Time Team S09-E13 Braemore,.Hampshire

most of what archaeologists know about the Saxons has been discovered by excavating their cemeteries last summer we dug one here in Bray more in Hampshire because we wanted to find out more about this it's a brass byzantine bucket which was found in a grave here over our three-day live dig we not only learned an awful lot about how people lived here but also how people died here nearly 1500 years ago during the frantic course of our three live programs we delved into archaeology as diverse as prehistoric flint knapping and Bronze Age Waterside rituals but while all this was going on our documentary crew were following the archaeology in detail to bring you the in-depth story of Saxon burial rites and extraordinary grave goods this mysterious sixth century tinned brass Byzantine bucket only the third ever found in Britain and one of only eleven in the world is almost two thousand miles away from where it was made in Antioch now in modern-day Syria so why was it buried in this idyllic part of Hampshire could it be a prized possession of a long-forgotten Saxon chieftain buried on a mound in this field has got to be the flattest most unprepossessing field we've ever dug or is big mound in front of us I see no mound I say they're very nice right big round mound in front of us well on this big round mound is this where we found the bucket yeah they found the bucket metal detectors found the bucket but there's also been lots of other findings from here and then the sword to find one expecting it with a cemetery so you know that's what we think might be buried here this looks to me more like what I think of as a Bronze Age barrow well it's not uncommon for anglo-saxon burials to be popped into pre-existing Bronze Age barrows so it could be that when the bucket was found did they excavate the Barrow no they did a few tug when the bucket was found the metal detector is just dug out the bucket of course but then when it was recognized how important the bucket was the archaeologists came in and did about seven meter square test pits just a few tiny pits what we want to do is excavate a bit more and find out more about where the bucket came from what was it in a bit more we've got three days does that mean that we can open up the whole Barrow oh no no I mean I think we'll be you know we were sampling the burials if they're there and we'll probably have a look at a section across the barrel just to make sure there is a barrow but we won't be able to do any more than that with the archaeology only a few centimeters below the surface the mechanical diggers can only be used to carefully scrape away the topsoil which is proven to be rock our plan is to open three trenches on the mound the first is to examine the context around where the bucket was found the second trench will investigate the test pits where spearheads and shield bosses have been discovered the third will attempt to find out if there's any Bronze Age structure to the mound as the trenches are opened GF is begin a magnetometer survey on the rest of the field looking for anything that may indicate the layout and scale of the Saxon cemetery we've got a problem with burials because you dig the grave you put the body and then you put the same material back so there's no contrast but we will see the iron objects so we're going to grid out the whole area and we can map those then get the metal detector guys in they can do the non ferrous material and we can compare the two and who knows what else we're going to get our team of metal detectorists have only got a few hours to conduct a scan of the entire site marking any non-ferrous hits with pegs this information will be combined onto a 3d topographic map with john's mag survey showing any clustering of metal artifacts indicating possible burials in the past night hawking of the illicit metal detecting and removal of artifacts from this site has been a major problem but it was a responsible detectorists to originally found the byzantine bucket when did you find it um wet and windy morning in October 1999 - before detecting weather yeah it was a miserable day I know you'd already found something sex enhanced that's right yes the second thing I found was the Byzantium bucket or Syd chiller they call it all right I dug down about two feet initially there was something green it looked like a handle or possibly a Bronze Age talk or something like that I rushed back to the car got my trousers I started to excavate then the right-hand side of the what was now obviously apparently was a bucket could you all right could you see any of the embossing around the bucket or nothing at all nothing at all it was it was covered in mud and it was pouring down you know Steve took the mud encrusted object to Salisbury Museum who called in local portable antiquities officer Sally Worrell I'm basically working with finders mostly metal detectorists to try and encourage them to record all their fines Withers I mean the thousands of objects found every year and basically trying to build up as the bigger picture as possible so actually what Steve did was exactly the right thing it was fantastic that he didn't clean it that was very important and so it was really only at the point where when the object was x-rayed that we began to sort of realize its importance and its rarity absolutely yeah I mean what we're trying to do is encourage cooperation between finders and archeologists and museums and Steve reporter defined immediately and this has led to further work and our understanding of this apparently really important site Phil's opening a trench to try and find out the extent of the Saxon cemetery to give him the best chance of finding the edge he has a plan to excavate a 30 meter long trench that nonferrous back on the mound Steve Bolger is busy helping carrenza scan her trench and there seems to be no shortage of metal detector hits blue for ferrous possibly spear heads on knives and green for non-ferrous maybe brooches or buckles the size of that is quite good for a shield boss I can't just go over and yeah see yeah I mean that's my fans eight inches so that's not bad for a fresh shield boss with some maybe studs and things yeah this and then so you might be looking here to a grave with something nonplussed there Jenny's trench is at last starting to yield the first signs of archaeology very degraded human bones as well as finding out more about the people who were buried here we've said Stewart the task of trying to find out where the Saxons lived - a lot of people that's just a mound in a field to me it's a mound in a landscape that's been evolving for thousands of years I'm keen to find out why it was there and more importantly the people are buried there where did they live and I'm using old maps geological maps air photographs to try and understand that and have you come up with anything so well already a very interesting things are emerging we've got some old maps which show a very very peculiar but interesting settlement pattern and I think that's going to tell us something about where the segment was that's associated with a cemetery over in Katie's trench there seems to be little sign of any Bronze Age structure to the mound we have been thinking Frances that originally this mound might have been a Bronze Age barrow what you reckon well first glance it looks like one a very big one but there are things that aren't quite right like what well I'm not happy about this being a Bronze Age Barrow ditch you know the ditch to produce the stuff for the mound it's it's not right I'd expect layers of gravel in it and slipping off the mound and there aren't any but we got Bronze Age finds everywhere yeah it was lots of Bronze Age find these Flint's I mean they're all about sort of 2000 2500 BC but they're not the sort of things I'd expect to find in a barrow I'd expect to find sort of juicy things like great big arrowheads and things in a barrack but this looks like the sort of stuff you picked up off the kitchen floor so are you saying that you think that this mound might be a natural feature that people have used over thousands of years maybe and the Saxons then decided to bury their people in it yes that's the way it's looking I won't swear to it but that's how it looks right now I think yeah the human bones found earlier in Jenny's trench have now revealed themselves to be to individual skeletons a rare example of a Saxon double burial but you think Andrew that these two bodies went into one grave at the same time yeah I do indeed and you very rarely find early anglo-saxon graves so close together a separate event so and looking at the aspect of these and almost certainly but two people put into grave right and it's that just opportunism is it we've two people having Stone the same day we'll dig one big hole rods and - or is it that you know father and son mother universes you better forgot mister that's they died on the same day that some sort of episode where you're the one thing we've got a bear in mind that this period is he sort of put up a plagues effectively it's quite likely that you'll get close members of a family dying at a similar time Coronas er this is the trench where the bucket was originally found is that's right we now know exactly where it did come from see that square in the middle of the trench there we just drew that well yes but we've drawn it round a metre square test pit that was dug around the anglo-saxon bucket any other phones well the other stuff we found is all much earlier which is quite interesting see we've had masses of this Flint steel this is lovely really black shiny stuff it's Bronze Age Flint and the fascinating thing is that it seems that all have come from one or two original bits of Flint somebody has sat here making flint tools on this very spot in the Bronze Age so even though the mound itself may not be Bronze Age it looks like almost four thousand years ago people were sitting here making flint tools to try and find the extent of the cemetery Phil seems to have gone a bit mad with the JCB then we have dug the biggest trench in yeah not much in it I'm afraid this is that the main Terrace gravel where we've got the cemetery the important thing is we've not actually got any burials ourselves we must be outside yeah as far but have we found anything until we've got a small ditch there which has got some pot in it all right but this is not it's not ancient that's from burl wood which is the local postman tree right here right in Flint of course and a bit of animal then yeah well so I think we should shut this trench no no no no no we haven't finished it yet we must extend the trench through to the floodplain itself to get a transect right the way through and we must know how this how old this this ditches okay and do you think it might still find something oh yeah the position of Phil's trench on the edge of the floodplain is apparent when you see its superimposed on a topographic map of the site add to this the results of John's mag survey and the metal detector sweep and we can see that all of the metal anomalies are concentrated in plasters on the mound we're at the trench which I think is the trench where all that terrorist information was coming back we've surveyed the whole area and targeted this one and have we done Corinne sir well you know i said earlier we had some metal finds possibly coming up that might help yeah it's now turned up man it's fantastic he's exactly what we wanted it's the first anglo-saxon find through her and look at it what is it what is it it's a spearhead see it from the point there all the way down to the ferial at the end where the wooden shaft would have gone into it and the fascinating thing as well is it comes just about a foot from where that bucket turned up so it looks if it might be part of the same burial everyone's packed up and gone home they're typing for you well I'm still worried about this trench we had loads and loads of metal detector signals for copper alloy objects and I haven't me coming out I'd say I'm wrong not everyone's gone home is Katie still telling a lonely furro what are things been like for you it's been really frustrating all day from very little just a few iron nails and a few Flint flakes but in the last 10 minutes I have just found a wonderful spearhead another smear no later than the seventh century so what does this tell us well it's even more of a conundrum because that's iron and all these signals are copper alloy or bronze day two of our excavation into our saxon graveyard and we've got one or two tricky questions to answer these two skeletons appear to be buried in the same grave so why would that be will they possibly related to each other where they just buried on the same day would you reckon Margaret well it's very very difficult to be sure there are various possibilities and one of the ones that we've seen on other anglo-saxon cemeteries is that graves appear to have been left open and then a second burial put in at some later stage so what we're going to do with these church now well firstly this isn't a chap this one we don't know but this is definitely a woman how do you know that because the part of the pelvis survived which is clearly female and were there any grave Goods associated with this one originally done yeah this one had a shield and there was a spear head lying here why would a shield and a spear be associated with a woman when she was buried well why not maybe she was a warrior they had warriors in lieu of women in Saxon well we don't we don't know but we do know that at the end of the rnh there were warriors in Britain there was build a car that was clear katia Mantua and she was a warrior queen so if this tradition survived before the Romans maybe at the end of Roman influence you get their reemergence a powerful warrior women yesterday's metal fines are now in the conservation lab the spearhead from Katie's trench is first cleaned of all surface soil showing the concave profile of the blade a sure sign of sixth century workmanship an x-ray of the same blade shows us the internal structure of the shafts socket definite proof that it's Saxon back in trench 2 even more Metalworks being uncovered this time a shield boss placed on top of a skull once x-rayed traces of rivets around the edge become apparent now Ian I know that this is the shield boss this is what they've been finding out there what's it made of it's made of iron and of course it's the only piece that survives with of course the rivets around there the rest of the shield's made of wood covered with leather and of course the other bit that survives is the iron hand grip that goes behind held on the leather this is that's a big thing but yes exactly last night we have some of the workers that some of the weapons have a look at this spear I mean it's absolutely huge stand really tall and of course if you're a guy of high status to be buried with a fabulous sword as well so are these common things to be finding engraved yes they are fairly common Spears particularly and then spears and shields are the next thing and then finally feel really important you have a spear a shield and a sword and what do they want them for why are they in the grave it's how you arrived in the afterlife maybe or it's a question of just pure status and as grave Goods go there could be no status higher than our byzantine bucket we've said craftsman Rey Walton the challenge of trying to make a replica bucket using a single sheet of brass and where possible authentic tools and techniques the first stage is to mark out the bucket base on the brass disk then begins the first of many hammering processes to try and raise the bucket sides the skill in the hammering is to ensure that all of the blows are the same strength to prevent bumps and bulges but all this hammering makes the metal brittle so every few minutes the brass has to be gently heated then quenched in water and pickled in vinegar it's going to be a real race against time for Rey to finish before we can lift the double burial skeletons for further analysis they have to be recorded to show their relative positions best done in three dimensions using some new technology how does it work you'll gadget well basically is a double triangulation and this emits a magnetic field and are a sphere and these two points allow you to track the possession warned within the magnetic fields that noise Witter is similarly these two karma to see the Lisl Street when it comes over the middle and that gives you the other triangulation and it's the combination of those things that give you all the points on this office just as you move the one bullhook so it's similar to what you may do with solving on the ground up in smaller scale with a lot more points that's brilliant you can even see its teeth and everything it's going to be a few hours before all the data is processed to create the full 3d image with the three trenches on the mound firmly placed inside the saxon cemetery it's Phil's trench for the epic lonely furrow at the bottom of the field that doesn't seem to be producing any archaeology fill all day yesterday you were here trying to see whether this trench had any relationship with the cemetery has it well no we've stripped out a large area the gravel there and we found no burials at all we now know that the cemetery does not extend this far we also managed to pick up the edge of the floodplain so we know that the area where the cemetery is has always been on a mound it's always been on a spur of dry land so was there any point in digging the station yes there was the only way you can actually prove whether there's a in this case the cemetery was there is to dig it we've done it there is no cemetery here that shows us the extent of the cemetery so we're going to close up this trace we're going to finish recording these ditches here close the trench down and then get everybody else at the top with the double burial entrenched - now recorded it's time for the delicate excavation of the bones so once all these bones have been taken out what's going to handle to them well we're going to take them down to the bone lab and very very gently try and clean off the soil and then have a good look at them to see if there's any pathology or heel-toe or anything like that so that we can see if there are any diseases or sort of fractures or anything that can tell us anything about life star really what's the quality of this bones like awful oh really in a nutshell and why is that it's the pH of the soil below the acidity is probably NASA's soil it's also it's sort of an alluvial sediments of River Valley floodplain sediments a set like concrete in the summer and then in the winter they're wet so the band is continually drying and wetting and that doesn't do any good either but where did all these Saxons who are buried here live the landscape surrounding our side shows a continuity of use from the Stone Age through the medieval and in his beaten periods to the present day but Stewart and Mick seem to have found clues to the Saxon settlement in the heart of the present-day village this looks to me Stuart like absolutely classic dispersed settlement you know you've got cottages all over the place little green lots of bits of woodland and it's what you'd expect from a Saxon settlement pattern that's never got turned into a village and you should say that they've been a big field walking exercise over here yeah and in this field over here which is which is beyond that big tree over yonder there's been a delay of Saxon occupation debris pottery all that sort of stuff from in there but from nowhere else so that is strongly suggestive that that's the settlement and that's where the people were likely to be buried but what attracted the Saxons to this particular valley in the first place I've had a look at the geological maps and the a photography and so on one thing is actually quite dramatic when you look at it Mikey that's the river the blue line here and this this lighter blue area is the floodplain the area where historically the river would flood and the banks would overflow so this is all wet down here and what's quite significant about this site is a big gravel Peninsula which sticks out into this valley fog plain this sticks almost right across the valley doesn't it barrier is near and our site is up right on it so if you care from the south you'd see it it came from the north and sea so any Barrow or cemetery in that position would have been a highly visible and significant Monument so now we know why the Saxons settled here but there's a huge amount of debate amongst historians as to who the Saxons really were warlike European invaders or indigenous Britons under new management from the beginning of day one we've been talking about Saxons and Anglo Saxons when according to the venerable bead this entire area of Hampshire plus the Isle of Wight was occupied by a people called the Jutes who originated from Jutland now part of modern denmark and if thanks sandy it's in fact a jute from Jutland so how long they're here well we think they arrived in the late sixth century and occupied the Isle of Wight and all this area probably from the river even over virtually to Hayling Island and that continued to be the case when our cemetery was in action right the way up to 686 and in that year there swept down from the north from the Thames Valley a tribe of Saxons under their King had Walla and he conquered this area committed genocide and even ethnic cleansing on the Isle of Wight do buy all this do you buy this well Romans getting all this from beads he was writing in early 8th century and he's talking about the political realities of his own day now this could have been in the 8th century this could have had been a kingdom with memories of a Jewish king but we're talking here about the ordinary people the ordinary anglo-saxons the ordinary whoever they call themselves in answer to heaven why the heck do they call the new forest the forest of the juice why was the itch in the area of the Jews I think I'll leave them to it the doots are going to be fighting the Saxons for some time to come down at our cameo site raised making good progress with his replica Byzantine bucket even though at the moment it looks more like a fruit bowl so is is this the way we think it was made originally oh I'm sure it probably boards yes I mean you can see exactly the same techniques in modern times you know in China or interview there guys doing just this so I mean I'm sure this is exactly how they did it it's going to take 40 or 50 complete rotations of very accurate hammering and 40 or 50 heating's and quenching x' to get the sides upright that's before the thousands of punch hole engravings and the tuning process on the mound trench ones beginning to look more like a maze the various holes and levels inside the trench are an attempt to decipher the very complicated archeology carrenza things got really good here last night didn't though yeah that beautiful anglo-saxon spearhead and now we've had the other thing we really really wanted which is a grave cut the actual edge of the grave that the body was placed into turned up in the bottom of this test fit we've just gone down further than it had before and you can see we've got the end of one long bone showing out section here and then the edge of the grave cut is actually this contrast here between the darker fill and the lighter filled in trench three Katie's got traces of human foot bones at one end but no sign of a skull at the other she's having real trouble finding the outline of the grave cut in the tightly compacted earth Katie have you got any more those skeletons yet oh no I'm so excited I'm just finding what's this then someday we've we've taken the trench backs yeah I can see the hole of the grave yeah that these feets belong to yeah and having done so exposed this post hole I've been going down inside it and I think I found a knife or a bear yes big piece of metal yeah middle ear and really exciting I've just found some more bone as well uh-huh are all these bits of bone then well just this bit and this bit of bone yeah and this is the metal object here yeah well hopefully the skull is right underneath you yeah okay well I'll come back later that's that's very exciting with trench four at the bottom of the field closed down Phil takes over trench five on the mound where there are a number of gia fears and metal detecting anomalies a very well-preserved iron spearhead a meter below the surface was obviously responsible below that two skeletons another double burial we got one of the three bones there they should be what is it over here the other head of the femur oh hang on that does not look like a thigh bone to me it looks exactly like a skull that's right done over the other ones leg isn't it I know I know yeah look at it let's go yes no oh god I well I suppose not much we can do about it now eyeshadow clear off all this and let's get down onto it get the rest of the legs of that and just see whether it's an isolated bit or whether it's a complete body yeah it might just be a bit more isn't it but it but it's a bit strange if it is a skull because it sort of lying between the legs of the entity after an hour of careful excavation the layout of the burial becomes apparent there are two super bleep reserved skeleton it's so different from anything else we've had absolutely one condition this is obviously a big hulking Hulk email you know cut that skull great big brow ridges really rugged robust face and the pelvis is an absolute classic male pelvis very narrow very high Android sort of shape yeah no question at all about that one this one's less clear the skull is still is quite solid grassle it's nowhere near as robust as this if we just look at the pelvis yeah the pelvis is very much male and that's the sort of thing you see very often a slightly grassle face and open mail pulse in people who died in their early twenties males who died in their early 20s still tend to have a fairly soft gentle facial features so we've got one in the prime of life say forty to fifty just like I see an absolute prime of life and the other one in the 20s and and the baby it's not a newborn baby by any means the sort of toddler I mean we need to I think there may be more bone under these shield bosses and we're going to eventually we'll have to take your shield edge up right here up on that don't you think it's incredibly moving you've got the entire baby skeleton would have been covered and protected by two she'll destroy amazing yeah there's no question of it being two graves they went in together even if one of them was put in days or weeks or months before the other one there's there's all due respect it's the burial practice here is really really odd I don't understand it so fills double burial appears to have the skeleton of a child or baby placed between the legs of two adult males unique in any British Saxon cemetery well I think the Katie looks like the cat has got the cream and I don't know what it is do you know what it is me look all right what it what is it Casey look what we have found it may be the rim of the bucket but York is it I mean is that a cop is it copper he eats a copper alloy and the thing is it could be either handle or it could be part of a vest Eva it's not like the other one yeah it might be made of wood with bronze fittings around it but we're going to have to wait until tomorrow to find out if mix right over in the bone lab the analysis of the skulls from this morning's double burial in trench two has also raised a few questions a supposed warrior woman turns out to be an elderly lady buried with an 8 to 10 year old juvenile surely too old and young to be warriors so why were they buried with weapons but the biggest mystery is why are we finding so many double burials based on evidence from previously excavated Saxon cemeteries you'd expect to find one double burial in every 300 graves we've got to in only five trenches you know how we're always saying that the best finds always come up just when the cameras have stopped rolling well would you believe it's happened again it's 25 past 7 virtually everybody's gone home and look at what currents has just found what is it current I think it's the one thing we've all been desperately hoping we'll find it's a skull there are the teeth spearhead from the spirits buried with but the really really exciting thing is that it's so close to where that bucket came from probably just a foot away this may have been a person who was buried with the bucket we found them at last it's only 9 o'clock in the morning of day 3 in our excavation of this fantastic Saxon cemetery and already we're running out of time the graves are so packed with grave Goods and multiple skeletons we may not have time to excavate them all last night Katie unearthed the rim of what appeared to be another bucket though different in style to our tinned byzantine bucket this is a major discovery Phil's been brought in to help record this extremely rare find that would you back there this is just unbelievable I've got decorations coming down in in copper alloy with the bubbles on underneath them and then behind that are what looks like wooden slats narrow with his fats coming down this is absolute strongly you wouldn't imagine that the preservation was so good with the excavation of the person who was buried with the bucket has thrown up another mystery yet another double burial our third in five trenches I'm definitely male and you can see these big brown ridges here and you can see that he's got a just inhale on the jaw hello the jaw yeah face of Brad Pitt I should imagine say as an angle Julie chunky bones robust bones that's a sign of heavy sort of muscle coverage and generally that's male really from the length of her of the long bones as well pretty tall least six foot the other thing we can tell about him is this there he's certainly quite old very worn teeth even the incisors here a woman right down and you've got the dentine which is inside the teeth exposed it's that painful to it money's eater not at all no as a dentine gets exposed it hardens up and it's quite a normal thing with aging illogical skeletons so if that's a male one what do you think about this one they're looking quite cozy this one's lying on its side sort of wrap it around the arms of this one there's a little bit less of this one isn't there you seem to lost a lot of the skull the earth around there well preserves hmm look at these teeth again we're probably seeing quite a lot of wear on those molars there can have a better look at those when we get it out so again we're probably looking at an adult and these lemon bones are quite slender so it may be a female but we really need to get hold of the pelvis and to find out whether it really is us that that's the best indicator of sex so it may be a female last night over in trench one carrenza thought she'd found the skull of the person buried with the byzantine bucket this morning we may need to have a rethink as to who was buried with what fell yeah yeah this is the grave that we possibly have the bucket out of a certainly had to spearhead and a skel we've got a bucket another one see starts there the turquoise green of a copper alloy comes right round like that it's a wooden bucket with a with a with a bronze skin or a copper skin yes that's what it looks like did you see yeah this is bizarre because I mean we just got the site is riddled with buckets cuz we got one over there hang on a minute both of you I think I've got another one oh good odd that's exactly like the one in our trench oh that's the rim yeah it's exactly the same perhaps these sheathed wooden buckets have been made using local skills and materials as Saxon copies of the Byzantine bucket it began in Byzantium and it ended up in southern England how the heck did it get all that way being probably very slowly because we think it didn't just start him present him it started in Antioch which I can hardly reach it's in Syria 2,000 miles away so somehow it made its way over to England and we don't quite know how it's probably through Byzantium either across land around and then from Byzantium it could have got here it could have been swapped for something by somebody who lived here and swapped again by somebody who lived here and swapped again etc etc all the way up to England but would there have been people in southern England who had the money to be able to buy something like that well indeed I mean the status of the object itself tells us that you're looking at people who want to own these kinds of materials and it indicates that and there were almost certainly contacts either side of the channel with families of a similar social stance so it could have been the brothers or cousins of people who were ruling this little area it's been indeed yeah as we've already established the river was a key factor in the formation and development of the Saxon settlement it would therefore seem logical that the river was also a major artery in transporting people and things from the coast to England settlements look at this splendid array of stuff and then you've got the the traditional costume on there but it isn't it isn't just functional is it no it's very highly decorated this sort of broach used to pin at the shoulders this style or you might use an annular like this or a sorcerer or a disc broach like these beautiful things but I mean has it can these all be local I have to say I've never never seen oh these know they're non-local no I mean that's a carry shell that's probably come all the way from the Red Sea so we're talking long-distance movement of objects here and what about all I mean lots of jewels yeah we've got we've got amber from the Baltic we've got an amethyst and we've got the little tiny ones are in fact garnets and pearls so incredibly long distance yes trade yes I mean this looks at me for up as we see it all beautifully laid out but it looks like a shop so is that what we would have had a lot of a bank people setting up a shop hoping to make a few quid I don't know well not a few quid no because of course we're in a pre monetary system here we're talking sort of barter exchange so you don't need the money that's all why did any of the thing what's it what's it about it's part of the human a sort of a quiz ative list of human nature you say something you want it you know you know it it's like we all do this and the anglo-saxons you know we're probably exactly the same as us but also these things are functional someone city's brooches you have to have to hold your clothes coroner comes along and goes all you'd want to hold up your dress like that I've got a much better way it's absolutely that's the beginning of fashion after the highly prized and decorated Byzantine bucket arrived at our settlement a new fashion for buckets was obviously born here we're trying to revive that by making our own bucket though it still looks like a fruit bowl even after countless hammerings back on the mound it's starting to look like our latest double burial contains more than just a bucket it looks like there's enamel that is really incredible so how does that work as a buckle if I take this one off yeah that's probably the easiest thing to do so that's the best way to explain it I think my little pin of my buckle is the same as this great big thing no got this huge plate on the on the base of it where it's got the loop that goes around around the bar which we underneath this so the next thing we're looking for is is the frame but then I'm guessing because this I've not ever seen anything like this before and I was really unusual fully conserved the buckle would look something like this so now we can see the two burials complete with all their grave goods a tall middle-aged man with knife spear and shield alongside possibly a younger female once again the females equipped for war but balanced on the lower shield a copper sheath wooden bucket it's extremely unusual for so many weapons to be found as grave Goods careful analysis may give us some clues to these strange Saxon burial practices this is a spearhead from trench one area from near the bucket was found and I'm looking at details things in the corrosion that might tell us a bit more about the burial I goodness is that what I think it is I think it's a fly pupae I think it is isn't it is sort of part of this sort of exoskeleton there and then you've almost got a cast of the rest of it yeah wow that's incredible isn't it and out it's wonderful but I think what this means then is that there were maggots on this body or the body associated with the spear when it was in the grave and that they've pew pated and what you're seeing is the cast and the remnant of the pupae and now the spirit wasn't found directly on the body it was quite as a bit of a distance away in forensic cases what you tend to see is if you discover a body when you first reveal it the the maggots will actually go away from the body because they're looking for somewhere that's more suitable to pupate and they don't seem to like to do that on the body if they don't have to so they probably moved away within the confines of the burial environment and found somewhere to pupate and what we're looking at really is what's left of that well it's time to catch up on the latest news from bucket city it's absolutely doesn't exceed it copper alloy bands around it decorative bands down four sides beautiful beautiful object it was they would associate it with that I was it just making its wood yes I'll show you on the trench can look can you see in there dark Bacchus wood and then the turquoise green is the copper alloy banding round it but then we found another one look at it here you see that it's got a rim around the top and then down the side so that's got bands of bronze around it as well you have had a good day what about the size of them these two look pretty similar in size well even more interesting there's not just two we then found a third over all the same size well there's something there they are more or less but what's really interesting that is 12 centimeters in diameter that's 13 that's 14 so they can all have nested in each other and the silver one from Antioch from the middle is just over 15 they all have fitted one inside the other we can only speculate as to how these buckets were used in Saxon life and death rituals half they were filled with food or drink for feasting at the funeral for the deceased person's journey to the afterlife future analysis of the material inside our excavated buckets may provide the answer what kind of status do you think the people were who were buried well this is a stunning find I mean as a burial deposit can only really represent people who were regarded as tribe tribal leaders Oh correct how do you think all this work then well I think how we know that it's such an impressive barrel is we think it's all part of one Barrett it's incredibly symmetrical that's what really screams at you and those postholes look like they're part of a structure that might have gone over the top at your can okay yeah a canopy or a chamber that perhaps people could have come and visit to the graves as they were laid out there with all their glories perfect items shield spears if all that shields and spheres both the skeletons one thing we do know for certain is that our Saxons from this part of Hampshire wouldn't have been able to read the inscription on our Byzantine bucket written in ancient Greek it offers advice for the owner use this lady for many happy years raise almost finished adding the inscription and hunting scenes to our now raised replica thousands of punch marks make up the intricate pattern with only minutes to spare before the end of our live program it's dipped in molten tin to give the appearance of silver it's this silver shine that gives us one last clue as to why they were important as grave goods I think these showy flashy items if I was digging them up on a Bronze Age site yeah they'd be to impress the other people in my village in my community no you're not it's about the living as much as a dead so it's not it's not going to the afterlife no it's display it's what they want to communicate to the people who are coming to the funeral then what does that say about the kind of funerals that they would have conducted well that they they would have been visible laid out in the grave if they wouldn't have been in a coffin lowered in they would have been there with their bucket here and their spear here ready for everybody to come and see and the people who came to see them with know what the bucket meant you are pretty sure that they were laid out and this isn't just supposition what about all the rest of the things that you said how can you possibly know well we we don't know a lot of it that we don't know how much feasting the wars where the fires will lit how far the relatives came from we don't know methods of things but where we're putting together fragments of evidence to make a jigsaw like watch what fragments like a lot of buckets in one place but perhaps a lot of blue beads in another cemetery and can you tell from the way the objects are found in the ground now by the archaeologists about that sort of thing yeah some people have a spear that with the head up here some people have to be as with the spear head down at the feet there's a lot of this this patterning which you can only see the results are when you look at thousands of graves over hundreds of cemeteries there's just so much to find out it's very very strange these people they've all got weapons I've never heard of that before this is something entirely different that was the end of our third day and we'd run out of time so with five wooden buckets and ten skeletons still to excavate welcome to day four the skeletons are finally giving us some tantalizing clues about the relationship between the bodies in adjoining graves one of the really interesting things about this one though katie is this is this line here can you see it this is sort of zigzaggy line yeah this is what we call a retained metal pick suture when babies are born their skulls are in lots of different pieces which overlap during the birth SS to a live birth usually this suture which you're very you don't see very often on adult skulls it closes by about the age of two to four generally when this doesn't fuse and completely disappear it's what we call a developmental failure but not one that has any sort of health implications or anything people who will have this generally tend to be related to one another and by sheer coincidence or not as a case maybe in Jenny's trench we've got this adult female who's also got a retained metal pick suture so they may actually be they may well be related to one another she's absolutely fabulous and I guess it's what you would expect in a sort of dispersed settlement which is what the anglo-saxon period is noted for that people would be related to one and as much and just so small oops on the airing yeah that's right another thing that is interesting here katie is this fracture line along here to see it is really faint yeah but it's all the thing that's slightly disconcerting with it is it's really smooth yeah and when bone breaks that's been in the ground for a while it breaks in these raggedy lines yeah because it's got no sort of plasticity left because all the colleges degraded when bone is broken either by trauma or a blade or whatever and it's got lots of collagen left it breaks and very smooth predictable lines and this this line here is a sort of line that you'd expect when bone is broken when it's fresh so with this have been enough to actually have killed him well it depends what it's associated with and until we get it out and have a proper look at it we can't really be sure about that post excavation examination of the skull does point to some sort of head trauma that this could be explained by something as simple as dropping the body during the funeral and with the incidence of fused mo topic sutures occurring in less than 4% of the population it's almost certain that the two Saxons buried in adjoining graves were related by dating the grave goods we can conclude that our cemetery was in operation around 500 AD by examining the bones and the density of burials that it was an extended family group centered on the mound and that the people who are buried here though maybe not warriors held weapons in high regard but why they're buried in pairs with buckets we'll for the time being have to remain an enigma and there's another time team adventure over on civilization next here on Discovery Channel though just what does it take to build the ultimate combat helicopter

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 453,932

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: JK8ZeJtSLYI

Length: 46min 50sec (2810 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2013