Time Team S14-E08 No Stone Unturned, Warburton, Cheshire

in 1998 a series of chants fine scattered across this field near Manchester inspired a local enthusiasts to start field walking for eight years he's been walking Oh walking a walking now after hundreds of hours of close scrutiny he's accumulated evidence of over 8,000 years of human activity from the prehistoric to the post medieval but it's the Romans who seem to have been particularly active there's loads of metalwork including coins brooches and this gorgeous little snake bracelet but the site itself remains an archaeological mystery so what was going on here local archaeologists believe they've discovered a faultless but then not all the finds are military and they cover over 250 years of the Roman occupation so what were the Romans doing here in Warburton we've got just three days to find out Warburton's located near manchester between the river Bollin and the Mersey the village can be traced back to the anglo-saxon period and its parish church is dedicated to summer burg the anglo-saxon saint from which Warburton takes its name but over the past eight years the locals have been finding evidence which has pushed back Warburton's origins much further that's a pretty impressive array you got there James tis isn't it we've got stonework here from the prehistoric with the Flint work we've even got Bronze Age uh small axe there which is really nice but what's really exciting to me on this site is all the Roman material the brooches and some of the coins and the various little bits and bobs what do you think it all means Mike we've got quite a lot of material here from the Roman period which is distinctively military though the brooch is in particular these nice little rings well we don't get usually in the northwest this kind of concentration if we're looking at military I think we could be looking at some like a fort or a fort late' it does seem to me to be a bit of a leap of the imagination from a few finds to an imperial fought with loads of soldiers hacking away at the poor Brits but we do have a bit more evidence that the local archaeology Society put in one or two trenches already in the field and they've got what might be an enclosure and in one of those trenches there's a ditch at the punic style ditch what's a Punic ditch it's a trap a Roman military trap Frances could this site be a trap for the enemy well I think we've got to be a bit you know bit skeptical because I've seen steep-sided ditches on farms and to my eye that metalwork doesn't look military and I think it could be a farm I think we've got to be very very careful you know rectangular enclosure doesn't mean four so I think what we'll do first of all is another metal detect let's do a detailed field wall Jeffy's and put a trench in but a trench alongside the earlier trench just to prove of that Punic ditch is a Punic ditch I might be convinced it's great it's gonna be a battle isn't it on day one that nothing wrong with that so battle commences as Stewart charges off on his trusty bike to survey the landscape and Henry begins to plot out a grid preparing for the advance of an army of field walkers warning thanks everybody for coming we're going to try to feel 4 in 10 meter squares in terms of artifacts we're picking up everything from the earliest things to the latest things including a soft little bits of red clay which should be what remains of the Roman pottery Helen's troop of field walkers from the local archaeology group begin to scour the field we're hoping that any concentrations of fines will give us precise digging targets and help us diagnose whether we've got a Roman fort lit or not while the field walking continues Richard the farmer begins to clear the bean crop so we can GF is and putting our first trench we're hoping the GF is will help us identify the full extent of the enclosure and any internal features this should tell us whether we've got a fort or a farm the diggings not going to be held up since francis has pinpointed his first target using the results of the previous investigation okay Mike so those two pegs down there they mark your old trench yep 2002 to 2002 and I am right that was where you've got the whatever the punic punic ditch yeah yeah okay so we don't want to put a hole on top of that as we'd look stupid that's going in that direction for 8 metres yeah well if we go this way one two three four metres and put one in dead parallel with it we should that should come down on it yeah it should be well away from the old trenching and we should cut this ditch okay into okay that you hang on to that I'll mark the ground give it a good shake where am I going going that way right let's get the bigger so we're putting in our first wrench next to the previous excavation so that we can look at the form of this ditch and decide whether it really is Punic and this will tell us for definite whether the site's military don't be what was the difference between a Punic ditch in any other kind of ditch it has a standard v8 inner slope but the outer face is vertical or near vertical which means that once you've got in there it's extremely difficult to get out and you become a sitting duck to the defenders to throw anything at you what they call Kunik ditches does that mean they came from Carthage is in the Punic Wars know the nasty come from Carthage but the point was that the Romans thought the Carthaginians were extremely and these ditches were meant to be treacherous to anybody who attacked across them as the field walkers continued to march across the field we still can't be sure whether our romans were soldiers or farmers but the fines are coming in thick and fast and we're hoping they'll give us a clue there is a lot of a some stuff that looks like brick I wonder if any of that's going to turn out to be the good Roman posture it is it's just lettuce just sand sand and more side of it it's like digging at Bournemouth yeah which rope now is charcoal that is burning of some sort I know it's possible that could be worms taking it all down there but that's a feral way down then it well there appears to be enough sand to build several castles but no sign of a Roman fort lit yet this really is a military side what sort of thing would it be well it could be a fort or it could be a fortress what's a fall it's a little little fort it is like a little fort but their difference in purpose between the two the fort is basically a place where Roman troops are garrisoned and they have a permanent presence in their area a fort that might be much shorter live and have a particular purpose related to a road that it may be lying alongside remind you that's assuming it is military but suppose it was something different well it could be a farmstead it could be rectangular just like a fort would be but inside it'd be rather less organized you probably have round houses just like they were in the Iron Age and even the Bronze Age so old-style round houses at our trench it looks as though the Romans are about to make an appearance right there's you ditch looks promising doesn't it so it does look or so that charcoal was coming at now so right on the edge of it I'll be happy when we got it sections and I can see sexually what you want to do that my machine or back no I want to do up behind yeah yeah exactly yeah this good style but our the field walking finds turning out to be equally promising such things were treasure so far an awful lot a very recent comparatively yeah almost no medieval and almost no Roman no nothing we can definitely say this is this is Roman but you know they're still out there still going for it optimism I like that the Francis you point a long jump fit well look at this hey yeah look at that wait took this all morning to find that oh wow really on day one of I ever seen such a cornucopia of prizes so what is this Francis I'm told it's romano-british and it's probably Cheshire Plains where or something like that are they being serious or they were they are they are so what shape would that possibly in Francis um large storage job I seriously what have we got here um well we're currently thinking this is the ditch of the four yeah unfortunately I don't think Jeb Bush can help us no I think I've taken a jump backwards so what's the problem for you John there's no magnetic contrast whatsoever sand and sand on Sam yeah so I can't track its course that's its theoretical course I mean it should turn and come back I can't see it at all where do we go from here okay if we assume that is the portlet ditch we know which side of the fort that it is and we can make a pretty good guess by measuring at where the other three sides are so that's what we're going to do suck it and see measure it out see if the ditches there what put more trenches yeah yeah okay while you do that I better okay fight these up to the great Museum geophys can't help us but we do know that Roman faultless were square although we don't know exactly how big this one would have been using the locals excavation report we think our first trench has located the eastern edge and we should be able to find the western side by digging directly opposite it so bridge begins to open trench 2 on the same alignment as Phil's trench Frances and Matt are putting in a third trench to locate the southern side and find out the exact dimensions of the fourtner's I don't think we want to sort of pretty about with it we got to find a dip so let's go as deep as that trench over there so a little bit deeper than that and just hammer it back to refine the thing the site is progressing nicely and it looks as though we'll be able to fill in a real gap in the understanding of the Roman northwest there is actually quite a lot of activity going on here there are quite a number of major centers which are either industrial or military centers and there's the the major legionary fortress at Chester for instance on the on the D and then moving across we've got a fort and then an industrial site at North which another one at middle which producing a lot of salts in the during the Roman period there's will despawn which was a manufacturing center which is the nearest site to to Warburton and then we've got across the fortress of Manchester and we know the Mersey is a big trade network in the prehistoric period in the Roman period and we've got copper mining over old Leigh edge just a few miles away and there could be a road network that links that into the Chester manchester York Road and we could be part of that kind of localized industrial network but just as the team seemed to be making advances with a ford late' Stewart begins to signal a retreat I'm a little bit concerned about what's in Phil's trench at the moment what do you mean well I was looking at the field patterns on the map yeah and there used to be a field hedge boundary go down through here it's showing on the 19th century map in so I'll just measure out where it was so I measured it from the hedge Junction there yeah to where the line the hedge would be its direction is straight towards they would corner down there it goes right through the centre of Phil's train so are you saying that the ditch of the fort which Phil's found might just be a hedge line yeah he's quite and suddenly the rest of the site's beginning to frustrate the archaeologists in Roman times a Punic ditch mayor Wharton enemy attackers but right now it's the lack of any archaeology that's starting to challenge our own army of experts it's all looking a bit glacial Mattern it yeah all the salmon got the gravlax yummy food for me yeah but there i thought art could be ditch but no hey get on here bridge well made a long trench but i can't find anything in it no features none no fines nothing if we're looking at a fort let it's very small for little soldiers like me just remember there should be an entrance through a fort lit shouldn't there and what about if the strange is right for the entrance if this is the entrance is a flippin big entrance in the end of day one and the trenches we open to find the punic ditch have finally joined up to become one huge monster trench but have we actually found any evidence of the roman fort 'let where's your Punic ditch Tony it is a Punic ditch no no this side it's a u-shaped ditch I think it's something off a farm or hedge of it it's modern which is what Stuart feared yeah he's right but we do have probably the longest trench we've had on time team in many a year and unlike all those other trenches this one hasn't produced a single find or a single feature nothing only this we have with that those two little pottery finds oh no give me a break no they came out of that ditch and I mean they could be flat oh I'm not happy about them at all they're too small and yet and yet and yet this is a real puzzle they've been finds coming off this field from 8,000 years of human history and yet we found absolutely nothing why not let's hope we find out tomorrow you we came to this field near Manchester yesterday because the beautiful artifacts have been found on the surface led local archaeologists to believe there might be a small Roman fort here well not only have we not found a small Roman fort we haven't found a small Roman anything no pottery no metal fines no roof tile no brick absolutely nothing even though we've dug a trench the length of a Heathrow runway but are we panicking absolutely not when there's a problem who you gonna call GF is what we gonna do we'll look that was the arrow over the fort where we got absolutely nothing we've extended the survey in this direction and look at this area of noise so could this be the fort no I don't think so I mean look at this plot I mean that suggests sort of burning metal objects maybe so it's just possible that that's where they've been making metal with so you're gonna dig it yeah to me that's a good strong target so I'm gonna go get the machine put trench over let's hope I luck starting to change we're putting in our next trench over John's GF is to see if there's any evidence of metalworking because if the Romans didn't have a military presence on the site our three-day campaign has still got to explain while the Roman materials been found here we were first drawn to this site because James the local enthusiasts have been finding metalwork all over the field with two concentrations at the bottom of the slope and Francis believes that this area should be our next target so what you're lined up for me at nailing francesc well I think the key thing is to put a trench through or close by those two concentrations of metal work on the down slope of the hill and also that will give us a nice transect across the top of the the ridge it'll also give us some indication as a thick nanou the plow soil as we go down the slope well if we're gonna do that why don't we pull the trench back over here what right back here yeah right back to here and extend the one from yesterday to meet it just in case of any stray archaeological features that'll be the longest trench in time to history we're going for the full half mile thing so I'll get my man on the gel okeydoke so we're hoping that a trench over the concentrations of previous finds might unearth evidence of Roman occupation and explain how the metal work got into the field in the first place we want to learn as much as we can about the finds so we've called in an RKO metallurgist to see if we can replicate one of them well it's it's a sneek bracelet or at least part of a snake bracelet and a Roman date I know it doesn't look like one because it's straight now but it's obviously suffered quite a lot of damage during its life and the the snake had at this end is being broken I'm not sure that if I was going to have a bracelet made for me I would want one in the shape of a snake well that's because we tend to think of snakes as frightening and sinister things don't we but in the classical world they didn't before Christianity came on the scene snakes seem to have been emblems of healing and as rebirth you know you see the snakes on on chemists symbols going twining around a star yeah how would it have been made it's quite simple because it's a snake there's no extraneous limbs just very easy to model we can use - some beeswax just made dreamers and pigment literally just get it soft and roll it into a loosely figured snake shape and then very simply to start to model the head and just start to define the features on it it doesn't take much work because it's so simple then later and as it gets harder we can start to put the finer detail so could put scales on or little elements eyes and mouth and whatever so it just takes a half mil so just in what about we made this other edge of it to what I would know so Phil extends the trench which he opened to look for archaeology relating to the previous finds it's another Paulding hill type route meanwhile Helens thoroughly examining them to see what they can tell us about the Roman activity in the field because we've still got to explain how all the local finds got here we're exploring every Avenue including the one that runs along the edge of the field if we can't find any signs of occupation then a route way might account for them when when we thought there was a thoughtless in this field one of the issues we were thinking about was access you know what what's the thought that doing and and how would you get to the to that particular Roman military site so you'd need for that a trackway and and the likeliest candidate is is what we're standing on now but do we know that we've got a trackway it seems to me all that we've got is a path by the side of a hedge not being looking at the geography the landscape and the field patterns and so on it's great and what's quite revealing is this kind of long finger of a high ridge was where our site is this is a high dry ground we've got bog on this side we've got River plain on this side it's like a ridge of high ground pointing out to where the River Mersey is potential for a cross into this high ground over here so there is the possibility of an early route way across here so what do we do about it I think we'll put a trench through it and I think we'll try to link that trench into our own trench system so that we can put it in context what my trench tell us well it'll tell us the history of this tract wave I bet you penny to acquit that's going to be stuff underneath it and it may go back to Roman time to me let's hope it does middle of day two and our trenches are getting longer and longer but there's still no sign of any archaeology it's a real mystery and bridges keen to see if a more scientific approach can explain why Oh a chemistry set Bridget what have you been doing with it I've been doing some pH tests because one of the things that's come up is why is there no pottery and the little bits that are here of course are in really bad condition and it's been suggested there's quite high acidity in the soils here so why not test that out and confirm and I've done three you actually tested them on the three soils from with fill dug that that feature yesterday and this one here is from soils that came from within the feature that filled our yesterday but one in the middle is from the network geology and the one here on the right is from the plow soil and you can see that's much more yellow than these ones and this indicates that it's got an acidity of 6.5 mm the other two are neutral they're seventy seven point five mm well six point five isn't very acidic is yeah I mean well it won't really cause any harm to any pottery so blaming the lack of fines on soil pH doesn't seem to pass the acid test and as the search for any archaeology continues even the dog has got involved but trench for which was open to explore the possibility of metalworking has finally produced some results Carey sounds like you've hit the metal we have hit the metal but it's not the method we want why not well and we had a spread of something yeah and I think we've got a spread of nails nails yeah cutting nails well just iron fairly modern nails unfortunately leather its history Brian you've been working on this site for ages why do you think that the only stuff that we're finding is modern stone and probably the farmer you know we're burning burning rubbish on the field you know getting rid of rubbish you're picking all the nails up as you can as you can hear now it's everywhere but why are we finding anything older Oh probably because we've had it that could be yeah well it seems that we've quite literally nailed down John's metalworking site but it's still not Roman I'm not happy you're not no we have done so many time teams in the past where you get a field where the metal detectorists have been in they've brought our wealth of stuff and we've gone they're all really we find nothing because the metal detectors have had it all and all we get is a couple of indiscriminate ditches what worries me is the soils very light so every time it plies that's why it's so easy to metal detect there's always new stuff being brought up which implies that there features below are being eroded so I'm actually very one while the trench over the fines concentration seems to be equally unrewarding Matt and Naomi are busy working on the track way to see if there's any evidence of a Roman Road there I'll give it another couple stripes so there's a gig Ben Toma well it's not the kind of surface we were hoping for but there's still a chance there might be a Roman road beneath it as the site continues to frustrate the archaeologists Andrews snake bracelet is shaping up nicely so what actually happens to this beeswax model essentially gets burnt away so what I have to do before that is to fly the whole surface with fine clay fine clay and sound that captures the whole thing that makes the mold and then we couldn't heat to it that drained out the works shall we it's a lovely fine mixture you just need it on with your hands and you keep putting more and more that clay onto it looks like this so it looks like that in every layer has to dry perfectly until you get something that's like a brick at the trackway trench finally we might have our first hint of something archaeological looks like you've got a result though Matt yeah we started the trench this end behind me we went straight down onto this yellow sand then we got to here and immediately very distinctly dropped down and we've got this kind of oranjee sand here but so it confusing because it seems like a cut or miss just goes straight down and cross I'm pretty sure what you got there is a plow headland right and this darker material here has fallen off the plow in fact if you look along the track way you can see there is a very slight rise just at the end of the beams can you see that oh yeah yeah which the modern track was using so what would have happened that the plow would have come across here turned and as it turns the soil that had stuck to it falls off and forms this low Bank obviously it takes a long time to do and then it goes back in that direction now Stuart reckons that this field was first plowed in the earlier 18th century something like that so you've got what two three hundred years for the soil to accumulate but what's important is that the we now know that the plows were working in that direction okay and that would explain why the fines are going down the hill or getting tracked across getting dragged across and the other thing is that there is no sign below the plow headland here of a Roman road or track that nothing at all underneath it it had there been one it would have been buried under the headland so this is the best place to look for it and I just simply can't see two days on and our enormous trench has so far produced nothing the metalworking trench empty the trackway trench zero it seems completely mystifying the locals dug in the same area and found a fort lit ditch but Phil thinks he can explain what they were looking at and it's not Roman in fact it goes right back to the Ice Age and I think that the best candidate for the or ditch is that one and now that we've seen the local geology I mean I think it's pretty clear that the geology here is is just gravel it's coming out of the glass here and I think as the glacier is moved back across the country all these stones have been washed out where where we're where we've got sand you can see very very fine lenses which is very very typical of sand that's laid down by water this stuff here I think is part of the water laying gravel you can see it's got a lot of the holes in where the sand has been washed out and all you're left with is the stones but I think what's happened is that the whole lot of gravel has been churned around at the end of the Ice Age and what you get when the hole all the earth is just churned up and things like this you see how that stone is vertical not horizontal if that was water lane it would it would fall flat but once it gets mixed around in the ice cracks appear in the Earth's surface and stones just drop down and of course once you know these things and you can identify them then you can interpret her natural geology can create wonderful wonderful I don't know fake features it's just unfortunate where they look like portlets of it so the punic ditches which the locals thought they identified are probably glacial deposits end of day two and the troops return to base in archaeology speak the pub for an emergency strategy meeting are we sharing three days of great significance is this the first time in 14 years that we'll have made a time team in which we find absolutely nothing at all it got me some sort of a record I must confess I mean it we are entered a - we put in three hundred and fifty square meters and absolutely nothing there can't be many fields in England where we would find so awesomely little we've looked at these things as if to be work printer years ago and so we're trying to chase individual finds with features buried below the ground you can't link finds automatically refuse the archaeological world is changing what metal detectorists are revealing is that the ordinary open empty spaces of the ancient world were actually packed with finds so what would have been a really rich field twenty years ago today actually it's sort of background noise so what I want to do I've heard at lunchtime today but the farmer next door on there's also on that Ridge is going to be plowing and that's had very limited investigation and what I want to do is to give it the full-time team treatment survey it shovel test pitted but basically you take a few shovelfuls of soil you sieve them and that characterizes a whole printing meter square so I could do that gonna now be a record to one then what will then metal detecting and you know having done all of that I hope we'll it on a proper job so are you in the process of spending an entire hour watching us fine not one single thing or is this going to be a classic time team we're on day three we suddenly come up with fronts we'll find out tomorrow well they're in a rather perverse sort of work be disappointed now beginning of day three and we came to this field near Manchester two days ago in order to try and find the source of some fantastic Roman artifacts that had appeared on the surface and as you can see we did a pretty good job of searching except that we found absolutely nothing so today final throw of the dice we're going to move over to that field over there and we're going to take our metal detectorists and our archaeologists and quite frankly they're going to need all the help they can get having dug this field to death we're moving into pastures new and the next field along and we're throwing everything at it archaeologists field walkers metal detectorists even the dog we think the new field is a good target since it's virgin territory and more importantly it also lies on the ridge of high ground which Stuart believes is the most likely candidate for Roman activity it feels like I'm surrounded by low-key chaos yes that's because we're desperately trying to find out as much as we can about the whole field in a very short time so we are doing a number of things first of all we're starting off with the old standby which is geophysics yeah but we're not really expecting it to produce anything because the results have been frankly terrible and then we are metal detecting all the way across the field and labeling tagging all our signals which Henry's then plotting in with the GPS it means that we're using metal detecting in the same way that we would normally use G Affairs in order to create a pattern on the ground which we can then use as evidence about where we should put a trench in yes and then the third thing that we're doing with it is because it was only plowed this morning we decided to go for the technique of shovel pitting where we dig a small hole right in the middle of each 20 meter square across the field and that recovers a certain amount of artifacts so that you can characterize what's going on in the in the topsoil from those artifacts which we can then use in conjunction with the geophysics if it produces anything to locate a trench times of the essence since we've only got one day to explore the whole field so everyone gets busy everyone that is except Phil who's refusing to be dragged away from yesterday's trench and Helen still got loads of James's finds to double-check it's quite worn on the edge so that's fixed into the wood is it apart somehow is it in the other reindeers I mean it's some way of distributing straps around the round cart to arraign travels through that yes yes yes indeed yeah I mean the rain would have run through there because you've obviously got quite a lot of wear yeah on this edge here was gone quite thin okay and at our original field Phil's tenacity has paid off and yes he's got a result from his tread never been quite sure why we've explored quite this far out in the field well if you remember there was metal work that was coming off the crest there were two concentrations and Phil's trench was to come down the hill and and follow that metal work well actually it's been much better than that we've found two lynchings what's a Lynch it well it literally is an old field system what you've got to imagine here Tony is literally a stairway of fields running parallel to the slope and what is happening is that place or as you plow a long slope soil moves down the slope and where Francis is you will have a bank and down here you've got a cutaway Terrace you can see here that you've got a dark brown topsoil that's this stuff and it comes straight onto natural now as we come down the slope you've got three layers we've got the dark topsoil but in the middle and we've got this brown material which is sloping down here and at the bottom we've got the natural and this brown material is where the plow is actually sliced into the natural and moved all the soil down that way you'll have a bank here and here there's a big cut away and so you've got a whole series of stairways and you can see that the next cutaway Terrace is up there with a chap is that but you've got these these fields about what 20 30 metres wide going downhill do we have a date for these Lynch's well we've got scrappy pottery from the from the bottom of this limp that runs through the Roman 16th century and 18th and 19th century so we might have two thousand years of Agriculture ploughing on this site but it important thing is that is exactly when the metal finds were being made that is exactly the date of the was metal objects what's exactly the period the medieval or the Roman Roman into medieval period so what you're telling me is the thing that you're excited about is the fact that we now have a field which we knew anyway we know it's going down the slope which we know and we didn't know and it's got fines in it which are either Roman or maybe you know this is what you're exciting about Tony the thing about Lynch's is that only form by plowing okay and that explains how the fines got into the topsoil in the first place they were put there in manure the manure came from the farm of a settlement which could have been over there it could have been over there I don't know this was a purely agricultural landscape but we now under understand the mechanism by which it formed and until we dug this trench down here we had no indication that there was a pre-existing field system on this hill the only field system that we could see was the present field system this shows that there was a completely different landscape here in the Roman and probably a medieval period which is why it's not on the 18th century map because these fields are totally different so finally we're beginning to reveal the history of this landscape the Lynch it's evidence of an earlier terraced feel sister possibly Roman and this would explain how the fines got into the soil as rubbish mixed in with the manure which fed the crops was to it we're getting wildly overexcited about - Lynch it's out there how do they fit into what we know about the landscape I mean if you go back to the medieval period and what you've got you see is the medieval village of Warburton here in red you've got a down here in the Priory arable ground here Meadow around the edge and a park and manor centre up here and the peat and Muslims over here but you've got a strip of open ground all suggesting that this strip where our fields located is the pasture for the animals of Warburton village and the parish so that's the pasture on which you'd have had the animals that would have manured the arable that's right this is quite important in the understanding of this also the pattern of movement actually is along that road that's there today the road that we come along leading from Dunham straight down to Warburton and then crossing over the river the Mersey itself is an important boundary in the Sexson period between Mercia and Northumbria and if this checks an occupation close to a major boundary there's a very strong chance there might be even Roman occupation so those those limits that we found are likely to predate the medieval pasture you indicate yeah by me I'll say that quite categorically from the evidence I can put together yes while we seem to be getting to grips with the site the wax has melted out of the mould and the snake bracelet has reached the critical stage of its process this is what I always get attention this is a bit where you come just at a perfect time because it's molten but it's also when everything could go wrong yeah so we've got the crucible down here in amongst all the charcoal so he collapses oh so hot no I'm gonna go for it how long have you got all just seconds gray right I wasn't expecting that to be so so liquid so liquid yeah well some of it went over the side but that's the best file what's the dangers of this I don't mean dangerous to you I mean dangers I'm messing it up well the dangers ah I mean this is why this dis modes been fired it's been five very thoroughly here because the waxer was in there if any of that's left in that's gonna turn to carbon and that reacts with the silver yeah the other thing is which is even worse if there's any moisture in there that turns to steam and bubbles at the top I'm just like Vesuvius then you get silver everywhere you could shotgun splat up soon for pellets how long it'll take to cool off I'm gonna give it about five minutes because I'm quite anxious to see you lunchtime day three and the new field is now speared with hundreds of canes marking all the metal detector responses what are the red dot red dots of a non-ferrous combining this with the geo fears and shovel pit results we've plotted out any hot spots with only a few hours to go the pressures on to decide where to dig there does seem to be a long line of finds there doesn't know where's that in the field that's someone on the edge of that hell yeah that wrench ah so Phil begins to dig a trench in the new field over the biggest response to see whether there are any finds and to analyze how they got into the ground it's nothing to spoil that's coming out as I in there could it be really really smaller okay place is very small yeah seems to be pretty localized in it is it in there for example no shut up for a while blow me try that in there then don't learn that go on someone watch me very very very very small 1x lead well I damned it's a lead seal you know the seals that you put on the backs that's what I think it is it's quite a nice little pattern on yeah our prized find who needs Roman when you've got a seal from a 19th century seed bag the fields now littered with trenches and Helen takes a quick tour to see what's turning up no features last bit came up courtesy of the detector was that the last bit we came out it looks let's get on that side yeah on the other side we are forgotten you don't mind okay thanks very much you're welcome this whole field is dotted with tiny discreet test pits and suddenly we've got Phil's zhongqing great hole what's that all about what we're hoping to prove is that there's a different pattern the finds in the top as opposed to that bit there there yeah then the subsoil and then on the on the natural and in features underneath there and how you getting all filth by enlarge all the finds are again there mainly Victorian post medieval the main thing is that we're recovering all the fines not just being selective with metal and certainly once we get through the topsoil which is where most of the fines are once we get into the subsoil we're not getting anything at all so what does all this tell us telling us quite a lot I mean it's telling us that this soil has to be manure that's where most of these modern finds are getting in finding their way in and then it's also telling us that below that there's a rather different soil which may represent pasture and then possibly earlier fields upon our beneath that with that earlier soil wasn't being heavily manure on bit frustrating for you though all this digging empty I spent my entire life digging holes and finding nothing I went with Ian you know the main digger driver here he and I dug 1,800 meters across Salisbury Plain in four days and what do we find one post hole was I disappointed no of course I wasn't disappointed the main thing is you've solved the problem we came here three days ago we came here with a set of questions we want to know about the forklift we wanted to know about the metal objects in the place aw and I think over those three days we've answered the specific targets I know what did really hack you off though the local pub didn't serve really oh yes you're right there well archaeologists are obviously more patient than I am this digging comes to a halt the molds ready to be cracked open and the snake bracelet revealed so after three days has finally done it is just about goodness I can't write on it love to try it on this please isn't it lovely so elegant she's beautiful this fantastic reproduction has given us an insight into how the snake bracelet was made but what about the rest of the wealth of Roman finds which drew us here in the first place our three days of careful study have given us a great chance to re-evaluate them but what do they tell us so Helen I can remember day one table groaning with loot wonderfully exciting important site and now we're down to this what's happened well what happened was when we got them all out of their bags for some detailed study and analysis we discovered that there'd been quite a lot of cases of misidentification and so we ended up really with a hard core which represents this little group here and what sort of activities do they represent these times well I think they represent quite a few things coins are people losing them through holes in pockets bags that kind of thing something as beautiful as that I think it's probably a broken brooch pin falls out of the clothing you can't ever find it again these Tara fallen off cart its various ways of getting into the soil but I've seen in sites and monuments record you know a brooch or something it was a sight exactly yes and perhaps a lot more significance was given to those finds and perhaps should have been so background scatter Helen I mean do these finds matter do you think well in some ways it doesn't really matter I suppose but we can look around I think people have been growing their food in this field for thousands of years I think it kind of puts us in touch with our ancestors if that doesn't sound too silly ininin really quite a quite a meaty kind of way I don't think it's dull at all I'm going to love this field Holly guys guys guys you invite the time team in and we find absolutely nothing your mates are gonna take the mick out are you huh how do you feel about it what you said you wanted something different tell me we've given it you thank you very much in pleasure so you're gonna keep on with your archaeology got plenty more fields to search plenty more fields to field walks oh yeah can you gonna keep on metal detecting certainly on a spit you'll give us another ring soon but certainly find something different we might not answer but to be fair to the guys we have learned something the archaeology has proved that these fields have been farmed for 2,000 years explaining how all the artifacts got here this could be any field in Britain and these finds many of which have come up in the last few hours could be seen to indicate the presence of a Victorian building or a Roman villa or a prehistoric settlement but now thanks to our better understanding of the results of metal detecting and field walking we realize that this is a not untypical assemblage is what Francis rather poetically calls the background noise of antiquity it's taken us over 400 metres worth of trenches to sort this little lot out and it makes you wonder how many other sites there are out there that exists merely on the basis of a few finds and a bit of wishful thinking oh and one other thing finally we've done what we always threatened after a hundred and sixty programs we found absolutely on earth hidden treasures with the very best time team digs is chosen by Tony Robinson and the team themselves available now on DVD coming up looks like the Tigers are gonna pay a heavy price for monkeying with the sharks shipwrecked Battle of the islands next on four

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Views: 385,208

Rating: 4.8443651 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: PPqCCaVbB7Y

Length: 48min 16sec (2896 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2013