Time Team S12-E10 South Perrott,.Dorset

thirty years ago the leg family took over this farm in West Dorset almost immediately they discovered that one end of this field was difficult to plow and they put it down to the stony soil but then earlier this year Roman fine started to crop up all over the field roof tile pottery Roman coins brooches what's going on the legs aging to know is there a Roman building here that could account for their broken ploughs time teams got just three days to find out and let them know or rains forecast for the next three days but at the moment it's spectacularly nice in there it's beautiful isn't it when did you first realize that there might be something under that well I've played this field about 25 times in the last 30 years and as a rule we would break two or three of these shear bolts every time we plan it so that's what it ought to look like that's the new one and that's a broken one but it could just be boulders or something we do get a lot of big stands down boulders but then these fine starts to come back yes that's right so metal detectors they found a number of Roman coins and brooches a which were confirmed by Dorset County Museum and both University and then this year a shadow appeared in the field yes when I was throwing at this spring because the soil was damp the soil was dark yeah and there was a square-shape of lighter chalky color but how big five four times the size of that reservoir four times this big where's going to be some structure isn't it guy if there's a building that size on the top of the hill it will be very very exciting I've seen the coins which are great yeah lots of them there Roman there's no doubt about that we've got some structural debris here which was started looking through some of that not ro1 so I'm not quite sure yet but there's a real enigma up here what could it be I think and it's only a theory the most likely thing it will have been is a Roman temple right up here it's not an ideal place for a villa or a farm there are lots of temples built on hilltop locations particularly in the late Roman period and that's the same period as the coins how do we find out what it is well I think we've got to do some geophysics over the area where the farm machinery was bent to see if there's any structures buried there but we've also got the chance here just some filled walking because hello there's a crop on the field of maize the plants are far enough apart to give us a strip to walk along to pick up any finds what about that crop Roger John's already been blundering his way through it well I've got lots of years to grow crops on this field this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity GF is have been at it since dawn we're also metal detecting and walking the field there's enough space between the maze plants to look for more Roman pot or tile just lying on the surface if finds a clustering we can investigate the hot spots one of our Legion of Roman experts has been looking at the building material that's already been found from the finds that we've got can you tell what sort of roman building it is well not from this because none of this is convincingly Roman you're kidding no I'm not I can see why people have thought it at first glance some of you think oh yes that looks like it's a piece of Roman in bricks but it's actually very hard and got an uncharacteristic smooth surface same with this it looks like a piece of tequila the flange roof tile but it's actually far too thin and it's been molded and run on brick and tile is handmade so we've got metal fine he's like look yeah because the coins brooches and brooches but there was never a Roman building here oh that's not necessarily the case because we could have a building in timber there's certainly Roman activity up here but from this there is nothing to indicate a substantial stone or tiled roof structure sorry this is gonna be one of those digs and the news gets worse the field walkers finds have been washed and mapped and there's nothing Roman and G affairs are looking even glamour than usual yeah so what if we go on the geophysics John it's a bit disappointing really and what about this blob here well that looks to be a large piece of iron so it could be modern in but there's no clear archaeological targets at the moment from the geophysics right lordy Lord our only remaining lead back to the Romans is the coins and brooches but they at least looking more promising the metal detectorists even found three more coins this morning okay what have you got there Henry this is basically a map plussing where all the previous metal detecting finds have been in this fields and basically we have red dots showing the coins the brooches the yellow triangles and the ring and that end and it does show a cluster so where we stood roughly so it sounds if in the absence of a geophys target we probably ought to have a look at that concentrated area in the middle there yeah yeah which which is presumably more or less where we are here this side of the hedge mix seems very relaxed given all this bad news and everyone's putting on a brave face but the truth is we're sticking in a trench on a broad scatter of metal detectorists finds and outside the geophys survey area I wonder if our spectators have got any idea of how close to disaster we are so what we do then is we will strip a bit of an area rather than just going straight - right the chariot and then Troy case there's still stuff in there in the toy that does that bit of a figure there well it could be couldn't eat our Roman double act guy and Richard have been looking at what kind of Roman coins have been found to see if the dates and values give us any clues as to why they were here to be written we know what we've got now yep quite a few coins yes I know we've got coins even I know we've got coins what kind of day early second speeding up in the third quite a lot of fourth century stuff they valuable in ancient terms no so what does that imply you'd either use them for everyday purchase on market stalls or fairgrounds or something like that and not worry if you lost them or if you're giving them to a shrine or something the tendency is always to give the worst stuff the copies the forgeries before in coins what about the other metal coins well there's and brooches some which maybe as well as the first century and one that goes up to the middle of the second century but look at it's broken now it's quite common in a religious context to give away broken brooches just as you might give away worn out rubbish coinage you give away scrap metal rather than good stuff so lots of fines for no structure yeah we've got a real mystery the coins are great the brooches are great it's a very very strange place what do you think it might be well you could have coins and no living both on a fairground or a temple fairground yeah mark it if the coins were here because of a fare or market this could turn out to be the shortest and least interesting time team ever something so if ephemeral would be unlikely to leave any other archaeological traces everything now seems to hang on the only trench we've opened but work the boy Ashton yeah but that's a trouble can we go get him may as well call in the wrinkled professor while we're at it I'm worried when you have a stone house we got we got what looks like our natural look of the own air but look the summit looks coming round here and we appear to have an edge what I was requesting is to take out a bit of this a bit and and see whether or not we can I mean this much if this is a ditch or summat like this coming round yeah but he'll I'll see that natural the other side is worse exactly what I'm saying okay let's do that what Phil thinks he's got is a man-made ditch cut into the natural geology he's found one edge and to confirm it he needs to find the other one oh gosh the other show you to bet that that is only can look as I as curving rain this curving rain or will have a bit more off they'll just pick it up here looking better on it until you pleased about that we like the look a lot hallelujah there is some archaeology here we now have two edges to our ditch you're thinking Flint's and pottery on you but this doesn't look Roman they didn't build in curves but the people who came before them did which is great for Phil because he loves the prehistoric that's gotta be good men gotta be good you see what we're interested in is you got a natural their natural bedrock their this this stuff and see there's an edge yeah comes across there yeah and it's coming across there as well so there's summit yeah go and round there that way the question now is what is it it's a mystery that's going to keep us busy for a while and really it's a bit of a fluke that we found it at all but the quest for Roman has not been derailed by Phil's possible prehistoric discovery GF is and the field walkers have now moved on to the next field in search for an explanation of the Roman coins farmer Rodgers mysterious shadowy square might yet be evidence of something Roman the trick is to get him to remember where it was presumably didn't actually mark the position of this shadow thing well it was roughly in this sort of area roughly approximately so how are we going to work out where to dig well if you look at the maze plants yeah they are sort of stunted in this area and it is still you're on the ground so is that a different theory or does that relate to the shadow now that relates to the shudder I think and was it around here god this is like extracting teeth isn't it um was it round here that the bolt shed on the plow yes here and all along the ridgeline ah we're getting somewhere help does your GF is indicate anything which might have shared his bolts are you saying no before you've even said it look with the eye of faith you might just see something in there yeah if I didn't know it coincided with Rogers sort of area I wouldn't have bothered with it where is it but we're stood on it now so do you reckon it's worth putting a trench in here we've got nothing to lose how many faces where the plow was hitting solid material oK we've not got anything special on the geophysics we still ought to look at it well this is not the most scientifically placed trench we've ever had but we'll have a go John well haven't yet not so another trench goes in without very much precision no he's a rather obvious ditch in it yeah Android the way down but that couldn't matter less to Phil who's now revealed a very nice curving feature which is producing artefacts oh you mean you got Roman stuff look we've got Church yeah that's the local equivalent of the Flint the yeah and sand in the bowl that's right and we've got Flint itself which really does begin to look make it look as though it is prehistoric yep but she really wanted evidence Bronze Age pot if I'm not mistaken oh I'd agree with that Alex likes what a good early middle Bronze I exactly exactly what you'd expect with a ring dish like this right I mean it's only gonna turn into a barrel yeah and it's perfect and I don't not a Roman in sight uh-huh let's give me what I just W if they're right and this is a barrow then Phil's found part of a ditch that ringed a man-made mound in the middle of which may be a burial if that's the case we'd expect the ditch to extend into the next field where GF is and the field walkers have been looking for Roman stuff we've done the field walking here and there's nothing Roman here at all just a lot of medieval but what's the GF is like John have you finished it yet well it's a clear Barrow there you've just walked through the boundary yeah and look at that clear arc we've lost the middle of it because of the modern boundary but it's there guy do you think that this Barrow has got anything to do with the Roman Forum it isn't exactly what I expected when I gave up yet but now the reality is that the Romans did pay a huge amount of attention to pre historic monuments awful they were dotted around in the landscape they were impressed by them they made offerings to them that could explain the Romans stuff up here so what do we do about the Barrow I think we need to learn a little bit more about it and the obvious thing is to go and look at the centre because if it's a Barrow you should have a burial in it so that would confirm that it's a Barrow but the middle could be just on the hedge line couldn't and that would be a problem well it would but I think it's more likely to be into the field given the plots that we've got John and Henry are going to look for the centre of this possible Barrow which appears still to have a Roman dimension to it just outside the ditch Matt has been exploring an area where detectorists have found a cluster of coins nits produce something rather interesting Matt mm-hmm you see I've got this kind of black circle thing here yeah I think we should get a metal detector or something over them can we borrow you from an air sweep over these two it's not very promising there ah well if you dig out in chunks a good distance away and then break out a big lump will get will to go over the chunks that we take out yeah I see so it's in there somewhere so now we just if we just split up into two or three yeah and then we'll go over each bit spread that out of it ah hey yo butt climb behind Oh beautiful I find mark come over look at this mate got another one oh yes you tell anything about that'll just need to be cleaned up well it's going to be either late third or fourth century you'll know that size and thickness alone that that's enough to give a good indication so what are all these Roman coins doing in a prehistoric site the answer is not in Rogers mysterious shadowy square bridget has found only geology so his bolts must have been shared by plain old rocks even though everyone's bottling up their feelings it's been a tense and frustrating day for the archaeologists nerves are beginning to fray particularly when one of the crew sets into Phil's newly cleaned trench David and on the other side of the hedge the hunt for the all-important center of the Barrow is also proving frustrating no one can agree where it is facing I think that's where the center is hey yeah not a chance will mark the perimeter and will see us right I'm gonna extend from the trench Finn are you do what you want is get it tight I'm done there you know what length you got there Center center two centers and three Center they got freedom you were right Marty this morning well this Iranian I'm never very good in the morning no buts about this site here we go or do lose anything you think I think it was quite a sort of high-risk thing at Jena we had a group of finds and a few other finds that might or might not have been you know Roman tile and so on and it seemed a lot to the base the you know the work on seems to pay off this bleeders yeah yes what's going on over with them guys I don't know why you're squabbling we're going to be digging a trench about five five five it really doesn't matter whether the centers on carries point on Henry's point or on John's point what matters is are we going to find anything in it we'll know tomorrow beginning of day two yesterday we found this beautiful Bronze Age ditch which the archaeologists are saying ought to be part of a burial mound so yesterday evening we projected where the rest of the curve of the ditch should be so that we could excavate the center of it and hopefully find the burial but this being time team there's a fly in the ointment Mick come here what's the problem well when I was up in the crane last night when everybody else had gone home looking down on the site it seemed to me that this curve of the ditch that we got here like that was actually wider than what we've projected in the field next door but we had three guys working that out last night so they all got it wrong well they may not have got it wrong just look different from above and it worried me that we might be basing where the ditch was and basing therefore where the middle was on you know he just didn't look right so here we go work it out well I think what we've got to do is you've got to go out that way with a machine which you do now and actually find the ditch on the other side and only when we found the outside can we then work out where the middle that's right we need to get that first it to go back and recalculate the middle we're tying up an awful lot of our resources on the Bronze Age are we are we gonna lose sight of the Roman no because if you remember both mark and guy was saying there might be a Roman structure in the middle of a balla anyway put in later on and in any case we might get more Roman finds you know going out across the area of the Barrow there and we're carrying on here we got Roman stuff on the batter over here you come over to our markets look silk and we will walk across your lovely ditch yeah that's right Tony mark yeah you got something for us yes only at the end of yesterday coming clean back in this area scan by us where the metal detector users and we got these three little shallow scoops and in the bottom of each one a Roman coin Wow the third and fourth century I do so do you think these were actually put into those holes deliberately yes why alert would you dig a little hole and put one coil in it well see what mark sorry sounds like an offering to me yeah I got a god by the way you know you're coming up here but perhaps you believe these to be your ancestors real or not yeah maybe you're asking a favor and in exchange your coin digging a little bit goings in a barrel putting a coin and perhaps a joined the meat or something but do we know whether the Romans actually did this yes from other sites religious sites weeks of always find little sheets of lead with prayers or even curses written on which are then carefully folded or rolled up and deposited within the tank the temple precinct but what about the actual burying of a coin in the side of a Barrow well we found coins on barrows but this is the first time to my knowledge in some southern and western England what we've actually now started to find these little hollows so we're really getting some good answers here so not only have we found a new Bronze Age Barrow perhaps four thousand years old but also the first evidence of Roman veneration for a prehistoric monument in this part of Britain 2,000 years later on the other side of the hedge the search is now on for more sections of the Ring ditch to get a fix on where the center of the Barrow is that's crucial because it's where you'd find a burial in a classic monument from the Bronze Age to get to the bottom of its history Phil's been cutting vertically down through the stuff that filled the original ditch and he's very pleased with his work I think that is an absolutely impeccably cooked section that will be so plumb people will write books about it Phil of course has had the advantage of modern metal tools the people who first dug it would have done so with deer antlers that's a very interesting looking section you got there Phil been a pleasure to dig make it really has and even better to clean up when it does look glorious and we've got the full story a terribly that's right it is the complete story from the construction of the barrel literally right through to the present day so what they've done is that they dug this very impressive ditch and and they've had to go through this big seam of green sand Charlie Rock drills to get through that wood yeah the first thing that's happened is at the top at size of the ditch up here of whether down that's this material here and it's covered up the base and the sides all this top there I think that's plow sorrel which is actually washed into the top of the ditch this is plowing the banner mound itself problems ah but if you look here see what we got there Oh crikey that's grotty old stuff in it it's beautiful it's a piece of an urn Bronze Age urn it's got the finger pinching oh yeah these are the finger marks of the Potter on the side so where's this from it's actually from the ditch itself but you see it's Late Bronze Age right and only think that what we're looking at here is is a urn there's actually been placed in the mound and as the mound has been ploughed away that fragment of urn has worked its way down so this is out of the middle of the Barrow I think this is out so even though the mound itself has been plowed away bits of Bronze Age pot a circumstantial evidence of promotion burials in a classic Barrow it's one of the practices that arrived in Britain in the Bronze Age so what was the difference between the Bronze Age people and the people before them well primarily we see the kind of monuments they're building in round barrows and we see very rich graves we're seeing people accumulating wealth for the first time so perhaps we can talk about the first time of Kings or defined leaders how long did the Bronze Age last in this part of the world from about 2500 BC we get out our first evidence of metals and round barrows up to about 1600 and then there's there is a very substantial change from the into the middle and late bronze age where we see lots more agricultural settlements farms dividing up the land and pretty much all we can see around us here in Dorset or the field systems or the ploughing going on begins in the later Bronze Age so would it be fair to say that the Bronze Age was the beginning of the modern world exactly beginning of the modern world prehistoric monuments are never just placed by chance on the top of any old high ground neighbouring hills and rivers and other local monuments can all shape where they're constructed stewards looking at why this hilltop was favored with a bear oh he's already found one possible clue our site appears to be almost completely encircled by rivers why that's significant and why the Romans took an interest in the site he's now got to figure out at the bottom of Phil's beautiful little trench there are some mysterious features which are exciting miles you see we've got these like almost like post holes I write the post pipes in each section look how they cut quite clear as post times we were just debating whether that's the sort of thing you'd expect to get you doing in quite a few later Bronze Age and indeed early Bronze Age barrows the ditch acts as a palisade trench so you've effectively secured the Timbers right at the base of the ditch and the soils then piled up around them so they wouldn't have to be very deep they wouldn't have to be very deep at all they're not very well define gnarly I mean they're not perfectly circular no no no but mean that that's nice because I know a couple examples in Dorset and in Sussex where they've dug the ditch out the post had been in so so really what you got into phase one is a is a timber circle right sitting in there and then they whip the post out you know fairly quickly bury it all and backfill the ditch but knowing that is that's fantastic this is intriguing a palisade around a barrow is definitely not a common feature of Bronze Age monuments we've revealed most of the ring ditch on the other side of the hedge now we can try to work out where the center is and whatever it might hold we're also still looking for possible Roman reuse of the Barrow remember those Romans who brought us here big don't seem to be any post holes in there or any of those little depressions that Marconi was finding early no I mean there's a lot of features to dig you know within the dickship but we don't seem to have those little Queeny little holes on this side of the Barrow so does that mean that this is a Bronze Age story well what we've got is an undiscovered Bronze Age Barrow that we've come across by accident almost which is obviously why the Roma stuff is here and I think we've got the opportunity to have a good look at it now we should do that I can't see any marks for burials there no but there's a lot of features in the middle that we're gonna have to clean up an empty and that after all there are all sorts of different sorts of barrows apart from ones with a big central burial there's lots with peripheral barrels around the outside there's lots that have cremations putting pots and in fact that bit of pottery that Phil found is probably one of those cremation that's been broken up so even though we haven't found anything yet it doesn't mean that there isn't something exciting in here so now I'm sure there's going to because there's such a range of types of barrow and when we luckily got miles with us who knows about these things so what does our expert think does our monument conform to a standard pattern of Bronze Age round barrows I thought that Barrow was going to be circular and that we might find a burial slap-bang in the middle of it well it does appear to be circular most round berries that we see in the UK he got a nice round ditch and the centre we got a mound and somewhere in the center there's going to be a burial but the more these we dig the more we realize that the mound itself covers sort of a multitude of sins sometimes there are burials sometimes as remains of a house structure sometimes as it remains of a fire sometimes it the mound itself just contains a whole range of different artifacts so a sort of tribal material pottery Flint work animal bone is all accumulated in the mound as some kind of tribal marker some kind of statement so not all of them have a burial smack in the Center but by and large are they around shape usually I mean when you see them in the landscape what you see is alone these of comedy kneecaps sitting up there as a that's the mound but you never know what's actually inside there could be anything sometimes it's a body but sometimes not in our case not we've now excavated what we thinks the center and there's no evidence of a burial but from the ditch Bridget has come up with a few fragments of bone from little bits of bone here it's incredibly poor and degraded isn't it worries me as if we've got a burial yeah I don't know if I'm actually gonna find the body itself that's all there is yeah yeah but I mean this charcoal in this soil as well there is yet and there may be another promotion or something that's been placed in the top of the exactly can't see anything in the soil there's no stains associated with burials or here but we'll keep digging after later examination none of the bone could be positively identified as human so still no definite evidence of a burial here any evidence may have been scraped away with the mound itself unless we've missed something in the middle and there still seems to be some doubt about where that actually is indeed Henry was so perplexed that he decided to plot the exact shape of our feature using his extremely expensive global positioning system which is accurate to a few centimeters and he's made an extraordinary discovery don't look at the plant this is or the ditch of our how about fry key whatever we happy now I see it's not circle sooner because he's not circle you still got to find the center very difficult find a center yes I've got a blog about two meters but it could be right on the center there and where is that on the ground the center of that yeah is just down we can see that that's down there but it's actually a holy area around that yeah you want to be taking at least meter meter and a half around that to get an idea so potentially under the section here can I borrow that cuz that's that's a real conundrum is I need to go and think about that and while mix struggling to digest this unusual shape bridge has turned up yet more surprises it looks like we've got a piece of burnt timber and what's interesting about it it looks as though it's been burnt somewhere else and then it's been dumped into the backfill of this ditch how big is it well you can see we can see this much here but there is a lot of burning up the other end there as well everyone's digging that's also associated with some burnt door what's that telling you me well it isn't quite why don't expect with a Barrow although you know you do get funeral pyres for burning bodies and so on but it's rather helping with with what is a very odd sight it seems to me now I mean I'm going off the idea of it being a barrow and really yeah but we look at the shape of it if that was your bike you wouldn't get home in another shot and you know we've hardly got any pottery from it at all you know I mean what few odd bits that might be bits cremation urn and we've hardly got any bone fried either cremated or ordinary bone so I'm beginning to wonder whether it's a barrow at all really isn't some other type of site but it is another type of site is it gonna be of interest well yeah because I mean there's masses of features in it we've got the ditch round got lots of features inside got what probably entrance over there so there's a lot to go out to sort out but I'm just wondering what on earth it is this site gets more and more peculiar on day one we thought we got a Roman temple day two we thought we got a classic Bronze Age burial mound now Nick thinks it's something entirely different what we'll find out tomorrow beginning of day three and not content with putting a huge trench in all the way over here and extending it all the way down there not to mention two huge trenches on the other side of that hedge mix gone trench crazy and you're extending the whole thing over here what's going on we've got some jiffy's anomalies here what do they look like they're just blobs on it but given that that is looking very interesting exciting now we've got to spend the whole day looking at it we've got to look at this as well to go with it what do you reckon it is I have no idea I just I just feeling me water that's gonna be very significant you're a professor you're gonna tell yeah but I think we're back in prehistory here yes that's you know we need some specialists I've been miles he's our man for this without any doubt we've left the first field behind all our efforts are now in the second field investigating the Barrow and the geophys blobs they might be an entrance which would be unusual in a standard Bronze Age Barrow it's one of a number of puzzles that have got the archaeologists scratching their heads about this monument okay right Matt if we can get a nice of me to section do that charcoal I'll be actually brilliant unlike most Bronze Age round barrows our Barrow isn't circular as Henry revealed and after his bombshell we double-checked the middle area in case there was a burial there but no and no burials anywhere else either and our puzzling Monument seems to have had a palisade as well we've got the disc swinging around here our army of diggers have got just one day of scraping and shoveling left to find out what this prehistoric thing is encloses and barrels have a big timber facade on the outer edge encouragingly there are plenty of finds one that may be very significant has got fill in raptures look at that profile for that curve danish classics great for shade phase we've gained just a five minute job that's beautiful I mean I've got the late Neolithic early Bronze Age order tool amazingly to an expert like fill a stone tool can be dating evidence the trimming on this scraper suggests skilled craftsmanship from the Neolithic or Stone Age these skills were largely lost in the Bronze Age when metal replaced stone tools it may add yet another thousand years to our monument and that would definitely account for the odd features is it true that he wasn't that interested in archaeology until we came over that's right Houston can't keep him away there it is interesting what is it that interesting most the contrast in the color of the ditch in the center I never knew any of this was under here I've been over it so many times not realize this stuff was underneath it that's proper archeology talk isn't it he's interested in the subtle differences in the shades of the soil not the coins then no one's born see one solution among the odd features of this prehistoric Barrow thing were the geophys blobs just outside the ring ditch so is it past the entrance complex definitely not no now looking at it it's starting to worry me whether it's actually some kind of quarry because the sides of it are extremely irregular ruin there's not an awful lot material in it either I see so they've used that to actually make the mound that would be a nice assumption to make actually so one oddity explained but there's another in the Barrow itself bridge and Ian are investigating an intriguing area of the Ring ditch which has clearly been filled with burnt material thing about the history that's amazing it's the finds that are coming out they're coming out left by hand center and it's Ian who's really finding them and I'm just looking in Janice's anything what have you got well he's just finding all these Turtles here cool look at them all I mean we've got these got this one here wonderful thing scraper you used to scrape your hides and things like that there's this one here there's another scraping edge you know this one here there's all sorts of things we've also grown some pottery in here absolutely brilliant stuff this one here can have a thumb decoration there or a lug of its falling off what kind of period doing this is well I'd go for Bronze Age but very early Bronze Age maybe transitional I think you're probably about right and I think one of really good key indicator that sort of provoke discussion is from this piece of pottery here but it's a rim it's got whipped cool decoration what do you mean brother well can you see here you've got like a piece of string has been pressed into the wet clay but what was dry the string decoration would have been applied before this massive collared urn was fired about 4,000 years ago absolutely wonderful it's just the most exciting trench I've worked on I don't know for how long the field archaeologists are starting to say that they reckon this might not be just a plain old Bronze Age site than it might be very early Bronze Age or on the cusp of Bronze Age and Neolithic or even Neolithic what do you reign it's nearly thick without shadow Vidal why did you say that well based on the actual shape of the monument and the artifacts coming out of it it very clearly all like new thing do we know much about these Neolithic people well we're really dealing with the the first agriculturalists the first farmers the first builders of monuments in the Neolithic prior to vanilla that we've got sort of hunters and gatherers not only having much of an impact but the Neolithic farmers are the first people start building things big monuments in the landscape cutting down trees playing fields what sort of date well it dates from around about 4000 BC so our monuments at the tail end of it's about 3,000 BC can we work out anything about the most people we can we actually finding this the skeletal evidence is often quite rare we find bits of bodies but we don't find complete individuals and that might be what our monument is it might be a place where bodies are left to decompose and then selected pieces are taken away for very less where do you find many monuments like this around here not around here no no service is actually quite rare it feels in a nice gap in our Neolithic map we appear to have lurched more than 3000 years back in time since we arrived at the side poor old Victor has been struggling to keep up with this archaeological mystery tour it's not that long since he rubbed out the Romans right Wow Victor what's the lovely drawing of a Bronze Age round mound I've got a bit bad news though I'm afraid yeah we material that's coming up now look sir Neolithic so we've added about a thousand years on to the day to day the mound redrawing is in order there oh yes redesign I'm afraid and as far as the activities concern without that that is the six million dollar question really what is going on inside our evidence for a number of these sites as you get bits of human remains in the ditch one suggestion is this is an exposure burial site where bodies decompose really not they're sort of the nicest of pictures to do but possibly a body's decomposing in the center and bits rolling off into the ditches Wow stewards come up with yet another piece of evidence that supports miles is theory that this may be a Neolithic site it's also do with the visibility of the site from the surrounding countryside this landscape has just thrown some real surprises in here this model here shows the green shows that the high ground and the other colors show the low ground where the monument can't be seen that it's there so essentially you can see it when you're somewhere away but when you're near it's invisible that it has a very nearly thick thing to do to get seclusion you're not wanting to show off to the landscape you're actually wanting sort of privacy around it and our site has got that quality if you look where the rivers are put the rivers on this 3d view of the site there it's like in the middle of the circle of all those rivers it is and it's actually sitting writing that triangle of them again typical Neolithic thing put in monuments close to watersheds and sources of rivers different in the Bronze Age because the barrows and burial in the Bronze Age is upon the the high ridges they want these things to be seen and the only reason you get in Bronze Age activity on our site is because they're continuingly the older traditions it's it's just perpetuation as it were what about when you gets the Roman ah different story that is a Roman Road in your bang on there yeah we've got Roman settlements here and we've got them up here yeah now the line of least resistance between them crossing these watershed you see if you went to the left you've got all these tributaries to get across he went to the right you have the same problem but look in between you can just go straight down that Ridge so that means there's a pattern of movement develops very close to our site and I think that's why you're getting the coins potlucks people are just passing close by so it's a landscape full of some real surprises actually so it's far more complicated never I came here Bridge Indians area of burnt material has produced one final surprise which may help to nail down the story of our mysterious prehistoric monument in look at this I think I might have another piece of pottery but I'm not sure actually what it is something dirty oh nice I don't think spots it's dope look that's where the hayswood wrote one sir it is what them dog that's absolutely brilliant because yesterday we had some burned orb up there in there yes the house he's got the house wattle and daub was made by weaving hazel rods together and then door Bing them with a mix of mud straw and dung our dog may have been part of the palisade around the monument fills postholes suggested a circle of timbers and in between there may have been wattled hurdle making it continuous and this structure would be more typically Neolithic than Bronze Age funny that they didn't seem to be able to do circles though Phil himself has found a quiet spot and is now in his own personal heaven to exile you know I told I've just been playing I just been getting so much hassle from everybody up on show about Stan Falls I keep talking about his stone tool to keep eulogizing Bam and I keep wanting to don't ask upon me all about them I'll tell you what I've done it pinched a couple of the bessel yeah that no scraper and while there nobody's looking I'll make a couple yeah that would yes it's not far offers that have been the Roy Blanca see yeah so what you're actually using here isn't isn't classic Flint as its chart but I saw it is think it's the Flint equivalent over the green sand yeah funny thing is I have devil's own job talking to all the locals around here because they keep on talking about this is Flynn yeah and to me this law is as you say it's chert it works just as well look at that yeah lovely straight edge when that is razor-sharp yeah absolutely razor-sharp the chart tools that have inspired Phil are the best evidence that our monuments Neolithic about five thousand years old but the pottery is all Bronze Age and could be over a thousand years later our experts have got together to see if they can crack this puzzle we were so excited about this pottery that we asked you to drop everything in come up here from Salisbury to Sears what is it well this is a very interesting little collection of early Bronze Age pottery there seem to be several different vessels represented here of which this is probably the best example this is a rim from an early Bronze Age collared urn do we know what that would have been likely to have been used for these vessels are quite often associated with funerary remains they used as burial urns but they can also be used in a domestic context give us a date what do you reckon I'd say somewhere between 2,000 and 1500 BC miles what about the tools well is there a nice sort of range of scrapers and knives and not flakes coming up so we're quite a dense collection of tools now earlier today you said to me I'm sure this is Neolithic and yet you're now saying that it's Bronze Age do we have a problem here well that's only with the Flint work there so I would say late Neolithic and/or early Bronze Age yeah so there could be a chronological overlap between the two what I don't understand is we've got this huge egg which is representing our site right and we've got our hedge here all these fines came from a change just here on the ditch these ones came from here but nowhere around the rest of the ditch have we found anything at all what you think was going on well think it's important to bear in mind that all this material is coming from a vase of organic rich charcoal which lay in the upper levels of the ditch so there's there's some kind of deposit going on this is not rubbish material this is some kind of deliberate deposit of Flint torso chert tools and pottery why are people burying their tools and their parts people coming up here in the very late Neolithic and early Bronze Age depositing these tools this pottery in the upper levels of the ditch in much the same way I suppose at 3,000 years later the Romans are coming up and doing the same thing with their coins this site has produced one of the biggest range of fines we've ever seen on time team from five thousand-year-old Neolithic church tools to 500 year old medieval coins there's something from every period and together they've unlocked the secrets of this site we came here looking for a Roman temple and instead found what we thought was a classic Bronze Age Baro but it's now clear that our thing began its life in the Neolithic about 5,000 years ago as an enclosure ringed by a ditch and quite possibly by a palisade which was later burnt the enclosure may have been used to display dead bodies tools and pottery were also deposited in two sections of the ditch in the Bronze Age a mound was thrown up using material dug from quarry pits just outside the ring ditch the mound was probably still visible in the Roman period and local people passing by were moved to bury their coins next to it which is where we came in to remember on day one about midday when we weren't filming and you grabbed my arm and you said well I hope we haven't got you here in a wild goose chase it slightly we're concerned it was just a pot of coins and there was nothing else here what was far more than that wasn't it that's right what does the guy who's not interested in archaeology think of it there's something in an it gets you after one you glad we came yeah yeah really good fun you know I can't remember a time team that's been more of a roller coaster ride can you Mick and it all ended up with this fantastic late Neolithic burial mound the ditch of which is being lovingly created by the whole team and the finding of this was a fantastic piece of luck this was dug 5,000 years ago and it would probably have remained a secret till the end of time certainly we would never have come here if it hadn't been for a handful of fines deposited by a group of people worshipping a completely different set of gods 2,000 years ago the first-ever time team DVD time team digs a history of britain is out tomorrow to order your copy cool Oh h7 Oh 1 2 3 4 3 double 4 or if you'd like to contribute to our knowledge of British history it channel 4 calm at / big Roman dig next up Homer in praise land hits The Simpsons

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 318,116

Rating: 4.8784194 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: oPyn0EuV03g

Length: 48min 38sec (2918 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 06 2013