Time Team S10-E12 Sedgefield,.County.Durham

this is search field' county durham a pretty little village surrounded by this lovely farmland and we've got a mystery to solve over there and metal detectorists found these a hundred Roman silver and bronze coins these broken brooches and this extraordinary goat amulet but why are they here maybe this air photograph can help you see all these crop marks which look to me remarkably like buildings but are they some previously unknown Roman fort or town or part of a temple complex could these coins be part of a hoard that was buried and lost nearly 1500 years ago time team have got just three days to find out this is pretty near Hadrian's Wars now that's right we're in the military part of Roman Britain northern Britain but unfortunately this is a complete blank on the map so we've got a really exciting prospect here to put a new mark on that map I explained what was going on here on the round period Sedgefield surrounded by Roman military sites if they'd been a fort or camp here it surely would have been discovered by now so could we be on an unknown civilian settlement but where do we start what we're going to do some geophysics but we've got a great plowed area and of course at the moment we've got metal fines from this so if we do some field walking we might get the pottery and that would really tell us something what we're going to ask you to do is each of you to walk 120 meter square and you'll be walking it for 20 minutes we'd like you to pick up everything so if you you think it might be a bit of pottery but you're not sure put it in anything metal glass even modern pottery as well we want the love for the people that are doing the detector survey if you can go along behind the field walkers and if you could turn any discrimination on your machines off so you're looking out for any signals at all copper alloy or ferrous and hopefully we might have some nice finds the aim of the field walking is to see if we can identify any pattern of finds in the field that's really nice as well that's not bad first find is it know nice early Roman coin you know where you find coins and metal you should find loads of pottery the field walkers and detectorists are working to a grid setup by geophys who've already surveyed most of the plowed field this is a pretty big area almost 20 acres soaked with only finds and crop marks to go on it's a bit like pin the tail on the archaeological donkey but you've got some results for us now which he hasn't shown you yes and there you are Oh crikey Wow wow that's brilliant that is such a relief I have to tell you that behind the scenes he's been going oh I don't think there's anything new I don't know what we're gonna do that is a questioning I see there's brilliant I mean we're getting really good correlation with the aerial photographs using closures and ditches I mean that's the the thing that I see when I look at these results I see ditches right I don't see wall foundation you don't think of the areas like this might be set up mother might be I think it's all to do with settlement eyes yeah well good sort of activity with these blobs of well those are intriguing they really are they're about four or five metres across because we always think we have no idea of date flyover at all really so we need to find that out first of all okay so where do you think we should put the first trenches in well if we went for the junction of that enclosure yep because it looks as if that's butted up against that enclosure doesn't it but then one trench that goes across the enclosure and takes in one of the blobs yeah you have to know that's great yeah yeah very relief to see that right if you could leave the type clean and that's its own back to me today you meters this one how do you realise it was going to be this long yeah how big was the geophysical we've just done the whole field 200 metres by sixty in that plot couple so that's sealed yeah it's gonna be a big trench in there yeah but it will we've got big machines with two trenches underway GF is turn their attention to the ancient Heartland alongside the plowed field the park hasn't been farmed for centuries and could reveal completely undisturbed archaeology I took the opportunity to catch up with Alan Luton the detectorists who found all the Roman metal finds so eight years ago you're walking along this field yeah with your metal detector and then what happened well I just suddenly started finding Roman coins I mean normally you may expect to find the odd Roman coin a casual loss because supposedly there's a Roman road going on the bottom of the field yeah they say but that's hard to find the odd silver coin and then we've cooked the bronze coins and then they started to fall apart a few brooches and I just had the feeling that this had been some sort of settlement site maybes a Roman camp or something like that a marching camp had you ever found anything like this before no no and have you ever had anything like this since whoa Allan's lent us all his finds for expert analysis welcome see at a glance I mean we've got mainly Roman coins there in some Roman objects like that Roman brooch but we've got some medieval objects here like this lead pilgrim souvenir what excites me at first glance that we've got lots of these large coins which are fairly early Roman coins unfortunately they're not in very good condition those are quite a split of dates there right from the outside well that's what we really want to know is the spread of dates not just sort of Roman a medieval but also within the Roman period because it's a long time the Roman period you tend to dismissively think Romans just Romans but it's 350 years and we really need to know when we've got the concentrations of fines are the early Roman or hundred years after the Roman conquest or what with the field walking complete kind win makes an initial assessment of the finds he's the same Ian that's lovely I mean that's what we were hoping to find we've got a nice rim piece there has a lovely finish on it survived so well have we got any different types of pottery coming from any of the squares classic lovely and we'd expect to find some gray we're here have we got any finds a aren't pottery or coins beautiful yes oh wow look that is absolutely lovely it's either going to be jet or lignite it's been pierced for suspension as well so we've got part of the jet pendant probably second century maybe third that's beautiful Phil is it looking like anything it is actually just as a geophysics said it would be this is the the point of reference is enormous greatly a lob now that oh this is this orchid it but in its very very dark area right where you where we are now yeah you're inside it yeah and the actual edge of it comes round here walking along the edge these pebbles are the local sort of glacial gravel yeah and that's veering on all the way around there so this is huge is a vast feature enormous that any fines from it at all nothing at the minute I mean all we've all we've taken literally is is the plow soil that's moved down sloping is given us this big buildup of soil in trench to Kerry and his team of diggers have uncovered an area of burning only half a meter down sprinkled across the surface a tiny fragments of melted bronze and lumps of slag containing copper and dog even Mick isn't allowed to walk on the delicate fine strewn surface so Kerry learns to operate a camera but this is it but a new technology gonna impress me with his ease I'm going to show you what we found in here right go on in all this lagging out we've now found is confined to within the ditch right it's not a structure it's been dumped in here but surrounding it we've got a large amount of pot we've got this piece here Oh crikey err which I turn it over it's all very nice rim great big rim yeah Oh clay here yeah so what you're thinking of this is a kiln or a furnace or something I think so yes the same say there's dog nose work yes that's very burnt in it and there's a nice little pop bass just here more gray where and as we get to the burning you can see all the charcoal yeah and orbit now so we've got all the components of a furnace or a kiln but it's dispersed it's been dumped here all spread here so what are you thinking that the kiln or the furnace isn't very far away from this dump compact you could be right underneath where you're sat right over at the incident room the slag samples been x-rayed to try and find out more about how it was formed you look at this so which way is the out point at first we thought it might be a mold yeah yeah like this is like a copper object inside a middle but it seems to amorphous and the clay is into a nice surface anywhere so we think now it's a crack in the furnace yeah and also you got a large amount of slag that's attached to it yeah yeah I have that so it's a process and it's really exciting because it means there was a obviously a furnace on the site oh yeah all of these bits of bronze and burnt areas are a sure sign of industrial activity but as yet no sign of habitation and Phil's mysterious blob in trench one is still causing Stuart a few headaches initially we thought this was a pet but actually it turns out there a thick layer of burnt clay this is initially all this red mass down here a set what do you think it is at the moment I've got no idea the only fines we've got off of it are some shards of Roman glass oh let's look at that yeah no pot at all not well we've got some Roman pottery from the layer above but nothing it would suggest uh you know a kiln or anything along those eyes at the moment cry here cut that's very fine isn't it it's obviously a vessel because it's actually shaped yeah cool the glass fragments are too small to even guess what they could be and there are too few of them to suggest domestic habitation the lack of fines in the trenches is becoming a worry and allen's coins are adding to the mystery right how are we getting on with looking at these coins because we really need to start to try and get an idea of what sort of dates that's coming in at what we've got a pattern building up we've got Roman material with that one point from the first century BC first century AD this large group from the second century we've got the third century we've also got the fourth century but then we've got a gap and then after the gap we start getting coins again from the 1200 you've got two coins out the Middle Ages we've got two two coins we've got Stuart coins we've got coins from the 18th century we've got coins from the present century guy what do you think's going on in the Roman bit what's distinctive about this is it a typical sort of collection you'd expect it's exactly not a typical collection what we've got here is quite a lot a silver coin this is the equivalent of the 20 pound note you don't go around chucking 20-pound notes away what we've got very little of is the very small low value coinage which ought to dominate these 3rd and 4th centuries normally rammus art is riddled with these little late things that a half basically one of these we ought to have a couple of hundred of these and so there's a real mystery so this is looks like a neat pattern but in fact there's another story weaved into this so Alan did you have any thoughts about what's going on in the Roman period in your site well yes initially I was under the assumption that this was probably a marching camp you know perhaps when the road was under construction at some point or when the troop movements were needed further north up towards and hydrants walls and winglike line fit with you guys I've got a rather more radical suggestion it looks like a lot of coins and Craig and I have been talking about this all these we think probably come from a single collection a hold a hoard it's a one sight thing and these may be the same Alan does that fit with how you find them where all these silver coins from sort of within six feet of each other no there won't no there were scattered over an area about 80 meters so quite a large area in well of the site that's not necessarily incompatible with a hoard because of the cord pot and it would have been buried and it was broken up through plow you would expect them distributed over an area but we shouldn't have this number of silver coins if that was a hold would that then feel very much more typical nope because even that is unusual this lot might be a bronze hoard and we've got some very late silver coins here these are extremely rare and these I understand Alan were found very close to one another yes the worth writing another part of the side so in other words we're looking at three possible coin hoards on this side so we've really got two very different theories at the moment either it might have been a military marching camp and we might find some military stuff on the other hand it might be a site the people come back to at major intervals the Barry hoards so we've got a real mystery going on here so why have we got this great hoard of silver coin I don't know it doesn't make any sense because they're high status objects and we're looking at very very ordinary low status settlement here yeah but look at the geophysics now Mick we've expanded the survey area we've got this big roadway going through there right I think we're well back from the action here yeah I mean this is beginning to look more like some sort of village settlement isn't it I mean these look like the crops of the individual farms in which case we are right at the back that's from of the back ditch of one of the but would this be high enough status to justify the find of all these coins I don't think so I think we're still looking at a sort of Roman rural settlement place okay they might be doing a bit of industrial activity but it's still not you know not high status intriguing isn't it we've got this real mismatch on the one hand we've got the high status coins on the other hand we've got what appears to be a pretty low status site will we be able to link them up tomorrow at the top of our field it's the beginning of day 2 in our search for a roman settlement here in Sedgefield we've opened two trenches based on fantastic geophys results although we've only managed to find faint traces of industrial activity but our metal detectorists and field walkers have apparently found loads of roman archaeology lying about near the surface it's all a bit of a mystery really we've got a lot of material from the field walking you've got pieces of pottery which guy is just having a look at here those are pavement yep some of these I thought they could be Roman though don't they I'm rather sure about that you know frame a now you see this very obviously more than that obviously modern yeah what about these bits of tunnelling they're not like Roman tile the long thickness for the wrong color but when our field walkers were going across the field they kept going our Roman here Roman here Roman that's because we're expecting to find a Roman site but remember we're very close to a town that's been there for centuries people have been chucking their rubbish over here since time immemorial we have got one really good Roman coin another silver daenerys just like the ones from the coin hoard I've been arguing we've got in the incident room this is reinforcing your theory that what we've got here is a series of coin hoards and actually not much in the way of occupation is that absolutely what it looks like at the moment on the basis of the evidence we've got so far that is what it looks like guy you're gonna have to swallow your skepticism the geophys is fantastic and even if that particular fine might not be Roman I'm quite confident that a lot of stuff will be we've now got a complete geophys survey for the ploughed field and a half of the parkland it seems to show a continuous set of archaeological features on both sides of the fence and what looks like a Roman Road connecting the two it's quite a substantial roadway link I mean that's 20 metres apart yeah but surely the thing to do is to establish we've actually got buildings and settlement alongside that track quite well that's why we've honed in on this area here yeah I mean that might just be something like an oven corn drying kiln rice and maybe a half so opening your trench open a new trench that will take in your wall ability is called drying clearlove nah whatever and this area here is this bit blown up large that's right and where is it always marked you on the ground for this will be here well this being time team that means that we're going to have to move the finds table and the finds and this rather large tent anyone loses a hand can we move the tent if you want to go put it over here somewhere we've got to move it sorry just about as low 20 meters what a table phil's moved over from trench one in the field to take charge of the trench under the tent in the park by his reckoning the archeology shouldn't be as deep here as there's been no plowing or other soil disturbance since medieval times to find out whether we're on a major Roman Road or just a simple track way Kats opening up trench for we're practically halfway through the dig now and I must admit I haven't a clue what it is that we've got here but I looked at geophysics plot as soon as I saw leather settlement was a term that came out what allowed a settlement a stone it is where you've got a road the street like that and then you get enclosures coming off like that we're talking about something that is basically a settlement of enclosures along a road running roughly that way through that gate over there yeah and that some of these have got occupation in them and some of them don't my guess would be that it's probably there's probably a lot of farming going on but that there's a lot of small scale industrial activity going on in the backyard so even though there's nothing above the ground and even though what we're seeing seems fairly rudimentary in terms of civilized life you think this is actually significantly adding to our understanding around must massively so yeah this would be the first site this type will it's north of the river tees north of the tees there isn't one site like this known a long thin settlement along the road is beginning to fill in the gaps on the Roman map of Sedgefield but yesterday's pottery fines are causing a problem they're not fitting into the time line of metal artifacts guy you and Craig of obvious had a chance to do a bit of tidying up on the metal fines but haven't you move them these were all in the second century yesterday remember we thought they were coin hoards yes well we're absolutely sure they're coin hoards have been dispersed across the field now the rule were the coin hoarders it can't be buried before the date of the latest coin in the hoard it wouldn't have been Nathan exactly so this lot we know belongs to the early third century this lot of coins down here are very very warm over the second century and date they're so worn they must belong to a hole that's gone into the third century and right over here we've got our other little hoard a fourth century coins but they're clipped down which means they belong to the pier they're probably still in circulation when the coinage is no longer being supplied to Britain perhaps as late as the early fifth century so that's moved all our coin activity into different periods I mean I watch you reckons actually going on here in the Roman period now we've got the sort of second century pottery a completely different date from the time at which the hordes are very busy we've really got a mystery here if we come along here and found this pottery I'd be perfectly happy to accept this is a local phenomena a little minor settlement living on the economic edge a few miles away from the Roman army up to the west where they've got shed loads of stuff these are people with a very small scale economy that's fine great but it doesn't match with all this stuff a high-quality silver hordes and coinage going on later on so for me there's a real problem here we've got a total mismatch in this this mismatch has a huge implication for Allen the detectorists who made all these finds confirmed as definite hoards he's now going to have to declare everything to the coroner as possible treasure trove and risk losing half his finds so is there a different law covering something that's a whole just compared with something that isn't a whole well if it's an if it's a then it'll go to inquest and then it'll be decided what they are or what the value is and then if any interested part is so museum or or whatever interested in purchasing certain rare pieces of our rare pieces that then they will have an option to buy which is which is great yeah other than that then it's returned and then I can decide with the landowner whether we're going to share them out or I suppose sell them and split the market value Phil's making good progress in trench three where he's uncovered a circular feature ringed with burnt clay so do you reckon this is a pit that's had some burning taking place in it it's difficult to say at the moment whether or not it's actually a pit with burning or in fact whether we're not looking at some some big sort of structure that may actually have had a roof over it or summat like that you know whether it could be some sort of a kiln or a furnace or summat like that at the moment we just don't know what it is accepting it is just so well defined the other incredible thing is look how near the surface it is compared with all the trenches that we dug in the field yesterday why do you think that like they plow in must be plowing this is only been plowed in in the medieval period when they had very very simple plows that didn't actually penetrate the ground very far now we are you know in more recent time steam ploughs and we're not that they do nowadays just just wreck everything given that time team came here because of coin finds and given that we found loads of evidence for Roman industry it seems appropriate that we're attempting to combine them both we're going to make Roman coins with traditional materials and techniques but crate surely we know how Roman coins are made goodness knows we find enough of them we find absolutely shared loads of Roman coins but what we do not find is any archaeological evidence for the technology which produced these big brass coins there are virtually no dies there is no written record there's no mint sight which we've been able to identify so no we really really don't know this is a huge experiment we're going to make the plain brass blanks and then we're going to also cast the bronze dies and we've got to engrave the dies and then we have to figure out how to use them so that we can get this impression on the hard coin we're using bronze dies on brass coins so we're going to try and do each of those three stages and the really exciting thing about it is there are really important questions to answer at every single one of those stages for example look at this coin you see the straight edges on that now one theory is that that's because they were made by cutting them out from big in got one being cut out there next one mean cuts out like that no I don't think so because I just think it would take it would be so difficult to hammer out all those around edges and if you're thinking about mass production how you know producing lots and lots of these coins you're not going to spend a lot of time doing this and it's not really in a metal workers repertoire so how do you think they were made I think they were cast individually before we can test any of these theories Victor needs to hand engraved the bronze dies using a real coin as a pattern and only authentic tools he's got hours of painstaking work ahead guy we've got some Roman coins hello oh hi what's your name I'm Matthew I'm guy nice to meet you so Matthew where were these found in my garden did you pick them out yourself no oh who got them my - did he put in another one gosh that's fantastic in fact this all knows better than sonic winds we've found enough right towel that one is no it's 1900 years old this is from the middle of the fourth century and this is an emperor called Magnum Dias how do you know that it just looks like a great flood of oil I can read the lettering on the side Tony also it's the shape of the head he's got a bald head here at which was a distinctive feature that particular and promised was coins these coins came from the other side of modern Sedgefield which seems to prove Stuart's ladder development theory that the settlement was spread out along the track way but it's still too early to say which part of the settlement were actually digging in Phil's trench has now been extended and at last we're starting to find evidence of structure small piles of arranged stones that could have supported a floor the circular burnt feature is proving extremely hard to interpret do the devil vanish well you get to the critical point there the circular wall is a seemingly complete bowl shape with a small clay dome at the center just suppose that that actually still does on there that is actually Kailash Mikan Phil's best guess for the moment is that it's some sort of collapsed furnace or kiln the dome in the center being the top of the fallen roof but there's still a lot of Earth to be moved before they'll know for sure hi there how you getting on making those blanks alright and has eventually got something that's working hello brilliant is it around orange glowing feminine oh they're wonderful are they well it is just little dimple molds in a clay base where you can do is you can stack loads of them on top of each other measure out the metal straight into the top of that and then follow up the whole kiln sister stop making chocolates yeah so is it really that simple did you try any other methods Dana we did try some other methods we were looking at the coins with the straight edges and trying to reproduce that and cutting it from the ingot took 15 minutes not perhaps ideal for maastradamus very effective and then we also did this where we made these as wax individual blanks and put them into plaster mold and poured through the top and that's another method that's been suggested and would produce a flat surface so and you've tried several different methods which have all worked to some degree because stuff we can work tomorrow but if you're looking for a mass production industrialized process that's the one Victor's almost finished engraving the dies they seem to work well enough on play but will they be strong enough to survive being hammered into a brass blank I didn't think that Craig I think that's absolutely astonishing it we've got a forger in the making I think you should take that as a compliment Victor it's almost the end of the day and trench 4 is well underway trying to find the edge of the Roman Road and any trace of domestic settlement it's about 5 o'clock it's really chilly I think the winds coming directly from Russia Catherine can I come in your turn yep definitely what have you got here well we've not had a lot so far but what we're starting to get is these you know fit sized pebbles in here similar to what Phil's had in his French and so basically we're just looking at this scene if it's some sort of surface so might that be a surface that people are living in or is it more likely to be some kind of pearl well we're not sure yet we think we could be on on the same alignment as a trackway but we've not got any evidence to to show that so it could be something domestic on the side of a road but there is something different but it's definitely something coming up there now yeah what about here this just all looks similar texture to me and I think we've got the roadside ditch coming through here oh yeah here I'm standing you can't see from here but if you come back up here yeah you can see it looks a lot darker over there than we were then here pivot lighter here then just up here it's pretty much I of faith isn't I think I'm gonna have to wait till tomorrow when you've cleaned it up a very clean it up later at the moment I can't see anything at all what else have we got well what we've got is what showed up on their geophysical survey as that big circular blob is this here yep we've got the edge coming through here with all this burnt soap on this is oh yeah yeah yeah that all that's missing here yeah so what we've done is we've taken it down and then we've we've dropped this huge Sun dodging here which is about two meters deep from the side so this is like a test fit yeah yeah just like a test fit and we managed to find these bits of amphora at the bottom now how do you know that's an amphora well this bit here looks like it's part of the handle all right it's so chunky yeah then the amphora where is all you know massively chunky so we know that we're still we know we're Roman and we've had a coin come out of the spoil so that's been dated to AD 69 so we were definitely Roman which is great so what are we doing this enormous trench next what we're going to do is we're going to clear it up see if we can spot that ditch that we're looking for have a look at that area down there see if it's something domestic basically just clean it up and see what we can find invisible Road ditches and and for a handle and a coin and not exactly what I would call conclusive proof of domestic habitation and cats only got one more day to find it films trenches yielded no domestic finds and his kill me pharmacy thing has now developed flu holes which proves it's a kiln of some sort so we know that people were working here at one time but were they living here as well Nile do these stones say house to you they do indeed Tong I think what we've got here is a rough stone foundation for a timber frame building big wooden sleeper building raising up a timber superstructure and then the rest of the building running off towards the road front do you reckon there's enough evidence here to tell us that there was a village here at one time yeah I find it difficult to believe that that geophysics plot with the street down the middle and all the tenements down each side is not actually a Roman village you're the local expert what are the patterns that we've seen through the geophys tell us about what was going on here and it tells it we've got something quite exceptional going on here the normal pattern of Roman occupation in the far north of England is forts with civilian settlements outside them little farmsteads here we've got something that's quite atypical and far more like the thing you get much further south in a much more romanized landscape so is this an important size exceptionally important mick apart from milestones we really don't have much evidence of occupation do we are we going - I think so we've only dug one plot so far on this village street I think we need to dig two or three more up in that direction and hopefully we'll get an assemblage of material pottery bones on little more clearly indicate settlement beginning of day three in our quest to find out exactly what was going on here nearly two thousand years ago I'm travelling along what your fears have proved to be a Roman Road or more probably a Roman track way we've got lots of evidence of Industry and agriculture here but very few clues that we're the early inhabitants of Sedgefield actually lived there's been a lot of midnight oil bird trying to work out what to do next but I've got a feeling there's going to be quite a few trenches down here today fill out a very stylish motor you got there Tony pretty stylish little trench you've got here - we have finally cracked it we reckon what is it look what happens when I pull out this bag we've got another flue hole in there and what we realize now is that in fact instead of this being the collapsed roof of a big dome thing this is actually part of the structure and we can actually tell you what the structure is - because all the way around here look at all these bits of pot undoubtedly a pottery kiln this is probably the remains of the last load of pots that they actually fired had a chance to clean up a bit and have a look at it and a lot of these pieces are fitting back together and then if you can see that we've got part of the same pot there it looks very much like a lot of second century forms but we haven't got examples like this from this area and the pieces are so big and they're so fresh they are and this is the weird but if you turn it over on the bottom can you see there it's not being used no just - just as they wired it off the wheel absolutely yeah it's still fresh I thought that around here the Romans imported all their pottery well that's what a lot of people think but it's obviously not the case here so this is actually quite an important fold it is yeah this is quite possibly the northernmost civilian pottery kiln ever discovered in England perhaps sedge fields Potter's sold their wares to the passing military on their way to Hadrian's Wall I've spotted a new trench next to Phil's killed I think I'll go the long way round I thought another stray to be getting in pretty soon right here well we're still looking along the street for evidence of if you like more obvious occupation yeah and we've got a series of blobby pity things I think um so we've gone in on those yeah three large pits to see if we can get any domestic refuse in effect carry well what have you actually got there got capping for a pit here there's another pit here and another one at the other end of the Train he's only three we've got all three I don't understand what additional information you're getting from this that you haven't got elsewhere it just seems to me that we're confirming the three bits of evidence that we've got elsewhere and we're still looking for a domestic refuge in effect people need to be convinced that this is a settlement by finding waste material bones and yeah I mean I wasn't going to admit it last night but it is odd that it doesn't have any more bones you know smashed up why is that odd well because you know almost every site you look at has got people you know joints and meat and all the rest in there and there's nothing very very strange so that might imply that it's not residential whereas last night you were saying you thought that it probably is a lot of a lot of vegetarian crafts over in trench for cats making great progress excavating the roadside ditch just the sort of place your average roman artisan might throw the remains of his dinner hello Catherine hi has it been worth opening this enormous trench after all yeah it's been very successful can I get down yes certainly did he go well we've just starting to excavate this roadside ditch and we're just starting to get a lot of votes Wow now that's something we've been really short of actual evidence with people living and eating here knock him out from there yeah I came out all through this film in here right what else we got out of the trench well we've been excavating the big massive quarry pissed at the end of the trench remember on the geophysical yeah yeah and we've just started to get some bone out of this but interesting me got it about three meters down and these corn stones right cornerstones of course if they're living here I can meet bread that will be for grinding the corn but you know I got a real feeling that the twins don't not necessarily and should be just for that and some of these seams have been used as the kick wheels in a potter's wheel see and we know the pottery made over there was wheel made yeah so this could be the thing that you're pushing around at the bottom to turn the pottery on so that's really interesting things are looking up that's that's great excellent a few bits of sheep bone out of a ditch in one trench is hardly conclusive proof of domestic habitation so we've opened trench six further along but still fronting onto the Roman Road the most likely place that the Roman inhabitants of Sedgefield would live can you see it here are some linear feature coming through here it's got a really kind of silty matrix to the soil we've got bits of charcoal and it just looks redeposited it's like something's happened plus we also have this something happening here can you see that is a the darkest oil in front of the soil just here as opposed to the oranges are orange gravel on the side and then we've got this dark kind of really sandy silty stuff so remember what maybe I don't think you've got to give it a good clean I think you're right I think we do have to give it a good clean there may be something here once again almost invisible archaeology in this case subtle soil staining where the Timbers forming the base of a wooden building may once have lain over at our Roman industrial site we're just about ready to try and strike some Roman coins Andrew we're ready to do our first experimental striking now aren't we and we're gonna do the least risky one first that's right because I think we're all really worried that Victor's Die is going to break I'm really worried because I spent two days hard slog on that very hard work still it's all yours what we're going to go for is just heating up the blank getting it to just under cherry red right putting onto the die and instead of taking one almighty blow at it just do a whole series of more gentler blows and try and tease it in there rather than forcing it in there anything they're really clothes decide nasty yeah Dana do you still want to try a cold stripy were keen on I'm not as confident that I would like to try it yes Wow nothing yes well that's been a fantastic experiment hasn't it we've managed to rule out the methods that don't work and we now know that a hot strike with one big blow using a bronzed I would have been able to strike huge numbers of coins without damaging the mold Phil I'll be looking at maps and surveys and I found a few anecdotes which you might be interested in relevant the kill yet the whole foundation of this settlement was probably because of the quality of the clay here a natural reached beach marbles for the quality here there's a survey in 1380 by Bishop Hatfield which actually records kilns incensed fear and in 1673 the guy who actually own this land left 25,000 bricks in his will and in the 19th century there were field names tile shed plantation brick kiln plantation just beyond the woods there so that the tradition starts here in the Roman period and kilns and tile making and so on carried right through to the present day just goes to show I mean well they sold part built this kiln here literally they know the tradition that they would be setting up cool meet with his son francelina yeah we've just decided to extend it back into here as well why well we think we might have a building some sort of structure I'm not sure if it actually is an entire building that probably more of a room there is no building better of course there's a building we thought okay we've got it running down here yes we're getting to a corner I can see the turn yeah you see the platoon it's coming all the way back here we've got another return here and then we're coming all the way back until we get to a tea section so you reckon you've got a rectangular building or possibly a rectangular room that's part of a larger building it must be a room of other structure and you do think it's a house because I've been saying I don't think there's any settlement here I think this is industrial stuff out in the fields but this would change that it would definitely change that this is your last chance Mick isn't it to find any settlement it is it is and you know the thing that's worrying here is we've had virtually no fine so we've had none out of the Syria whatsoever we've had fines within the trench and other features but we haven't had actually anything in this yeah so what are you going to do we're going to have to cut summer sections into it see if we can get a profile see if we can find some fine we have roughly two hours left no problem Tony easy-peasy we'll get it done she may get it done but will I be able to see it at least Phil's kilns easier to understand but he's running out of time as well he's being slowed down by even more flue holes which require very careful excavation we suspect that we're in the middle of a civilian industrial area that may have provided goods for the military heading north to Hadrian's Wall but we found no military artifacts to back this up until now my word that's copper alloy isn't it I think it looks like a pocket handle it's definitely looking handle shaped isn't it when it's cleaned up the bucket handle looks too fragile and small to carry any real weight but it's definitely a handle for something so what Roman object needed a small bronze carrying handle Cragen guy came up with the solution once used by a soldier to attach his helmet to his belt or shoulder strap it obviously broke and he must have come to a local metal worker for a replacement we've almost run out of time and our search for domestic habitation in trench 6 is finally over so Bridget didn't turn into a house in a word no I don't think it is oh I think it is there I think it's a single cell building no evidence of humans living in here nope no Falls or oven or anything like that absolutely nothing not even a piece of pot for it huh so what's it for then I think it might be for animals I don't think coming here kept overnight so it might be a pig pen or something like that really it's about it I'll go and tell everybody you found a pig pen okay let's pickled fish films almost finished clearing out is killed all his effort is worth it as we can see inside the fire chamber for the first time in two thousand years fed from a stokehole at the side this is where the wood or coal would have burned the flames shooting up through the vent holes to fire the pots stacked around the bowl of the kiln the heat would have been kept in by a thin clay domed roof which the potter would smash after every firing to get his pots out this is one of the most amazing things we've ever found an almost complete Roman pottery kiln and once the pots have been fired our Roman Potter might have walked through his workshop past his workbench stacked high with completed pots opened his front door and gone out into the Main Street we've established that this was a major Roman trackway heading from the south off towards Hadrian's Wall the chances are that this previously unknown Roman settlement could extend for miles along the track way we've discovered at least 20 different enclosures just in the field and park this was obviously a thriving industrial area making pottery and smelting bronze for the growing Roman market it must have been a lucrative market too because at least three people over a 300 year period were rich enough to bury their coins in the fields and lose them I think we can safely say that Sedgefield may not have been a city of forums and amphitheaters but it certainly deserves its place on the Roman map of Britain after we'd all gone home Phil had a surprise visit from the local MP eager to see for himself his constituencies Roman heritage how long have you been associated with this place it's getting on for 20 years 90 years you see you just don't know what's undergone it's certainly a revelation would this have been a camp no there's this distraction this is a this is a real settlement yeah it's fabulous for local people to to know something about their history and don't know what was here and so how many people do we reckon we would have been here we just did well I mean slightly you've got 20 20 enclosures maybe got 20 families or summat like that these people I mean I know this answers all basically the ahta question but I mean they will have been Romans no they would have been more likely to be the local people eager to actually absorb the Roman culture this field is just just it is just a gem it's a real finders of this to roil it is really I'm so proud next on Discovery Channel and look at the very public rivalry of celebrities today we'll find out the truth about the competition between arm Prost and Ayrton Senna

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 399,049

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: Wj87O_Puoz0

Length: 46min 49sec (2809 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2013