Time Team S07E04 waddon,.dorset

this is the tiny village of worden endorses it's a beautiful place to live in protect it from the elements by this high ridge up here and on a clear day overlooking what must be one of the most spectacular views in the whole country but how long have people been living here the owners of these two bungalows have found lots of pottery in their back garden and they've discovered lots of lumps and bumps in the fields around them this is the two bungalows here naturally they're wondering what it's all about and who was living here hundreds if not thousands of years ago time team have got just three days to come up with some answers how you doing Mick well we got a very interesting situation here because David here I live me lives in this bungalow here and he's the one that wrote to us wrote to Time Team and he shares this garden with Grace who lives in this bungalow here and in front of it there's this septic tank which is this mound and when this has been dug you watched it and the workmen were pulling pots at all the time with they dug away right the either side and lots of us came out basically we found a lot of pottery in it basically the spoil heat was pushed over there and all the pottery really came out of the mound they are covered with Nettles so just up on absolutely here oh yeah I can see the manhole cover that's right yeah there's a pipe running down here that other stuff came out that's right in this direction yeah down in this sort of direction yeah so we've got this big coach and a pottery the problem we have tone is we don't know whether all this pottery is coming with soil that's been dumped on the side here in which case it belongs somewhere else and doesn't tell us very much or whether it actually relates to buildings and structures or workshops or anything like actually in the ground area so we're going to have to well first of all Jews from geophysics and and see if there's any structures but we actually gonna put a trench in here and and see what we get where's the pottery that David found it's up in the bungalow come have a look as a fantastic collection at the pipe yes surely yeah accordingly no problem David's neighbor grace is waiting for a hip operation so we're planning to bring the archaeology to her whenever we can Oh gross what Tony just said the pottery what all this came from your bad garden yes and this is just a tiny proportion of it as well they've just say a sample muscle mass is mores been thrown out it's strange it's not all from one period but it doesn't run completely through steady either there's masses of this medieval stuff for 1213 1400 AD there's a sort of gap of about 600 years then is a bit of late Roman stuff - 300 AD then there's another 700 year gap then we've got masses of this early Iron Age stuff which is in fantastic condition at the moment we're waiting for geophys to survey the garden before we start digging till then we're going to use the time to double-check the spoil heap created when the septic tank was put in right very keen on this this spoiled tip archeology betray us left the summit in addition to wanting to find out what's under their garden David and grace have noticed lots of lumps and bumps in the field next door I want to know if these could be further clues to who was living here in the past this is a job for our landscape surveyor Stuart Ainsworth who already thanks to some photos taken by a local photographer has noticed several features which may be worth further investigation that there either is where the septic tank is in the back of grace and David's garden yeah if you look over here alongside the road can you see these rectangular structures very clear yeah there's another one in there they look as if they might be medieval or post medieval buildings to me and there's all sorts of other stuff little boundaries coming off and just wondering whether we might have a small hamlet something like that struggling out along the road but on on the other side of the road you can sit can you see these terraces yeah and so on over here and this all these plowing there's a lot going on yeah because here you've got this appears to be an earlier field system overlain by region furrow this looks very much like a prehistoric field system wonderful position south-facing slope and then you come down to the break of slope we've got the classic location for Iron Age and Roman settlement in fact it's the optimum location for settlement in most periods mikta Victor over you found yourself a nice spot there Victor what are you doing grants and view here except it's bitterly cold as a game probably what I'm doing basically it's just a quick sketch of the two bungalows and having a bit of a fantasy of what would happen in the garden if we had an Iron Age round house or alternately had one of these medieval stone houses one of the longer houses with the thatched roof so I'm working on those two at the moment Victor in fact has been fairly restrained with his sketch because in a landscape like this the potential is enormous it could contain evidence of an entire early Iron Age settlement and a medieval village one built on top of the other at the moment all we know is that geophys have detected several features in the area of the septic tank but nothing that's an obvious structure so what do we do I mean it seems to me that the prime reason for doing this particular hole is to check out the stuff that you found David in this area and try and get some context to it so we need to be near the pipe and near the septic tank so perhaps we need to be in that sort of area so where's that me well that's there's a septic tank under that bound there yeah I was going across down there so our target without the geophysics will be round here wouldn't it right and face of the geophysics I'd prefer to come this way a bit and go that way a bit okay well if you've got a wall that when a feature that way we can presumably lie something had to take all of them so at last time to start taking up the turf and the debut of a new machine designed to speed up the process this is this the new labor-saving device this is the turf-cutter this in theory should make it easier to replace the turf after the dig in the field next door digging begins in a more conventional way as we position our second trench over the earthwork which could be the remains of a medieval house if David and Grace's pottery finds in the garden or anything to go by over the next few days we should be uncovering bits of both the Iron Age and medieval story of waton with this in mind we've invited Jim new bolt a specialist in making medieval pottery to work with us oh hello I'll give you a hand with anything yes so we could do with you taking your boots off we need this mixing up here with your feet thing whether it's off that's it using methods and technology appropriate to each period Jim is going to try to make replicas Iron Age and medieval pots based on the pottery sherds we dig up in our trenches so you say here rather than that's riotous people today the task is to build the kilns we're using local clay and by adding water it becomes easier to work with the Clay's then mixed with hay and rolled into balls that he used to make the walls of the medieval kiln right so Lisa this is the kill worn from medieval kill me that's right yes how high is it going to go it's going to be around this height and rather like a beehive right so you've got quite a lot to take that's right they're also gonna do an Iron Age firing as well that's right the Iron Age firing is going to be in this fire box here we have the two fire boxes for the medieval kiln so if enter the Iron Age bonfire in the pit will help fire the medieval that's right yeah that'll enable us to do pottery of well any period we find office that's right yes but what have we found in the garden so far well we think we found what GF is detecting John I think we got your anomaly yes but it's running along the hill it looks like a drain it is a drain the pipes no longer in use so we're going to take it up and dig deeper today warden is made up of just five houses one of them's a la manor house and it's in the bar next to this building where Robin Bush our historian will be working Robins task will be the troll through a collection of original documents all relating to the manor and our site how are you going to pull this stuff together over the next three days what I'm looking for is is evidence of references to the landscape to old common fields old open fields the way in which this this estate was worked was managed and its very name goes back at least a thousand years Wadden means road hill so presumably either it grew wild or they actually cultivated it on this hill the road with which supposedly the ancient Britons used to slap on themselves you know for battle they could be actually a much older name than one thousand years absolutely gosh - come on a bit hasn't it Reza yeah it's absolutely amazing you've also got a wall yeah well we've got three walls we've got the end of a building what we're dealing with is a death of this building it's collapsed mainly inwards although with a little bit slumping onto the outside so we were right it was a ruined building causing the lumps and bumps and so far the fine suggests that the building was abandoned around 1700 ad so does this sort of stuff suggest the people living here are quite wealthy or is it very much your kind of farm laborious stuff no I think there was the some suggestion that they were relatively well-to-do and they had more than just one slipper vessel that they clearly liked to have some decorative vessels on their table we've got any medieval pottery here at all we've I've just found one actually and it's a tiny base fund there so that would be 30th 14th century and that's the only bit of metal we've found so we've discovered a building and tomorrow we want to find out when it was built and also if there's any trace of even earlier buildings underneath this would help us to answer David and graces question about how long people have been living here race however at the moment seems happy enough having a quiet chat with Phil what that Portland out there is it here that's poor Portland bail you can understand what people want live here though man yeah yeah okay you're just lucky enough to be the person it goes are ever on at the kiln side how Potter is quite happily breaking up replica pots these will help to spread the heat across the floor of the medieval kiln when it's fired tomorrow but now we've reached the end of day one everyone I'm sure is enjoyed the weather but how are we doing with the archaeology so you're pretty happy with what's going on around here yeah I think we've put some trenches in through the rubble there and get down to the early levels of that building but what about in this garden I mean I know David and grace are really excited but quite frankly the best that you can say about this is that it's a an enigmatic hole enigmatic hole look this trench is stuffed full of archaeology but the only bits that are natural are those yellow bits all the dark bits other than that are features we've got to dig em out find out how old they are and what's in them so there could be iron age down there definitely there could be and I think we should put another trench in the other side of septic tank where we know all that material came out when the septic tank was dug so it seems make sense we've got one trench this side which was another one over there and that will double our chances of getting an Iron Age structure ok happy ending day one this night I'm really off about it yeah yeah quite frankly we haven't found anything like the amount of Iron Age stuff I thought we'd find and the thing I remember most about today is those enormous pieces of Iron Age pottery the size of digestive biscuits the Grace has got surely that must imply there's not a settlement around here somewhere tomorrow let's hope we find it it's the beginning of day 2 and mikolai left colour ponds of the reach to try and get a bit more of the whole picture it's fantastic view isn't it fantastic middle landscape in it and you can really see how close the sees to our side yeah yeah we got chisel beach over there a Batory over there should we get to go down a bit wait out of the wind and we can see the sights from the top do you reckon there's a real chance that we'll be able to find out what was happening in all those different historical periods in David and Gracie's back garden yeah I think so I hope so I mean that trench down there in their back god we're only just coming onto the archaeology I think we have a very good chance of giving the Iron Age picture from that have you noticed how the winds drops yeah I'm it's very sheltered down where they're living down there I mean it's not from the north wind certainly it must have been a haven compared with back there yeah but there's also an emerging medieval story of course we've we've got the house over there the end of the story the post medieval period but there's a whole series of platforms and buildings which includes their garden I mean they've got all this medieval pottery from the garden it's fairly clear that there was a house somewhere in that vicinity as well in the garden as grace can see we're now opening up another trench on the other side of the septic tank we're looking to see if there are any building remains under here which might explain why David and grace have found so much Iron Age and medieval pottery meanwhile in our original trench Phil's digging the darker soil features he discovered yesterday we need to establish what they are so that we can then investigate deeper down Oh UDP thought there Stewart you caught me out it make what have you thought then I've been saying you me having big thoughts been trying to work out really what the context what happened what's happening in grace and David's garden by doing something everything roundabout and you can sit can you see up here I just big terraces here time yeah there's no reason why these aren't Iron Age field terraces reused in the medieval period we know we've got a medieval house over there which are digging at the moment that's on top of these terraces so the implication is in the garden that we may have that depth of siphon some of those terraces to get to potentially before we get to Iron Age suit much rather be able to dig that light will we are you saying that we would have to dig down to here from there it depends where we do you digging on the downslope side that's where all the material moves down to if you're digging on the uphill side then that's nearer the original Iron Age things formed by plowing you say yeah if you and what what tends happen is the soil gets dragged from the uphill side so you're not very deep on to bedrock at that in it builds up into a great bank at the bottom so our bottom trench could be very deep but at top lynch mob quite shallow Stuart's also noticed two-track ways that are showing up as earthworks on the side of the ridge they can be seen very clearly on one of the photos this trackway he thinks is medieval but the higher one is earlier and this is clear to Stuart because this medieval field boundary goes over it this prehistoric track which could be Iron Age leads to another earth work which Stuart's interested in so we actually got an IH truck way which leads to fields over here comes down here and eventually leaves off over here and this is that curved enclosure that I was badgering you about yeah yeah yeah that is an earthwork don't understand what it is but this trackway heads towards it well we've got a trench in there now trying to see cuz geophysics didn't come up didn't come with anything at all but it's such a clear earth work that i want to keep running with that one so we've opened up another trench on the far side of the field we know that the features early because it's got medieval plowing over it but does it have any connection with the Iron Age pottery finds in the garden we'll have to wait and see listen Jimmy and I was just looking through this stuff that's come out of this top trench we started and I really hope it and poke tweed get lots and lots of Iron Age pottery out of this he's near a septic tank obviously we're not getting much pressure to but it's really hard stuff yes there is in this train this one is particularly nice it's a it's a well known type it's a bowl with the nice red finish traces of the red finish here right so is this a good one do you think to get Jim to try and reproduce and that's what we wanted to get him to do is try and do vessels that came out of the treasure yes I think it would be a perfect one currently our Potter's making a reproduction based on the one bit of medieval pottery we found in our trench in the field yesterday what actually promised it that's just a nurse you're not pet this is just a dementing of the wheel itself I send it round with my hand but it means I've got both feet on the ground okay to you steady that's right but you have to keep re spinning it that's right a tip at each stage is that I need to put my hand in the water as well so you've got the base now you're presumably gonna lift it up that's right gymnast helpers need to make lots of medieval pottery to fill up the kiln but just now we've got a much harder challenge for him to make a replica based on a bit of Iron Age pottery something he's never tried to do before Lisa you've managed to work out which bowl shapes were after yes it's roughly this one like this published drawing and it would be about this size right so that's that that sort of that's where you've drawn so the challenge is on can we make a replica iron-age pot to match the shirt we found in Grace's gun Corona has volunteered to get the experiment started the big difference between this and medieval pottery is that this is made without a wheel that's it this is it this is a long process this will be a real experiment to match the shape the fabric and the color of the pot and as no one knows how it was made for sure our attempt will be based on Theory potting experience and guesswork we're not exactly sure what these balls were used for they were probably multifunctional but again probably not for cooking hurry they may well have held liquids they may have even been for drinking from and probably just generally as table wares but I think the the fact that we very rarely find carbonized residue means that they weren't used for cooking on the whole meanwhile just outside Grace's window in our new trench the deeper we dig the better it seems to get some of that - handmade Iron Age stuff isn't it yeah that's night age well the big joke yes a base brilliant it's quite fragile no in fact it's beginning to look like we may have more than pottery here I'd like to think it was it was maybe a back end of a wall cut into the terrace you mean that edge there does look as though it's cut away and who knows I mean maybe just maybe David went plancha's his septic tank slap-bang on top of a building there's also some good news from the field next door because our test trench across the circular earth work has also found some archaeology Stuart's curious about ygf is didn't detect anything here this is a curved feature which was showing up on the air photographing which is visible as an earthwork and we're just putting a trench just across that section of it there the bank the geophysics is not saying there's nothing here we're just saying we can't see anything different to the earth works all right no additional information really it's a bit of additional information there now is nice yeah Phil Tony we've heard on the wire that you've got something I to right we have we've actually got our house but it looks it look you see this rubble that is the wall of an Iron Age round house beyond it is the outside of the building and where I'm standing is the actual inside of the building it looks very much like a rockery I know you'd say that but look at the size of these stones they are part of a makeup of a really big substantial war in here where I'm standing much much smaller bits all flat the the medieval pottery has just totally disappeared we're getting big pieces of wire and aged pottery Peters actually dug one of these you know so you know you know what you're looking at presume is that what yours not like when you first it feels right you can see the rubble and you've also got some of the stone just tipping off and slipping down into the interior of the hut the other thing you've got here is a space at the back of the hut before you have a change in the slope to the next toe is up there and on this flat piece of ground which technically is called a berm you've got a slight hollow which could represent a drip gully off the fat of the hot so in other words you can actually almost guesstimate the thickness of your thatch as the water runs down and goes into this little although they're from the curve of the wall we should be able to work out how big the hut was but where would the door have been we've got enough excavated prehistoric houses now to know that they tend to face south southeast it optimizes the amount of light you get from sunrise and may have some religious significance if you look from here look would have been a cracking view look that I like to see down there towards Portland that's Paul and Bill isn't it yeah yeah well this is great Iron Age houses are rarely on their own so there could be lots more to find here the next job though is to mark out the position of this hat and work out where the doorway should be they leave a gap of about a meter and a half we then plan to open up another trench across the doorway to start again that's south east where the doorway just up believe it of all the places put a septic tank probably look at it there's now one of the finds turned up is if it's not it's in there right in the middle of a house although we've only found a bit of the round house so far I can't wait to tell David and grace grace this is Victor who's who's our artist David grace now before we started digging on day one Victor drew this and it was what he imagined we would like to find in your back garden which is this iron H out of YouTube and the good news is we found an Iron Age Hut just where really popular which is in that trench with a bit of luck we should be able to show David and grace not only a round house but also the kind of pottery used there and believe it or not Jim reckons that this iron ochre clay is what the Iron Age Potter's must have used to achieve the red finish on their pottery you think you can actually achieve this color from that use it yes there's a lot of iron in this body in this clay so it should at least get something semblance of that this is really a trial run so we'll see how it works with iron rich clays fairly easy to find and Jim sure that there must have been some close by it's the firing process that affects the change in color but was this really how it was done in the Iron Age hopefully we'll find out it must seem that we've forgotten about our dig uncovering what we hope is a medieval building in the field next door the truth is what we're trying to do is allow Barney in his diggers time to reveal more of the building Robin also is on the lookout for documentary references that might help but in the trench the latest news is that we've discovered a courtyard with a flagstone floor and Barney now wants permission to dig beneath it I have to do that because I mean we really want to know what date that he and he was first occupied don't we do where they go to the medieval settlement or not Jimmy's making a replica of the 600 year old cistern he also has another system with him which we'll be able to use tonight but it's not completely ready it still needs to be pitched to be made watertight this was done using melted beeswax or pine resin this is where the pitching comes in as I'm pouring it out I see some pitching is the turning it round like that she's being pitched pitching you're out of the item we're also attempting to make pottery as it might have been made 2,000 years earlier in the Iron Age currently we're trying to recreate the smooth finish to the pot in our new trench to find the doorway of the Iron Age heart the signs are already looking good it's a different sort of pottery but it's of the right date it goes with the rest of it alright so surly oh no that's right it's early iron age about 600 BC did you stay tomorrow perhaps this time we might actually be able to invite you through the doorway of your very own round a very nice you're a lucky devil you know no give my left leg to have an Iron Age round ace in my back dog would you yes I would you want to move in Wow boy I love it it's been a great day and tomorrow should be even better as we hope to reveal the floor of the round house and find out what's under the mystery earth work in the field next door to celebrate a successful day we've invited Dave Ian grace to join us for a jury so how's it been going your Impreza well we've been very busy we've made a huge number of pots as you can see both Iron Age and medieval it's actually been really really useful because it's given us the chance to do a lot of experiments to try and find out how they were making the pottery that we're finding the trenches what other thing well one really interesting thing that has come up is that the Iron Age pottery we're finding we reckon was made by women how do you work that out because some of it is decorated with thumb or fingerprint imprints and we tried with Jim and his finger and thumb bits even his little thing is far too big to have made those imprints so we reckon it must have been someone very small fingers either woman or even a child what are you really proud of well I'll tell you what we did which was really fun we actually did some pitching waterproofing one of these system oh I know about this yes then this is not one we saw this afternoon with this little bulb that's right again it's all based on what we've been getting out of the trenches but I have a taste and see if you can work out what we actually use the waterproof it with just taste the side of it almost really good actually if we actually pine resin that's excellent the taste doesn't come through it is work that's right absolutely not at all I think I'll try again but the day is not over for everyone because the firing process will go on all through the night it's really exciting to actually got this all lit at last they were looking forward to it all day and now the firings well underway and that's the medieval pots in the mud kill that's right in the big mounded up thing that and then the Iron Age pots are just sitting in the bonfire it's called a clamp kiln but it's just a bonfire and a pit basically but that bonfire is firing the medieval kiln as well what about these medieval ones can we see them you'll be able to see those from the other side if you look in the other stone come and have a look cuz we've got we're gonna have two fires firing this kill them we haven't lit this one yet so you can actually get round here and then you get right down you can just see the bottom of that lowest pot one of our big pots oh yeah yeah yeah well it's 9:40 it really is the end of day two for Karenna and i we're going to slope off back to the hotel but Jim's got to stay here till the wee small hours of the morning Emily looking after his pots Jim what time did you get home last night Oh cracker dawn that was crack of dawn any late yeah I'll go I'm very well very well we had a few bangs and crashes but I think it's been a success bangs and crashes from in here and out here well I can see this that that doesn't bode too well does it it has been a success oh we've got things to do what we wanted them really as carrenza seen this year no not yet carrenza is checking our progress with the Iron Age round house oh wow this is we've extended this trench that's right yeah oh right yeah sure that's that same curve again going round assumingly so we will join these two trenches up and then we'll be able to see exactly where it goes and that's really quite how the less clear stuff we're getting about trench face with dogleg our way around this bush but I told me join them up we should end up with a hell of an arc on this round ocean so we've lots to do today we want to find the doorway and floor of the Round House we'll continue to search for earlier evidence under the building in the field next door and we've got another trench to sort out which I haven't even seen yet Wow look at this quake on the nose Oh what that might be good clay pit bloody get out luster EOP writer I'm gonna like this I live in jolly good on the church's killer that's good good god some of the foundations for hotels of you why did you dig so deep following me Phil what this floor is a sticky crisis good yeah down down where that's all Phil that's not just natural I don't know what it is is an enormous ditch huge with a bank on this side hang on a meat hang out the ditches go in that way yeah what ladies here was this photograph than this curved enclosure we'll be talking about from from day one and we wondered whether it was going to be a settlement of some kind or the geophysics showed that it clearly isn't settlement now you've got this yeah well we kept we kept pursuing it yeah cuz there's clearly an earthwork here we have to keep going with there and what we've ended up with is a huge ditch on the inside the big curved earthwork I only know one thing that has a big ditch on the inside and the bank on the outside and I don't really believe what I'm hearing yeah well what is it well II think having the dimensions and everything are right for it being a henge which is a late-night thing sir if that's right that's a mega mega mega mega dude me if it's a hinge that doesn't necessarily mean there's gonna be big bits of stone lying around doesn't no no because a lot of them have timber settings inside or indeed no obvious features inside it's difficult to see the soil changes which indicate that we found a ditch and Bank because the trench has partly collapsed but the crucial next step will be to find some dating evidence and am i right in saying that henge building was about the same time as the early pyramids yeah we're talking about 2500 BC in round figures so we've actually moved the habitation of this area like another thousand yeah yeah yeah that that's what it looks like I think we need to do a lot more work today to try and clarify so we're not gonna get excited yeah we are oh yeah we're excited even so it could be a henge a place where people were worshipping as far back as 4000 years ago but we have to find some dating evidence to prove it dating material isn't a problem in the garden though where we're continuing to find evidence of the people living here in the early iron age a mere two and a half thousand years ago but it's a complicated business sorting out layers of rubble and it's beginning to look like we might have more than one round house here the goals still the same to find the doorway and most importantly the floor where we could discover items left behind by the people who lived there but now over at the kiln the pots have cooled down and we can see how we've done trying to replicate some of the Iron Age pottery they all seem to be broken at the moment dream is that because in order to do the experimental firing and the time we had available we put them in a bit when they were a bit wet that's right normally we've got at least two weeks built for the drying process we're day a day was not quite long enough what's in one piece isn't it just a Dan this is Mary but it's a pity that a lot of broken but the important goal was to match the fabric and color right now this was the one we were trying to get that red burnished that's gone now there's only fired on one side really but we've forced this through that's red that's beautiful and the burnishing is true you got that one man it's looking very similar I'll see what else we have right that yes oh that's nice yes that's exactly dab it with her so that's where it's been down in the clamp kiln itself works had very little oxygen at all that's a reducing atmosphere that's right it's a completely so that's exactly at least even and again there we go they're only succeeded at out of the hinge site as we now call it we're extending the trench and Phil's decided to oversee the job himself as people didn't live on sites like this fines are usually few and far between well relying on film to spot any dating evidence should it turn up meanwhile it's time for a final report on the other set of lumps and bumps we've been uncovering in this field now I hear that what we've got is a post medieval cottage is that right that's right it went out of use in around 1700 but what we can tell you now is that it was built sometime after say 1500 as a it's a sitting on top of this great late medieval courtyard ah so this is evidence of an earlier stone building which stood here in the 1400s but we've also found occupation evidence telling us that people were living on this Terrace in the 1200 victor's drawn the building we know most about the last one built around 1500 AD yeah you've got the square courtyard here the cottage on one side and even the slate roofs so it's exactly what the archeology has been telling us we know about the track the drawing does help to bring it to life but if I'm honest I don't really understand how it actually relates to what we found in the trench I asked Nick to show me you can see the wall there coming across look and then where that red blob is the corner yeah and that wall comes back across here look yeah and then turns again here and goes back and you can see the way the grass is draped up over it which is why we had the earthwork clue to start with so what's this rubble here well all the stone that you can see both in there this this of course is inside the build yeah and this is outside all of this is the rubble that's collapsed from the wall so you've got like a great Mound debris if we have the time and could take all this away we'd have these walls standing proud on the original garden and courtyard surface and is that little son - trace does that good as the floor yeah man what we've done there is that is the floor inside the building yeah with all the debris on the top how big would the original cottage of being well we've got the end here and I'll actually put a couple of buckets in the green bucket and the red bucket which are more or less the other two corners so it's sort of end on to the slope like that when the gable roof would have gone that way originally so my big wasn't it oh yeah yeah and they always look smaller in the ground than they are when they're they're fully standing if you start taking out what's more we can get an idea of what some of the pottery finds from that trench would have looked like whoa that's the chimney yeah it is just one of them no no that's one of the pots first putting as a baffle so throw that down behind you as well so those battle ami Baffler this is to defuse the flames really all right so I needn't be impressed but now we're getting down to the pots here yes is this one oh yes pensee yes this was made in the year thirteen hundred and forty six haha it could have been good there Oh could you catch the other one alright nice blow knelt on the base there donates that nothing that will be sealed so that would place that over there tomorrow I'll grab that make sure and that's the wrong whole picture Oh excellent so now not only can we show David and grace what some of the pottery looked like when complete but for the first time we can give them new information about what as it was in medieval times Robin can report that the documentary evidence suggests that wooden has never been much bigger than it is today in 1288 we've got that the manor house obviously a customary tenant called Geoffrey Aaron three three tenants and one cot are someone who lived in a cottage so what does that make that's four five five plus whoever's in the manor house the geophys survey of the terrace found evidence of what we think are more medieval buildings and Stuart has an idea that there was another one just in front of Grace's house Gross's cottage and Davies cottage were fossilized in this wall pattern this rectangular shape I'm sure is the remnants of another post medieval cottage like the one we're excavating over in the field Victor has used all the new information to conjure up a picture of medieval Wotton as it might have looked around 1200 AD meanwhile on the far side of the field Phil Kanzi might have found some dating evidence for the henge piece of pot look where's the imprint of it yeah but is it 4,000 years old is it a bit of Neolithic pottery luckily for us we've got an expert visiting the site today who can tell us you've got red on the inside then very dark gray and then what seems to be coming up as sort of buffa shred on the outside that's absolutely typical of pottery of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age hey that sounds encouraging ah did it ever but oh having said that this is a very fine piece of pottery and although it's plain we were hoping that maybe in washing it we might be able to see a bit of a bit of decoration but on closer inspection this bit of pot turns out to be medieval in date and nothing to do with the henge just another bit of debris accumulating in the ditch as the years rolled by evidence though of activity in the medieval period when we know the henge was damaged by plowing today the subtle lumps and bumps of the henge can still be detected as our GPS survey of the field shows victors done this droid yeah of a hinge monument is this anything like you think this monument would have been I think so I mean it shows the external bank the inner ditch what we haven't got in the evidence for yet these rings of pits or any stone settings in the centre but the general form of the Bank and ditch I think is pretty close to what this would have looked like the clear evidence of a big ditch on the inside of a huge Bank is a combination that's only found on henge monuments which is why we're still confident about our discovery and as henges only occur in the neolithic and early bronze ages it must mean that wooden henge built sometime between 2,500 and a thousand BC what started with pottery finds in one garden has resulted in a whole landscape being revealed a landscape which tells the story of the continual occupation of Wadden for over 4,000 years and now as we reach the end of the dig the news from the garden is that we finally come down onto the floor of the Round House and just a moment ago this bone all was discovered there and let's just come up the floor just right off the floor that's exactly what we were looking for this is beautiful there's something really satisfying and I mean that that sort of a polished that polished tip I mean you can't make a thing like that can you you can only get that polish by using yeah so you can imagine someone sitting here maybe punching holes in leather just so ups know thing in the middle of their house and that's really domestic activity inside our on edge house it shows they lost needles to David and grace we've just about got to the end of our three days with you so now it's time to try and pull all the evidence together that we found in your back garden Phil well we now know that the pottery that came out of your septic tank came from at least two Iron Age round houses now the one most obvious one the wall trench is just in front of where Tony is a little too big stones these ones here that's it exactly there yeah now if you walk away from your Tony this way that's right keep going yep the war would have run right the way around there keep going Tony yet stop yep the two big stones immediately on your left he's to one side of the entrance door so where's the other side underneath the blue helmet here that's right so in fact the entrance ways where you predicted it would be looking straight straight out to Portland bill and then down there by the digger we've got a boundary ditch it was stuffed full of Iron Age pottery but a boundary ditch belonging to the house an Iron Age guy I come into my home that's right if you step this way yeah on the floor immediately in front of you yet your wife would have dropped this it's a beaut four beautiful bone all you found that down there just immediately in front of you on the floor Wow here that's all folks baby good so from now on whenever grace looks out of her window she'll be able to imagine several Iron Age round houses in her garden we can help her imagination by taking her back to the Iron Age and with more computer graphics we can actually create an impression of what one of these houses might have looked like inside so here I am again Iron Age man walking across the floor of my Hut to the place where we found the bone or this is where I would have slept I think in a position to watch the Sun rise through the door of the hut wondering though doubt what the day had in store for me in 600 BC next on Discovery Channel the time team is trying to uncover the where what and why of a Norman castle in Alderton that's after the break you

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 435,634

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: Ju9C8xm5I4w

Length: 45min 34sec (2734 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2013