Time Team S15-E02 Street of the Dead, Binchester, County

in my hand is a piece of Roman brick it's not very smart we've probably seen hundreds of bits of brick like this before except when you turn it over you can see that nearly 2,000 years ago someone scrawled a list of names in it there's Vincente there Morini there they were probably some of the thousand or so soldiers who were stationed here at Vinoba one of the largest Roman forts in northern England for these common soldiers life in the fort without food warm clothes and entertainment would have been impossible they had to rely on the attached veikkaus a civilian settlement that depended on and provided for all the soldiers needs but until very recently these settlements have been almost entirely overlooked by archaeologists so we're stepping outside the forts imposing ramparts to uncover the lost world of Vinh ovios veikkaus the bars the shops and beyond then the cemeteries which would have been such an essential part of life and death for Vincente Sankoh we've never had the opportunity to dig an entire veikkaus before probably because it's such a massive undertaking and we've got just three days to do it you you Ferno via orb in chester as it's known today lies on deer street the major Roman Road that ran from York through Hadrian's Wall to the far north of the Empire this strategic route was lined with forts the backbone of the Roman military presence in Britain and the water fin oviya is a fantastic excavated example it's a classic layout of barracks for up to a thousand men kitchens and stables and a common dance house complete with a luxurious bath house all surrounded by a massive stone wall and beyond that wall was the veikkaus the civilian settlement on which the fort depended but so far archeologists have almost completely ignored it there have been loads of people dig inside the fort but actually only one person has ever had a look outside in the Vegas area it's this chap the Reverend Hoople in 1891 and he produced this very interesting planner buildings here and we've got sketches of what he found now these are really substantial bits of masonry lots of different faces they do look like illustrations in a late 19th century children's book don't they and we have been ripped off by antiquarians before who've come up with all these fantasies which you actually can't substantiate is this stuff real well we've got something that can help us decide because look at that area we know is a sensational tool here we've got deer Street and look what looks exactly like these buildings very clearly here I mean you can even see it that looks like the long building there I mean it just looks wonderful it looks like this is a really accurate plan yes but whenever we're on a site that's been dug before I know what always happens and it makes me so depressed which is rather than looking at new archaeology we go for where the other bloke dug and we gonna have to do that this time we are done with reason - because when Hoople dug here I mean we don't actually know what he found we've got a few sketches and a probably pretty inaccurate plan so what we need to do is to stick a trench in here test the accuracy of the walls and actually see how much deposit he took out and if he left any how much he left so just go around the outside one's got to serve about that so we're opening our first trench over the area done by Hoople in the 19th century and it should contain substantial stone buildings belonging to the veikkaus but all this area including the fort is a scheduled ancient monument and that means our digging options here are very limited that shouldn't be too much of a problem though as we suspect the veikkaus extends well outside the scheduled area and that means Jeff is have begun one of the biggest surveys they've ever attempted on time team starting in the large field to the east of the fort the entire area on that side of this fence is scheduled so we can only put in one trench there but given how big that fault was we think the veikkaus might extend over here which is unscheduled where we can put in as many trenches as we like if we get the evidence stew and enjoy so far well they feel looks rather interesting Turner because we've got some aerial photographs there's the fall that's the fence you just walked along can you see that angle there that looked like it might be an annex a ditch feature something an annex onto the fort either that or it's evenings of an earlier fort or something of that sort of order and there's another aerial photograph which shows a road coming out of the entrance to the fort heading over that way so yeah there's a possibility of lots in here I mean there's no doubt from my point of view that it's full of archaeology there's your curving feature on the aerial photograph there it is on the geophysics and look at all these pits and all the other archaeology inside I mean one target we're definitely going to have to go for is is this ditch to see what its relationship is to the main four I mean as regards the area in Hull woman presumably as you go away it looks like it's thinning right out you wish oh you have you you definitely I don't fail this is where it gets exciting look God thought were those there laughing what is that thing doing the flower structure project without your temple don't you said it haha don't see your eyes dig it late morning on day one and it looks like geophysics legwork has already paid off with two intriguing targets we open our second trench over what appears to be two parallel ditches to the north of the fort first copy that down the line of the tape you're just walking over the bank you're just about to cross the first ditch and there's a probable second ditch behind me yeah down the bomb at the time if these are ditches we want to find out whether they were part of the veikkaus or an annex to the fort and almost immediately we've got our first find Ruhlman our first piece of shame in there is that nose red showing a yetzer official up C on a patent on it Camuto ah no it would have been decorated looked because you've gone through the middle look is that little raised area which is where the pattern would have been but it is pattern pattern shamian while Phil works his way through the plows soil our resident historian has been casting his somewhat skeptical eyes over our geophys I've never been in experience before where we showed the archaeologists this geophys and they all immediately went it's a temple it's a temple they're normally so cautious now this is the radar that John's done look at that face do you see that face how long did he tell you to look at that you old silly bear with me that's the roadway which is on the far side of the fence we think this here is our temple and that was the blob in the middle well I don't think it's a temple because a romano celtic temple wouldn't normally turn up here that which is that kind of shape i think it's much more likely to be a morsel in why do you say that well it reminds me of a mausoleum just outside Rome on the Appian Way which consists of an enclosure wall and then with the central tomb in the middle so what's the difference between a temple and a mausoleum and more Salim as a place that's dedicated to the memory of a deceased person you might actually worship there religiously you know you go perhaps and offer sacrifices to the spirits of your departed but I guess I'd guess there's more likely to turn out to be the mausoleum of maybe a commanding officer of this fall well finding the last resting place of a Roman commander doesn't happen every day and I have to admit the geophysics results are some of the most striking we've ever seen on time team so with a strong sense of anticipation we open our third trench over what looks like one of the walls our possible morsel iam that's almost exactly the line in the wall where that sheep track is well old you do that you know I said almost exactly almost exactly yeah I never known a sheep walk in a straight line no bit like yourself isn't it a little bit of a few beers a wee-wee is there something else we not on 20 so false alarm yeah Olli I'm it you know yeah Oh Ian Worsley we've had our fingers burnt before never more so than when re excavating antiquarian trenches and so far our first trench over the site of a 19th century dig hasn't delivered the stone buildings we'd hoped for just a confusing scatter of rubble but our second trench looks more promising we put this rather long trench in here because earlier today John did some jeff is here and he came up with two things which looked suspiciously like ditches Naomi can I come in your trench have you got the ditch we have got the ditch we are in one of them where is it ok if we come over here we can see this light patch you start patch just the edge of one of our ditches this is the ditch Phil ok and if we come this way yeah where this light patches this is our other edge so it's quite wide dick yeah it's a heck of a big ditch isn't it yeah well here it's just something we're just uncovering it looks like a nice piece of militaria which is which is kind of like a pestle and mortar for grinding food under stuff it again just another nice chunky vessel both Roman it's definitely looking that way so does that mean that we can date this ditch as Roman I should say so yeah and the other fish is over here Tracy have you got that ditch yet oh yeah we've got one injury here yeah sure I'm just working on and then the other side of it all the way down to about here I'm sorry I'm not really concentrating I've just noticed this down here what's that oh that's nice isn't it yeah that's a Roman gray where pot Wow could it be a burial urn it could be could well be it's gonna be really difficult to get out those man will have to block lift it I think just to keep it together it's fantastic the finds are really starting to come up already so we can be confident these ditches are Roman but we're still not sure when and why they were dug or whether they're part of the veikkaus we believe the fort was built to guard the point where dear Street crosses the river we're and Stuart thinks the landscape may help us to understand the relationship between the veikkaus and the fort I've built up the basic topography of the landscape as it is now on top of it I dropped in the fort the first thing you'll notice is half the fort's hanging at the landscape oh there is a very good reason for that because this side of the fort has actually slipped away there's been a big land slip on this side here by the river and it literally is gone so it looks rather nice but you don't have to lose that that side of it okay but what that illustrates really well is this high ground that the fort sits on because it actually sits on effectively a raised island doesn't it the river on one side the valley down here that's a really dramatic piece of topography four dominating this major crossing in the river here very distinctive it is the Roman writer Ptolemy who's writing during the Roman period about AD 120 actually mentions we know veer has been a big Antion City as if they might actually have been an Iron Age fort or settlement here before the roman fort we know the veikkaus extended along the roads to the east of the fort so there's a possibility it continued on the other side too but the substantial stone buildings we were expecting to find along the road to the east I'm missing the more I'm cleaning them up the more they look a bit of a pile really there's tops all in and around them yes it's just kind of it's a it's a ruffle nothing really it's beginning to look like whatever was found here in the 19th century has gone late on day one and there's still no sign anywhere of the shops and houses we'd expect to find in a veikkaus so we extend our survey even further over to the west of the fort in search of the lost settlement and we continue to survey the area to the north to see what happens to the double ditches for everyone especially geophysics it's been a long day but just as we're getting ready to leave for the night there's a dramatic discovery in our possible more solium trench there's a base now does that mean it's inverted we may just have found evidence of a burial because this pot looks like a cremation urn yeah it is interesting it is inverted in it Judy I could feel it goes right the way around it's incredibly thin walled well I'm amazed just how well thrown is I mean look at the thinness of those walls its way for a thinness it's a beautiful piece of pot and it really is I mean do you reckon if we got this roadside mausoleum job is it's going to be a crow motion well to have a complete vessel placed upside down in this County position the most obvious thing is that you would have a promotion barrel in it but you can't actually see anything at the moment alright we might have to cut the stretch back a bit yeah well after boxing if this is a cremation it lends weight to guys theory that this is a morsel ium but it's a long shot we've never found a roman mausoleum on time team before it's been an extraordinary day and right at the end geophysics have come up with another curveball the continuing survey of the site shows that the double ditches we've been excavating extend around the fort and that suggests these ditches look less like an annex or part of the veikkaus and more like a huge earlier fort if we're right that would push the history of Vinh oviya back towards the very beginning of Roman occupation in the north of England it looks like we're in for another busy day tomorrow beginning of day two in our search for the Roman settlement around the big fort here in Ben Chester in the Northeast and yesterday afternoon John came up with some extraordinary geophys here where we expected to see shops and houses John has found this which he thinks is a new fort which is quite extraordinary but that provides us with a bit of a dilemma do we continue to investigate inside this new fort do we go outside to search for the settlement or veikkaus as the Romans called it or do we dig in both remember we've only got two days left Mick that's what we're thinking it's the other is that it is it is that we've got a lot to do already so adding extra sort of interesting projects is something we're a bit weary of we don't really want one little hole because it might not tell us what in my budget so you know we watch it well thank you very much for terminus telling them all now what's the solution what's the solution I think we've we've gotta try and what we do have to try and resolve it we I mean thankfully we have got to what we do we've got to die so more days we can just rot good diggers that's amazing they've told me absolutely nothing yeah why do you think that this is a fort why couldn't it be medieval or anything there's a couple of things about getting too complicated look at these earlier results we've got clear stone building showing in the physics you don't have these these look like timber slots and pits within these defenses so that says to me barrack blocks earlier fort alright guy what's the significance of that look this is very exciting we've concentrated all our attention up till now on the later stone fort but what I'm convinced we've got here is an early timber fault that probably pushes us right back into the first century and that big Roman push into the north okay so where do we dig well fell and I reckon our best bet is probably to extend this into that area there yeah but remember that in addition to that we've got two possible cremation burials yeah we've got a whole flippin morsel iam there which everyone was really excited about yesterday well I'm are we gonna be extreme to your form what the one that the old antiquarian originally done yes a lot of work to do can we do all that well I think so if we only extend this role and do something new if we didn't think it was possible we wouldn't do it so you reckon we can do what we need to do but yeah we're stretching ourselves but just don't come with anything else nothing else to find so we extend trench to into the area we hopes an early fort and continue to excavate our possible morsel IAM trench we've now uncovered this fantastic wall and we need to work out how it relates to our potential cremation ur really nicely Mary's NER with that that should be the interface according to jeff days of whatever we've got it I'll tell you word for that with not one but two discoveries of potentially national significance our hunt for the veikkaus takes a back seat with only mat left scraping away in search of the substantial stone buildings recorded in the 19th century mat we've got a mausoleum down there we've got cremation burials we've got a brand new roman fort that no one's ever seen before what have you got in your twelve part from all this stone rubble we've got hope and we've got a day and a half as well so see how it goes can held the end of its when they go through what's left her so far we found very little archaeological evidence of the living but we do have plenty of evidence of the dead in our long trench bridges excavating what could be a cremation burial she's found a coin next to the pot and suspects it was originally placed inside there when you block left I guess well that's it I mean the nice thing would be if we could find some croatian bone something like that and in our trench over the possible morsel IAM jack is still excavating what we hope is another promotion Jackie what have you been doing almost a day ago you said you're gonna lift that pot and it's still there yeah that's like change of plan because if you look behind you we thought we were outside this building we're actually inside it because we've got the return wall that is a fantastic archaeology how many times on time team have you shown me something which you tell me is a structure but it just looks like three stones to me even I can see what a robust wall that is three stones make a wall and we've got a lot more than three so that's good down there so what we're going to do now we've we've got this vessel here in fact we've got slightly more than one vessel we've actually got to cool and often they're placed inside this building so what we want to do is see how they relate to that return wall as it runs along there so we're going to strip away a little bit more of the ground to that size so you're going to take this part of the trench from here back this way yeah so it's going to go out about two meters in that direction so it's found where that wall isn't exactly how they sit in relationship to it this new one looks even in better nick than the other one and much bigger - so what do you think the story of this trench is so far well this is starting to look like a possible mausolea so we've got a standing building in which will have been there for quite a long time inside which and potentially burials have been made cremation burials which is what this may be but we don't quite know how they relate to each other date wise all right it is Johnny exciting we're becoming more and more confident that this is a more solium and we want to see more of it so we're extending the trace yet again the mausoleum alone would be a major discovery but we also think we might have discovered a huge earlier fort we know the fort that's visible today was built around 130 AD so to prove this one's earlier we need dateable evidence and they've got some decent edges to this dish you get down into it now which was yeah it'll be nice to see how deep this goes now I reckon is gonna actually come a fair old way down I hope so have you got a hit coming out of it yeah we've got some nice bits um this is lovely Samian Bowl yoshino ocean you've got a date on that late first early second century and you're not your well you're nowhere near the bottom of the dense roof weekend first century stuff this far up makes you wonder what you got from lower down well hopefully lots more what you gonna spit of bit of bubble wrap ah ah yeah that is pretty Roman because I'm so gorgeous Oh Annette a that coloring isn't it the way it catches the light and that's well and truly stratified in the dishes well yeah that is from the same context as the say me and that's the second one down here so actually let's hope we get some more bits as we go further down it's a promising start these late first century finds take us back before the construction of the stone fort in around 130 AD but there's no dating evidence in our first trench in fact despite Matt's earlier optimism there's little sign of the stone buildings we expected to find so if you're sorting this out now Matt yep we've got it that is the bottom of hoop house trench finally right you can see though there's none of this lovely masonry left and we know that's the bond of his trench because look the most exciting find of trench one so far no man is easy you're getting good at it is been a 19th century real open and that was right well it's from down there in the back field so that's confirmed that it's Victorian so once he'd done those nice drawings wore that nice masonry somebody must have pinched the stonework in fact no dating evidence in trench one bridge is hoping the coin from the pot in trench two could provide us with a date for the ditches you can see the original surface of it is completely gone you can see how nobly that is but I have managed to pick out of the corrosion some letters coming up around here yeah and I can see the face of a man looking to the right yes but who is he and what does it say well I can tell from the the size of the coin straightaway that its first or second century but do you see how on the man's face there's no beard mm-hmm okay barefaced and that puts it pretty well into the first century because most of the second century emperors have beards so great and I can tell you straight away looking at his face that this is the Emperor Vespasian I can just tell from the profile now that means that this coin was deposited sometime in the late first century or possibly on into the early second century when that would have circulated so you know it's pretty good sort of date for us it's quite early and you know and it goes nicely for the dating of that trench or trench number two yes this coin is the strongest evidence yet that the ditch is entrenched to belong to an early fort we're getting lots of finds from this trench but the truth is none of them are exclusively military to confirm our theory that this is an earlier fort we need to find evidence of military activity such as a barracks or granaries I knew that we were going to extend this trench in that direction because Jackie wanted to sort out her cremation burials but now we've extended it all the way up to here even though this morning the archaeologists said to me they didn't want to do any more archaeology other than what was already on their plates and they didn't want to find anything new but they have and now I named these three oh man thought you were gonna come out as Abed why look at the geophysics well not only look at the geophysics look at the trench when Jackie extended she got the main wall of the mausoleum and she got that second wall and if you look at the radar we've got these fantastic results there's the main mausoleum wall here's the second wall cutting across here turning through a right angle when you see we were debating earlier whether we got one or more mausoleums or mausolea along here all indeed whether we got part of the temple complex now it looks from the geophysics we've got a series of these Moslems going down the road that's fantastically interesting it's that sort of thing we get a lot of in this country so if we've got lots of mausoleums in a long line what does that tell us it's a classic bit of Roman culture who go off to Italy today and you visit the port of Rome at Ostia you can see the tomb still laid out one by one beside the throne if you go to Rome and walk down the Appian Way there's tombs all the way along if you go to Pompeii you can walk through the street of tombs one final question what do we think this is well that's why we're going to excavate that we thought this was so interesting we ought to look at it and open it up and so that's what we're doing so in a year our of two stone will be able to tell you that when you've dug it when we've dug it like you weren't going you're digging this morning yeah lost and gone tear off don't be glad we were dogged yeah exactly this is the first row of more saloons to be found in Britain for a hundred and fifty years and only the second ever to be discovered it's a find of national significance and with the strange circular feature and Jackie's pots this trench promises to get better and better Jackie this is the longest-running story in 1526 hours later you still haven't lifted those pots yeah unfortunately the story keeps changing and it's changed yet again believe it or not this rather pale material you can see here yeah that's somebody's skull or at least what's left of it this is very very acid soil so it's more or less dissolving and those are bits of tooth that are in there and I can just about see the cut of a grave going through here now so it looks like we've got a burial and animation burial it's been made with a head here and the pots have been placed up by the head so those pots have been placed as grave Goods in with this individual and the idea how old that person would have been well one of the teeth that I've got out here that's a premolar tooth and it's slightly worn so that I know that that person must be at least over 16 that might be all I can say so what happens now well I want to extend down here and see if I can find the rest of the grave outline and see if there's anything else in with this individual so those pots are unfortunately going to be there a little bit longer I was hoping that as the Sun set you'd lift the pots and I do my end of day piece to camera well you'll just have to adapt it slightly dear I'm sure you can in fact on this dig it seems we're constantly adapting and the more the story changes the more questions we encounter was the mausoleum built for this person when was our newly discovered fort constructed and what's this mysterious circular feature we've now got just one day left to find the answers it's the beginning of day three at Alverno via roman fort in county durham and when making an early start because this is turning out to be one of our most productive digs ever so far we've uncovered what could be a huge earlier roman fort and not one but a whole row of morsel eum's the first to be excavated for over a hundred and fifty years we're bracing ourselves for another busy day and with such a wealth of archaeology we've got our work cut out if we're going to make sense of it all do you remember from the geophysics there was that circular response in the center I'm just wondering if this is the building then this perhaps well I only know enough I'm only going on the evidence and Miao's late yesterday afternoon geophysics came up with a strange circular feature next to our mausoleums but making sense of the layouts proving tricky I thought we had a big one err with some dividing walls within it well perhaps what you thought was not road / ha I can't believe that in trench 2 over what we hope is an earlier fort we're looking for evidence of military activity such as barrack blocks excavating this is no easy task instead of large stone blocks we're looking for traces of timber and subtle changes in the soil marking the bottom of the ditches see I don't know if that's natural or a primary silt that's fallen into the bottom of the ditch no it's absolutely err its soft as butter but the trench is producing some good fines guy we've got a fair bit of pottery that's yeah I'm out of here we got a nice piece vamp for us some interesting pieces of grey ware that this is the real star find look at that and those three will join together I can tell it's a Mian I expect you can tell me a lot more than that with South Cordish say Mian I can tell from the decoration which we've got so much of that this is going to be about 70 to 90 AD we do know about individual potters that's what you can tell from decorated semen it's very tightly associated with individuals also we've got these key historical events where Samian has been found and the classic example is Pompeii August 79 AD Vesuvius erupts and one of the casualties is a crate of fresh salmon that's just arrived in the city and that's been excavated so we know exactly which Potter's were working in the south core at that time but the best thing about it is that we've got so much of the decoration we can definitely get this reconstructed late morning on day three and an exhausted geophys team finally pack up their magnetometers they've surveyed an area the size of 18 football pitches it's one of the largest areas ever surveyed on a time team but it's been worth it this has got to be some of the most spectacular geophys with a very something isn't it really is I mean we've taken mark Knowles earlier survey you did it for junior quest and we've combined them with ours and so we've got this whole landscape picture now just in the geophysics um it's actually the patterning within that that's so important you can see different parts of the site you can see that the veikkaus is on both sides of the fort for example that's important because it tells the main axis therefore width and that's to accept I wouldn't expect to veikkaus on either side of that axis all that's fine but you've got to admit when we came here we said we would look at the settlement of ekeus then when we found the first morsel iam suddenly we all became so captivated by that that we poured all our resources in here I mean we've done virtually no trenches elsewhere if we've been digging this site and we've found the veikkaus and hadn't found a morsel in we'd have put all the trenches in the beacon absolutely the fact that that turned up but that's actually relatively unusual it's almost what happens in archaeology you know you you set out with with one thing we've answered actually the question about the settlement from the geophysics I think that's quite revealing what you've just said though basically you wanted to dig it not not for me I do and it's looking more and more like it was the right decision with yet another surprise in our mausoleum trench Jackie's discovered a handful of iron nails which means the person was probably buried in a wooden coffin with the bowls placed on top it appears the grave was cut into the mausoleum sometime after its construction perhaps for a descendant of the mausoleums original occupant it's a window into the rituals and beliefs of the lost world of in oviya a world were beginning to piece together just glancing across this we've got some massive things like these huge great big tile yeah those are bound to be made locally because of course tile is very fragile if you have to carry the long distance it's bound to get broken but there's a single little tiny piece of pottery over here which i think is the most interesting bit of all even though it's almost the smallest piece we have now that is off the side wall of an early form of decorated Samian builder and its profile is rather like the rim is here it'll vertical here and then it curves right down like that okay and there's just enough of the decoration for me to say that it's probably been made between the years 70 to 85 AD now that takes us right back to a governorship of somebody called Patil II as kiri Allah see there's 78 right at the beginning of when the Romans are up here is that's exactly right now that that of all the pieces here to my mind is the most interesting because it gives us that very early day this tiny piece of pot from trench 2 is powerful evidence of an early previously unknown for tattva novia dating to the very beginning of the Roman in the north yesterday we all got really excited about this area here with this morsel iam and Jackie's pot then we found another morsel iam here but then towards the end of the day John started to get really excited about an area over here where he found this mysterious circular thing so fil have we found a mysterious circular feature we have but it's not circular it's square this is it well why does it look so well I think the fact is that the inside of it does look circular but actually when you look at the geophysics to see look you've got that straight edge there and there's another straight edge there I think you could interpret that as a square mausoleum as I'm mausoleum for a very small person on that's no not at all I mean there's perfectly feasible to have a cremation in there and you can actually get a burial in there I mean when you look at the size of E and against that the inside thing you could actually squeeze a human body in there and get it in in a problem so there could still be a variable there could well be a burial in there bridge nice piece of masonry over there yeah I'm glad you notice that it is indeed it looks to be part of um a column you see this curved edge around here that would have been the front of it why is it flat on the other side well it's really being put up for aesthetic reasons rather than structural so of course as it was standing there this flat side will in flush against the wall of the mausoleum and then you would have just seen that curved column on the front so there's no need to actually build a round column yeah but this is only half the story isn't it you got something fairly small over there but you've got this massive building here you've got a wall where I returned there a wall there a return there is huge ah but you see you're taking the obvious interpretation which was exactly the interpretation that I came to when I first came here thinking that you did have this one big building but you see what we've got on the geophysics is this which actually contradicts that that there's going to be a wall across there literally going across there and we have no archaeological evidence for it so we're going to continue digging for the wall that geophys says is here while extending our trench to see if these two outer walls do join up the truth is it's mid-afternoon on day three and the layout of the morsel ear is still a puzzle race an and guy are looking at possible models guys suspects each morsel iam was made up of a central chamber surrounded by a walled enclosure but to confirm this we need to find all four walls oh gosh it is [ __ ] there innit yeah there look those areas is feed grit so let's go and ask the door sock yes round round round on there second to the door what's this gonna do look it's closed up against that threshold there yeah and saved but the threshold jam they're blocking and then here even brilliant coming at the old oh here it starts again excellent that was worth doing now we'll move on back here what does take it round a couple of times and then I'll start taking me with a soil down sign in the mausoleum next door excavating the pots has reached a critical stage what do you think the chances are it's gonna come out in one piece I'm not really a betting woman yeah so is the idea to that both of these will be emptied in the lab yeah I mean this one at looking at from this side hasn't got a lot in it which has reduced this is light makes it slightly more difficult because it's not supportive no wider than a just get a little mobile yep yeah okay like I didn't leave it sideways looking back down there right huh there you go Charlie good well done she extending the trench has produced not only the return wall as hopes but a beautifully preserved or socket very pneumo no got metal toe caps wave your machine overlaps low door plug and she Fisher is a metal plug in there that's a big metal plug in there then can I am living hell yes well I am but it's a piece of engineering - you think with all these raise [ __ ] around here flush it all off we're gonna head a devil they do that and then they got to put a plug in there just for a door for a mausoleum I mean that's an incredible amount of work that really is we're ready to lift the second bowl it looks almost perfect and we're hoping it will stay that way when we lift it it's very hard to kill some stones yeah well I think what it's done is I think they've been on top of the coffin sheet and a slid off yes as it's rotted yeah too many side just it's wedged up against that edge right I'm just gonna is that moving it yes it is yes okay okay look at that oh it's a crack down this side but that's it otherwise yes whew the two parts date to the late 2nd or early third centuries and what probably filled with offerings to the deceased scented oils or wine inside the central mausoleum we've found the wall we were looking for it seems that this was an internal wall and not a separate morsel iam with a beautifully crafted entrance columns and fine stonework it's becoming clear this was built for a very important person possibly for a general late on day 3 and trench 3 just keeps on surprising us but our trench in search of the early fort has been almost the opposite with ditches and pottery but little signs so far of buildings or military activity yesterday we put this trench in here because there was what seemed to be a big double ditch which we thought was the outside defences of a roman fort that no one had ever found before and sure enough we've got the pottery dating and it is rhomin so then Mick decided he wanted to extend it to see if he could find any evidence of that fort in the ground buildings and hards and roads and whatnot have we done and it's worked out extremely well because you just walked over the site of the rampart running that direction shouldn't be made of turf and timber and clay and so on big great the wall across there and at the back of that you see this orangey clay area this is probably either an oven or the base of another or burning associated with nothing's because there were often ovens in the back of the rampart guy why would you put an oven in the back of a rampart well this is a timber fort so your barrack blocks are made out of wood the last thing you want them to do is to burn down so you have your bread up and over here safely behind the rampart there the other side the road because we've actually got the road looks you're these cobbles yeah so the roads running in this direction behind the rampart and then the other side of the road we starting to get the foundation for the timber building we've got timber slots we've got rows of nails where the beginning of the Front's of the barracks or other military buildings we're going off into the fort that direction but one of the reasons that we wanted to dig this trench guy was because we wanted some dating yeah we have had some very useful bits of pottery out of here one little piece in particular takes us back to the seventies ad and that's great because historically we know that in the early 70s there's a governor called Patil E as Kerry Alice who has brought the Roman army up from the North Midlands right into this part of England to wipe out this troublesome northern tribe called the Brigantes now we may well have one of the fort's from that campaign which is boolean and there's probably a series of early forts like that to control northern Britain this has been a truly remarkable dig we came to this hill in search of a veikkaus the civilian settlement that supported the roman fort and in the process we uncovered an entire lost landscape we located the veikkaus along the road on either side of the fort but we also discovered a huge earlier fort which pushes the history of the novia back to the very beginning of roman occupation in the north and a row of three more saliyah the first group to be discovered in britain for a hundred and fifty years we came here in search of the living but found a city of the Dead a street lined with grand tombs a little piece of the Roman world in the far north of the empire and at its heart perhaps the grandest morsel ium of all okay Antonius my brother and fellow comrade soldier at the mighty fault oven over up there we've come down the street of tombs to venerate the memory of our great ancestor our great great grandfather the mighty general who once acted as a soldier here and we've come down to his tomb and we got to go through the vast mighty door that would have once been here pivoting thereon iron and then we come to the mausoleum area and towering above us here is his grave with an inscription that records his name his mighty exploits and around here other graves of his brother and his cousin's other members of the family and these are the men who make you and me important people in the fort today and our great hope one day is that we'll be buried here too as great chaps and as part of that we brought down a meal of chicken and wine so that our great ancestor could share in that meal with us after an amazing three days it's time for a celebration of our own we've set up a Roman - Verner the kind that undoubtedly flourished in the veikkaus complete with authentic Roman style ale or something me oh yeah yeah yeah yeah the use of straw - I'm held on told it's the deal for clastic do the oil a lawyer a minister slugging it straight down what's in this what I see the beautiful basic ingredients there's there's wheat barley and oats as the grains just water nothing to be simpler better bread to make it give it the yeast and then to make it better sting in there some he's got to be good for some and it really not something I like any anger at least - right okay that's anyone what a great day Oh Cheers to the fort or should I say the fort's Arvin oh yeah for more information about this week's dig as well as all the past excavations visit the website at channel for calm Time Team the news is next

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

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Rating: 4.8244052 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season, argeologie, archaeological

Id: u4AwKq2I8ss

Length: 47min 37sec (2857 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2013