Time Team S10-E08 Athelney,.Somerset

welcome to the hundredth time team my way of celebration we've come back here to one of the most important historical sites in the country this is athelney in Somerset working Alfred burned the cakes and saved England from the Vikings last time we were here we found loads of stuff it was so long ago I was the one wearing the stripy jumper and would you believe we did it all without digging we discovered evidence of ironworking possibly from the furnaces used to make weapons valfrid Army in 878 AD and GF is scanned us all with the first ever pictures of the abbey built to celebrate his victory it was frustrating though we weren't allowed to dig even one square inch of Earth now 10 years later we're back armed with permissions shovels and trowels but some things never change we've got just three days to crack the secrets of Alfred's hideaway in the marshes why is this site so fantastically important oh I think it's one of those key points in English history really the Danish armies the Vikings have taken over most of the country the only sort of Kingdom left the only leader is Alfred and this is the place he uses his base to fight back so it's like one of those turning points if he if he hadn't been based here if he hadn't been successful from here who knows he might have been part of a Scandinavian Empire over there why did he choose here why not somewhere else I think because of the the local situation we're down here in the Somerset Levels which floods a lot in fact this aerial photograph which is taken in the 40s will see a faun is this 8 shaped Island here but all around it is floodable land well all this in this picture is water yeah it was flooded in the 1940s and it would have been flooded in the anglo-saxon period so it's actually unnaturally defended by marshes and flood land and reeds and so on it's very low-lying site so you could literally hide an army here 10 years ago when we were here it was listed it was protected to shed you an ancient monument here is that still the case yes yes in fact the area's been extended in within that last 10 years then how come we're now allowed to dig it well because I think there's been a change of attitude in archaeology 10 years ago it was very much you know diggings destruction therefore we don't do it under any circumstances if we can avoid it now in order to manage it properly we think we need a certain amount of small-scale excavation to understand it and he did we won't be able to look after it without understanding more about it till long time we've been waiting 10 years to find out what's under the ground here but how long has farmer Tim Morgan been waiting rather longer than that yes I've often wondered cuz you were born here when'd you tend to you know so you've been wondering about it all your life allas yes in 1993 the geophys results from the abbey end of the site turned out to be one of the highlights of the three days now you do remember at breakfast this morning last comment was geophysics will be the answer to it all yeah like well you're not going to see a plot that will astound you this is if the technology were yes premium racism Anesti charities is at the toe of it was the first jiff his plot of this kind ever seen on time team and it still ranks as one of the best well you can see we're getting church all's that's fantastic this is never been excavated there's no pictures there's no prints is no drawing so this is actually the first time anybody's ever seen anybody's ever seen the layout of the Church of Ashland Caffrey ten years later and both beards and printing times of shortened what we've done is we've actually used our new software and giving it a bit of color and it's enhanced it yeah and we're not going to get any better than that with resistance no I mean there's the monument and all the war lines yeah but what we're going to do now is radar right we've got a superb plan what the radar can give us in addition is actually depth information athelney a be founded by King Alfred in eight nine three ad would have been altered a lot over the years presumably much of what is showing here relates to how it looked at the time of the dissolution in 1539 AD this was Mick's idea of how it looked based on the GF is and our brief now from English Heritage is to test this interpretation see how much survives and what condition it's in we're also going to investigate one bit on the GF is that ten years ago we thought might relate to Alfred's original Church major alignment along here but in fact it's it's out of out of alignment with this little area over here it's the big question could this be the remnants of Alfred's early church GF is have marked out two trenches so we can start the trenches you can start the trenches I think that is the first time in a hundred programs that he's generously said yeah you go ahead take him at his word I will let's get tracking before our last visit all anyone knew was that this monument put up in 1801 was said to roughly mark the location of alfred abbey RG f is plot changed all that and now we're all extremely proud that we've been given the chance to excavate such an important historic site this will be the first full-scale archaeological investigation allowed here even better we've also been given permission to dig the other end of the island traditionally thought to have been the location of Alfred's fort and where 10 years ago we found evidence of ancient metalworking last time we came here Phil Harding was in charge of our field walking operation and discussed the star find with Tim Morgan's dad we found some quite toe or something in particular you're very interested um this object here yes well we don't see that sort of thing every day you know well we think it's a piece of metal slag people who did their geophysical survey up here did actually detect strong indications of metal work actually engraved and this bit we've actually found on the surface obviously been dragged up by the plow very interesting unique I should say the find was important enough for an expert to drive 300 miles to see it iron smelting slags come in a variety of shapes and sizes and they can be characteristic of certain periods when Chris described the slag to me it immediately or parallels in my mines to say either it's Iron Age or possibly Iron Age or possibly anglo-saxon so by looking at it now in the hand I'm much more happy that it's probably of anglo-saxon date one - fantastic you've started digging yeah we Jerry's back with us and he circled several targets on the geophys plot that might relate to anglo-saxon metalworking we've opened up trenches over these two signals where is it in the ground well it's quite a four-season yeah corn jeri-show should we put it onto the sort of the background natural getting readings about 30 or 40 over here nearly 1,300 it's really really magnetic that is I think what hunter is going to swing around he super here it's really dark again so what the values that God answers it's actually gone negative yeah that's typical of a huge lump of metal eh what was going on here so we can see Gerry's slice through the lump of slag we found last time and in this cross section we can see that there's some gas bubbles at the top and at the bottom but the rest is very very smooth it's been fully liquid fully molten the presence of these white iron oxide crystals in our lump of slag means that it isn't a waste product of iron smelting but possibly a byproduct of making steel now what exactly is steel compared to ordinary iron right the iron that's in the bulk of artifacts is just pure iron today we'd call it wrought iron but Steel's got carbon in it and it makes a very good cutting edge keeps the cutting edge and it's very very sharp the Saxons were masters of steelmaking probably unparalleled until the 18th century well that's odd isn't it a capacity fit 10 thicker steel as an industrial revolution material not a Saxon video the Saxons have a very very finely developed art it's extremely technologically demanding and extremely expensive so the people the status that we're looking at is high status the top so what you're saying is that if we can prove that this is the result of steelmaking then it's more likely to be to do with Alfred than anyone else absolutely yeah we have to hope that one of our two trenches here at the fort end will turn up dating evidence to prove the soil stains and slag waste our Saxon Jerry also wants more iron slag an ideally bits of waste metal to help improve steel was being worked here that's like that's definitely fans like the sort of thing we should be looking for okay poor let's dig for some more of it at the Abbey end of the side we're opening up a third trench this will be a really long one to examine the remains across the width of the monastery but the first signs aren't good thing with it's more to spread it just shows how shallow it all is oh yes it's obviously been allowed to death and it's got onto the top of where the plows just cracking it on the top surface okay and Gary yeah further down the hill in trench two we're looking for evidence of a wall that could be part of Alfred's original saxon monastery all right then Dave oh hi where's this Warland but it's supposed to be about here I think I know where it's supposed to be but this is a trench distinguished by lack of walls it's early days yet but what we're finding in this trench are bits of human bone at the moment Mick thinks this may be the result of burials being washed downhill or perhaps disturbed by plowing at the fort end in trench two Phil's digging this geophys signal we had to go down through all this place oil to get down onto the edge of what looks like a ditch running off in this direction here the ditch has produced more metal slag for Gerry to examine well you do it just check it with a magnet see if there's metal in it oh there's a magnet in the here yes yeah they just keep the magnet clean so I don't get contaminated with any sir no it's similar to that that the big lump that was found ten years ago but that's definitely slack all absolutely no doubt at all that at all what's worrying me is that Phil's also finding what looks like Iron Age pottery that would date to something like a thousand years before Alfred have we made a mistake put all metal wastes be iron-age it could but I'd like to see I mean as I said this this slag seemed a little bit different to the other material now there's no reason why we couldn't have continuous occupation and so that what we're seeing is actually two phases of activity so I wouldn't I wouldn't go off and until we can actually work out the archaeological relationship of these to be able to say it's all Iron Age all it's all Saxon if I'm honest I don't want to hear about the Iron Age I want to find evidence of the man I heard so much about last time we were here King Alfred the Great at one point in the time that we're discussing this weekend in in eight seven eight Alfred's Kingdom had shrunk to the few acres that surround athelney the particular reason why we know so much about Alfred is from the fact that a chap called a sir who was a Welsh friend of his and became one of his bishops wrote a very detailed life about him it's the only life of a Saxon King we have of that kind but he had a horrendous situation to face because the danes had literally split England in two they'd cruelly slaughtered most of the kings of places like Northumbria and East Anglia and were obviously intent on taking the rest of England for themselves were the weapons for outras fight back being made on this hill at the fort site we've just turned up our first bit of metal any idea what it might become yeah it looks very much like a knife at this end you've got the tang or start the bit that went into the handle and on one of these sides is going to be the back and one of them is going to be the blade the cutting edge I've got my fingers crossed but it could still turn out to be medieval hella weird taking before you can tell us we're going to excavate it a bit long few minutes yeah yeah come back to us what are you doing out here you're normally beavering away indoors I was allowed to be curious to find real robins brought me a map that includes a drawing of gothram leader of the Vikings but really it's just an excuse for a historian to do a bit more storytelling so the Vikings are sweeping down this way yes and also landing it on the coast of Devon so that effectively alfred is cut off he's isolated and yet he feels safe before he Sally's fourth-round about Easter of 878 to finally defeat Guthrum at Eddington and that's the turning point that's the moment at which Alfred is is coming back to establish his Wessex and eventually in the hands of his son and grandsons England itself have you worked out what it is yeah yeah it looks like a kinky fish knife but it is in fact an anglo-saxon scram or sax just a small curved back tonight it is actually Saxons accent does that mean that we can date some of the slag working to the sex appeal yeah awesome yeah yeah yeah it looks like it's in association with the slag so it's really exciting and could it be associated with Alfred conceivably yeah don't see why not astonishingly even the horn handle has survived ah look at that lovely add the a B end the news isn't so good what we've discovered in trench one is that all the building stone has been thoroughly rubbed away to be used in other buildings but there are still some great finds among the rubble it's the three lions it's the arms of the king it's England you can just see the bottom edge of the lion there as well she would have come up and then the two other lions above it so one of the Abbey floors would have looked like this around 1290 but we've got tiles from three different floors here how often would they have been renewed it was probably a constant thing it's like mending the fourth bridge you know you're you're laying new tiles in different parts of the church as different things are happening one of the things that the stone is suggesting is that you've got fairly constant building going on I feel really quite concerned by the amount of bone that's coming out of this yeah in our trench furthest down the hill trench to our jumble of human bone and rubbles become even more puzzling as bits everywhere there's bits of skull bits of long bone was more in the trays yeah and then there's this bloomin thing with chair I mean David you shiny what whether it's a Chia a complete body now or I think it looks like it is complete but whether it's sort of insects you I'm still not sure it almost looks like it's sort of I almost pushed together and ribéry or something like that it's a jumble in he's gonna say doesn't look like a proper articulation skeletons no it looks like a bundle of bones in a bag basically and somewhere in there should be the wall GF is detected sorting this out clearly going to be a challenge tomorrow but for me the exciting story today has been at the other end of the island where we're digging up a site that in Alfred's time could have looked like this what picture showing us is the iron working process the intense activity but what we've been excavating today is what's gone into the ditch debris that's been swept out from the smithy to fill the ditch and what we want to do tomorrow is to go and look for the rest of this activity so what are the things here might we actually still be out of fire it's a things like the post holes the the hole for the post for the for the anvil and the debris that will be scattered around so you're confident we might get something tomorrow I'm confidence the geophysics showed us the iron working today not just a night and there's more to come from that for tomorrow out there it's going to be a really hot on a really critical day - when I first got here I knew that this end of the site was going to be really important to our understanding of the island of athelney and Saxon times because here King Alfred's Abbey is located but now over here where we'd already discovered evidence of iron working we've found this lovely little knife which puts the far end of the site well and truly into the Saxon period - could we be lucky enough in our hundredth program to have found evidence of Saxon metalworking connected with King Alfred's army today our expert in ancient technology Jerry McDonald wants to investigate the magnetic signals he's found here just a short distance away from the trench where we found the knife it was on top of what we think is a ditch filled with metal slag from a forge we're actually excavating this large anomaly here but it extends further in that direction right so I think if we extend about two meters that would encompass the whole thing and then we can take that off and we'll actually see the relationship of this black to the other material that's in here and actually get a good edge to it on that side okay and we can potentially look at these alternatives strong anomalies as possible Smithy's last time we were here Victor conjured up a picture of athelney in Alfred's time an island surrounded by swamp with only a causeway linking it to the Saxon settlement at eastling 10 years on and surveyor Henry has created a more scientific view of this landscape the blue areas show those areas which have been flooded seasonally so this would take from the geology map they'll be over here really at spacebar that's right yes but what this shows in terms of Alfred's time is although atomies an island on three sides it's actually got relatively dry access from linge along the peninsula the green areas coming up here showed those areas which are low enough to have been wet enough to have the sorts of vegetation you get so this is a scrubby Reedy sort of landscape which effectively cuts off earthly as as an island from from the dryland access you don't got to see you Henry even thinks that the swamp would have been too thick to easily get a boat through which is more or less what I thought ten years ago this is what it must have been like for Alfred I can't even move let alone run away from any Vikings the only way in would have been across the causeway and stewards been studying aerial photos looking for traces of Alfred's defences at that end of the island fortifications that are mentioned in the documents according to a sir who was Alfred's friend and biographer he wrote about athelney which is surrounded by swampy impassable an extensive marshland and groundwater on every side it cannot be reached in any way except by punts or by a causeway which has been built by protracted labour between two fortresses and then he goes on a formidable fortress of elegant workmanship was set up by the command of the King at the western end of the causeway this is sort of swampy Reed stuff yeah very much so Victor's going to draw the defenses and Stuart's going to be looking for any evidence of them at the causeway end of the island and he won't be getting any help from a fill because he's been moved from the fort end over to the abbey site where we've got a complicated jumble human bones mixed up with the ruins of alfred abbey we got a real problem here in trying to understand whether you know these are burials intact with others derived bits of skull or whatever but we needed filter sort out what quite well how this wall fitted into it that's on the geophysics well i think i've shorted it actually right can i go back over there but you've got a burial in it yeah no but the point is john told me this morning the walls going to be about here yeah and look we've got a perfectly good front edge yeah almost looks like a mortar dead that's right that's right I'm actually got the back edge I'm still working that way but more importantly like you say look I've got this pelvis in there with two vertebrae there and what looks like probably the part of a forearm so it looks like they're buried like that the point is that we've got an articulated skeleton here and the most important thing about it is that it's articulated and it's on top of the wall the wall must have been knocked down when that body was put in so what does that tell us about what might have been going on here well I think it's actually very important because it means that this building which you can see on the geophysics and this is the one that's at a skewed angle now a mystery one that's early it's actually gone out of use and been demolished was only down to ground level before these burials have been put in we've got to tell is when the bodies were put in and when that building was knocked down yeah so this is the medieval church and this is the Saxon church that William of Malmesbury described in the 12th century yeah could our building be the Saxon shape I don't think so because this has got circular APS's around all the sides whereas this as far as you can see on the geophysics and what we see in the ground is straight I think that buildings probably up on the top of the hill beyond the monument so we haven't got the Saxon church yeah this could because there could be another one or another building they often had more than one Church on the same side on the same side it's probably more likely that it is if it's been got rid of in a new rebuilding fo like that stay here for a bit right stewards got some news he's desperate to tell me about for ten years I've been running across sites looking for you so that you could interpret them for me which kept you sleep anyway tell me all that running now this big ditch coming through here Stewart's interested in this red bank and the makeup of the ditch we're digging here he thinks this trench puttin in search of some more metal waste has unearthed something much more interesting don't don't get confused by all this lovely data he's been reading a report about some bore holes put in during work on the flood defences last year which resulted in the discovery of a ditch identical to the one we're digging we're standing just about here and one of the bore holes in particular she was taken there showed evidence of a red clay bank which sealed the deposit which was seventh century in date was it was radiocarbon dated but was cooked by a ditch which was late 8th century in date so we know that there is a ditch and Bank there in the early Saxon period around there so I think what we're looking at potentially is this here being part of a fortification round this end of the the island here with the causeway leading off to east Ling if you look over on the other side of there's eastling there there's our site was the causeway in between so we're looking something which is fortified across the end here simply to stop invade is actually getting on the island when you say fortification would it have had stakes it would be a built of a big ditch with a wood a wooden palisade on top of it Victor's already started working on the drawing be worth having a look at what she got later that's it yeah absolutely good Victor double palisades with a walkway Stuart believes the ditch we're digging was part of Alfred's defenses and what's more the latest GF is plot maybe showing the ditch running around this end of the island and I just think there's this general sort of a hint of settlement on or I don't know if it's a ditch I don't know if it's defense the geophysics is given there some nice interesting hints but it isn't necessarily giving us the full story but there's one intriguing feature showing on the GF is that surely we've got to dig and basically there may be some sort of break in the in the in the possible ditch oh not an entrance I don't know I don't know I don't often entrance I don't got no idea it's a ritual entrance and will find a small Saxon sacrificial brooch in the side of it to date only you've been hanging around archaeologists too long I think I am getting a bit carried away but wouldn't it be fantastic if this new trench did find evidence connected with the story of King Alfred and from what I remember about gothram leader of the Vikings I'd expect the ditch to be extremely deep to keep him out they practiced what was known as the blood eagle which was peculiarly nasty form of death in which they they kind of slit the victim down the front while living peeled back the ribs and then flung back on either side the lungs to form a living blood eagle it's so disgusting it is absolutely revolting you you are talking about rather brutal ruthless men for our return to athelney we've decided to bring Alfred and Guthrum to life as two men of high status they'd have been dressed roughly the same outfit himself was very keen that his armies were of quite professional and as such that meant that he stated they must have a helmet they must have a shield for example of a very particular size a sword such as this thing this is also an opportunity to see what weapons edged with steel actually looked like now this would have been tool steel this is what all the cutting is done with I'm not sure a pregnant carrenza should be wielding a Viking axe but certainly handling real weapons helps us imagine Alfred's predicament there are only two other Saxon metalworking sites discovered in Britain and the connection with King Alfred here makes the evidence we're digging up at the fort end all the more important Jerry's interested in collecting even the tiniest bits of evidence so these are bits that have come from this process here that's right we call it hammer scale they're flakes of metal flakes of rust that has come off and we know that's very characteristic of blacksmithing not a vast amount of just pop it in there right then overdue using more ninth century technology we're trying to cook some cakes like the ones Alfred famously burnt to pick up some of that rain but first we've got to make them and currents is grinding the flour this is the hundredth program I've been told I've got to get my hands dirty so this seems as good a way as any this would have been a griddle cake so they would have been milky and edgy and very like sort of like crumpets milk egg butter honey salt and of course Carranza's flour all you need to make authentic Saxon griddle cakes maybe you should have a look at some of the trenches while you waiter at the abbey side Phil's spent the day untangling the skeleton that was mixed up with the rubble in trench two and now has a tale to tell somebody's actually placed the body of a juvenile in there after the collapse after it because it's sitting on top of the rubble or the demolition rioting but at a later stage again somebody's dug away this hole that I'm standing in probably to get the stone demolition stones or these [ __ ] and in so doing they've chopped through the skull of that child uh-huh that's it that's extremely interesting because I've come across a major demolition work carried out in 1674 by the laborers of Captain John hacker who owned this site at that time and there's a letter in the Bob lien library describing it and he says there they continued digging up the ruins and foundations of that sometimes famous and ancient monastery they took up the basis of the pillars of the church lately and nearby found some graves one among the rest near eight feet long as the workmen guessed with the bones answerable they found graves in 1670 that's right and then they go on to talk about further work that they did south of the east part of the church which has to be over in that direction so that will fit with that wouldn't it it's just fascinating to actually get some historical detail that ties in with the archaeology that's great stuff thanks a lot not at all glad I could be a service at the Ford site we've been waiting for a pottery specialist to look at the finds that crucially might help to date this ditch and now the moment of truth has arrived I must admit my eye goes to that right because she evil that's more recent for nothing no no no one who's handmade isn't it it's got this these licensed eyes lines around it I know the father thought that was late Saxon really really yeah the problem is you realize that we haven't got much late Saxon pot for wrap well I know I've been saying that for that couple of days yeah it's rare to find Saxon pottery in Somerset there simply isn't any from Alfred's time in the ninth century and it's assumed they were using wooden or leather vessels and those don't survive now this is later than alfred the latest it could possibly possibly be would be what 12th century perhaps I would put it somewhere around about tells them interfere right it means the ditch was here a hundred years after Alfred but could it have been here a long time before him we think the pottery from the lower part of the ditch might be Iron Age I wanted a bigger meat I think it could be well bit well bi late Saxon Iron Age I mean there but unbalanced I have to say I think it probably have an age rather than its axon and is it the fabric make you think that yeah yeah I mean I could have been looking at something then that's a that's an Iron Age ditch that's you know what Alfred picks it because it's already there leakin seed you can revamp it you got anything else that would help with I mean presumably a ditch like this is going to run round this hillside we think we can see about half the circuit you're right yeah I'm Egyptian so we're getting a new prehistoric side edge on this aren't we acting rather rather good yeah yeah so it looks like alfred was reusing Iron Age defenses that's brilliant we didn't know that before when everyone does know is that Alfred burnt the cakes because he was worrying about the Viking my excuse well it's got to be that my minds already racing ahead to tomorrow Nick what its own yesterday Stuart was saying that he thought that the ditch along here could be part of some kind of anglo-saxon defense yeah I think that's likely if you come back here look at the profile you can see the hill here look he's dropping down the ditch we've discovered here runs off an angle like this and today we're hoping to find more evidence of it in this trench where Jeff is think we might find the entrance what we're hoping to prove is that this was an Iron Age ditch that Alfred the Great reused in the ninth century so he could have been using something that was already over a thousand years and yeah and why not you know if you're looking for somewhere to defend and you've already got a defense on an island put a new fence up you know refurbishing it away Ian's task today is to reach the bottom to prove it was first dug in the Iron Age Alfred's defenses would have been designed to prevent access onto the island along the causeway from East Ling the causeway still in use today really stands out now that it's been reinforced with white concrete so Alfred himself would probably have written across that causeway on exactly the same line and that y know how we see today picking his way through the bargain each side across the bridge seeing that big defensive bank in front up to the doorway all that industrial activity on the top with furnaces going on Smith's working away you know as you come up that slope through there but it surprises that anybody's bothered to do this in the Iron Age can I just interrupt you ten years ago carrenza believed she discovered evidence of Alfred's fort this is the fort area that we're looking at ya actually see this there's sort of black lines coming around here other intermittent messed around right now that you can also almost see a circular structure going right round that could be the site of the fort Mick wasn't convinced it's a sighting with actually bar surface it could be the right it's roughly the right shape is roughly the right size there's a lot of shape and a side is in the shape of it though also worries me I mean III mean here's Alfred presumably these back to the wall he's coming in you know retreating to this us I do I feel skeptical Madsen admit it eventually after transcribing the soil patterns showing on the aerial photo a different conclusion was reached it does come up in other ways too it does look remarkably prehistoric it does it something yeah it's like some sort of Iron Age farms it does now ten years on it looks like we're proving athelney was occupied in the Iron Age that's at least 700 years before the earliest documentary evidence which tells us about a hermits and Ethel Wynn who lived on the island in the seventh century now this st. Ethel win was the Sun and the brother of kings of the West Saxons in the late 7th century six 70s 80s 90s that is the exact time at which the Saxons first conquered this part of Somerset and from that point you get the feeling that this is a special place a royal place because certainly at alfred's time it was known as the island of the ethylenes or the princes and there's no reason to suppose that this isn't the kind of area that alfred as a king of the west Saxons wouldn't have visited regularly possibly as a child possibly as a hunting area and so that it would occur to him naturally as a place that he knew to seek refuge in when he came here in eight seven eight this would have been the perfect place to be a hermit wouldn't it you'd have been surrounded on all sides by the marsh so you protected from the people close to God the quiet contemplative life yeah and in fact that's exactly what Victor's drawing here it could be because this had been a religious site that Alfred founded a monastery at athelney in the ninth century and Phil still hoping to find some dating evidence that might prove we've located a bit of that early church he's opening up one last trench at the Abbey End so we've got the what we think is the early building here on this alignment yeah and up here the main body of the church on a slightly skewed alignment and where we've got the trench is where this building and the main Abbey intersect in other words they're try and take this Eastern Lady Chapel a square extension put it over there we're also trying to make sense of the medieval monastery and the excavated plan of much lonely Abbey 15 miles away is being compared against our GF is plot both monasteries were of a similar size and history and the interesting thing one of one of the interesting things here is that the farmhouse itself is actually orientated exactly along the line of the gabbie the abbey of course isn't on the same orientation as the hill so it's as if the farmhouse is respecting the abbey rather than respecting the hill itself as if the farmhouse or its foundations have been put in at a time when the Abbey is still standing we'd established the extent of the medieval monastery but now we're beginning to appreciate the details within it the cloister for instance is in exactly the same position with visiting experts looking at all the finds we're learning about the history of Alfred's monastery across the centuries the monks here at athelney would have walked across a floor like this around 1500 AD with the whole mass of these similar pattern designs and altogether and half trials along the edge you'll see these slightly darker color tiles they're overcooked over five that's a good one now you see that two ever cooked turn it inside it's gone almost black and there are lots of those I think that the athelney monks were buying a whole lot with seconds doing it on the cheap ten years ago I'd never have guessed that we'd be back here with the chance to dig such an important site and it's the Saxon evidence we're finding at the Fort end that's got me going especially now it looks like we've just made another cracking find Cedric I hear you've got some metalwork yeah I come down there Sonne Oh crikey yeah Oh Jimmy it's not a sword or anything like that is it oh the thoughts I'd not know is I got this end on it okay well it looks like it looks like a sort of thing where you fit this end into a wooden handle and it's like a scythe yeah I mean it would have to be broken wouldn't it cousin normally they're quite a length that's right what she's actually in um well this black stuff is appears to be metalworking Deborah perhaps smithing Gabriel something like that so he could be a bit of scrap or something that's broken or something it's going to be reworked I suppose couldn't easily definitely yeah yeah I mean if that's the Sexson scythe I mean how many of that was hotter well I saw very few it's gonna be quite rare on it it is we'll need to bring in a specialist conservator to excavate it unfortunately the Saxon knife we discovered on day one was badly worn and can only be loosely dated between the 6th and 12th century now this is my personal knife it's my everyday know if I'd used for eating doing small carving jobs and things now if I just all in take this the correct way you can see that you've got this classic so humpback sea axe blade shape and that's the shape of the blades very similar it is I mean obviously this has got a antler handle on a carved antler handle whereas this one might have had this bone one finding Saxon evidence that the ABI end of the site has been made all the more difficult by the discovery of a medieval graveyard put on top of earlier archaeology nevertheless the dig in this area has produced some special finds one possibility with things like this is it could be for marking out on documents you know because any document has got lines to set out where the texts going so on parchment or vellum and what an egg would mark well either a point or perhaps a so I don't know so you saying these this this item is it is an item of grave goods that is gone with with with a monk to his body it might have done but what it's much more important for it I think is probably that it's shown us literacy a scriptorium manuscript compilation that sort of thing so that's a cracking great thing and it's not just our finds that'll go on the record presumably being that sighs you're either growing up pigments I or medicines or something like that so medicines and all the fragments Tim and his family have discovered over the years have been under scrutiny Mick's favorite being this chunk of monastic Bell and he [ __ ] lifted because he's plumbing everything I the bronze you can see the sound bow that's the bottom into the Bell graphics have gone to town reconstructing it but it's unbelievable in a way that so little is left of this famous monastery which we know once extended across this hill and looked something like this at the time of the dissolution in 1539 when the bell of athelney abbey would have rung out across the marshes for the last time the complex of robbed out walls proved in the end too difficult to interpret despite the encouragement of finding some early pottery and this is possibly what we call sack Sir Norman type stuff maybe 11th century Levenson floor that sort of day so late Saxon it's all that transition so this is the first link that we got at this end of the hill with Alfred's monastery this self average as somebody who was in that Abbey in the 11th century was here and they dropped this pot what we've done is we've taken an area from the resistance plot it's no wonderful had a difficult time the geophys radar survey shows the remains don't survive to any great depth these are 10 meter slices through the ground and so we're at this ground surface here so nothing showing at the ground surface we move along and here about 40 centimetres we're just starting to see wall lines and as we go deeper here they are showing quite clearly and then as we continue to look into the ground we're disappearing below the actual foundation level it was a real technological leap forward like 10 years since we were here last isn't it you might need to dig in a few years time so it's not surprising we didn't find evidence of Alfred's original Saxon church that looked something like this according to William of Malmesbury who visited athelney in the 12th century but the thrill for me is that we found so much Saxon archaeology at the Fort end of the island now for the Great's guerrilla base in the marshes as Jerry predicted we think we found evidence of a Saxon workshop this bit of stone would have supported one of the posts and the conservator agrees with us this could be part of a Saxon side so do you think you're going to be able to get it back to looking something but reasonably like the sickle plate rather than just a lump of metal yes I think so I think so if we won't take it back to bare metal because a lot of it has corroded away but you will get a good good idea of the original shape so fantastically exciting find isn't it when there's virtually none of these known at all for me I've never heard of a parallel no there's a nice strong edge still there that's the cutting edge I said yes would have been in use this way oh the Smith would have come somehow off of here not quite sure because there are no parallels to this and that would have been cutting edge points really yeah after examination in the lab Jerry's opinion was that this was either a scythe or a draw knife used for woodworking tests showed that it may have had a carbon steel cutting edge although we haven't has yet been able to prove the metalworking dates to Alfred the Great in the 9th century our experts still think it most likely sadly this trench didn't find evidence of the entrance into Alfred's defences that must be elsewhere but look at this what we have found is stunning evidence of the defensive ditch continuing around the island it's much deeper here but crucially it contains the same pottery sequence 10th century Saxon fragments in the top of the ditch and Iron Age pottery in the bottom that's pretty well the same sequences over there ditch dug in the Iron Age presumably some sort of Iron Age fought or something here certain amount of silt in Alfred comes in no pottery now if it's time and then lots of stuff dumped in which gets the late sex and pottery in both in this trench on the other one it's gone early use by then so the sequence is very clear and we know that it's an Iron Age site open with the defense's in in outfits time as a result of that I'm sure I thought this is a very ten years ago she did you got a good lot with this ditch who you're only 20 yards out I think that's too bad about me I think 20 yards and 10 years is too much go ork Reich a look at that that's a colorful trench that is here in Ian's trench where we originally discovered the ditch the surprises but it's much shallower than expected this green clay that's the base of the ditch there may be one possibility at the moment I think is that this is a big quarry ditch then yeah digging this ditch out to get material to stack up tiger ramp on the path up here yeah the ditch on this side of the hill wouldn't have needed to be deep because it was protected by impassable Marsh but it would be much deeper here where the fortifications would have been at their strongest to stop anyone getting in from the causeway a precaution just in case Guthrum and his Vikings managed to find this island hidden away in the Somerset marshes we came here looking for King Alfred we didn't find him over at the Abbey but what we did find was much more important evidence right here of why he's known as the great because when he was on the run from the Danes he didn't just wander around in the marshes he came here to the island of princes a defensive sight he already knew and which had been in existence for over a thousand years in order to regroup make weapons and plot the downfall of the invaders it's nice to know that even after 100 programs time team can still come up with the unexpected cheers Cheers next on Discovery Health the girls are ready for their makeover in celebrity slimming here on Discovery Channel Rory McGraw explores the Monmouth rebellion

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 447,723

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: urtO2Jh1n5I

Length: 46min 35sec (2795 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2013