[Music] underneath all this rubbish a remnant of what life was like here in Oxford 200,000 years ago over there archaeologists have discovered evidence of huge tusked mammoths and giant elephants can we find out more about these animals have we got the resources to recreate the environment in which they lived and is it possible that we can find Clues as to whether our early ancestors prehistoric man lived here too side by side with the mammoths [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what do you think of that then Kena wow there some hole in it that's fantastic isn't it we ought to that over there that's where the business is that's the site in the middle there all the dirty Brown God I mean this is let's be honest this is typical of about I don't know how many percentages of Paleolithic suits in this country simply because most of them or a lot of the good on are in gravel pits and they' got to take I mean you know I mean this is this is pretty typical big holes lots of water and lots of rubbish well let's go down and see Tony first and see what he's what he's looking at down there good job it's not I hope it stays like this we drown if it rains we need our AB sailing kit don't we so what's this level here Phil well this is the Oxford clay Tony it's about uh about 150 million years old well but that's not really why we're here you see within the Oxford clay there's a channel been cut and in there is our site but what you got to realize is that that whole Channel has been sealed by this amount of gravel where up we are going up the slope there was gravel that was laid down by the river temps very very cold climate at that stage and so that's where we're standing in this enormous Quarry we to go over and have a look at that come on it seems the water from a huge River carved a Channel Through the clay that lies at the bottom of this Quarry about 200,000 years ago a remarkable collection of of Mammoth and elephant Bones have been recovered in this channel by archaeologist Kate Scott and geologist Christine Buckingham but their excavations have failed to find the channel edges and the areas of prehistoric land Beyond them intact land surfaces from this far back are extremely rare but crucial if we're going to learn anything about prehistoric environments over the next 3 days we're going to search for this land surface with techniques more normally used to detect man-made features and for the first time ever geofiz are going to try and use their instruments to distinguish clay Banks from a gravel riverbed how practical is it in the course of three days to use your kind of technology in order to create a picture of this area going tell me hoping you would um yeah we're not used to working in sort of situation where we've lost 20 feet of top soil and gravel and we're sort of below ground level so it's an unusual challenge for us to say the least but there's a River Course to find you know an an all abandoned River uh which is only just under the the gravel that we've got if the weather stays like this we might be all right but if we get some rain then to wet it's going to confuse results and can we get that data onto computer well we think we can I mean we're waiting you know to set up the computers and we think as soon as we get that data in we can then actually do a 3D visualization of the landscape and move around it and light it we think we can do it we're talking positive already a we what what about Victor what can you do for us absolutely amazing range of animals in there you know I've been practicing my mammuts last week you should have feel now well it's uh 10:35 on day one uh we've got quite a lot to do I think if we're going to be able to create this picture of this landscape 200,000 years ago so uh let get moving [Music] prehistoric sites like these may look Barren but they contain a wealth of tiny environmental finds like seeds insects and mollusks our air shelters will house all the technology needed to analyze these microscopic Clues we don't know much about the environment 200,000 years ago so it'll be fantastic if we can gather enough information together to reconstruct the ancient landscape here even less is known about our ancestors at this time but if we do find land here then we can start looking for evidence of early man on our River Bank half past 11 and our first trench is cutting back Beyond Kate's excavations this is part of the river Channel but we may be lucky and find an edge Kate's been prevented from Excavating the site more extensively by the constant discovery of Bones and it seems our first attempt isn't any different a large bone takes 3 Days To excavate properly and we can't afford to spend that much time on one find but try telling Phil that hang on Phil's getting excited about something what's what's going on Phil looks like a bit of Tusk well does it maybe is that Tusk as it well I think it is looks like yeah well we don't want to go any deeper there we've uncovered a 200,000 year old mammoth tusk which could be as much as 9t in length but coming from the river Channel it can't help us find land and we can't afford to be distracted by it what's needed are seeds from mature plants land snails and beetles and that's where our environmental archaeologists come in as we get down into this we've got to be very careful because the environmental evidence is going to be very important yes you know we need to we need to you know identify the areas where we might take samp from it well because we've got a view of the side of the section here you can see this gray stuff look here I'll just show you what I mean by this stuff okay hold on a minute um where the sun's got at it you'll see it's very pale but when they get down to that that stuff contains the animals and plants that actually lived in the bottom of the river right so when you get down to that let me know because then we can take bulk samples of that while we searched the south end of our site for environmental Clues to our land surface Kenza and the survey team were with Christine using geology to find where the river flowed out of the North End I can show you one of the oh yes yes River bed so you've got a channel is that line that look that's a margin Where the River has cut a Groove in the clay and redeposited all sorts of material so it's either a quiet water part of the river or it's material that slumped from the the bank if you can help me to map individual snapshots of this River then together with the geology eventually we can pick to put together an idea of what we think was was going on perhaps you show us Christine where this channel goes across here give everyone an idea roughly what they're trying can we get out of here that's proba easiest place Christin believes the river moved around a lot during the thousands of years it flowed through this site but if Fizz can show up the difference between the gravels and the clay we should be able to chart the various courses the river Channel carved out a clear picture of the river's course across our site will increase the possibility of finding surviving land surfaces but back at trench one we seem to have narrowed the odds already you've got something well we got big tree here where Kate is got wood there haven't you and it's certainly coming across to about here look presuming what's this K rest on the River Bank perhaps yes well great big chunks of tree like this tend to be more on margins than somewhere out in the middle of a stream so it's it's an indication as we have had with hazelnuts and land snails and other things around here that we may be near to a margin and what's so exciting end of the morning and it looks like we've found our River Bank complete with Fallen oak trees but is this habitable land tell me if I'm getting too excited or not but I've got some of charcoal down here do you do you get that anyway see down down here look I'm sure that that looks like a bit there that's a bit there there are probably people better qualified than me on that but I think we what we found before that it isn't charcoal it's some kind of oxidization or something that's created this black so it looks black but it's not fire in fact yeah yeah I won't get excited they pretty amazing on our first scpe it would it would especially on my first scrape so these are actually The Beetles from the sediment that had the trunks of Oak in it they are indeed in this site we've got species that come from uh Southeast Europe from um even Bosnia and heroina from Spain but the bulk of the forer is found in Southern England at the present time right and we can therefore conclude that the environment was warmer than now because the species of vetle that are in here live south of this right south of this area let's see what else we can find come on did you say something Meg we've got another bone I think or whatever I want Kate's instant instant recognition looks like it is a bit of a Mammoth tooth our first Mammoth [Laughter] tooth at 6 in mix mammoth tooth is smaller than an elephant's and shows how mimus primogen was consuming Lush soft vegetation mammoths only have four teeth at any one time as one wears down it's replaced by another the ridges on our tooth show this Mammoth had already worn out three of his teeth this tooth came from a mature animal probably 30 years old smaller than an Indian Elephant a male mammoth from our site would have stood about 10t tall its size shows it had adapted to a warm climate so as well as being a good 2T shorter than a woolly mammoth it may well have been bald as well but it was still found in the river and Mick feels it's diverting us from the main task this weekend finding the land see my my inclination Kate would be to sink a trench across this to look for the old ground surface on but I can see that you would risk going through a lot of stuff but to pick up the relationship of The River To The Ground alongside and yes if you like accept that in one metor you're going to destroy yes OD the odd bone the odd Tusk or whatever but you'll leave in that wouldn't be construed as being really bad archaeology to plow through evidence of all these depends what you're trying to do and one of the things that we intended to do here was to try and get the environmental context sorted out and I think it um to the information we would gain from a trench would far exceed the few things we might destroy so mix proposing a huge gamble destroying a wealth of fins we already know exist in search of better environmental pointers below a second trench at right angles to our first would cut back through the tusks and teeth on the edge of the river bank but would we find the land surfaces Beyond them that's for tomorrow today we're relying on geofiz yeah well I think it's quite exciting we do actually appear to be getting some positive results we can't find anything magnetically but with the resistance we are getting changes and I mean basically on the plot the low is where we think the clay is the Oxford clay the black then are the high resistance that's where we've got the gravel deposits on top of the clay um the oxide clay there you were hoping for a channel going in that direction and we've got certainly anomalies going in that way I mean it's easier to see on the screen that's where we were stood there was the cut at that point and there we've got a Trend along there so this time the clay in blue gravel in red and well you're going to carry on that way well we'll extend our survey areas in between where the trenches are at the moment and hopefully join up the dots dots that would be excellent we seemed to have learned so much about the site in the past 7 hours that I was beginning to wonder if we'd need 3 days here but Mick decided I needed an overview to put today into perspective the site starts to make some sense from up here doesn't it yeah I mean you can see what a a sort of small patch we've got in the bottom of it really but why are we so locked into geology this week it seems as though archaeology hasn't got a look in yeah I think that's inevitable with something as early as this really you know we're talking about 200,000 years ago I mean BC makes no difference really that that length of time ago and so at that time you're dealing with hunter gatherers uh they're very dependent on what resource the Landscapes got in it whether it's animals plants all the rest of the stuff they collect they hunt they fish so to some extent you you need to know something about that General background before you can see where people might have fitted in is there any realistic possibility of finding evidence of human settlement I think it's so a very very long shot the trouble is you've got a landscape of say that's been that's buried for a start I mean it's worse than looking for an need in a high stack isn't it I mean you got every everything you can see in front of you for many many miles to the west of here it's all gravel across to there now there wouldn't have been many people living in that area there might have been say one family operating over the whole of this area so chances of finding their Campsite in this area you know pretty remote really but somewhere in this landscape between here and the Horizon there was a family hunting and operating yeah we think think it's is part of um Mammoth skull and uh back on the ground we've uncovered a whole jumble of Bones and then there's bone over there so there's any amount of it it's all over the place it's getting really quite a complex little group of bone oh yes you see around there yeah and we got something now coming in there but D be careful there Tony you got bone already all the way around there um and then we got someone else in that's the Horn of a bison inside of a b horn it's called a horn core right is that another one uh I can't really see yet that's no what we got coming through there though that looks like a bit of Mammoth limb that's probably also limb I don't think that's yes should we knock it on the head for today it's getting a bit chilly isn't it it is Freez come and meet the Earth watch people and have a glass of wine I just clean up my loose to help us excavate as much of the site as possible over the next two days we've been joined by volunteers from the earthwatch charity what it used to look like well it's what it could have looked like this is a sort of impression this is Victor's first impression of the Channel with a couple of islands um this is sort of our best guest at the moment and over the weekend we can alter this impression as the data comes in you know all these bones seem to be accumulating on the edge of the river and you know I mean this is if if there's any evidence of people living there then it'll be on the river bank so we thought we were to dig a couple of trenches back ac across the river in order to do that we're going to have to plow through Mammoth tusks and that's going to be the hard knows what meanwhile it's left to Christine as the geologist to Peg out mi trench ready for the Digger to do its worst first thing in the morning so tomorrow we're going to dig a big trench right through Kate's mammoth's tusks and bison's heels and all the other bones in order to see if we can establish what the environment's like further down let's hope it's a price worth paying see you after the break [Music] start of day two and a complete change in the weather means a complete change in conditions at the site 5 hours of solid rain have reverted the Oxford clay to the sticky mud that once lay at the bottom of the prehistoric ocean while the earthwatch volunteers Shelter From the weather we have to cope with the problems it's causing yesterday's excavation needs a cover the rain could also affect the Geo Fizz results we are making progress with mixed trench which is looking for the old land surface beyond our Riverbank but in all this mud are we really going to find anything it's actually hailing in my tee well the late 20th century interglacial appears to be over and we're diving back into another Ice Age what are we going to do Mick well we've got this trench that's been du morning Kate good morning just having a look it's been a very interesting exercise actually digging this the Digger driver was here at 8:00 a gathering this weather it was snowing at there snowing there what we got then well we thought over there with all those silts that we had very nearly the margin of the channel deposits Yeah by taking this through we realized that we've got yet another cut in the channel here we thought we'd get the bank didn't we somewhere here over there in fact we've got another cut which links up with one probably over there maybe going in that John we got those shells so we've got a whole series of river channels have we through here yeah see you got these shells which are coming out of this area here and in fact the margin of the channel is over there where it meets the oxidized clay that orange clay over there have a look and what we got there these are fresh water Ms that only live in warm water so we're in a warm period with these then yeah so mix's second trench hasn't revealed our land surface we had thought that the edge of the trench here where we found the wood and Bones yesterday was the start of the river's bank but as we go back into where the land surface should be the soil and silt that's covering the clay dips back into the orange gravel of the river channel so what we actually have is merely an island between two of the river's channels again back in the dry Russell is explaining why we're unlikely to find an intact land surface at this end of the site green yeah that's it now this is the situation when the channel was functional and in this we've got all sorts of animals on theide of it got all sorts of animals mammoths doing their vast droppings here and the dong beetles falling in all sorts of things now time goes by you're getting the the whole area is gradually cut down this is what they call their cold gravels and the land surface disappears too now somehow you've got to highlight this as the last bit of that surface which we started with because if this is the North End that's a little bit that's surviving right it's the last bit of the Lamb surface that didn't get eroded away can we do that the rain stopped sun's coming out just at the moment when we managed to get this temporary roof over the trench the weather takes a turn for the better but I hadn't realized that the rain is so problematic when you're digging because it makes the Earth so much heavier normally you can just fill a bucket with this sort of Shale stuff and Chuck it on the spoil heat but as soon as it starts raining everything's about five times as heavy and all of the Soggy Earth sticks to your shovel and sticks to everything that you're using to scrape the little fines with it's murder how getting n it's all Happening Here Tony it really is I don't know if you remember last night we had this bit here which we thought was part of a a mammoth skull and then we had here a a boon horn well we've cleared all the way around that and we've now got bone which comes all the way around there this is all bone so I'm pretty sure that this is all part of this this massive Bon skull and then we got some of else another piece of bone running in there and then here we appeared out part of a Tusk which has been slowed off when they machined out the gravel so we've only got basically half of it any here what do you think of this here then that is massive look at that you see that's mammoth tusk yeah can you see what it's doing it's running right in underneath all that lot of bone so how long do you think that it will take you to to tidy all this up can can we get it done by tomorrow night we can have a try but we're not going to certainly risk ripping it out just for the sake of getting it finished it's got to be done right if we're going to do it at all it seems the Ice Age gravels have sliced off any old land surface at the South End of the site but at the North End where Russell believes we'll still find a land surface Kate's team were Keen to show us what they'd uncovered oh Lord look at thatness Fantastic is it that's what 200,000 years old that's at least 200,000 years it's probably not in situ that is a piece of wood that's been deposited there yeah but this area here you can see from the tentacles of roots that are coming out and the little stumps remnants of stumps that are sticking up that this is a land surface undisturbed from 200,000 years ago or more per it's incredible these pieces of wood are the roots and stumps of trees which actually grew beside our River we found a tiny piece of the land surface what strikes me is it is so incredibly small I mean it's like a Sixpence in the whole the whole Quarry that is surviving and this with exactly what you were saying earlier about this is the the edge of the river bank that's survived and here it is that seems to me remarkable I mean quite incredible how do we feel about disturbing any of this then I mean it's all going to be buried eventually is we have recorded it drawn it photographed it and sampled it so I'm ready now to take it down further to see whe there's any more Roots underneath basically it's an indication of how profitable it's going to be just look at the where the mollus are washed out on the surface just there and you can the the one that the rather bigger thing there is corbicular fluminalis that is exciting because its nearest locality at the moment is that's the one it's nearest locality at the moment is in the Nile in Egypt so it's beginning to tell you there's some exciting signal in here whatever exting let's get on with it so we get cracking at in the gravels that now fill the channel Kate's found a number of stone tools including Flint hand axes because they've been found in the river they were probably washed here maybe from Miles Away still that does mean man was in the area and it gives one of the country's top Stone tool experts a chance to do what he does best Flint napping so you've got this family of nomadic people right and they pick up a piece of flint like this and then what do they do with it well I suspect they would probably gone for something a bit more manageable like that and uh really they're just probably running around up on the CHS and they pick up a stone like that and the first thing they do is what we would call alternate flaking which is one flake off one side and one flake off the other side just going around the edge like that this is it's really all about I mean one of the great sort of uh comparisons has been made was like you're calling it The Original Swiss army knife yeah yeah I mean you name it they probably used it for that particular purpose Butchery scraping chopping cutting but you know okay that's a that's a pretty rough hand ax but um the thing of it is it works well it only took that probably took about 4 minutes there you go I mean you saw me make it we've been sat here okay we just a bit confused about what we are actually tracing on the the ground uh I don't know did you see those yesterday basically this is the this gravel the face along here the thought was that that's going along this line we've now done work at the other end this end of uh the site and so we're still getting Trends following similar directions so the the real difficulty we've got because we're looking at Keyhole areas when we're seeing changes between the gravel and the Clays we can't actually be confident that we've got an edge to a river bed we may just be seeing undulations within that so it's going to be very difficult for us to join up lines and say to you there is one major river Channel why don't you geiz the middle it's no space that's the major problem no space it's all covered in trees and we've got the tents here and everything we can't get to the site can't no access for it can you pass me the call so that's our feeling we need to do some more work but even even ack can you hear me it's Tony a sample may help if we getting the same hello Tony expect to find a river I'm talking to John uh in the uh in the tent and he's a bit stuck really he can't tell whether he's got one big river or lots of little bits unless he geop fizzes the middle of our area which at the moment has got spoil heaps and trenches not to mention a load of shrubs on it now it seems to us that really it ought to be a priority to do that work have you got any thoughts on this I think we should clear well I've got Kenza over here as well and we're both sort of nodding to each other so I suppose we could take it as that executive decision it's a sort of executive decision I mean I'm quite Keen that we should get um you know as complete a plan so that we can do the reconstructions on the screen uh of what the landscape was like and and this is all part of the landscape work so that uh yeah I think we should go ahead with that okay well we'll try and get some people together and maybe you could at your end and have a go clearing a bit more of the site okay okay thanks Tony we'll come over have a look when we just looked at what we've got over at the North End of the site here while Mick and wood expert rowa gaale set to work identifying our 200,000 year old trees we start clearing today's vegetation from the middle of the site [Music] back in the air shelter Rowena is trying to match thin slices of the wood samples to slices from Modern trees I hope she succeeds here Tony Chuck Chuck that down a minute come and have a look at this you were talking about how how sharp a piece of flint is and how much it does it cut in you think of that then did you make that Flint yep it's just one of the ones I saw when we were sat over there this afternoon it's amazing isn't it Kade have you seen this before ever seen anybody work with a piece of flint on a on meat before well I haven't but one of the research students gave a set of flakes hand ax and things to a local butcher who butchered a road deer and the thing he found the best for doing the whole deer without making any mess at all was one Flint flake I believe that the whole carcass yeah so uh what are you waiting for I mean I thought you were making a fire so we could cook this stuff up well I'll stick this on the barbie St away just about another 45 We need oh wow so put night we decided to eat prehistoric Style with just a few concessions to the 20th Century Metal barbecues plates and of course veggie burgers for Mick I think it's it's a mammoth dropping Mammoth dropping fine look wonderful but at least some of us were prepared to enter into the spirit of the occasion that's the cook the job right what we going to do tomorrow carry on WE where's Rena result have you managed to get the uh data together yet yes the spread out routy bit is uh almost certainly a willow outside CH it might be popular but it's more likely to be Willow we've got Willows growing on the riverbank growing into the yes seems so and the the long thin bit beside it uh is not from the same uh tree or bush it's most probably um Elder but I'd still like to have another look at that and make certain about that this this is very interesting because he's showing us in detail what the local landscape was like next to the river and that's presumably a climate that's not particularly hot or cold no temperate rather temperate like today yes it's very good uh so that gives us a picture of the immediate locality along this bed of the river and do you think there is a realistic possibility that by the end of tomorrow we'll have a picture of this whole environment for yeah I I don't see any problem with that I think the amount of background information that that's come out of this small area in in with what Kate's done before and what we've managed to together is incredible you know' got a whole batch of techniques they're all producing useful stuff with no doubt about that at all so it's the end of day two let's hope we've got the big picture tomorrow stay with us [Music] [Music] 9:00 day three and we've been given a helping hand by the owners of the Quarry their giant earth mover is going to clear away all the spoil Heats that are preventing Geo Fizz from surveying the center of the site there are some advantages to in a gravel pit after all clearing a whole new area on the site hasn't only helped the survey team it's also allowed Mick a chance to dig an even deeper trench this time where our Geo Fizz results predict we'll find the course of the river in the middle of our [Music] site H hang on John oh yeah look at that it's uh that's good condition that's good condition that could be quite a recoverable task so this is out of stuff that we've actually cut through just last Lo so that was the last Lo which going into the clay somewhere down the that pink in there is is that possibly no that's that's right here no no hang on hang on hang on well that's the only pink bit I can see no I I think I think I think you'll find that c is it have a look it's very smashed but it looks the right stuff I think I think we you know we are prepared to sacrifice a little bit right to gain the overall picture of the of the environment and so so we ought to carry on with this now we right okay well what about this Edge we've got here we saw it in the previous trench we did yesterday yeah if I just move this material back a little bit you can see that very very approximately that line there divides clean clay from the gravel we don't really want to go anym into that do we or do we want to empty that out well we are the idea is to take the the whole thing down to the clay right and back and then we we'll see it in section you'll be able to pick it up and Survey that if uh if we can have somebody in with a with a scale Rule and the grid we just take a photograph of this yeah so we have it recorded then we'll we'll we'll excavate it out and carry on so we can now start to plot the course of our River across the site and we can populate its edges with the animals we've found like the Bison which Victor's sketching here the bones we've uncovered this weekend also give us Clues as to climate and environment on our site but by far the best information will come from the insects mollusks and Aquatic Life hiding in the soil samples collected by our environmental team who are now busily washing and sving the Earth from trench 3 put more water in that so you can wash those ston okay ah there's one look little round one there yeah there's one just there but there's another one up here and these are both land snails and that one down there the round one's tricker hispa it's not very fussy it lives anywhere so that's not much use to us really not much use about that one is that a bit now this one this one's a pupilla muscorum it likes dry grassland open areas so it's not a dense Woodland how would we know how far these might have washed I mean they're very small and light I could imagine they they could they could wash a long way but by looking at all the species we can f with the other that's right so if if if the species look cohesive looks like we have a single uh assemblage from a single um environment and we can combine that with Russell's insect information and combine it with the wood identifications that that's the way you can tell the big story that's the way we can get the information and if it's not just this one line of evidence it's the combination of all the lines of evidence that is really important and that's what we're beginning to get now it's really it's really getting very excited by this afternoon we should have a really good picture shouldn't we I hope so while Mike sved to today's samples Russell and fishbone expert Brian Irving were examining Yesterday's Catch under the microscope T come and look at this we got a story here um now R you explain what well I've been looking at the um Fishbones here and um we do have ra rather a large species list now we have a lot of fish here which are still coming in the British Isles but uh we have three three spine stickle back Pike perch eel bream goodin D chub roach so so it's rather a long list um what does that tell us about the kind of water that they would have been well all of of of the the bones are from very very small fish so with these being so small it's probably a very a very very small water course and then we've got the eel as well and Russell made an interesting comment about the eel well there interesting thing about the eel is it spawns in the sea yeah now the presence of eels here means first first of all they could get to the Sea the adults and it means that the youngsters coming back must have come back on the Gulf Stream So the Gulf Stream must be washing our West Coast at this time and it's the Gulf Stream which is responsible for our uh warm climate it's lunchtime day three and we've got an absolute Avalanche of information coming in here now we've got Russell working on the Beetles we've got snails and seeds here corenza is doing the mapping here's the geofiz going into the computer Victor's working on the animals Steve's creating a grid which shows us what the river bank would have been like and steuarts plotting everything onto a big plan and I'm beginning to get a picture of life here 200,000 years ago that there would have been a big river me Meandering through here and the whole landscape would have been a bit like the African Savannah although maybe the temperature would have been a bit more like Southern France nowadays and on the banks there'd have been Oak and willow trees but it wouldn't have been thickly forested because if you think of the size of the animals that uh we've been picking up remains of they would have been the sort of animals which would have bashed down the trees and knocked the trunks into this thick caked cracked mud on the river bank that would have been crawling with frogs and beetles and little snails it's good is it but what I don't yet understand is how our early ancesters Stone Age people fitted into this landscape in the center of our site mixed deep trench is complete well how you going on then John we've been hearing great things yeah it's been very good it's hell of a length now is it it must be close on 65 M now it's it's a really truly Splendid trench anyway the out of it the exciting thing is this wow it is it's an elephant tooth elepant so does that help us with the environment whether it's hot cold whatever well yes elephant are only warm right and this is really really good good stuff yes looks in good condition as well it's very solid really good what about other stuff cuz I see there's a there's a bucket down here with something in as we came across yeah well it wasn't just somebody's lunch you know funny should say say that well in in the bucket we saw some wood near the surface when we stripped it and this is this is if you look at the curvature of that that wood it's a fairly large trunk we're dealing with yeah so we can get that looked at and see what sort of uh yep wood that is identification like Oak actually it's really well preserved across it yeah yeah haven't finished yet we haven't there's even better so this is the this is the the River Bank getting deeper yeah and we then found these bones which although very dirty and smash they are I've been told they the uh one of the leg bones of a mammoth good Lord big uh a Big Slab is very heavy isn't it very joint is it yep you can see the bone structure in this your L um that's great is it Kate yeah what you been doing while we've been at dinner then we've been hearing great things I've been drawing you must been getting pretty excited about all this there's a fantastic looking bone here but all this stuff coming out all over the place now and it's it's what look at this look at this what's that there look have to have a have a little pick of the end first you can tell by the wear surfaces on it this is a horse Shin bur right quite a short stocky little stocky sort of horse like the environmental fins from this trench tell us even more what what you can do is in the channel there are prostrate trees yes we know that they are submerged trees because they've got beetles that need submerged trees right now the that so that in a natural environment trees would fall in the river instead of the Water Authority coming and cleaning them off they would in fact be just washed down stream now so there are trees which are in here now we know from yesterday that we have Willows along the edges yes yeah the snails are telling you that the margins of river are very weedy that's right even though the water course itself might be quite narrow you got a nice wide marshy area there's a lot of that's right there's a lot of ENT P weed seeds things like that so you've got quite a lot it's not it's not a definite boundary the side of the river you're talking wet Marsh and you've got Pond grading into Meadow and occasional open tree I suppose much Greener I would like some good ripples to distinguish the ripples the pools exactly yeah yeah because it was there are two clearcut aquatic habitats one is the pool of slowly flowing water and this goes with the m to and some of it which is Rippling and running fast FIV now the only evidence that I've got are from the ctis Flies and the ctis Flies say moving water on a mature stream yeah now mature is usually a matter of measure of velocity not size um but in other words it's not a trickling stream it is a proper small River small River okay but has our final trench proved Geo Fizz right have they found the edge of our Channel how does this fit with all the stuff we when we I mean when we started John you were very skeptical no I I put it stronger though you were to go home you were yeah exactly you were iffy about whether you were going to get anything out of it at all weren't you well I wasn't that confident no I think and now well now well well I think we we were told by geophysics that that the edge of the trench the edge of the the deeper part of the channel was here and guess what we've got the edge of the channel well done the most exciting thing from our point of view is to be able to use the bits in between that we haven't dug from your survey and see so you've got whatever a year or more to go or a couple of seasons to go and you can now see where perhaps you might you might want to dig we won't digging any of the ball bits on your that's it I me we can give you a plan by the end of today C of the main area that's been stripped in point of you that's wonderful to have a I mean it must be must be pretty encouraging for you John mustn't it to actually be able to put GE physics and this sort of site must be another first it's different it certainly is different um not something we do every day of the [Music] week we've now got only a few hours left to record and preserve everything we've found this weekend we won't have the time to lift our first find the Tusk or search for man on our our newly discovered land surface b as Mick says looking for our ancestors on a site this big encompassing such a vast period in prehistory is like looking for a needle in a hay stack I'm just beginning to get my head around the enormity of the time scale involved in this week's dig if you think of this Horizon as a massive Continuum of time then the remnants of the first man that's ever been found in Britain box Grove man we can place round about where that gray Hopper is over there and then there were lots of ice ages and warmer periods and more ice ages until the period that we're looking at this week the warm interg glacial at Stanton harcour is about where that white van is there and that continued for about 50,000 years until where that yellow Digger is and then there was another Ice Age in a warm period and another Ice Age which ended around about where those trees are that's the beginning of the Middle Stone Age the lithic where you saw lots of hunter gatherers appearing on the scene and then the Bronze Age is round about where that triangular Tower is and the present day is where that big Square Tower is and if you want to put your own life into the equation well each human life is about the width of my thumb sobering thought isn't it we may not have found man but we have discovered more than enough to give us a clear picture of the environment here 200,000 years ago our geofiz survey has clearly given us the channels of our River we found at least one intact land surface and geofiz has pointed Kate in the right direction of a second she can now spend the time she's allowed to remain on this site Excavating these former land surfaces our environmental evidence shows our River moved through flood to periods of drought in a climate as warm as southern Europe there were Willows in the river margins and a forest of Oak and aler on its banks Kate now knows the animals she's found the Bison the horse the mammoth and the straight tusked elephant lived as well as died here and her excavations May yet reveal evidence of human life who knows [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music]
