Time Team S12-E04 Drumlanrig, Dumfries

Time Team get invited to all sorts of places these days but they don't come any grander than this this is drumlin reed castle near Dumfries in scotland but that's not for us typical time team what we're interested in is something that's been discovered round the back in the garden there's not much to see on the ground here apart from a few lumps and bumps but look this photo was taken from the air during a particularly dry summer and you see all these strange shapes and lines the experts reckon these could be the remains of a Roman fort if it is you could have a really good story to tell because it would have been in the frontline of the Roman attempts to invade Scotland time team have got just three days to solve this Roman mystery in what must be one of the largest back gardens in Scotland go ahead this is your theory where'd you reckon the fort actually is on the ground you're coming into it now as you step through the Gateway the East gateway and you'll walk in this direction go straight up the main road at the fort so which of these lines directly the fort well most of them I reckon the light lines in the interior which the most obvious perhaps are a grid of streets where the grass growing over the streets is parching and showing a lot as a light tone in this black-and-white photograph outside it you've got the ditches shown as a dark lines showing where the defense's curve around the angles and bands straight sides of the fort making in all a huge rectangular playing card shape still excuse my skepticism but this is a huge seventeenth century house within most enormous garden this could just be formal gardens couldn't it no because I regard on this one Hal with Gordon I it I put my I put my mortgage on this it might be a northern mortgage and small but I put my mortgage on this one although this field looks flat on the aerial photo it's actually full of lumps and bumps the Stuart reckons match up with some of the crop marks also what I hadn't appreciated is that this site actually occupies a ridge of high ground dominating this landscape and making it an ideal location for a Roman fort most Roman forts in Scotland were built of turf and timber and looked something like this with big defensive ramparts and ditches a gateway on each side and buildings laid out to a set plan in theory Roman forts were meant to be the same but they very rarely are in order to manage this landscape the drumline rig estate wants to know exactly what's hidden underground here and geophys my best bet of giving them some answers they already have some very promising first results but need more time to complete their picture I can't remember a time team when so many of the archaeologists have been so confident that we're actually going to find what we're looking for but pride comes before the fall gentleman has what we've got here been tying up with the gfs yes it has and they're they're carrying on with the geo fees and adding a great deal more detail to what we can see on the air picture so what part of it do we want to dig well lots of things would be nice to have a go act but you know we need to get some sort of chronology and sequence out of this first of all don't wait yeah and I think the best place to go for that would be the defense's the beach system in fact that changes over time if there are more than one phase of a fort here we're going to see recut we're going to see sequence very quickly in the ditch section I mean should we go for near a gate for example near a gate near a get as near to a gate as possible would be good and here you can see this road coming out of here make Tony give us an x marks the spot there there yeah so our first trench is going to investigate one of the defensive ditches around the fort it's gonna be a ten meter long trench and the first ever to be put in on this site trench two meanwhile is going to test this geophys signal in what's thought to be the interior of the 40 hopefully it's gonna give us our first look and one of the buildings inside it's 11:20 and everyone's very excited except me I think probably the main reason I feel so skeptical is the one thing I know about Roman sites is that you get loads of pottery but here the only pottery anyone's ever stumbled on is one piece this Richard where'd you find it I find it just behind this here Tawnia near the children's adventure playground did you realize that it was Roman no no it didn't realize it's only ice less thought it's an all-day guard no sport but you've got excited about it enough to want us to come here well certainly the site behind us it was discovered in 1884 three years so hey and that's really all we know you know a Roman camp piece of port that's the story so far are you surprised there's so little Roman pottery no not really because the place has never been excavated it's never been built on and it's never been plowed so all the normal factors you would require to bring fines up to the surface to be discovered haven't taken place here Richards find is the base of a Roman cooking pot and we've reconstructed it to show him what it looked like it was probably made by the Roman army on this side and although it's what I'd call a bog stand a bit of grey where according to guy it's more significant than that if we'd found this piece of pottery down south if we just want a ten a penny we'd find loads of it but we're up here in an environment where the indigenous tribes knew nothing about that kind of pottery and it's a symbol if you like of the impact of Rome on a virgin piece of territory bit like the kola can in the middle of the jungle yeah exactly this Roman pot dates to the second century AD and it's our first clue to when this fort was occupied but apparently our experts think it's likely that there was an earlier fort here as well one that dates to the Romans first attempt to conquer Scotland in the first century 40 years after the Romans invaded in 43 the governor Agricola in the early eighties ad is bringing the Roman army right up into what we call Scotland garrisoning it as he went and building roads so wood drumlin rig have been the sharp end of the military camp Oh almost certain it will have been one of the key forts that Agricola built to garrison and hold the roots he was taken to control into Scotland but it doesn't last very long not long after a brick ler it leaves Britain all of this area is given up by the Romans now some forts remain in commission but most of them were dismantled and abandoned and the Romans withdraw down to here the area we call Westford northern England between Carla and Newcastle Hadrian's Wall yes but not yet it's not until the 120 ad that Hadrian fixes the frontiers of the Roman Empire and he builds the war here that marks the limits of Roman Britain for the moment but it doesn't stay like that because there's so much trouble from the tribes in southern Scotland over the next 20 years the Emperor Antoninus Pius who succeeds Hadrian decides to push the Roman frontier north again he builds a new wall up here roughly where between Glasgow and Edinburgh and he pulls Hadrian's Wall on hold and this whole area of southern Scotland where drum nanri Giz has to be regear esand and many of the older griilll and forts from the late 1st century are recommissioning so if the experts are right there could be at least two stories to get to grips with in the grounds of drumlin rig castle there could be traces of the 1st century fort here that was abandoned after only 5 or 6 years and also another fort built on the same spot in the 2nd century when the Romans made another attempt to conquer Scotland it sounds like it's going to be tricky to sort out especially looking at the size of what I was calling trench to mix strategy for the interior of the fort is to dig test pits but you're not going to learn much from a trench as tiny as that is we're going to learn is what sort of deposits are in there and handfuls of pottery that give us some sort of date from it why here John well look we've got the geophysics there's the main road coming through you can see it on our plot and the streets going off to the side there's actually a road going across here the main road there I was like that isn't it so we're in the corner and there should be a sort of building and maybe a barrack block well there ain't much of a barrack block there yes not yet rubble no but if it was a timber building you should probably sit on rubble like that anyway we got one two bits apart hot miss Ronny oh look well that's doubled the amount of Roman profits is this the same sort of ages Rich's piece yeah it's second century stuff so it probably towards the end of the life of the fort so there must be earlier stuff underneath so you're gonna keep going down yeah I mean we're drawing it recording it now and then we'll go down and see what happens we've opened up another test pit over this geophys signal that could be the remains of a corner tower already it's turned up some pottery that again tells us something about life here in the second century AD we have some properly Roman pottery with all jar rim but this is coarse iron in stale pottery but it's not earlier than this material it's contemporary with it it looks as if for the very closest cheapest pottery they're buying the ordinary trotters you can find in the house hide it from the locals they're looking around presumably yeah so what the local people have been coming into a fort like this and unplugging them stuff or would they all have been the enemy they'd certainly be coming in because of course by the mid second century the frontiers move north it's on the Antonine war between Glasgow and Edinburgh so this is within the Roman province so the people here are beginning to go through the process of becoming part of a romanized province and that all kinds of supply and interaction is going to start taking place yeah you can imagine if you drop 500 troops in the air just like today there's gonna be all sorts of goods and services they're going to need shall live to your lurid imagination to work out we don't want the only thing the only good bit of dating evidence we find to be on the spoor here but the Marquise ologist Helen geek wants the metal detectorists to check the trenches so as not to miss any clues particularly to the type of soldiers living here we don't know for sure but we'd expect this fort to be occupied by auxilary soldiers based on the size of the fort and the aerial photographs we suspect it on zulu soldiers not the main citizen leaders so auxiliaries is that kind of like territorial no no these are the provincial soldiers the ones hired by the Romans to do all their frontier work their fighting work they would earn their citizenship by working in the Army for 25 years but they're incredibly flamboyant they're the ones who love parade dressy armor on their tombstones particularly the cavalry who are always bashing around with standards and showy parade dress armor with the excuse that it's just possible that we might find evidence of the Roman cavalry here at drumlin rig we're going to attempt an experiment that's never been done before and to do it we've got metal usual Roman standard it's the dracco the dragon head shaped standard which first appears in the second century introduced by the salvation cavalry but it becomes so popular that most of the Roman army start to use this kind of thing over the next two to three hundred years so are the many archaeological finds no there are very few examples indeed what we know about them most of all is from stone reliefs which the carved on but the historical sources that know describe them but describe the or inspiring an eerie sound that they made and do we know how that sounds no we do so the challenge for us over the next two to three days is can we get a noise out of this salutely it may look like a jelly mold at the moment but it's far from finished and tomorrow we should be ready to experiment with the kind of noise it made meanwhile in trench one over the defenses things are going well alongside are you talking about these wonderful swords here I certainly am yeah look it looks like we're finding the layers of individual turfs cut by the Roman soldiers to brown 2,000 years ago and the brown stuff on top of them is the decayed organics isn't it of the sort of grass tied down yeah yes i down to find that and everything has we've also got this ditch done here with Phil's digging that was a ditch that's contemporary to this remember yeah yeah it's really nice while in this test pit what I was calling trench - I'm lending a hand and learning that timber structures leave fairly subtle evidence I've got something here something black which looks to me like a fireplace or a posthole I don't know well charcoal at least you need cleaning up a bit more to see the AG's engineer I thought I'd cleaned it up could this be packing around it it could be or Jordan was saying it might be to support timber for buildings do you know I said to you earlier if you put timber buildings up you don't see much trace on the surface yeah when they've rotted but you know if you got to level them up with stone and stuff it's those stones that we getting lines like that in it yeah how much cleaner I got to get this thing well as clean as you can really don't want any of that loose stuff lying about yeah well that's a small little pearl well you shouldn't leave little piles really like that all right having a go he's ready just to realize I've gone through the stage of doing the digging like I'm like the surgeon who's dropped the doctor bit you say but there's no doubt about it today's biggest success has been the geophys survey of this field it's revealed what's effectively an archaeological map of the fort it's stunning good cat you beaut well we stopped to fill in the gaps on the aerial photograph there we could see the main street and the roads going off to the side here we've got it in the geophysics and all the details of the barrack blocks now what we've got in this area here is a rather large perhaps stone building yeah and why does that make John such a beaut yeah we have the central range of buildings here with the huge courtyard building which is supreme capilla headquarters building right in the middle both Gordon and Tony are sure that this is the headquarters building and it's possible that these white lines on the GF is indicate the only stone building in the entire fort well the important thing is you now know the layout yeah we can navigate our way around the fort now we can name the streets so that now is the vir pranky palace this is the vir Pretoria we know exactly where we are now it would be a great relief for me to see a bit of stone because so far all we've seen is shadows in the ground well you're gonna see it soon in that small trench across the wall there well I started the day wondering if there and GF is of proof spectacular way this trench should reveal the stone remains of a second century Roman headquarters building looks pretty encouraging turning into a building now but in the rampart trench Phil looks like he's ready to call it a day after working his way down towards the bottom of what's turning out to be a very deep defensive ditch while further along the trench Bridget has unearthed what may be the stone edging that reinforced the bottom of the rampart it'll all be made clear to me tomorrow apparently they think they've also found traces of an earlier rampart as well well I don't right now some bad days work Tony I mean just in this one trench we got evidence for two forts and it's beginning to look as though the second court was deliberately backfilled into the ditch so have you finished oh I wish we had there we've got to keep going right to the bottom and hopefully we'll actually get some date in heaven certainly for the second fort okay so we've got a ditch and we've got a rampart even I've got to admit that that says there's a fort here but tomorrow we're gonna get inside it and hopefully find some buildings and maybe even evidence of the people who lived here and that's the part I'm looking forward to beginning of day two here at drumline Riggin Scotland where we're looking for a Roman fort on this high ground based on this air photo yesterday I was pretty skeptical but my skepticism was misplaced we've got not just one roman fort but two but if this is Roman fort what about this and this stuff and this and that not to mention exploring the inside we've got so many targets and we can't dig them all so what's our strategy gonna be well I thought I'd start by asking the people who are actually doing the digging what would they most like to find out more about pushed on the crouch I'd really like to look at this building here what is it it looks like it's the main headquarters building we've got solid foundations and some really nice dress stone I mean I loved I'm in love to go for a Gateway but that's just gonna be that's gonna be too much for what we want I think we should go for the buildings in the center here actually because we can see this as a fort you know the ditches going around the side here really great to get in and find out what the actual uses of all these buildings were why the barracks I know hopefully you might find some evidence of of the of the soldiers actually being there and that would be really nice I think I'd go for that why it's a really strange Jeff is going on Lee and none of the archaeologists can tell me what they think it might be find the early fall I'd want to know more about what's going on outside the fort are there any annexes I've never heard such a long wish list of things to excavate and although Mick agrees we can't do everything I'm surprised to hear he reckons we can do most of it the idea of coming here was to evaluate what it is there's this super air picture super geophysics now what does it mean so we've got to dig a lot of holes in it so that you know people are historic Scotland and the estate and some know what they're dealing with so where we actually put them I'm quite happy if somebody says well I want to know about the Principia I want to know about the barrack blocks I should have guessed Mick's plan is to dig more test pits this way we can look at several areas so we're opening one here over Johns strange geophys signal and two more in the interior of the fort although I'm not keen on tiny trenches this one trenched to where I was helping yesterday seems to have paid off and revealed traces of a wooden building mat I believe you're the only one with fines trays that are filling up yeah absolutely what have you got well we've come down in this trench onto this burnt layer which looks like the destroyed building and what hang on do you mean destroyed or demolished ah well there's the key question I think it could well be demolished because quite often these forts were razed to the ground by the soldiers as they left that's exactly right they cleared the whole place and we're getting things such as the door there from the walls burnt clay right and we even have some of these carbonized wattles yep so that's the wood the wood framing in which the clay was packed around yeah so it looks like they've knocked that down and set fire to what was left over it yeah yeah with there a few of these nails here these large ones and I presume they would have been holding yes the actual building frame together probably made in the fort itself in the workshop right almost certainly yeah and isn't that looks rather interesting yeah these came out of the kind of stone rubble above I think they've been reused as building material but that definitely looks to me like it's been smoothed down yeah it's a quern stone that's net for winding corn uh-huh that's really good because you know that's the first evidence we've actually got of people living and eating here that's the whole process of the soldiers staying and preps wintering in this fort in between the campaigning seasons always what is actually one of the things we wouldn't mind you casting a rye over which I found it's a little bit of metal oh yes I can work out the end of a metal strap or something but I didn't fit with the nails and well there's an edge there do you see the corner there right but it's covered in corrosion it's just possible but it's a piece of scale armor which is the sort of thing you might associate with auxilary troops but it you know it's it's very very difficult to say all our evidence so far is building up a picture of the fort in the second century AD we've got a wooden building with wattle and daub walls which due to its position we think may have been barracks we're also digging up the remains of what's thought to be a much fancier building made of stone Richard apparently one of the really exciting consequences of you inviting us here is that we found the Principia right here although that's all I can tell you have no idea what a printed copy rate structure and one of the big surprises we've had is that it seems to be built of stone now that's something you weren't expecting this looks like it's the Anton Idol this mid-second century around 140 to 160 buildings have a look this at the moment it just looks like rubble to me but then guy was expecting me to say that we're in the quarter see this group of people here yeah that's roughly where we are we're in the middle of a courtyard what we've just seen where Carys digging over there so where that is this front wall here yeah so just follow me yeah if I run up here kitchen right I'm now standing roughly at the entrance to that big hall okay so stay where you are I'm now running round the hall which is a little bit like a small parish church up to here yeah round to the back this is where the shrine is where the unit standards and valuables are stored yeah all that all the money all the gold and silver possessions that some of the officers might have had Yeah right the way up here down to the end of the hall passing rooms that may have contained all the paperwork that recorded the unit and it's where the soldiers have been stationed where they had to go all their duties that kind of thing the end of the hall here now I'm moving out into the courtyard so this is the big courtyard area where the Commandant might speak to the officers of the unit calling troops for disciplining or religious services they had a whole religious calendar they had to follow dedications to the Emperor and everything come back to here okay and this is the front gate into the headquarters building and I'm looking out through that up through the road that leads through the north gate of the thought meanwhile there's no way anyone would confuse this with one of our test pits it's our 10 meter long trench across the fort's defenses the news here is that Phil reckons he's found a couple of post holes what do you think about that second post over one I had yesterday look there it is there's the one I've got now no way massive isn't all there yeah Phil's impressed by the sheer scale of the fortifications but also intrigued to hear guys theory that they would probably never attacked the Romans wanted to fight a particular type of war with their defenses and they like set-piece battles but up here in Scotland you've got various different tribes like the voted Deanie the sell go via the no van time they don't want to find that kind of war at all they've got a much more much looser idea of fighting and they're not really stupid enough most of the time to come and attack this sort of place they want to wait out there by drawing the Romans out into the forests and marshes when they're out foraging for food or supplies are on the march and operate a guerrilla warfare so the fort will have looked great be very impressive there's no use at all well because the tribesmen weren't stupid enough to come up and attack this I suppose it's a good way to spend your labor while you're up here and it really just build a fort chaps there's nothing worse than a bored soldier or a bored archaeology I want to carry on in the stables at drum Llane Wrynn castle we're preparing for an experiment by making a type of Roman standard called a Draco this ornate dragon head is thought to have had a silk tail as pictured here on Trajan's column in Rome it was used by the Roman cavalry to scare the enemy because it was said to have emitted a noise or what type of noise nobody knows well oh gosh that just makes a noise just with the air that's around just the wind working on it on a flat roof can't make a Peter Taylor has been experimenting he reckons the Chinese whistles may be the answer whistles and if we get some I'll stand back stay back a little bit and we should be able to get oh just a little a little bit of art dear so we think this is the right sort of noise it's meets the bill for eerie it certainly does and it's quite loud and it it's loud it quite low volumes want to hear again I clocked it was taller like then and swing it right which way the way that's it wow that is just extraordinary yeah I think the it's the right sort of noise and the draggers head will then be coming out this way we'll have have you put it on yes not yet well that's the challenge is to try and make this arrangement works somehow inside the rock Oh we're supposed to be walking along a Roman rose that led from the headquarters over in that direction through this way the flags supposed to indicate where it is what you mean supposed to indicate look at that is that Road yeah I think so you see the cobbled surface there and it's dipping down this way so it's a canvas does it yeah I mean I think this is the camber on one side and then the other side is marked with the black pocket over there so the road would come all the way over here and there did it down here go in that way about six meters wide what you've got to realize is they've been a big gatehouse structure here how do you know that what you can actually see it on the geophysics and big structure here the road probably divided yeah be to carriageways wouldn't it come in so I would be standing on the road with the Gateway there with big double arch going kind of there and then over to there yep with Victor's help I do feel as though I'm starting to get a sense of this fort in the 2nd century AD this test pit opened today has revealed the remains of what may have been the stone footings that supported a timber building and some nice finds who is that an freh it is it is Wow you can speak the language of the pottery spoke hey so how big would this hamper of being we'd have been a boat boat this high off the ground a big teardrop shaped vessel with a couple of handles and on our own egg very heavy you can big lad like me we'd struggle to lift it why would it be here it's here because this is the Roman Army's way of bringing the oil of oil we need for cooking and for waiting for lighting yes little these little towel lamps we've got with Auto wick use olive oil as well and where would it have come from this is from the south of Spain the valley of the river quite al-kabir that comes out at Cadiz which is the big all of growing area but the test pits can only tell us so much this one put in over the strange 5 by 10 meter Jeff is signal has come down on a wall with a clay lining making our archaeologists think it's a structure that holds water but exactly what it is here on the junction between the two main streets has our experts baffled we need a bigger trench in a lot more time to solve this mystery the feeling now is that it's time to change our strategy some of our test pits like this one over the Roman Road have done their job and can now be closed down our experts are keen to persuade Mick that we should now concentrate our effort on learning more about the headquarters building the headquarters building between kaypea it's the center of the site it's not only this military center of the site it's also the the cult center of the site and right in the heart of a headquarters building you've got the Chapel of the standards which is where literally the standards are laid up and venerated right we're a cult center it's a code center of the imperial cult of military aspects of the king of the imperial cult so you've got you've been this other special factor here for drumlin Rick isn't it our fall that we're digging yeah because in many cases the whole fort would have been built into stone what's interesting about here is that that's the only building they've got round to building in stone so as going salutely reinforcing the until they put what resources they've got here and they've only got as far as putting their major resources into that building well if they have their wish oh yeah although we now know from some of our trenches that the area of the fort has been shallow ploughed probably in medieval times it hasn't gone deep enough to damage the archaeology we've got a rare opportunity to investigate the site of a Roman fort that seems to have survived intact or at least just as the Romans left it 2,000 years ago where now we are of course still continuing with the big trench across the defences like elsewhere on the site we've got plenty of fines dating to the second century force but we'd love to be able to prove that the early phase of rampart we've discovered was built during the first Roman invasion of Scotland in the 1st century AD is it sorted yet Phil no and actually Mick we're getting there gradually hollow in it here's a heck of a hole as you say come and tell me what's going on well we've got the ditch here beautiful ditch yeah I'm actually wondering whether or not we might actually be looking at the dish of the first fort she's merely refurbished by the second fort because here's the actual front of the first is that these big posts these big post holes right and we come through the actual bank of the first rampart and we get here which is the front of the second round part oh right right so they've actually bodily moved it backwards assuming he's built a turf or something at this destroy we've got beautiful imprints of those in the intersection right as we go on we go up into the turf urghhh rampart and in fact you can see that mirrored oh we can see the earth way that's right yeah yeah as we come along we've got a row of stones here nice first ones here I wonder if that's not actually the back of the first heart right because through here we have a gap which could be this big row of stones here the back of the second round part in other words the whole thing has been bodily bowled over backwards and in fact you can see this coincides with a back end of the earth again the back of this lump yeah that's just one possibility yeah you've got various phases of shifting them - that's right another possibility is that we've actually got a roadway running along the back of the road part here and we've got burnt material in there we could in illustrate because you get those at the back of the rampart that's right over there so at some point this fort was made smaller but tell that to GF is who've walked miles surveying this site and today have been testing a brand new resistance machine it will not only give them more detailed results but allow them to do the job quicker what we've done is we've moved from the Zimmer frame to the wheelchair she's quite appropriate for you guys thank you very much but that's it for today tomorrow GF is we'll be targeting outside the fort while we try to get to the heart of the story insider the canned we have a Roman cavalry man playing as a visit to test our dragon day 3 and our last chance to disentangle the evidence of at least two Roman forts that occupied this ridge of high ground yesterday we put in this trench to find the back wall of the second century headquarters building which isn't clear to see on the geophys plot the news today is that it hasn't hit the building but it has turned up lots of Roman fines and is this what I think it is could that be a hotmail yes it's got the big corner core head and the curved over tail - I told you I wanted to see evidence of one particular soldier Mick with at last we've got it are all coming from what seems to be on century occupation before today so there's actually quite a lot of archaeology in this trace but we still want to see more of the headquarters building fell so Phil's opened up another trench do you reckon that you're down on top of the headquarters how the hell should I know that Tony I've only just opened the trench we run just clean it up all right well can I ask you a different way why did you point your trench here and not in the forest that is a totally different question working from the principle of the known to the unknown we've definitely we appeared definitely have the headquarters building there we think we've probably got the corner of it in here it's quite patchy this earth yeah I mean this looks like the same destruction stuff we've had elsewhere of sort of charcoal and ore than this yeah I mean this is massive burning really big heavy burning but you know like I say we've only just open the tractor making you're telling us to go away aren't you limb trying to be polite yeah I can see that it didn't work see it now that Phil's working here on the headquarters building Bridget's in charge of finishing our dig across the fort's defences an 8 9 it's about 9 meters she's trying to make sense of what's left of the 9 meter wide rampart well the problem with always turf ramparts is of course none of them survive because they're fundamentally unstable they rot and fall away so all you've got left is what the Romans chose to leave behind now these fragments have burnt wood are intriguing and guy reckons they were used to strengthen the rampart so they use a series of Timbers to frame it and hold it together as it tapers up to the walkway so all you've got left and the bottom layers and perhaps some scape somewhere close to Garda river crossing and what they found here was absolutely ideal because two sides of it are actually almost at a right angle they've got two sides of a rubber port ready-made for them this fort drum LAN rig is positioned at the junction of three Roman roads and is ideally located to guard a fording point on the river NIF we know from aerial photography but there's a temporary Robin camp in this field down below us here you can't see it now because the conditions are not right and there's a big marching camp in that field on the other side of the river what that tells us is that must have been a fording point in this river here this campsite is almost like the river of Roman activity around this point having looked at the maps Stuart knows this has been a fording point since the 1700s and it may be the actual crossing point used by the Roman army it's such a good choice of location but that would have been the same for all different periods from the early forks right through to the later part so is that why you think that there was this continual phasing of port activity and that's right there was no need to move this is a critical place in the domination of this valley to be able to control where they cross the river in Roman terms this was a small fort probably housing something like 600 soldiers although some of them may have been out posted to man one of the very small fortress like this one at dura steer just half a day's march away with so many Roman soldiers around it's surprising that this is the first coin we've found the size tells me straight away it's Roman small change from the first or second centuries mm-hmm but it's a little bit smaller than the first century once so for my money it's going to fit with that Antonine date pottery we've had on the side so it's going to be probably one 30s one 40s one 50s I guess that's what it's going to be but the key thing is where did it come from that well we're getting underneath its demolition own is this Pontins floor so just lying on the floor surface here right so it's going to date the destruction above that I met here can I ask you about this now Phil yeah I think you can make calm down to beat up you know at all you see it does pay for you to go away well absolutely air cuz it looks good than it will he does I mean I don't think there's any question about it I'm slap-bang in the middle of the headquarters building I mean that looks like a really good hard floor you've got there it is we've got this wonderful pink mortar floor and we in fact we're finding evidence of the same water floor in both of these trenches across the headquarters building yeah well you can see this label 513 exactly the same floor surface as Phil's got right so what is that a foundation change you've got there no this in the foundation trench for this stone at all what this big stone is thought to be a step one of the few that's left in situ but sat on that is this floor here and blow it is another floor layer is this our two forts I mean it looks like the five one three layer and my floor could be the second four yeah and that five one five layer could be the early fort so that's our first glimpse actually in the bottom of that hole and what's going on under all this Lawton it it just gives you an idea of the potential of this site gonna sort of it really they're only just gonna tickle a service that we look for Tommy that's right today's also our last chance to test our dracco a Roman cavalry standard shaped like a dragon it was said to have made an eerie noise and once we've managed to fit these Chinese whistles inside it we'll be testing it on horseback with the help of this re-enactor but in the meantime I want to ask him about a bit of Roman bronze that's been found by our metal detectorists quite conceivably it could be part of the mirror one of the myriad variety of bits that Roman cover Eamon used in their horses mouths well you can see that extension of that sort it's possible yeah and but even let's say this has got nothing to do with a horseman at all is there any proof whatsoever that Allen isn't just dressing up in a totally redundant fashion because there were never any horse manure there were horsemen here we know from Tacitus as a quick ler that he brought up a Moxon recovery I'm feeling they were here no it does because look at the landscape down there in the ancient world with an ancient army how are you gonna be highly mobile fast get across this landscape in a matter of minutes rather than hours and days you come with cavalry like this just think of the imposing effect that is gonna have on the local people it's all about power and image of course you've got cavalry up here but what would a dracco have sounded like as the Roman cavalry charged into battle having conducted a quick test on pedal bike we can't get our dracco to make a noise apparently it's time for Plan B having the flutes inside the dragon head we're hitting all sorts of problems that the flutes weren't making enough noise but also the more flutes we put in the less air we get through the dragon head so the less well that Hale works they get into the sort of vicious vicious circle components aren't working properly together that's right it doesn't look as bad as I was expecting all those are reassuring thank you so much significant with their hidden away ins but here I thought that it might look a bit messy but actually it's almost reminiscent of the blobs that you see on Roman standards on coins yes sir that's quite neat that's why the other words one of the things which gave us the idea so does it work with the whistles on the outside could this be the weird sound used to scare the locals some 2,000 years ago it sounds eerie to me but it must have sounded really strange in an age that didn't have as many artificial noises as we do today I feel woozy flu that was there meanwhile back in the trenches we've opened up a few more test pits to help us work out the layout of the huge headquarters building the stretches across here fill 6 centimeters different so same floor again oh that's very good and the midden or rubbish pit we discovered here has got even more interesting not only as it produced lots more fine such as Roman glass but underneath it we've now revealed an earlier structure and what these look like as me is his Timbers or the positions of Timbers they rotted away masses and right is that why you see these were these are false Timbers framed together pegged and jointed together supporting a superstructure but firmly better than in the ground floor boards over the top right so we're looking at an earlier phase of Roman timber buildings barrack box or whatever they are yes it is them it's only pre-dates of a metal surface that we're on yeah but the pottery that came out of it was all second century so it's part of us but the second major phase of a site so that could still be an earlier phase of forth underneath lutely yet so even though we found two different layers inside the fort they both seem to relate to the second century occupation of the site we're talking about a period of something like 20 years long enough for turf and timber structures to need repairing or replacing as needs changed and in the absence of any dating evidence in the bottom of this 3 meter defensive ditch the feeling is that the two phases of ramparts we've unearthed both probably date to the second century - it looks like any evidence of a first century fort if it's here will be buried too deep for us to find yesterday you were the one who said you wanted to work outside the fort to see if you could find any evidence of anything really early have you done well the thing that I was really excited about was this little ditch here Tom's like a triangle there's there's the fort that seemed to sit on the outside of it and what was really interested to know is whether it came on is it part of an annex coming along here whatever so as the geophysics to do this area down here giasses have surveyed this area but they can't find any continuation of the ditch leaving Stewart to conclude that the annex could be shaped like this but what's an annex for we don't know a huge amount about annexes we think that they could have been there and they could have held things like animals that might have been related to the fort or possibly an industrial activity that they didn't want to take place inside the fort late first and Jordan reckons this shape could be really significant he thinks it's identical to an annex found at a fort at stroke ask oh snap there you are that's the crop market struck a throw this is the crop mark at drumlin rig the little triangular area and the continuation that Stuart was talking about is the equivalent of shall we say that area there here is the annex just the same shape although four times bigger than drumlin rig and here is the corner of the fort and its side to which is attached at struck a throw exact parallel strike Affco is classified as a definite first-century side and Gordon now thinks that this could be proof of the same early occupation at drum land rig it's what you're saying that the best evidence for first century activity is this annex that's not what you say that in terms of structure yes at the moment so you feel something really good and you didn't even know geophysics completed survey has revealed lots more buried archaeology for the experts to think about and it can now be studied against our 3d model of the site but most importantly what the geophys plot has given us is a much clearer idea about the layout of the second century fort you put on the ramparts and the ditches and we know about those obviously we don't Phil's dug the trench right the way through it if you've got a pretty good idea of that now we've got the headquarters building which Kerry and the others have been opening the trenches up across so we know that buildings there and it's pretty clear from the geophysics now that's the nodal point if you like and from this everything else pans off so we can put on the other buildings according to the geophysics that's very good isn't it you can see those energy so there's the barracks probably for the infantry there's a headquarters building I put granaries here in a common dance house but to be honest we really can't be certain about exactly where those we're on this for more barracks here perhaps for a cavalry contingent if there was one here we end up therefore with roughly 480 infantry and possibly 120 Cavor at the end standard Roman unit guy maybe right because it looks like there were definitely some cavalry here one of the trenches behind you this is really exciting this is so Roman Imperial cavalry really yeah uh it can only work in a limited number of places on the harness as you can see the main harnessing on the saddle itself which stops the saddle from either moving forwards or backwards has these fittings so it's more likely to be perhaps here or on a browband somewhere where it's going to be more or less permanently in place line of them polished up they'd look fantastic as as all of this harness does but for a roman site we've had relatively few finds I really expected it to be bucket loads of stuff well there are bucket loads of fines round here they're just not on the fault because the Roman army did its housework when it packed up it didn't leave the stuff around for the enemy or for anybody else it cleared away the foot and all the archaeology we've produced just suggests that this is a very complicated site with a lot of occupations several occupation airs in a very tight date range but neatly cleared away every time and in most cases we haven't gone into those layers of archaeology we just come down onto the top of them which is precisely what we've done on our second century headquarters building in several trenches finally what can we say about it we didn't know whether this was a dividing wall or the back wall of the main building this is of the headquarters but the headquarters here it might have been a room coming this way right so we put this trench in yeah and all we've got is this road surface that's all we could see on the GF is there might be something in this gap there might be something but come and look at Phil's trench I've cracked it I've gradually we've actually got all the components in here we've got the main road and it actually stops here and the reason it stops is it is but enough against the back of the the main war it's difficult to see because the stone walls have been robbed away but as I understand it films located the massive back wall of the building and inside it evidence of a room with a wooden partition wall and the trace of what might be a dais or raised floor it's likely that this was the Chapel of the standards the room at the heart of the headquarters where they kept items such as a bronze dracco and the other valuables and as we found lots of evidence of burning within this huge building it seems likely that the Roman soldiers set fire to the headquarters just as they did to the wooden buildings before leaving Western Scotland for the last time and withdrawing to Hadrian's Wall around 160 AD well you got it cracked it and all the result of the gf is he's a danger with that spade to take

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 383,129

Rating: 4.8181047 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: 48xgkyA4ah4

Length: 47min 46sec (2866 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2013