Time Team S13-E12 Scotch Broth, Applecross, Near Skye

this is West Sussex one of the very first parts of Britain to be romanized and it's amazing how little some things have changed here over the past 2,000 years there's still the agriculture the rolling hills and of course the a-29 or as the Romans would have known it stain Street the main road between chitta store in London what has disappeared though is the thriving Roman settlement which would have once flanked this road including Amancio a Roman hotel used by the Empire's officials as they traveled the country and yet we know almost nothing about man CIO's or how they fitted into the wider landscape this is a rare opportunity to shed some light on a little known aspect of Roman life in Britain but we'll have our work cut out this whole site is over half a kilometre long with 300 years of Roman activity and of course we've got just three days to find out with a hell of a lot of this hypocaust toy I mean it is amazing this just diddled with it it's absolutely everywhere as soon as you walk onto this field you know there was something big important and Roman here the grounds littered with box tile roof tile high status pottery and countless other classic examples of Roman occupation it's no wonder that over the last century this site has been survey field warped and written about many times but it's only been dug once in the 1920s when an amateur archaeologist called Samuel wind bolt identified it as the site of a station an official complex of buildings used by the Great and the good as they journeyed up and down the country so what have we got is it a station is it a man see I always thought they were the same thing wim box India station but I think he hadn't minded like a police station a place or some Roman troops on ritalin soldiers were but stationed with hostile natives outside today we pre say well no it's more to do with a mint show or a hotel so kind of a crossing a motorway service station and medical coaching in but the whole country's crossed with Roman roads so presumably there were lots of these hotel things by the side of them don't we know everything that we need to know about them would that that were true Tony I mean the problem is when we look at Roman Britain is that we understand the faults we understand tribal towns we've done a lot of work on Roman villas but we know diddly-squat really about what Amancio is all we can really say here this looks like an important site got double ditches and a large enclosure a massive area of settlement but we just don't really understand anything about it so everything to play for absolutely the Manteo is the obvious first target 4gf is but we've got a small problem John's results are awash with potential targets look at all these responses the problem is there's so much going on we can't actually see the detail of the buildings that were excavated yeah when here's wim bolts plan and he thought he called his officers quarters this is what we think is the mount Co he thinks that's a wall he thinks that's a test like two floor mosaic I get the question but a fine where it is well that's it I mean if we can't rely on the geophysics to finding what we can't you believe that the only way to resolve it is literally to dig it so our first trench we'll try to relocate this nineteen Twenties dig we may disagree with wind bolt about his description of the man show as an officer's quarters but this classics teacher was a very good archaeologist for his time and locking his results into the landscape and re-evaluating his work will give us a great start ah what is this that's the trouble we don't know what the quality of the floor was that when bolt said he found him he was a noise drawer for weather just ease proper fiction toil but the archaeologists have also identified a second target wind bolts records described the Manteo as being surrounded by massive enclosure ditches and Neil's keen to investigate these as soon as possible because when it comes to getting dates for a site ditches are an archaeologists best friend hey John have you seen this plan this bloke during the 20s he's got a huge ditch around here you haven't come across anything like that in your GF is over oh yeah yes oh look there's the bank and ditch the river at the top behind us why not putting out a trench in here across the ditch let's see what day things coming out of that we're going on there exactly where to go on that so trench two goes in over the ditches okay and then just take you north martinique right although why anyone would want to dig two huge ditches to cut off a hotel from its surroundings is a mystery to me back in trench one filled things he may have just found the man CEO or at least one of its wall foundations cut into the bedrock I mean I wonder as a first starter for ten letter this it actually gonna be in an actual bedrock in which case our building and I think we can start talk about a building because there's just so much demolition robot it's all toy or bits of tiles and what have you that's in there the other thing I look about it that age look at it is exactly at 90 degrees to the Roman Road yeah I like look at that but it's a bit early to break out the champagne we may have our first piece of manseok but we don't know what piece it is or how it might help john decipher his abundance GF is results to be honestly we don't even know which part of wind bolts excavation this is only time and a lot more digging will tell how this small war line fits into the bigger picture of Roman alphonsine a settlement that stretched along both sides of Staines Street a lot of what we know on this site comes from this rather serious looking archaeological tome which was originally written by someone who was once the young archaeologist of the year time goes by so fast doesn't it might yes i've changed a bit of those times yes definitely you've dug in so many different places but your heart's still here it is I used to cycle 40 40 kilometres to come here when I was a schoolboy so it really does hold something for me this site what was it that attracted you about this place I think it was just that there was so much evidence you could look in the fields and you'd see artifacts visible in the ploughed fields and also this roadside ditch what's so significant about the dish well the ditch was important because within it you could see pits and ditches and half of the Roman period suggesting the Roman settlement to the south of the river continued for about 600 meters which is far more than was previously thought this site belongs to you more than anybody else in the world we've only got three days here but what would you like to be able to take away with you I'd like to take away a plan showing the settlement to the south of the inclusion to get a plan of that show the property plots would be fantastic mic entered his study of al folding into the competition the same year as an entry from another young archaeologist a 13 year old hopeful called Niles Russel Mike one while miles didn't even make the shortlist we haven't got the verge on this side at all but thankfully time is a great healer I mean Phil walking evidence there aren't there are pottery concentrations in that field but they do seem to increase going further south going up slope going up slope yeah yeah and that will mean more geophys a lot more jiffies ah now we're talking is this the natural minister that's it so that's the outside of the site so we now know where we are over in trench - Raksha and Matt have located the man SEOs enclosure ditches or at least one of the ditches well to be more precise they found one side of one ditch one extended us well because he couldn't find an address it seems we bought the edge of a ditch was gonna be about here tyranny hang on let's have a look over here so this is see how see how soft that is that's really soft isn't it yeah prowling that mountain yeah so this is Phil we're doing top of a ditch here and we could on the edge of the ditch where we thought it should be it's that absolutely yeah so this is the actual natural undisturbed bedrock here after we know we can work out buy back a trench that way the problem is the geophys results suggest that each ditch is at least four meters wide and possibly up to four meters deep we'll be lucky to get to the bottom of them by the end of day three the size of these ditches and the half kilometre of settlement geophys are now investigating shows alf Aldine was a major focus of roman activity in West Sussex and to try and find out what was so appealing about this tis a part of something Helen has volunteered for her first time team chopper ride look at State Street is so long it's so straight isn't it it's a classic example of Roman military engineering this yeah crushing its way straight across the the countryside definitely perfect so why do you think our site is where it is well I think it is all about location because you've got a really strong straight staying stream and crossing with the river arrow so you've got this point in the landscape we've got two major routes cross and where you get that that's a prime location to establish a settlement state all in our control I think it is because you can say you're the center of this huge landscape full of natural resources you've got woodland you got played to make tiles and pottery and thrips not that two miles to me what a local source of iron ore you've got everything you need in a way to sustain an industrial economy back on the ground we're finally rediscovering wind bolts 1920s excavation in trench one you've got tech clash on top of tiles on top of green clay what that would mean is that this is actually the base of one of these concrete floors you know upper signaling with the pink plaster the pink and the red brick mmm now look at that Neal though that is super painting all plaster on it and that gorgeous piece right isn't got a light balloon you can see the brush marks left on a stripe it's a room with a wall painted like this the short and room you'd expect in a man she oh yeah I mean you're gonna expect any high quality accommodation in some parts at least you've got important people coming down this road you know it wants to do everything and be so we can expect some pretty lavish rooms this plaster gives an idea of just how posh parts of this hotel might be but then again if you're on government business you expect the best so what are they actually for they're just places for officials to stay tonight what we have this thing in Roman Britain called the curses publicus which is really sand administrators journeying along these major routes administering taxation local economy they've just they sold whatever it happens to be they may stay for one night offer a few a few days and then move on and they move on there it's staged along the main routes and a long stained street we have hardened to the south and we have alpha dean here and these may be two of the staging posts along the route between Church ester and London so is that why ours is defended because it would have been full of unpopular tax collectors who the natives didn't like it may well be for the tax collectors but we've got a bear in mind the fact that this whole severe Sussex sorry and the whole of the southeast is one of the first bits of Britain to be romanized so it's not the case of sort of angry natives in and around the area of our holding waiting to attack it but I think we're sort of looking it from slightly wrong angle because rather than thinking these are defended forts these are points where resources are being protected if you've got one or two members of the military here they've got a nice defined area within which taxes within which foodstuffs within which perhaps new recruits are contained on their way towards London well whatever it was the Roman certainly went to a lot of effort to protect it I've only lived o'clock this morning Neil decided to put a tiny little discreet trench in here to see if he could find the ditch which would have once gone round the Manteo but he couldn't see it so he extended the trench then he extended again then you extended it again and again was all this were relentless totally totally Tony look here is the ditch sir a look at very soft feel very black full of fines now just behind rapture we get a change raccho can you just point out where we see the change in the earth yeah this is the lighter colour the ditch is actually cutting into this it's going down that way so one edge of the ditch there and another ditch just there where does that go - well who knows I'm impressed over bad as far as here so we can extend back to here where time goes we come this way this is really interesting so think one ditch think two ditches yeah and then look here we have look it very different yellowy clay this must be the rampart Bank inside the two outer ditches so we should now be on the inside of the enclosure hold on if we've got all these ditches and we can see from this plan that the ditches were huge they went all the way out into this field this would have been a massive undertaking yeah I mean it's not just one guy on his wheelbarrow is it you know it's a really big endeavor what it shows is that they must has taken a lot of effort to enclose that building it shows that building is important and it needed to be defended we really have set ourselves a challenge under half goodness knows how long it will take to get to the bottom of this ditch trench we haven't even started on the 600 plus meters of settlement nevermind the Manteo probably a full-time team by itself time to sort out our priorities Phil I guess the big news is after 13 years of time teams you finally got a new hat I know well the other one is not so rancid it needed it but I decided to celebrate with some good archaeology and we've got some cracking archaeology look in this trench we've got this wonderful floor which for the first time in this trench means we've got intact archaeology do you reckon this looks classy enough to be the officers quarters why it's what Wimble called the officer's quarters but forget the officer's quarters you know he's living in a fantasy world this is part of the man see oh this must be part of what people referred to as the pink corridor so we know more or less where we are but tomorrow the real challenges may actually work out the exact plan of the mount Co because that will be real achievement John you've been geophysical there um dear yeah looking for the settlement outside and look we've got it you can see these clear ditches these very strong pits but look at these responses here right along the edge of the road I just love to think that those might be mausolea yeah I mean I agree I think that is a potentially an extremely exciting feature there that sort of circularity I mean that could be a hot circle that could be mausoleum that could be a big pile of pans we don't know until we uh we dig into it it's not this target for first thing tomorrow I mean attraction there as well so it's one important thing won't it are these buildings earlier than this enclosure or are they contemporary with it so we've got a fantastic site here this jam-packed full of goodies we've got a possible morsel Ian we've got a brand new hat do things get better than that I don't think so beginning of day two here in West Sussex and yesterday where that digger is over there we found what we think is a man CEO which is a Roman service station or coaching house and at some time or other it was cut off from the rest of the site by some huge ditches over there by that digger why did they do that well we don't know but in order to understand what was going on there we need to understand more about this area here and yesterday Mike you said that your ambition was to see a plan of the whole of the Roman site that's where John's got to so far yeah it's looking good it's showing the enclosures continuing to the south with Amancio so we're about where we're about here yesterday evening you got very excited by this little circle thing here you said you thought it might be a Morse Liam somewhere where the Romans buried their dead it'd be nice wouldn't it's in the right sort of place right next to the road as it goes into the posting station so we got this big circular feature and that's exactly where you'd expect a big monumental burial to be so what do we do with it bridge well I've got the super duper enlarged version here of your plan I'm gonna stick a trench across at a diagonal or pick up that ditch there and we'll pick up these anomalies in the middle that indicate that they might be burning and they could be typical of Commission's where you going in the archaeologists suspect that this whole site may once have been a single big Roman settlement before the ditches were dug to cut off the man's ear but getting that crucial dating evidence from the ditch trench is turning into a bit of a nightmare we just don't know if we can afford the manpower to dig down to the bottom of these massive defences and over at the Manteo trench we now face a number of challenges for example and picking the remains of a 1920s dig by local archaeologist Samuel Wynn bolt but perhaps more crucially working out what our man zio may look like whenever I've asked any of you three about Monty OHS you've always said oh it's like a Travel Lodge or a hotel or a service station but that doesn't really help me picture what was going on there in Roman times does it well think of a Roman motel you know what are you gonna have you want rooms don't you mean victims not a kind of a plan here or drawing place on a government admits conveys it so imagine you bring your horse in you dismount you want to get give your horse to the stables come in here change your clothes go through the bathhouse have a nice wash come back I something to eat and then go to sleep thank you this kind of typical courtyard building is quite usual well you probably know more about man chairs than anybody else I know can you work out what bit of the man's here we've got in Phil's trench it's very difficult to gauge to be honest at this stage there are certainly hints of substantial structures and I suspect we may be close to one end of the wing perhaps where you've got the bath house but because it's a but here isn't no no this is not our building this is based on another site there isn't a single blueprint to Amenti okay but not always this size I'm gonna be much bigger some can be quite small and some don't even have the courtyard some can just always be like a corridor so I'm fortunate we can't just say okay we're digging here we've got that wall I'm gonna meet you reconstruct the rest of the building now the problem we have is it in Phil's trench wim Boulter's dug very deeply in there I think it's virtually destroyed most of the archaeology in that trench so we're closing down this trench and opening one in an area not investigated by wind bolt so actually authorities have we got a range of grooms coming round with a courtyard in the middle you see that yeah so John believes that with the eye of faith he can see a pretty substantial building possibly even with a courtyard strong and within minutes the archaeology seems to back up his theory is a sort of thing that you more you picked up on this area I think there should be a cut feature through here we'll enter that I Stern as reflected by this for this brick and tile is here it seems that we are on the spot then and things are also looking up in the understaffed ditch trench we still haven't got to the bottom of them and hopefully you bill to hell because we're we've now got a virtually limitless supply of extra diggers from a local college Christ's hospital this also just happens to be the school where our 1920s archaeologist Samuel wind bolts taught and his legacy looms large here a lot of these six formers are actually studying archaeology you start from this end you see this yellow here you don't want to hit the yellow so just keep taking this back of it oh my god so in return for some practical experience in trench digging we're now confident we can get to the bottom of these ditches by the end of day three hopefully these massive ditches didn't enclose just the Manteo but a whole complex of buildings that would have served Roman officials and traders as they traveled the country horses were the main form of transport so one of the key facilities here would have been the blacksmith among his many jobs would have been the manufacture of what's believed to be the precursor of the modern horse shoe the hippo sandal although I've seen pictures of these many times in books I've actually never seen a real one so I'm really interested in how it's going to look luckily I managed to get up to the British Museum last week and we actually managed to get up close and personal with some so I could come and make some today so how are you going to start making them well I'm going to take a plate I've got to forge it down into this nice triangular shape and then turn a loop on the front and then the wings on the side we're going to have to form those and then weld them on top and bottom and try and come down on top of it rather than coming back towards this design is based on various archaeological finds but surprisingly no one's ever tried the theory out on a real live horse so we're using Christ hospital's fully equipped school Forge yes school Forge to test how practical this hippo sandal is oh and we will be using a real live horse back at the trench in the settlement Myles has now found the source of his geophysical anomaly the problem is it's not quite as straightforward Li Roman as we'd hoped for is it more slim no I don't think so but I think if you bear in mind this morning I said it could be a round house or mortally I'm attending to veer slightly more towards the round house interpretation because well because we've got here this big sort of area of burning he service these stones with charcoal and baked clay around it and that seems to be at the center of John's geophysical circularity so I tend to think of it more being a round house with that essential ha I mean that's I know that that's before the Romans even get it well yes bombing the population aren't going to suddenly become Roman start building square rectangular buildings round houses iron age structures are probably going to continue for some time so basically you're telling me that you've failed a bunch of bird stones yes it's very interesting Bernstein's while miles Ponder's the future of his trench we've now analyzed the finds from Phil's first trench over the Manteo and we think we now know what was going on there we've got structural components these are pieces of box flute I'll that's certainly indicated eated room but I think we can also from that say that there is certainly at least one bath Wow because we've got the pieces here of opus signal that's that kind of concrete floor yeah a vaulted roof stuff miss often found lying in bars plunge bars and this is undecorated no is actually limescale well that's a chop above yes they should have gained their bar for it maybe one rather poorly maintained plunge pool but it places the man's ears bathhouse here to the northwest of the complex fell is this trench easier to understand or what was going on there oh this is an absolute dream on me and thanks to Phil's new trench John's theory that this is a pretty sizeable Nancy Oh possibly with three ranges is now looking very promising in here we think we're probably into a courtyard so that this whole area is the actual courtyard of the site and then this looks like it's probably going to be a wall line somewhere through here and then you pass through here into a corridor which you can see looks like we've got tassel on it so they may actually have had a mosaic floor then you go through from the corridor into a series of rooms and we've got a wall line here I don't see that quite clearly and you can see the return of it going across there but as you go through the room you find that here in fact we've got another wall line oh yeah coming through there so it actually gives us one two three sides of the wall and here we've actually got the fourth side I think what's great about this trench now isn't the last one we just about depths of archaeology now got plan all here you understand the plan that's Roy any more work this afternoon you bet or not just as we prepare for a manic afternoon of trenching the heavens open and the clear wall lines of the man CEO and the obvious circularity of the circular feature disappear under a sea of muddy clay till we've dug in much worse weather than this and even when everyone else has packed up we've had to prise you out of the trench so how come you've stopped it's simple it's a geology what do you mean well this ground here has just got so much clay in it that as soon as it starts to rain it just puddles up there's there's just no way it's going to drain away it's the archaeology that comes first here and if we actually thought to work this like we actually destroy the archaeology so what do we do we simply have to wait I mean and it's not just a matter of wait until the rain stops we've got to wait until the water in the site drains away so we're now all playing a waiting game well almost all of us because when the going gets tough the tough get cheer fizzing that's a really strangely beautiful object snake like it feel free to be heavily thankfully our archaeological experiment hasn't been affected by the downpour and we can finally see if our alleged Roman horseshoe is up to the job we could be the first people for some centuries to actually be looking at a horse's hoof in a hippo so yeah I think I think we probably are but it's just trying to decide that whether this is the right way to tie it on or not well he thinks it's strange doesn't he thinks it's strange I'm not sure whether you want to work a horse for any long distance Oh with these on you certainly wouldn't be able to pull a load with that if you were trying to pull a wagon I think that'll do there John actually I think that's you know I think turning is gonna be difficult with those spikes out the front he's gonna he's gonna try and stab himself through those on a regular basis I certainly wouldn't want to ask him to trot with them all no well then if they're not for heavy loads and they're not for long distances on metal roads what are they for well the only other thing I can think of is that they would have been used for a veterinary type purpose if they've damaged not one foot to hold something in like a brand poultice to draw infections would have been ideal for holding something like that in well it might not have been the result we expected but it does show that sometimes it pays to put theory into practice back on site we've hatched a plan to buy us a few extra hours digging on this rain Sun site we're going to cover Phil's trench with this tent and use a digger to expose clean dry archaeology in miles is trench unfortunately the conditions in the ditch trench make it too dangerous to dig so at most with only one more day to get to the bottom of it but although we still don't have a date for these defenses Stuart thinks he now knows why they were constructed this is about control if you want to go up and down this road you have to go in one gate out the other gate and over a bridge it's about Roman Imperial taxation it's a way of easily generating revenue to support the army in fact I just quoted from some original sources here where regulations for taxes per capita for each slave one Denarius and a half for a horse mare jackass mule donkey ox half a Denarius and so on if it moved they texted I mean you've got to think here the of why would they want to do that here and one thing we've discovered is there's lots of iron in this area and iron is in affecting the Roman period it's a controlled substance it's controlled by the military its movement so it doesn't fall into hostile hands and therefore once it's controlled by the military then you get the military stamp which is the building of ramparts and ditches and all that sort of thing and in effect those defensive earthworks like a like a big bond of warehouse if you can put it like that what do you think you were young archeology year 1981 91 it's almost the end of day 2 and while we've managed to get some work done in a couple of the trenches to be honest the rain has completely scuttled our plan Bridget what have you done with the circularity seems to disappeared together yeah when the machine is clearing that would be able to see the features very clearly but of course now we've got rain again yeah water starts pulling and it just is phasing it out again and you can see these guys out here working in it we've got to get them out that's just yeah this make like churning everything up on that yeah I think all to call it a day but it's not completely doom and blue geo fears have gallantly continued to survey this large waterlogged site and John thinks a clearer picture of our foldings development is beginning to emerge but it's getting late so time to swap the cold wet misery of the site for the cold wet comfort of a pint it was a frustrating afternoon oh very frustrating us morning was going so well I'm not thought yeah we can now see the walls it can match it the John's to your physics we're actually getting a plan of the mount Co yeah we got the site on the router yeah we've been having that for sure that was it future but we've had a fantastic time okay Claire and fear of done wonders they've surveyed about three hectares today and we've got the settlement we wanted look we've extended the survey some three hundred four hundred meters beyond the main complex there's a whole series of ditches and these large pits and then trackways coming around I mean it looks a bit irregular though but I think it's probably by age rather than actually Roman you know it's then developed you would look to me times like we've got a native indigenous village and look what happens Roman government with a road right through the middle of it and like that says yeah what a great spot for a hotel and even later then says let's put a bank and ditch right round the outside yeah alright that's a theory isn't it how do we ascertain whether or not this settlement is actually earlier than the Mencia well you know I'm gonna say doing Israeli Eternia what do you think John well I think if we take one of these strong anomalies that I think is probably a pit and then we'll hopefully get some dating evidence yeah and we can compare pottery from that with material from the ditch from the bank and from the mint see oh it's bit of a picture of how this site developed over time are we actually gonna be able to get inside the man - oh for sure but tomorrow night we'll know a Roman bedroom in a hotel looks like I've Roman hotel bedroom by tomorrow unless of course it continues raining in which case we just have to spend the whole day in here if it's a good opportunity beginning of day three here in West Sussex on the a 29 what the Romans used to call stayin Street and yesterday we thought we'd found the Roman man cor Roadhouse and then at lunchtime the skies opened and the archaeology was washed out well as you can see it's another day the rain stopped but the mud still here so the question is and we're still big and the answer is a resounding yes the first target is the new trench pinpointed by John this is a good 400 meters from the man's ear but if we can get good dating evidence from this part of the settlement it should help us with the overall story at the size si that's the point yep well tell from the size alone is gonna be first or second century it's only had the back yet come on ye of little faith hello look Oh with rachi you can actually see there's a head and it's quite prominent actually relief Andrew and I would put money on that being either Vespasian or his son Titus between sort of 70 80 oud not a word out opening it right the coins date of around 70 AD suggests this part of the settlement was here around the time stain Street was built jiffy's have played a bit of a blinder on a difficult and soaked site as well as revealing the plan of the settlement their results inside the enclosure are combining with the archaeology to uncover a rather impressive building fill your tents get your free drawing but how's it going in there well I'm going down into the foundations but look at the depths of it I mean surely a foundation that deep that could be you could be looking at a two-story building I thought this building is getting bigger by the minute we've now established the man Co had a bathhouse here and consisted of at least three ranges each of which could be two stories high we're pretty confident we've got a long range of buildings going in this direction and out here I step into a courtyard but is it an interior courtyard with other buildings beyond it or is this the whole extent of the complex how do we work that out well that's a look at the geophysics and here's the range of room where Phil's investigating that's very clear round here looks like more rooms and perhaps another range there I'd like to prove it I mean this could be something else it's very noisy on the geophysics here so maybe a small trench two by two and I would think maybe there that looks like a clearest area just lets you pick up the wall line we've cracked it the more we dig the clearer this mass of geophysical information becomes a part that is from miles is trench and his intriguing circularity over the past three days it's been a mausoleum a romano-british round house and then he lost it completely miles it's still here he's come back again my circularity has returned we've got what looks like the circular gullies swinging right the way round the trench I still like the idea that being a half that's a burning area in the middle and this being a circle around it but it's all Roman yeah it's all romano-british so it looks like miles his early suspicions were right this is a romano-british round house built by the locals and part of the original settlement that was here when the Manteo was built but this trench refuses to be straightforward is a complicating factor in that just outside that circular feature Ian's founder and series of other pits have you got down there I've got a broken but it appears to be fairly complete pop just so well suggesting outline I can see that yeah that's the whole diameter of it isn't it there it looks like most of the pot I mean that's that's the fabric you got a new forest indented pika I mean that's useful isn't it because that probably is gonna be sort of 3rd century AD so again it shows the activity here outside the enclosure is contempt and what going on inside being closed not earlier it's contemporary we're also at last getting near to a story for the ditches that were at some point dug the separate and we presume protect the Manteo from the rest of the settlement yep here it is you can see this huge thick yellow clay of the RAM pipe yeah it is brown stuff here yeah that's an earlier ground surface and the rampart has been slapped straight on top of it yeah and this is the stuff that's coming from under the round this is the stuff that's been sealed by the bank it's just what we'd be wanting yeah this is a classic piece of archaeological dating because when these ditches were dug into the clay the spoil was used to build a large rampart ceiling any finds on the ground surface underneath what we've got here is a shallow platter and this cordon vessel and I think we're looking at that late first century AD group of pottery right so pretty early yeah early then yeah so we now know the defense's were constructed around 90 AD when the settlement was already here we can also get a date for how long they lasted because it appears once these ditches outlived their usefulness they were filled in with a mixture of earth and rubbish which we can date there's a ton of coffee with yeah it's very interesting actually because it's all fairly consistent it looks as if it's gonna fall into the end of the second century and into the early 3rd certainly nothing lighter than the middle of the 3rd century that's quite a tight group for dating the thing it looks like these defences dominated this landscape for the best part of 150 years but the enclosures only part of the story and geophys have now completed their exhaustive survey of Roman al 14 much to the delight of one longtime fan of the site Mike Luke might you've been looking at this place for 25 years what does it feel like to see a plan of it for the very first time it's brilliant to see a plan of a settlement adjacent to the road that's fantastic and look on the far side of the road we've got a whole series of large pits but we've also extended down below towards the river in that direction excellent the ditches are continuing the pits are continuing track right here what's unusual and what we hadn't expected is that the settlement actually seems to be far bigger than we thought seems to be continuing down to the river and also we don't know how far it goes to the south Geneva you get all this without even digging us out digging no geophysics has really come up trumps it's fabulous we think the story goes like this there was a settlement here by the time the Romans built the defense's around the Mansi Oh in about 90 AD this newly fortified complex then acted as a customs point taxing travelers along Stane street as well as providing secure storage for iron shipments from local quarries and so Alfe all Dean continued to prosper throughout the second and early third centuries but then the whole site ceased activity and Neel now believes he knows the reason for our foldings demise you know this is about tax collection don't you decide yeah and about iron well in the middle of the 3rd century AD the wheel ceased to be an important center of iron production and production shifted to the west of him to the Forest of Dean so hey guess what happens just as the onion sugar goes down the tubes this site falls out of use and the governmental tax collectors head off the Gloucestershire it would seem the whole of alph all Dean was reliant on the man Co complex because when the tax men left so did the rest of the settlement but there's a last surprising twist to this story in miles is trench where ins uncovered this almost intact third century beaker was this down there with it this bit of lore yeah it was down off the bottom of the ditch II cuz that's from one of these big square bottles are not be made in the Rhineland round cologne in the 2nd century stir stir they're often used as sin reinsert a promotion burials and with a complete pot crashed in on itself I wonder if there might have been a disturb area where it's possible in yeah we now believe that the romano-british round house that once stood here was abandoned when the man SEOs defensive ditches cut through its plot but the leftover land still had its uses and became the ideal location for Roman burials being beside a major road and just outside a fortified Roman complex back inside the enclosure our final trench has deciphered another piece of the complex Mansi ogf is Kari wit for a bit of keyhole surgery here looking for a very very easy story and looking for the wall to the men soon have you found it yep and got an easy answer that's all natural or the floor and that's a wall haven't got back to the wall you can just see the yellow just creeping through on the other side well that's great isn't it inhale proves the width of the courtyard and Prue's we've got another rain showmance here over here so that's great yeah this fourth range means we do have a courtyard building while Phil's trench has now revealed a corridor that surrounded that courtyard so it does look as though we got the corridors we first thought what we didn't know was that it was going to turn through 90 degrees and go that way so this is actually the internal southeast corner of the buildings act Lee and the whole of the South range now we can sort of plot them behind us precisely you're in the corridor I'm in the courtyard we're now getting an idea of just how impressive John's results are because with the help of the archaeology we can filter out much of the noise on his original GF is to give us this the actual floor plan of the ALF Aldine man she owned an impressive two-story coaching in complete with its bathhouse and at the heart of the complex with paddocks stables and all the other services a traveler would have expected and we're now standing in one of the bedrooms right I'm a weary traveler at the end of the day I've pulled up into the Manteo what do I get for my money you're a very important person Tony you would get a room to yourself I'm sure good-size room in your come imagine your bed perhaps a brazier it's cold in winter warm your hands chest you could go out perhaps have your dinner in the dining room have a bath and you maybe a few alternative attractions perhaps a few girls or something like that fantastic did everybody get a room on their own almost certainly not I think it would have depended on your status I mean some of these rooms you could easily fit a number of bunk beds in so you could be literally sleeping with 10 go something like that no I'm high status sorry you'll have a single go but hey last night you you kept in your wagon or in a tent so to get to civilization and have a wash must have been good and of course a decent meal so as a reward for our diggers hard work food historian Sally Granger and the pupils from Christ's Hospital have prepared a veritable Roman feast and among the delights on offer are asparagus quiche fish balls and freshly cooked hair strangely dormice art included now it all depends on hanging around your last different that is different oh so this place last 150 years imagine how many people must have walked through the doors looking for a good night's sleep and a warm bath and a decent meal there'd have been Roman soldiers and administrators and tax collectors and British traders all wandering through the rooms admiring the mosaics eating their food off the fine Samian ware and charging up their batteries for another day's journey down stained Street and quite frankly after three pretty grueling days in some fairly horrendous weather conditions all of us will be only too glad to get back to the 21st century version of the man's here just as soon as we finished our feet the DVDs time team digs a history of britain and time team in your garden are out now from all good retailers or click onto channel 4 comm slash time team next on for Susan finally meets doctor right she's a desperate housewife

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 340,324

Rating: 4.8366904 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: a7QSaRpfybk

Length: 47min 54sec (2874 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2013