Time Team S14-E04 The Druids' Last Stand, Anglesey

in early 2006 a light aircraft flew across the north coast of Anglesey on an aerial survey of the island then the photographer spotted something strange and took this photo it revealed a massive earthwork about the length of two football pitches until then no one knew there was anything here except a few lumps and bumps but what makes this even more intriguing is its location in a landscape rich in archaeology and on an island that was once home to one of history's most mysterious groups accused of magical rituals human sacrifice even cannibalism the Druids so what exactly is this strange earth work as usual we've got just three days to find out we're in Wales on the north coast of the island of Anglesey this is going to be a tough site it's windy it's never been excavated or even properly identified so we get geophysics started early send in Stuart to survey the earthworks and take a long hard look at that intriguing photo Rick we've got this huge site here clearly visible yeah and yet nobody's ever dug it that seems a puzzle to me not only there never been done but I've hardly been recognized even the great survey of Anglesey done in the 1930s just said a few scrappy earthworks mainly destroyed they mostly destroyed look it doesn't look like it to see them in the huge great banks and ditches really idea what period well they just suggested it might be Roma but I don't think we know really do think it's Roma process no I don't think it is it's got a very strange outline yeah we know of at least two sites on anglesey of that shape which are middle to late Iron Age and they're also known elsewhere in Britain well I think it's even more exciting lights it seems to me maybe more than one period because you've got this then you've got another rectangular bit added on the end then you've got this bigger one round the outside right a quick look round and these survives earthworks it's a really exciting sign if it is multi period and those later things are later than the Iron Age but that's going to take us right through the key period of Anglesey history it really is the periods and everything that's all waiting for dating this massive earthworks going to be critical if it's Roman then it's the product of one of the bloodiest episodes in Welsh history in AD 61 the full force of the Roman army descended on this small island their mission to destroy the stronghold of the British resistance an insurgency led by the Druids in a merciless attack unprecedented on British soil they massacred the Druids and their followers and burnt down their sacred oak Grove's but if our earth work was built before the Roman invasion then it could be a remnant of the very people the Romans set out to destroy a relic a lost world dominated by the Druids whoever built it geophysics show this was a massive piece of engineering but we surveyed the bottom half of the field away from where the earthworks are well preserved so you've got the top of the enclosure in the earthworks but look really clear responses and possible entrance at that point they're lies with maybe some sort of palisade outside and is this settlement stuff it's noise here well I presume so it is the black the bank or the ditch that's the ditch right so coming around and forming a complete circuit well that gives us some obvious targets doesn't it what for before we fold before Yvonne that I think somewhat probably a similar sized area in the middle yeah yes so we put in three trenches over the large rectangular feature Phil opens a trench over what looks like the entrance that looks inside the rectangle in the hope of finding evidence of settlement and bridge opens a trench across what Mick thinks might be a stone rampart we'll have two bucket which from there that show you that lowing go let's do it the relentless elements have made the ground bone-dry diggings gonna be tough nice want to start raining look at that damn rain coming over here and it's about to get even tougher we're into summer you're into bash play yeah I know he is in conditions like these it takes a keen eye to spot any archaeological signs of life and luckily for us there's one man who's ever vigilant in our expert digger driver just say you've got the natural where it comes over the rise again you've got the natural there just live between there that's not some sort of ditch where it's got the natural there and then go that yeah just through there it's a changing color in its softer material it isn't it you feel it yep just tidy that up take that other job if you ain't got your print o in your pocket no well in the head though hey I've got it in my head is real it is you're a linear coming through here there should be no well that is it then whoa look at that he spotted that he felt in those jobs on there hey Phil with more than a little help from Ian has uncovered what appears to be the entrance to the enclosure the ditch across the front would have made it impossible to approach the entrance directly it looks defensive but is it Roman or Iron Age an imperial fort or the last refuge of the Druids I know we've got evidence of Iron Age Celts in this part of the country but do we actually have tangible evidence of druids if you go over to another corner of the island to RAF Valley angles seen back in the 1940s workmen not archaeologists discovered in the Pete's where they had once been a lake up close on 150 objects of iron and bronze and we have some replica examples here and some images this image of a bronze decorative plaque think of this as the mercedes-benz sign on the front of your fancy car but put this on the front of your wagon or chariot and the question is who was directing the dumping now let's use a better word deposition gifting of these objects including swords they'd been bent and broken before they were thrown into the lake who was doing that so this is what Francis would call ritual deposition just like you have on your own site at flag then over in Cambridgeshire yes absolutely this is this is one of the classic ritual sites throughout Britain and Europe you have deposition of offerings into bogs and wet places it is a religious activity and it's only towards the end of that period in the last three or so centuries but it actually gets attributed to the Druids they were the blokes doing the stuff nevertheless it does seem frustrating doesn't it that given the wealth of archaeology that there is around we haven't found any kind of drilling temple or tangible representations of druidic practice think of the the oak Grove's that were cut down by the Roman troops attacking angles seen in AD 61 you know what would be left of those because oak just disappears it rots away stashes you know how would you make those links we want to discover whether the earthwork belongs to this complex Iron Age druid culture or whether it's a Roman fort built to suppress the local population we've put a trench over some exposed stones that Mick thinks could be a rampart bridge has cleaned them up and then looking good well Mick this is fantastic we don't usually find archaeology ladders on day one it was very impressive doesn't it yeah it's not what we're looking for at all what do you mean well I thought it was probably part of some sort of Iron Age rampart structure sure well of course the problem is it's outside the enclosure it's the wrong side of it and it now looks if it's the end of a barn or a building going off in that direction and it turns out to be much more to do with a post medieval farm site post-medieval roundabout when do you reckon 1800 something like what we've got it is complex me all these earthworks over here we thought the site might be multi-phase yeah LTP it is the pattern of them suggests a farmstead quite late in date and it's obvious when you look at it yeah I mean I hate to say this but he's absolutely right about the earth to us right you are giving Stuart Korea is the man who you always say Oh him and his high-flow manages lonely but he's actually come up with trauma senior in understanding the lie down after hearing him say that what it means is we've got to go that way we've got to look at the interior enclosure over there and not worry about what's going on on the outside particularly if it's a sort of date so day 1 in our search for a prehistoric settlement yeah and we've got an 18th century farm no fine very fine but it's not a 1,700 years ago so far this is our only dateable evidence in fact despite some of our best ever geophysics our trenches are beginning to look worryingly empty for no spirits of charcoal let's see there's one yeah but I love it makes it into mr. closet but yeah doesn't seem to signify anything really you should have heard of here the only pottery but nothing charcoal charcoal charcoal some probably chunky bits of charcoal actually in the subsequent my instinct is if you've got a blank area then you extend off it yeah find some I agree with you I think there's a work or a different plan now result of the earthworks of the jib if you look at that enclosure on the map and you've got this bottom are badly affected by later plow in on that being post-medieval farm then our best bet forgetting the outline of this enclosures you're gonna be up the top there yeah the all of this so followed it so far could you explain it back to me so those in the relentless wind our plans and our minds are taking a battering but as the clouds gather yet again the archeology begins to shine through at Frances yeah as a with a lot of hope for this trench is actually a coin down here perhaps this can help us to date the earthwork definitely copper alloy of some sort and very very fragile as well if I can get one's lethal it's lying right on top of the natural then okay that's extremely flips very coy nish does it turn over mm careful so we know what a coin you know need a couple of cops on a copper alloy and that's about as much as I can tell from it I think conservation yep cool Bridget corporate 999 and it looks like bridge is gonna be busy Rick someone have a little dish look Oh coin it's out of context but could be dateable they that come off that spoil tip over there and that looks to me like something early early Roman rather than later than exactly I mean any dating evidence for this sites gotta be important and that's right but I mean if we're trying to prove some link between the local Iron Age people and the arrival of the Romans an early Roman coin is absolutely absolutely crazy so we send both coins off to bridge but even if we can date them on their own and out of context they can't tell us whether this was a roman fort or an Iron Age enclosure and in Matt's trench there's no sign of settlement nothing that can help tell us whether the earthwork was built before or after the bloody invasion so we've put it to bed and opened a new one over the bank and ditch one second if we can find the bottom of the ditch it could contain fines that'll help us discover when it was dug follow this edge it says the ditch field is that a proper rate I think the ditch bill is really soft actually this is fairly soft but I'm hitting much more stones but you can see them yeah and hear them infection like Matt Bridge has found the edges of the ditch but not the bottom in fact both trenches seem to be getting deeper and deeper 9 feet yeah 2.7 meters well I mean I'm absolutely speechless what a tree what's amazing is how it what a small space it's fitted into and we never thought it was going to go that deep do you think that it tells us anything that shape that incredible depth or narrowness well I've been normally if you see something as narrow and steep and v-shaped as earth you'd say Roman but we don't know about is its shape and if it was Roman I'd expect to see a lot of pottery knocking on we all had a whisker behind nothing to no charcoal no but really tried hard to find something if this ditch was Roman we'd expect to see pottery coins or other finds and the enclosure would probably be laid out in a neat rectangle but it's empty and irregular which means our enclosure is looking less Roman and increasingly Iron Age just as things are getting really interesting the weather we've been battling all day winds as you can see the weathers turn really grim on us and everybody's been sent home and it's been a fantastic day this is what we came here to look at sorry the rains tipping down on it please huge earthworks but look what gf is has discovered that whole field is jam-packed full of archeology there's our farm here which we think is 18th century but look at this great big curve which the archaeologists are saying they're pretty sure is prehistoric and of course there's this massive earthwork and Francis is still saying that he's convinced that it's iron age I think it's something to do with the size of the ditches so tomorrow what we want to do is get down deep into the heart of it and see if we can find out something about the people who live there because if they were Iron Age then they would have been the people who were here at that extraordinary moment when the Romans first arrived in Anglesey beginning of day two here in Anglesey and we're just beginning to come to grips with this strange earth work which covers this entire sloping field yesterday we found a big ditch which Francis swears his iron age and if he's right that would be great because it would mean that the people who lived here would have practiced the druidic religion and would have witnessed the horrible cataclysmic events that occurred when the Romans invaded except Francis having said all that we haven't got any proof at all that this ditch is iron age anyway no no I don't expect to get much right Tony you don't get Iron Age pottery in this part of the world the depth of the ditch is fine I'm quite relaxed about that what about the shape of it does that help you at all yeah that's fine I mean there are a number of examples of that shaped enclosure around sort of farmsteads and got the world's it's not actually a rectangular is it well no I mean that I think that's the point though it's not as if it's been laid out carefully as if it's a rock square so what might that imply I would guess it's more native than Roman no Roman army has come along with textbooks and measures and dough that's right that's right I mean would you expect the buildings in this to be around the edge or should we be looking for buildings in the middle wherever they've been excavated these sites have produced buildings right in the center right so really we should be looking in that middle area there then probably for the for the building definitely and it's a bit tricky because that looks like where we've had the modern plumbing doesn't it well the the top half of the site hasn't been the bottom of has I mean my inclinations to do something as near account to the middle but over those two different degrees of destruction if you like and see if we can't pick a house up you know I'm happy with different degrees of destruction yes yesterday we opened a trench in the middle of the enclosure in search of settlement without success today we're trying again this time over an area that we hope has survived the plow and while we look for signs of Iron Age life inside the enclosure Stuart thinks there might be clues outside he's sniffing around in the field next door with the local farmers see boundaries in this field here Katja favour suggests there were fields or yes all around it and so on well I've seen aerial photos of this field years ago on this like shut killer you know the concert the shape stir alright but even with one field this is a massive site which makes it even stranger that our only find so far are two small coins it's just breaking down there nicely roots yeah that's fantastic can you see those the monitor yeah I can that feels rather coin this is apparently yes why nothing yeah well are you slaving a hiatus and we can't work out whether it is or not I'm feeling very dubious about the whole thing at the moment I must admit dubious about what well I just can't find any decoration whatsoever there doesn't seem to be any dye or stamp on it that you it's likely to be found on a coin hmm with the microscope failing to shed any light on the archeology Stewart Mick take the opposite approach they've gone up in the chopper to look at the bigger picture look can that field over there oh this is absolutely I just as we fly around I can hardly take my eyes off all these field systems it can see in the fields around it seems the farmers were spot-on about the shapes in the field next door the circular features actually feel about they see a trackway or a drove way going down there which is what you'd expect maybe what it does show is that the enclosure that we've got is at the heart of a very actually prehistoric roller paradise it's not sitting by itself is it but what's the connection between our Iron Age enclosure on the hill and the shapes in the next field we're sending into your fears to have a look and extending our search for the people who built this earth work even further which might not be such a bad idea because back in our enclosure we're struggling to find any trace of them we've widened Matt's trench over the deep ditch so we can get down and dig it out by hand and Phil's still plugging away at the entrance and so far they're both empty the only trench with any fines is bridges we've got a lot of charcoal flex a lot of degraded stone I've got a lot of animal bones really big ribs it sounds promising right so that sort of size that sounds to me like modern cattle but it's not you've got big fun 18th century you've got a ditch you've probably got cattle in the area you've got to drain it that's why you've done this ditch it's just a recut of the early ditch done probably in the 18th century my feeling is that we're going to waste our time if we spend too much effort here ok let's just call it a day it's beginning to look like any evidence of the people who might have lived here has been destroyed by later farming any sign of any buildings in ricksha No actually nice it's all gone nothing at all no this is all natural really and it's the same story in rakshasas trench in the middle of the enclosure if you see here we jump for Oh coming all the way through so it must have been plowed away there's no structures or anything what about joining it up with with the trench over there do you think we could actually take a strip that that goes right up that oh I think it's always an advantage to doing things up isn't it yeah can dude gives us a much better chance of finding yeah yeah the almost total absence of fines is puzzling there's plenty of activity on the GF is but nothing in the ground while in the field next door we can see shapes on the ground but the GF is results have come back and they're empty not the Stewart's about to be beaten can you see these trees yep on the hedge line yeah once there so got one two three four without the aid of GF is we're relying on the highly scientific between the fourth and fifth tree method to plot in our trenches so what suggest these we'd put a trench across this ditch across this earth work and up to them to the other side and you should if it still survives you should hit it in a trench going across there I wish you're looking over to you yeah hopefully we'll find something in this field to help us date our site because so far these are our only finds and dating them is proving difficult we've called in fine specialist KY paintin to take a look initially when those coins were dug up everyone was saying Roman roamin possibly early roman really exciting but then these waves of doubt began to hit us all maybe it's not a coin at all are they coins are they row but the good news is they are coins they are Roman one of them could potentially be quite early and one of them might be a little bit later this one here looking at the size and what it's made of this looks like it's what they call a sister sheis which could be as early as 1st century maybe even a little bit earlier but this one I mean it's in grotty condition but it looks like a coin called an ass so it's a grotty ass and it's it's made of some kind of a very coppery alloy which is why it's sort of blue in the middle it looks like quite an early coin so this could well be a first to coin about you know the time of the invasion here I think as can I says they've been they've been around for a long time they circulated for a while so you don't think that the early coin was being clutched in the hand by a Roman warrior as he murdered the Druids on this very spot I think it's possible that I have to say unlikely in fact the coins are so worn they could have been in circulation long after the Romans invaded several hundred years after they'd wiped out the islands druids their brutal campaign was so successful but today it's easy to think the Druids are more myth than reality freaker's if someone mentions druids nowadays we tend to think of hippies in white sheets on Salisbury Plain don't we but do we have much tangible evidence that they actually existed in ancient times we must be careful because whose territory you are now you're in Wales and we have living druids our own intelligence yeah who come together for our big cultural festival yes but those kind of droids are just an eighteenth-century conceit early that's that's a fancy listen Sony's our druids today are our intelligentsia in Wales they are musicians but also think of those poets and those people who continue oral traditions so then maybe we we have a roots into prehistory into the pre-roman periods as to how these people behaved and what their special roles were why do we think they were an intelligence er well there's there's plenty of documentary evidence Caesar tells us that the Druids in Gaul France today which he happened to be conquering at the time that they came over to Britain to study that is the best teaching the best source of learning so what was this knowledge that they were in party well I mean the syncro being three types of druids basically a priesthood and then soothsayers sometimes called evades or VAR tazed from the Latin and bards and it's the bards we see a lot of in Wales because they're the poets and the singers and the artists but we can broaden their role in and were they the scientists you know we use it's a modern some science they were foretellers of the future and we are also told that battles between the native peoples the pre-roman peoples their own peoples they've come in as actual peacemakers so they knew that they're playing many roles but that's not how the Romans saw the drill it is it they saw them as blood-drinking cannibals Tony as you know the natives didn't do the right thing it's the Romans who tell us the story it's a story that includes blood-curdling accounts of elaborate human sacrifice but is that just Roman propaganda or could the Druids really have conducted such ceremonies I'm traveling across Anglesey to find out there's certainly a powerful sense of pre Roman history here it's not hard to imagine Iron Age Celtic people living and worshipping on this enigmatic Island one thing above all others that the Romans seem to hate and fear about the druids was their practice of human sacrifice the most terrifying manifestation of which was this the wicker man roman historians claim the druids built giant wicker effigies in the shape of a man caged sacrificial victims inside and burnt them to the ground David Freeman and his team from the Teller and archaeological group are using traditional woodworking techniques to build our very own Wicker Man to see whether such a thing could really have existed do we really know that this actually happened we've got two pieces of documentary evidence no physical evidence so unfortunately budget this is not so much a wicked man more a Wicca pair of trousers it it looks like way at the moment the top half of him will be a different color so from the waist upwards but of course we're not going to stuff it with human beings what are we going to put inside us you're going to stuff it with straw so that we get we get a good flare a good effect I'm kind of a bit disappointed religious a bit of showing right is it difficult to make the main frameworks going all right my big problem is as soon as we start to bend in smaller circles willow should Bend extremely easy but we're so short of water in the wood at the moment is just breaking I hope you're going to be able to make it in time what you may not have noticed is that Victor is lurking behind us scribbling away and given that it's Victor yes here we have a wicker man that's pretty amazing Victor look look at this little arm that's horrifying is horrific actually I hope they can get somewhere near it because I particularly like the head that's made out of leaves and things there's a little face here as well if it's gonna look anything like that it's gonna be really spectacular on it yeah we'll be quite looking forward to this see like that there's no sign of druids back on our Iron Age earth work in fact after two days of hard digging the painful truth is there are no houses no domestic rubbish no sign of Iron Age people at all we've got this huge ditch going all the way round this field we put in a trench right in the middle of it because we thought there might be an Iron Age house somewhere around there but we hit natural so we put the trench to bed or so I thought yeah I thought it was natural as well but he's got a different idea now he's certainly attacking it again with a great appear what's going on Frances well I think we got a bit of a problem we thought it was natural but when we put a trench through the bank beside the big cut through of a ditch yeah yeah yeah I wanted to do that but I wanted to establish the bottom of the bank right would give us the top of the surface of people walked on Indiana yeah okay well we had established that if you go about six inches or foot below that you'll remove the old topsoil that was there and below that that's where you'll find the pure natural okay that's what we've done over there and I followed it down and I've dug a hole here right in the corner and you can see that the stuff in the hole it's very much paler and firmer but this rather granular gray stuff on the top in other words you thought we'd put it to bed but in fact we've left a blanket on it see so you can't see what's under the blanket is that the difference in the yellow is the natural yeah we got the grey on the top here which is weathered natural yeah right the post holes of your houses if they exist and that's a big if will still be under this blanket so if we are gonna find evidence of the houses does that mean we're gonna have to take off all yes yeah we're gonna have to take this off we got us to take that off up there and we might even have to extend this and take more off so we get more of an idea of the plan so em we haven't actually finished the job basically that's why we're not found it much of the hardest job of all is standing still in this wind isn't it yesterday we had rain today we've got wind and you feel completely battered at the end of it some of us can't remember the plot as a result it's Armageddon we thought we'd got to the bottom of our trenches we hadn't we need to dig down deeper to get to the Iron Age ground level and when we do if Francis is right we could find two thousand-year-old houses evidence of the people who built this massive enclosure who may have practiced the druid faith there's one day left and everything to play for beginning our third and final day here at Anglesey where we knew we've got this great knot of massive earthworks which we thought were iron age but when we started to excavate them there was no sign of human activity no sign of human occupation nothing except this natural earth and stone and quite frankly we were all getting pretty worried but then yesterday afternoon Francis came up with this theory that this wasn't the natural it was a blanket of Earth and stone covering the natural so he began excavating underneath it and lo and behold you're not just a pretty face are you brother I must admit I'm a bit shocked yeah yeah we cook it off with the digger and lo and behold underneath it we've discovered host holes to enterprise houses down here I've labeled them up they've got some sort of lost in the rain yeah they're quite distinct against this really bright natural I've been in the middle here this great pit I don't want it any way around here like this yeah it's absolutely huge so what this means is that we've got to reexamine all the other stuff we were stripping yesterday with one day left with one day left well what do you reckon this might be well it is I'm into all intensive purposes it is a big fit whether it's a rubbish pit whether it's dare I say a grave I really don't know the only way to do it is to dig it and burn it suddenly all got rather exciting sealed beneath the blanket of earth with a Roman coin on top we can be confident these features date to before the Roman invasion even if we're not entirely sure what they are yet it means we finally uncovered the remains of angles is lost Iron Age world a world the Romans tell us was dominated by the Druids they claim the Druids burnt sacrificial victims inside giant wicker effigies but is this just Roman propaganda we're building our own wicker man to find out but dr willow and strong winds are making things tricky they've got their work cut out if he's going to be ready to burn tonight and back inside our Iron Age enclosure the race is on to make sense of our pit party what do you reckon this is and it's got good edges there it seems but this bill is so extraordinarily drunk there's only and loose you know not what you would expect from a pit of this sort of size where you might be hoping for all sorts of burials or whatever well exactly I mean I'm half expecting to find a sheep's head with a modern ear tag in it I will yes but on the other hand this surface that was a partner didn't show any Sun it's not fun so there it was sealed wasn't it yeah this is strangest thing in the field next door we're investigating a series of shapes Stuart and Mick's spotted from the air we've put in three trenches and discovered a network of ditches so you think all which is probably fields and agriculture then I think we've got to go back to that agricultural idea and and keeping animals here and headaches and pins that kind of thing if there's no evidence of settlement whatsoever so it's a landscape around our main circle of them that's what it seems most like perfect with a vast network of fields and a massive strategically placed hilltop enclosure this was more than just a simple farm whoever controlled it must have been a powerful chief so with time running out we concentrate all our resources on the main enclosure everyone that is except Henry he's wandered down to a boggy area in the valley to take a core of soils the gray stuff at the bottom is two thousand year old man it's a sign that in the Iron Age this bog was a lake this is so typical of you on day one you prowled around the site on day two you moved into the next field and now we're what two hundred meters away in the middle of a bowl yes it's all about landscape context I'll keep banging on about it but knowing something about the site isn't it isn't sufficient in yourself unless you know something about the landscape that site lived within and how it developed and where we've walked to down here doesn't typically look like it to you perhaps but this was a large lake here in prehistory so what do you think the relationship would have been between the lake and the people who lived up there well this this two relationships one is very practical one is supply of water and from the crop marks we do have evidence now in the field where Bridget's digging of a trackway which actually leads down from the fields towards this bog they're bringing animals down to two waters that's very practical of course the other is ritual once you get into prehistory are awful word but we do know that lakes and bogs become areas where in prehistory people are depositing votive offerings metal works so they're actually chucking it into the lake that's right these are spectrally our special phases in prehistory so there might still be Iron Age objects in this bog that would cast in two thousand years I think that's the case we're not gonna be able to dig it early yeah there's no I mean it's actually very large there's no way you'd even attempt to dig something like this well let it lie from his hilltop home the Iron Age chieftain who ruled this corner of Anglesey could see the source of his power economic and spiritual laid out before him and he made sure that anyone looking back could see it too if you remember the jeera fish showed another ditch on the outside of the main big ditch so we put this trench in and what we discovered wasn't what we thought it wasn't another ditch right but we came across these big rocks we found about five of these and they went to the in a line across the trench here so I put an extension here yeah and I think that's the foot of a wall so you got a wall through here we got a wall this in other words the bank that accompanied the big ditch yeah had a revetment right stone revetment to stuff all this stuff tipping out over yes we've just got the bottom of it it may well have been higher yeah in which case you could have seen a stone wall down there in the valley and it would have looked yeah really spectacular and it sort of enhances this impression that this is a very high-status important site he wouldn't look like a fort on the horizon wouldn't it yeah yeah yeah in an imposing structure like this would expect to find substantial houses but so far the only sign of iron age occupation is a series of small post holes they don't look much but Mick and Francis are impressed it's probably the best evidence we're going to get for settlement on this side of actual buildings and structures isn't it yes but dating them with any precision is impossible other than by absence of pottery but they're right in the center of our enclosure which is where we know they ought to be so they're at the center of power if you like and if we could join them all up into coherent pattern I think we'd find they would be round houses about sort of eight meters diameter that's true that sort of thing but the posts can't have been very big they're pretty snow but all I think the problem is you see we're seeing just the bottom bit the post hole all the rest of it the actual foot or more in which the post has been eroded by plowing across this site we're right at the bottom of them so you're happy that there were actually Iron Age people building shelters here not just putting up fences yes I think it's more than shelters this is houses this would be a substantial house you know the where people reconstructed they're quite substantial buildings and a nearby Mellon Claremont a team of experimental archaeologists and modern builders are demonstrating just how substantial their reconstructions show these were simple but brilliant designs carefully placed posts bore the weight of the roof and define the large communal space and a thatched roof would have kept out the very worst Welsh weather it was the perfect house for this hill a substantial weatherproof home fit for even the most powerful chieftain so is the mysterious pit next door another part of this domestic picture even Frances wouldn't get this excited about a rubbish pit oh I see another of these yellow he sells over there yeah yeah right so what it looks like then project is a kiss so it'll be a little grave possibly lined with stone and probably bought Bronze Age early bronze oh well it certainly is of appropriate size and shape for a crouched information if you know so much about it do you really want me to bother and dig it this is completely unexpected looking for signs of Iron Age settlement it seems we found a Bronze Age Grave not two but four thousand years old the oval grave was lined with large flat stones the body would have been curled up inside it seems the acidic soil has destroyed the bones but the discovery helps us rewrite the history of this hill we're saying those post holes are about 2,000 years old and that bury us about 4,000 years old in other words the people who were looking at that burial were as far away from it in time as we are from the Romans but think now if there were a keep of stone over this burial pit yeah it was there it was being respected by the builders of these new houses it's odd isn't it because for our special places like churches and synagogues and and what have you tend to be very much separate from our everyday lives and yet that seems to be right in the middle of Iron Age everyday life but then as we all know the landscape has changed and the way we read the landscape has changed and I think we've lost so much meaning in terms of you know the specialness of the hill the ancestors who have worked this land for millennia and that's the mindset I believe that these people had and of course we were advised by those special people those druids who are helping us to and make sense of history three days ago this earth work was almost unheard of one of the few clues to its existence as a photograph now we've uncovered four thousand years of history on this Welsh hillside it begins with one person buried but not forgotten because 2,000 years later this hill was still a special place the power base for an important chieftain it gave him a link to the past shelter food even a sacred lake he had it all and then the Romans arrived life on anglesey and on this hill changed forever the curiously empty ditches suggest wind and rain began to fill them with earth soon after the invasion the Roundhouse postholes were covered by a blanket of soil the Roman coin dropped on top it seems the chief and his people vanished and the once mighty earth work was abandoned the round houses fell into disrepair or even demolished and the terrifying events of the Roman invasion were hidden beneath gentle pasture this exposed Hill bears witness to the island's darkest hour David's really come on as men yes it has grain I see we're almost on the last stage despite dry willow and strong winds Dave and his team have proved it would have been possible for the Iron Age Celts to build a wicker man let me show you the head does that remind you of anybody as Dave puts the finishing touches to our wicker man it's easy to forget the 2000 years ago this would have been a gruesome spectacle bird stuffed with straw instead of humans it's far from terrifying how to feel strangely familiar thank you Mike bill certainly seems to be feeling a connection back it's tempting to find faint echoes of this ancient custom in our modern traditions from corn dollies and the Green Man to Guy Fawkes and much of the ancient British way of life to the Romans really destroy how much do we owe to that elusive elite the Druids it's really usually filled over the station still unscathed though log on to the website at channel 4 comm slash time team to read more about Anglesey and explore other time team digs pain and pleasure in the South Pacific next shipwrecked 2007 Battle of the islands you

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 880,172

Rating: 4.8200541 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: I-fKlfDxEBY

Length: 48min 6sec (2886 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2013