Time Team S13-E05 The Boat on the Rhine, Utrecht

if you were a Roman soldier guarding the northern frontier of the Empire which would be worse facing the Waring picks on Hadrian's Wall or stuck in a tower like this in the marshes of the Netherlands watching over the River Rhine the main supply route into Britain here in Utrecht archeologists are making some amazing discoveries which detail what life really would have been like here on the frontier and how hard the Roman army had to work in order to keep the supply route to Britain open time team have been invited to the Netherlands to help uncover that story and you'll understand why we're just a tad excited when I tell you that one of the things that we're going to be digging over the next three days is a perfectly preserved Roman boat Utrecht in the Netherlands was once on the northern frontier of the Roman Empire which at one time extended from Hadrian's Wall in Scotland all the way across to the Black Sea in the Netherlands the frontier followed the course of the River Rhine which was the main supply route used to get Goods and soldiers out to Britain the island on the very edge of the known world amazingly much of that story is preserved here in the waterlogged soils on the outskirts of Utrecht even though the River Rhine itself now flows further to the south in advance of one of the biggest building projects in Europe archaeologists have been given the chance to investigate before some 30,000 new houses completely cover this area this picture is based on their fantastic discoveries so far which include Roman watchtowers forts and the frontier road all built alongside the River Rhine in that some fantastically preserve stuff here yeah why do you need us you've done a great job well after a couple of years of Roman archaeology we're still left with a few problems we hope to solve between that time make with the building work well serve it's almost on top of you to be honest it's it's the last round of Roman archaeology I the building is getting close yeah okay so we haven't got very long what are the things that you want us to resolve for you um well we've got this zon felled side we've got a collection of amateur finds and some trial trenches in a neighborhood suggesting a military cycle do we not sure really you said two problems yeah it's not a problem over here that's a river bench we excavated one ship a Roman ship a couple of years ago but now after almost excavate if you discovered another one and it's still there so we want to know the date of this ship so you didn't excavate who didn't excavate it's still there it's over there just just look up meters down there none of us can quite believe it buried just two meters under here is an intact Roman boat so where's the pointy bit the proud well we've found one end of the ship somewhere over here and well we expected to be running 30 meters in that direction 30 meters what I mean in other words it goes right through those trees and well deep down under really I mean it's it's it's going down very steep in that direction Eric I mean look at this is she so dry what makes you think it's still gonna be well preserved in the ground well I hope it still is I mean it was there two years ago when the same conditions I mean it's it's water lock really you have the ground water table is well this deep I guess at the moment gotta find it first time we I think yet so easy I'm look we've got a digger let's use it let's get started Eric and Hera discovered about two years ago but only had time to expose a fraction of it essentially our goal is to find out how old it is and personally I can't wait to get my first glimpse of a genuine Roman boat but we're also going to try to help sort out what was going on at the sand Ville site that was further along the river Eric and Hera discovered a Roman watchtower in this area but because of pottery finds in this field they think there may be a small Roman fort here too they're hoping geophys might be able to locate it for them Roman forts on this frontier were built within half a day's march of each other and several have been excavated the dig here at ALPHAN fort turned up many well-preserved Roman coins like this one which tell a story in themselves it had been assumed that the forts were built by emperor claudius on his way to successfully conquer Britain in 43 ad but surprisingly the coins have revealed that it was the Emperor Caligula who fortified the supply route to Britain a few years earlier there was a massive amount of Caligula coins for nearly 400 of them which is very impressive and in my opinion the whole fourth stage - 40 40 180 so what might Caligula have been doing here he was the third Roman Emperor he only reigned for four years from 37 to 41 he was extremely keen to emulate the great military achievements of his father Germanicus who was a general who fought up here very successfully along the Rhine any trouble war says that Caligula was slightly demented and a bit of a murderous megalomaniac so although he planned to invade Britain and he got all the preparations up and running here he ended up deciding that he was going to conquer the sea and he did that by telling his soldiers to go and take sea shells away from the sea so he just turned around went back to Rome that's basically what he did with the sea shells yes and of course the Roman populace was not terribly impressed by this great military victory and he was assassinated but he did leave behind him all the preparations for an invasion of Britain but this Caligula and coin has more to tell because it's been counter stamped with the Emperor Claudius his name it reads Tiberius Claudius Imperato he puts his name on colliculus coins because after his death s guy told us and his name was cursed his coins were no longer valid and by putting his name on them Claudia's move envelop again so to say so does this imply that these forts weren't just used for Caligula's failed invasion but for Claudius is successful one as well exactly Caligula had made all the preparations for an invasion if you'd come here in around the year 43 you would have seen thousands of troops and all the equipment the barges and the boats ready for an invasion of Britain just like the lead-up to d-day in 1944 of course those soldiers had to be paid three out of the four legions used for invading Britain came from the Garrison's along the Rhine so that's 15,000 men alone we actually know that we know that for a fact but proving the case for a fort at the Xan Feld site is not going to be easy but our problem you see Tony is that on that side of the ditch over there there's gonna be a lot of dumping of material in the next few we got a few bees left actually so we want to look there to see what these Roman finds know where that were found earlier yeah on this side both of these Phil's are scheduled were only allowed one trench so if GF is in this field and we got a GF is in that fir but we don't want to take a decision on where to dig until we've got both Lots done so do we just have to sit twiddling our thumbs until geophysics I think now we can start on that trench the other side excellent so as the first trench gets underway at the sand pail site I'm gonna check how Phil's getting on locating our Roman boat Phil oh this stuff what Eric's guys laid down last time yeah this is the policy this directly on top of the boat this plastic sheet was put down to keep the moisture in the soil and help preserve the boat until this excavation could happen there she is oh look at that can I come in Phil you think you coming up a look at this I mean look at that you can't honey this is not a Shoshanna this rock and a hey super yeah come on you enjoy this ocean yeah I mean that could have been in the ground for five years couldn't it but you know it's been there for 2,000 years extraordinary credible hey yeah I mean that's the beauty of it it's not just a piece of wood you know it is actually a boat I mean somebody's actually seen it they know it's a boat but there's just so much we don't know about it that's right we'll have it in the water again by Friday the boat that Eric and Hera have already excavated was found just a short distance away and is of the same type as the one we're digging it means that we know our boat should look something like this this is as a madam type with a barge named after the place where they were first discovered these flat bottom barges were used by the army and independent traders to move cargoes along the River Rhine most like this one have been dated to the second century AD but according to Eric our boat could be significantly earlier which would get the archaeologists really excited the preservation of the wood here in the Netherlands is so exceptional the mick has sneaked off to see some of the special finds discovered in the waterlogged soils what's this in here then this post was once part of a Roman Watchtower a structure that would have looked like this when it was built around 62 AD not only is this post the best preserved in the world but it also has something written on it for example here you have to I all right here is the T yeah and here's the a funny thing is today they made it and they just erected the post and filled it so it was not feasible yeah yeah what about you start here we're talking about watchtowers you know where these ideas of soul you're standing on guard on his watchtowers yeah but you know in front of their watchtower there was a river as you said these were fish traps to me exactly I know these in fact are real trash found in front of one of the watchtowers and something like 1950 years old Neal entering this little thing here the tunnel swimming through here entering the basket you know swimming around eating debate yeah here are some little twigs here but I couldn't get out and to hold it on you know on place in a riverbed they put a lot of things inside since their looks are Rome entirely in that one it is embedded entire higher roof dos never know just wait it down yes the rope made it down this one is such a fine little twigs look at these hey I know you this one the most because it's so beautiful made and the preservation of the boat looks to be just as good fill that piece of woods must be at least a metre below the bit that you felt I know but the main thing is what we know it's got the bottom of it and you can see look there's the join between two of the planks and it comes through underneath this this main rib there's a heck of a lot of it there I know could we have the whole of the boat here you know one of the answers to ship is missing we don't know if the forward or aft but it's above the ground water table and completely gone and you he left us or tomorrow so all this is stuff that we've exposed that you've exposed before yes okay so when do we get to stuff that's new archeology in in an hour well which bears the bit just under the feet of Phil so you literally dug down one side of the chair ultimately a part of the but you never saw the whole thing right the way across Phil what's that lump just below this new piece of wood well we've got one here I'm one there and another one there these are big chunks of volcanic rock and Yap reckons they've fallen into the boat from the riverbank surprisingly there's no natural stone in the Netherlands and it appears that the Romans shipped in basalt rocks from Germany to try and stop the river eroding the road along the frontier over at the Xan veld site the news isn't good the geophys survey hasn't revealed anything that looks obviously like a roman fort were still having decided to investigate this intriguing blob on the plot our one and only trench allowed in this area has revealed what looks like modern rubbish it's a copper see it's a can really but particularly strange form what's in know that that's not fair so that morning explan no they wouldn't explain your signal but the bit of wire could of course there could be more here than just bits of wire there could be Roman finds deeper down in this trench and we'll find out tomorrow but there is some positive news from this site because rakshasas trench was in here outside the scheduled area has found some Roman pottery to compare with these pieces that were found here some time ago that's a piece of first century stuff isn't a Flavian you know these two pieces tell me straight away we've got two totally different dates haven't we that's well on into the second century that's perhaps up to a hundred years later and that flagon this all screams Roman arbiter made is this quality of assemblage yeah I mean we've we have a few hundred pieces of the pottery and normally if you have a native side you you would have expected 30-40 percent of handmade wear right and there's nothing now I mean a lot of single piece what about the stuff used fan reaction well I found quite a lot over quite a long date range and this fierce oh yes Amy another first century piece very distinctive are more of the white flagons well yeah yeah but we do have something here that Eric and I are very excited about well it's an ordinary plain same Ian cut but it's got um it's got writing on it not just that I think I have a little present for you does it say one try this one it's the same one that's not yes it is gets to go there we go yeah look at the whole word they're scratched on there you've got c c/e that's a cursive form of e with two vertical strokes PT us except us and if there was an a it's being rubbed off yeah that must mean the excepting once I wonder if that's the name of somebody who lived here must be unless it's just saying it's not a reject and then there's another AVG morgue underneath it's not wonderful yes beautiful I mean this this point some military presence I would say yeah reading and writing that it was far more of that on a Roman military site out here and these remote provinces like Britta and and on the Rhineland it's extraordin so we're not giving up at the Xan field site just yet but right now as we reach the end of the day I have to admit that my attentions focused completely on our Roman boat in fact what you here see is the top of this plank the upper plank that's that one there yes that one there so what we've got is the full height of the boat in the trench yes normally when we excavate anything Roman it comes out of the ground looking pretty ancient and bedraggled but this is completely different look at the angle of this boat it's like it was moored here yesterday and the quality of that timber it could have been cut last spring it's fantastically well-preserved isn't it it is not ancient at all is it no modern yeah and that's just at the end of day one I can't imagine what this is gonna look like tomorrow beginning of day to hearing Utrecht in the Netherlands which used to be part of the northern frontier of the Roman Empire and we're looking at two sites a mystery military one over there and this huge trench here in which there's a Roman boat which is coming out looking in my eyes really modern and pristine except last night I had a moment of panic suppose it is modern and pristine and not Roman at all yeah there and no Roman fines associated with that boat I've seen any Roman graffiti on the sides of it and dating this stuff must be really difficult is it Roman how do we know dating it now without chronology the constructional features of the shape points to our typical Roman boat for instance the transition from bottom to sides with one l-shaped piece of wood like half dugout for instance that's difficult room are there any other kinds of boat apart from Roman ones that have that same kind of bill no well that's a relief isn't it but I had to ask I can't believe how beautiful that is that's absolutely just and it took all the bark of the to the knees so everything has worked everything it is isn't it we're digging a Roman river barge and it's got to be the best preserved structure we've ever seen it's only a pity that 3/4 of it is buried too deep for us to get at on this dig this boats on a steep angle and one end some 6 meters below ground too deep even 4gf is to detect with radar this dig is all about exposing a 5 meter section of the barge that will allow the experts to find out exactly how old it is Phil meanwhile was gone to have a closer look at the other Roman barge found close to ours that's already been fully excavated it's being stored at the Netherlands Institute for ships and underwater archeology and it's joining Phil on this trip is British woodworking experts Damien good burn unbelievable this is just the bow end up there who says that the front that's the that's the mate and that big-block crush we're the master we didn't find it but there wasn't master there okay that'll be carrying a sail but also used Soto it helps for pulling the boat yeah I mean look the quality of the product again the planking and I mean the techniques the woodworking skills incredible in it I mean you can still see some of the original saw marks where the saw used to cut the planks went up and down and left scratches on the surface here the ax marks preserved on the side of the frame Timbers here the tool was being used in this direction to trim up the edges of this strengthening timber here to me it's the scale of it I mean it's big enough seeing half of it but when you think about what it's like full size its enormous and it's what fills looking at is half the length of the boat which has been cut into two for ease of storage these barges are a bit like a punt and this one measures two and a half meters wide by 25 meters long do you know what they would have carried in this cuz procedure you could have got a hell of a cargo yeah we did some some calculations and actually when you would have dumped it full with grain offerings there's something like that that would have been too heavy and a ship would've sunk so we think loose goods that you could my place dropship where we're digging on our boat is an end yeah have a look at that look I look at those shows you these nails yeah I mean the preservation is fantastic you can actually see some of the hammer blows of a Smith that made the heads of those nails on you there are like forty thousands of these in ship 45 that's amazing and they go literally oh well aren't they're all perfect amazing no here we are this is our end of our boat and we're probably gigging well you don't know that for sure I mean amazing but well that has got to be the crucial question then if we can following that block where the mass would have been then we know they are at the very end well it may be a while before we find out which end of the barge we're revealing because to piece together the story of this boat every bit of evidence has to be recorded even the basalt blocks scattered around the trench all right the high-tech boys have moved in yes it's a drawing arm really a it's a mechanical thing which you can follow the beams and planks and it sends coordinates to the computer so it's it's just mechanical and you just follow the lines of the beams and planks and does it do it three dimensionally then yes so it's essentially for recording if it's a recording it's a drawing arm we call it back in England we've got a bloke called Steve who does that with a pencil the story revealed by excavating the other barge two men one was that it had been sunk accidentally as it was discovered with all kinds of personal possessions still inside the cabin the cabin is a unique discovery in itself and it's been partially reconstructed yeah I'll be off the boat here yeah they had to dismantle it on the ship and this is a reconstruction of what was actually found and they with the dark line here they've indicated what was found in position and metalwork and woodwork I mean it's absolutely incredible it's unique no other ship has this sort of car I mean each it's got all the creature comforts what amazes me too is they've obviously got summat worth pinching because that is a theory a fishing credit lot yeah I mean that means they could leave the ship overnight or whatever or at least for a while and keep the precious things secure inside the cabin well they obviously did up somewhat worth pinching the fines inside the cabin include a stylus for writing and military style sandals which have prompted the suggestion that the owner may have been a retired soldier but most impressive of all were a set of tools that included these wooden planes that even had the shavings still in the blade the wooden parts are being preserved separately but despite being just over 1,800 years old even the metal looks as good the day it was made I don't know was the original Lakhan better than the risk restrictions it may live and this is such an array of tools I know you got shears entrenching tool boat hook it's just stuff that you instantly recognize I mean this this crowbar here it's just about the same as what you actually buy today I know but then again you get things like that what on earth is that well if you compare it to this one you see it's a it's the same kind of handle as this ski has and actually they reworked it into a chisel and they worked with it as a chisel because you see yeah they're really hammered on it most of these objects they not very sword domestic they look very peaceable but then on the top of that you got a spear well actually if you look at all the wood preserves in the ship if this was a spear that would would have been there and it wasn't so it was on board for another reason maybe a knife or something maybe a knife whatever but it wasn't used as a spear because we didn't find chef it certainly got me thinking about what surprises this barge might have installed for us and with the basalt rocks now being lifted out of the way the diggers can set about revealing more of the boat itself it appears our boat was abandoned here on a bend in the river and one of the reasons it's preserved so well is that it's been covered by the wet River silt laid down as the Rhine gradually shifted over the centuries Eric in fact believes that the Roman Army's biggest challenge here on the frontier was battling the natural forces of the river and that our barge may be part of that story I tell you that we've got the basalt blocks off that you can see what a dramatic angle yeah the boats at nobody would position a ship against a revetment with an angle like this in a River Bend where the strongest current came yeah so all this points in the direction of intentional sinking of the ship but Victor's drawing them not sinking it but pulling it out well they would have had to fix it its position on the bank and but with these ropes yes we draw it on the bank a little and maybe throw in all these basalt blocks so are you suggesting that they put it in that position for a particular reason like being a pier or a key or something like that well what we know with this we've done a lot of research in the environment and we know the river was threatening the railroad in the background around 100 AD this construction was made in hundred AD we have dated the the poles of the construction yeah and its shape suggests that it was meant to protect the the road from erosion Eric thinks that the boat was used as a barrier to stop the river eroding the bank the Roman engineers seem to afford a constant battle with the river as it kept shifting position but they'd no other choice because they were surrounded by marshland and everything had to be built on this narrow Ridge of sandy soil so a critical thing presumably is going to be whether the date of this in relation to this but I could imagine that you wouldn't use a new boat for this would you you wouldn't Eric what's the oldest boat of this kind has been found so far well we have one other boat of this type it was found in something that's post dated 98 AD which means they didn't measure the what we called separate a separate set on the bunkers will give you an exact date so it's a post at night a bit after night 98 could be 40 years after I could be 40 years so if we do get an early days this would be the oldest boat of that kind I'll be found could well be but to find out the date means doing something fairly brutal to our boat shocking I know especially as we haven't revealed the full width of the boat yet but I'm assured it can all be pieced back together again apparently they need to take quite a few samples in order to get a dendro date and we'll find out more about that later mapping the changing course of the river has been crucial in developing an understanding of the frontier but as you might imagine the archeology is a tad complicated in places this is especially true of the other site we're digging here at Xan veiled Erik inheres excavations found the corner posts of a Roman watchtower built beside the river in the 1st century but a hundred years later the river had shifted and pottery finds in this area suggested a bigger Roman presence something like a small fort may have been built here in the second century sadly the two trenches we've dug here haven't found any structural evidence of a fort so is that the story of this trench do you think that it's mainly medieval features I think so we've got nothing sort of roaming in here that we need to take we've got some high road debris you know like little Shearer's or little pieces of roof tiling yeah I think I think there's a glare this trench Roman empty it's nice right there's little more we can do here except to say that if there is a fort on this site it doesn't occupy a very big area Henry's been creating a 3d model to analyze the frontier system essentially the forts and watchtowers here weren't just about guarding the frontier but were carefully positioned to control movement along the River Rhine I think the important thing is to realize that it's not only a military corridor all the fort's here depend on their supplies to be brought in from outside and these supplies are coming up from Switzerland and later on from Britain this is the corridor that takes the trade to Scandinavia and to France so this is the motorway of Europe every bit of heavy traffic has to go on this river so we're basically protecting the motorway of Europe here that's it that's it yeah and here you have the patrol system it goes with it I mean look at the chain of watchtowers but I don't understand that what wait such a flat landscape why can't you just make do with one if you just want to watch that the river what do you need so many because you can't actually see in a rubber area like that if you're on the boat you need to know where the next bend comes and you need to know where you're heading especially in a system like this where you have civil branches at the same time so their way markers like your roses they're also the ones that stop pirates getting through they need to be higher up to see further ahead right yeah now so what you're saying is that there's somewhere between traffic lights or maybe like lighthouses yeah they mean you don't do suspense do you uh well no I mean oh wait a minute that's fantastic look at that oh that is a big car that is a bit noisy senator sometimes no this is I'll tell you what when you see that against the the other one that we've just looked at he's got to beat watch watch to show you something nice yeah I mean you're talking about twice the capacity at least twice the volume of cargo I mean what amazes me too it's a condition of the Timbers the Timbers are every bit as good condition as what we've seen today and thank you and the size of them too what's your first thoughts um well it's fantastic I mean we should be finding these things in England we're not so we have to come here to find I'd have had them in England oh well I think it's likely we've got lots of Roman ports we've done a lot of work in Roman port excavation especially in London we've got seagoing ships of the period of demand 1 148 eh and we haven't found the river bottles we've got dugout boats we've got seagoing ships and we're missing this link this is a missing link and now after a hard day's digging we're beginning to see the details of this boat feels first question though is fairly basic do we now know which end we're digging I think there is 80% chance that we now know what end of the ship it is for the math step would be on a quarter of the length of ship seen from the from the front end from the front and so does that mean it would be in here it would necessarily be in this trench if it was the front end so we can say 80% certain that this end is the stern yes back end of the city that is amazing disappointingly there doesn't appear to be a cabin at the back of this barge but it seems our experts have spotted something that makes this boat rather special here it is peculiar to see a joining of planks at least from the bottom plane with a mortise and tenon joint which is typical for the Mediterranean it's gonna so you're saying surely you're it sits in the bottom planking that the bottom plank oh my god that is unusual they're not saying more of the moment but they've promised to explain tomorrow tomorrow's also the day when these wood samples will be analyzed and we'll find out if the date of this boats also special right now it could be the drink that's talking but the experts seem genuinely excited yeah upset to me about five minutes ago that every archaeologist says that their latest dig is unique but this boat really is unique cheers Phil and hopefully somewhere under that mud tomorrow we're gonna find out why do a beer come on in beginning of day three here in the Netherlands on the old northern frontier of the Roman Empire and one of the downsides of being here is that we can't show you more of this very beautiful country because guess where Time Team are digging right in the middle of a building site I don't think the archaeologists are even aware we're on a building site their eyes are transfixed on the perfectly preserved Roman barge we're digging and today's the big day when we'll find out most about it but first there's still a bit more boat to reveal morning fell I get on absolutely excellent it really is something else down here something very impressive yeah I mean we're actually now got the full width of it now oh so this is the other side oh yeah and and it's the full height of it so we got the full hog and I mean since I've been working here you just really get that sense of being in a boat it's quite incredible I notice you dig in with a different implement you know this is not your normal troll ah but you see the normal trowel is never far away using a kitchen spatula all right here's wooden you see this is what to save damage in the wood process right they other favorite foolish is your hands and then of course to get it really clean you sponge it down what's this thing behind you that looks like a sort of like a fence post or something well will we be calling it the mast but we already see it over with serious about that it doesn't rather round yeah yeah yeah but there's a good archaeological reason why it's not not the mouse know will you see those we got those big blocks of Bassel oh yeah these are the things you were fetching yes I thought yeah well yet was saying he thinks that they actually tumble in from these from the bank and they've actually tumbled down across the base of the boat right yeah one there you see there you've got brass salt down there but this pole is actually on top our other bass also if the bass got nothing to do with a boat this certainly hasn't so you think perhaps it's a tree stump or something just summit that has just settled in and I suppose as the water levels gone it's it's pitch settled against the bow-wow-wow yes that's rather good is this this is a model of two myrn one the other Roman barge already excavated in this area yaps brought it in to point out some of the differences with our boat as you can see the general constructional elements are the same but on the other hand this ship is two and a half meters wide and the ship we're excavating now was at least four meters 8000 we must rise so does that make you think the boat we're thinking was actually longer than this one it's longer but it's not twice as long I think it's in between 30 or certifier metres long originally and I think more towards 35 Natur 30 these barges were the lorries of their day and the only cost-effective way of transporting goods some 20 times cheaper than going by Road as I understand it these barges help to transport all kinds of Roman goods heading through to Britain but I'm not sure exactly how the supply system worked what we have over there what we've been looking at is part of the river truck part of that journey if you like utilitarian boats carrying bulk cargoes down the Rhine of all kinds some of which were things like wine and so on later on that came over to Britain and you had at least two different types of boat involved in that that the low flat vessels like we've got out there and then big much rounder vessels and I know Victor's been working on a couple of drawings here a 35 meter long barge like ours would never make it across the North Sea and the goods would be transferred to a seagoing ship like this this particular ship Blackfriars one was found in the River Thames in the 1960s it's possible in fact that the goods were transferred from boat to ship here at Utrecht the name of X means tie actin which means the crossing point people assume sometimes it just means crossing from one side of the river to the other but it can also mean crossing from the river system into the sea and do they cross straight over from utrecht to britain not quite it is easier to sail down along the coast into the Delta this is down here somewhere down here where the big islands are yes it's near the modern ferry ports of places like the fleecing and of Flushing and it's basically from there over you get a good sailing straight into the Thames Estuary yesterday Yap hinted that he'd seen things in this boat that make it a unique discovery and now he plans to show Phil exactly what he meant by that he's been busy sticking yellow pins into these planks to indicate where they've been fastened using a mortise and tenon joint like this a technique that's never been seen before in any of the Roman boats found here so what you're saying then that these these Timbers are not merely joined to these but they're joined our joint is through there by a piece of timber yeah and and these yellow pegs mark the pegs that actually seal the joint yeah that's true yes that explains why you get pairs of them yeah against the joint what is it to the point of using mosses and tinder Singh on a boat well because it makes the the wick otherwise weak bottom you see how distorted it is here it's not a very strong construction and it makes all the planks held together and so they don't move like that easily so they're less less likely to leak it makes the bottom stronger and tighter so far we have excavated approximately 15 ships from this type it's the first time we see a mortise and tenon to join the planks normally the planks are hold in place by quite a lot of iron nails through the floors they probably used local people to make the aisles and l-shaped is a wood chips that were normally the making dugouts those people were not used to have John planks and Romans explained how to joint so you think this is an early very early on but it should be that's maybe we learn more about it by the Dendrobium so diamond in a sort of scale of one to ten where on earth does this boat right in terms of importance oh it's 11 it's it is 11 because it's throwing all the accepted ideas up in the air it's that important oh yes oh yeah oh yeah it is so important in fact that we need to take the chainsaw to it again apparently we need more samples to analyze in order to find out precisely how old this barge is this is done by a process known as dendro dating in simple terms this means analysing the tree rings or growth patterns in the wood and matching the patterns with other ancient trees of a known date st anne's mer and her team can compare the tree rings here with a database of trees from most of europe the problem has been that the sample bits of wood so far hadn't contained enough tree rings how many do you like at least eighty or hundred right man did you get that from this well we we got it from the pond acoustical i don't know the english dl shape helps you know oh the brackets yeah but right yeah right one of the L shaped pieces and her bottom plank who are very long but if you look here how many years of that then this one is tool and hatred and rings and this one contains 189 but when you look at the pattern you can see all these periodic Dipsy love growth in this even though these samples had over a hundred tree rings they haven't yet been able to find a match with the database which is why they need more samples the appliance of science is in evidence out here - what are you doing with your little pump we were trying to get some groundwater up why because we want to to analyze the water and see if the environment below us where the shape is is good enough to preserve the ship what are they planning to do with the boat at the moment well it's going to be filled again after the excavation and it will be protected as an archaeological monument so what will be on top of it on this specific place there will be a bicycle path but you'll be able to tell them whether or not they can do that without the boat degrading yes that's it one of the bonuses of cutting sections out of the boat is that we can now see one of the mortise and tenon joints for the past hour various groups of archaeologists have been squatting around this little square of wood like it's the Holy Grail Phil why is everyone getting so excited about this because it is just such a revolutionary way in this part of the world of joining planks together it's a mixing of two different technologies we've got the very Mediterranean feature of these little tongues of would these Tenon's which are used to join the bottom planking which this is one of edge-to-edge 2fast them together to make one huge sheet of plywood if you like I mean we have boats built very very similar way to this on the Thames in the 16th century and they - managed to make the bottom planking fairly thin by strengthening it with these free tendons but that's but that will see not years later yeah this may be the the great-great-great great-grandfather of that technology but the main goal of the dig was to find out the date of this boat and now that moment has finally arrived according to Eric and Hera this barge should date well before a hundred ad if their theories about this frontier had to be proved right to get the most precise date the sample has to include the sapwood from just under the bark as this contains the last growth rings in the tree that show exactly when it was cut down this sample didn't have the sapwood but it has given us an approximate date which Esther's working on right now I'm not wait all right I'm showing you here the last ring of the l-shaped piece dates in 52 ad the last ring 52 ad ad ad 25 rings equal to 77 ad plus minus um plus minus 6 or something and then that's your first date so 77 is derson we're looking at something ought to be some reaction excitable I mean it's it's just about I mean I said 85 yes you didn't know yes I had 55 so I'm why I said 71 you wanted yes I mean if you you asked me this morning I mean the only thing I could think of when was the first serious phase of construction on this land infrastructure yeah to my opinion it began around 85 AD this after seven years of research so uh well that was my guess so as well as all this infrastructure going in there getting the shipping so you had to bring ball carriers were constructed so that was my guess I think they're quite happy with this day Esther always means to come yeah it's a great finish to the dig and their project in this area oh no I can see it really see it's Bo today but given the importance of this barge I have to ask them is there any chance the rest of the boat will ever be excavated if the groundwater level lowers and we noticed that you notice degeneration of the wood I think you call time to you you think there's the possibility that one day we might get the phone call might come and dig the hole I think yeah if you have to do it if to the reschedule time tema do it in four days I think we might just do that okay thank you wouldn't it be great if we could just pull this entire barge out of the ground right now well with the magic of graphics we can do just that this way we can see the full scale of this unique river barge which measured just under five meters wide and something like 35 meters long this is the missing link as Damien calls it the earliest example of a Rhine River barge it was constructed most likely for the Roman army using a mix of local and Mediterranean shipbuilding techniques built around 85 AD this barge seems to have had a working life of fifteen years before it was deliberately sunk around 100 AD to stop the River Rhine eroding the frontier Road a desperate measure by the Roman engineers fighting a constant battle against the forces of nature and now there's just enough time to share the news with the people who did all the hard work ladies and gentleman the dendro date for our barge is give or take five years 85 AD which makes it the earliest Roman barge ever discovered on the northern frontier another amazing water find an invasion at it next on for the news you you

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

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Id: 9ATMSGEu9R4

Length: 48min 4sec (2884 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2013