Time Team S15-E09 Saxons on the Edge, Stonton Wyville, Leicestershire

take a look at this I bet you're thinking that's just another piddling piece of time team pot but it could be the key to something that's really hard to come by hundreds more bits of part from the anglo-saxon period that's the centuries after the Romans left have been found up here at nave Hill in Leicestershire could they be cremation urns is this an early cemetery or could this even be evidence of one of the rarest and trickiest of archaeological prizes an anglo-saxon settlement as usual we've got just three days to find out we all know the story Roman Britain was a thriving bustling place but when the Romans left a bunch of Germans came over destroyed romano-british civilisation and introduced Saxon culture trouble is there's so little archaeology that we don't know much about this time that's why people call it the Dark Ages but in Leicestershire archaeologists have begun to find some clues and one of their most promising sites lies here on nave Hill in a rural part of the Midlands eleven miles southeast of Leicester local archaeologists here have found hundreds of pieces of pot just lying on the surface and crucially one piece is decorated pointing to the early anglo-saxon period from the 5th to 7th centuries the good news is the Sun looks like it's going to come out yeah and we've got 300 manky pieces of pottery is that good news as well I think that's very good news we've either got an anglo-saxon cemetery or an anglo-saxon settlement or the more money we would be on settlement this isn't their picture yes he's not terribly informative this this dark area might be settlement what we gonna do with it well we've got existing results of Phil walkin and these dark blue areas coincide with the areas where they found most of the pottery and what we're hoping is that these actual concentrations are sitting over the top of sacks and buildings though this one here we've actually looking at it again and then we'll put in a whacking great trench how big it's gonna be 60 metres long by at least five metres wide what's that big yeah sounds big doesn't it but it's really the minimum size I mean this is my kettle B which is a very similar site that was excavated about about ten years ago very close to here you realize well on this plan 60 metres about that long and plunk it there or there or there you'd miss everything anglo-saxon but the good thing about I kettle B is that this area of buildings and this one they're on top of concentrations of pottery so if we can find out exactly where our concentrations are drop a trench down on them we can we have a really good chance of being able to define our buildings so we're going to stick a trench in and we're going to come straight down on an anglo-saxon building and you're being a tiny bit Mary Poppins if you think of the number of anglo-saxon sites we've dug on time team over the years and what do we get stains in the ground if we're lucky isn't this gonna be another three days of hell well what's the alternative so I mean this is a pivotal point in our country's past and we have a duty to investigate sites is it in this site needs investigation the alternative is just to give up I found buildings like that and every time I see one later Bingle up my spine GF is get going with a huge task of investigating the hill the aim is to locate the best place for a huge 60 metre trench we're hoping that together the geophysics and pottery scatter will lead us to identify some post holes holes in the ground the once held timber posts these would have supported distinctive Saxon buildings either halls or buildings called grub huts built over a pit but before we even start digging some amazing geophysics results trellis panel works any gorge on which all wow look at that that's very good that is really exciting but he doesn't say anglo-saxon to me I thought the anglo-saxons liked circular structures but we don't get ditches like that around either settlements or cemeteries do we I mean look at this really large pit response it's just possible that that could be Saxon could could that be one of these sunken featured buildings that's what I was meaning right is in this area here around where Phil wanted to put in his long trench yeah I know I my thoughts are maybe shorten it yeah you could do 35 metres taking the enclosing ditch and look at some of the features inside see what the date is I mean after all part of our job is to characterize what's on the site so if you tang there Saxon and it's Iron Age as well we need to know that so this could be Saxon but it could also be much earlier from the Iron Age the centuries before the Romans arrived Phil opens a trench that will cross this ditch and critically the area of high concentration of sax and pottery finds now looks like a post overnight well ah I'll clean this up but I think it's better decorated Saxon pottery yeah yeah they owed it to an on pottery expert when I do that I feels like stone Lee will be riotously yes don't feels understandably cautious about anything he finds because we don't have a great track record of locating anglo-saxon settlements in Lange course we were looking for evidence of an Anglo Saxon community but there's nothing really so no bank no ditch no such as Dore we're dealing with a hedge we'd make a little edge line okay right well we obviously stock right in Hartlepool we opened up seven trenches in search of an Anglo Saxon nunnery but found no signs of any structures so you've had a good time but we haven't found anything we've had an amazingly challenging tongue we had a lot of fun but no we haven't found anything but in eastery after 14 trenches looking for a Saxon Palace we thought we'd finally got something tell me if this is evidence of a sex and community there's some comfort that other archaeologists haven't done much better there are only eight fully excavated Anglo Saxon settlements in the whole of Britain Mick why is anglo-saxon archaeology so hard to find well I think it's because at that time there's not as much pottery around some parts of countries another tool and the whole material cultured doesn't have as much metalwork you know it's not only much bronze or stuff like so it's very difficult for archaeologists to find and of course the buildings are built at timber so when they rot away and disappear it's not like Roman buildings the stuffs not there to be found so it's much more difficult to find the stuff and you're very optimistic about this place why we are very lucky here in Leicester and north answered that the pottery survives on the surface so you know from from the field up there this morning I picked up that amount of materials probably more than you've seen yeah in your whole career Vincent they green with envy you see because we don't get as much of stuff like that down a par the world here you've got whole sequence of things yes we've been at it for 30 years round here and it is like fairies you've got to believe before you find it because this stuff is the sort of stuff you can walk over so easily you know but once you actually believe it's there people find it you probably know more about the anglo-saxons around here than anybody and yet you're very excited about this site aren't you it is a particularly big one you know this could be some sort of estate center but really nicest it could be but we please please please guys don't use the video if we start looking for a palace we'll be here til Christmas and we won't find one for a moment let's just bask in the glory all that fairy dust but there is the possibility the finds didn't come from buildings here Saxon pottery can also come from cremation urns so there may be a symmetry on the hill the anglo-saxons buried people fully testing the ground but also they burnt them put them into pots and then buried them in the ground if you can imagine a funeral pyre up here you would see it literally for miles around yeah really spectacular right a spectacular thing so it looks like we found a good place for a Saxon cemetery so this will be our you think our first target upon top of the hill if we're looking for it for evidence for a cemetery I quite like that I do personally yes Saxon cemeteries are often discovered by finding metal goods in the burials so metal detectorists get going on top of the hill oh yeah we might well I want coming in there meanwhile back in fills trench sastric wada Oh a big know the big bird does big big big extra charcoal that's it what a million I think we are I think we are to post holes in the line that's a building yeah watch that wall no more SAP they were old is it oh it's a rim as well look at that oh yeah oh that's beautiful look at that how old what so it's early mid Saxon so what yes for 450 850 ah wait till Tony hears this Eddie was so skeptical as out this morning is believed is he gonna eat some humble pie yet or anything to do incredibly on day one we've hit Saxon post holes dated by pottery in them if they are from a building it suggests there's a Saxon settlement here and we now think the pottery must have come from a settlement not a cemetery as metal detectorists hadn't unearthed any metal grave goods it's not long before Phil uncovers even more post holes in the ground Phil you've got lots of little white flags if you found something it's a row of posts tiles Tony we've got one two three four five six possibly a seventh all in a line and one two three of them have got enormous sherds of Saxon pot reanima when you say post holes if they're all in a line like that why couldn't that be a fence the thing is that the spacings between individual posts is so close that I don't think it is a offence the only time I've ever seen anything like this before it was in a saxon building and of course haven't got these bits of pottery in and does suggest to me that we could be in a settlement not out in the middle of a field in fifteen years of time team can you ever remember us having a robust anglo-saxon house no but I can think of many many times when we've looked for what I think this is a building I think it's a very good chance that that's exactly what we're looking at it's a real stroke of luck to find an alignment of closed cells like this with us Phil Fez well dated pottery right in the surface was this only geofence no it's not but remember this trench was placed here because of the dance concentration of Saxon pottery I mean it really is like you just scraped away it was not lucky it was the dense concentration of Saxon pottery it was you it was dubious about it if we've got what you think we've got what's the significance of it well the significance first of all is that we have very few buildings of this sort from this part of England we don't have that many well-preserved plans of angle sacks and buildings of this sort at all so really quite exciting to find one to find one again with dateable pottery really very unusual so no hype this is genuinely a really exciting archaeological find absolutely absolutely these are not easy to find and they are very very few from this part of England well and Phil you'll not paid off it was not lucky this trench was put in on the concentration of pottery I told you so I said lucky unbelievable it seems like we've got a Saxon building but we need to excavate more to find out what the building is and to find other buildings within the settlement we extend our trench from 30 meters to 60 meters long to try and find more Saxon postholes the state one comes to a close there's a huge effort in the search for more dark stains in the hope of identifying a whole Saxon structure but then something else appears in the ground this morning I was incredibly pessimistic about this site because whenever we've looked for an Anglo Saxon settlement before we've never found anything that I found very interesting at all but already today we've got these six or so post holes that indicate a major building and now look at this it may look just like a stain to you and me but the archaeologists are saying that this is a grub hut one of those big buildings with a big pit underneath it so already this is turned out to be the best anglo-saxon settlement site we've ever had tomorrow let me get better beginning of day two here in Leicestershire and yesterday we gave ourselves the seemingly impossible task have tried to find an anglo-saxon settlement here in this rather dreary and apparently never-ending field and yet within a couple of minutes of starting the excavation look what we found over here boss boss boss about six post holes all in a line which seemed to indicate some kind of building and then late in the afternoon over here without yellow string is something which Mick calls a grub heart lick what exactly is a grub heart it's a tiger anglo-saxon building which either has a sunken floor under it or it has a cellar under a suspended floor is it called a grub Hut because it's a sort of kitchen no it's from the German Grubin house so unless archaeologists a really bad at foreign language so we have to call it a grub hut look I like your idea of a kitchen now we've got it what are we doing with it well you see we've laid the string out because we're going to put a section across it to make sure that's what it is and we'll import me see what finds there are in because that'll help us a lot to say what it is so we've got our rectangular house here and apparently some sort of grub parts here what does that tell us well this is the normal arrangement anglo-saxon settlers people are living in the in the halls in those sort of Postell houses they're working in in the Grabbe our grub hut could give us important clues to the people living here although the construction of grub huts is hotly debated we know they were built over a pit in the ground where today there might be important finds preserved by my post on he's pounced only offended the postholes we found yesterday suggest a different type of Saxon building one built without a pit and with posts we tell you what now the sun's gotta clears and shows up ever so well now you see the features more better but we still don't know what this building is exactly so Ian's delicately digging to try and find more post holes while Jeff is are finding even more features even though we're well into day two we've still only put in one trench it's that long one behind us to fill put in yesterday lunchtime although I suspect all that's about to change because John has wandered off over here and he's looking pensively at the ground what's happening well look you remember this curving ditch we had yesterday it's now square I am in there fantastic results what do you think it is me well it looks I&A some of this but you know there could be angular section on the top of it you often get that you know an iron 87 with anglo-saxon material over the top of it so ten past eleven day two trench - yeah Tracy opens a second trench where we might find more signs of Saxon settlement we can't tell from a building whether it was incoming Saxons from Germany living here on native British who adopted Germanic architecture but the hill itself might give us a clue what a fantastic sight this would have been for an anglo-saxon settler I think it's a bit drafty to be honest I think I'd rather be down in the valley bottom all right it wasn't a fantastic way for them to live so why did they live up here in the Iron Age there were people living up on the tops the hills down in the valleys as well early Roman period we find that progressively the sites on the tops that they'll disappear in the settlement is concentrated down in the valley bottoms and then there's a whole new set of sites that come back up onto the uplands again so do you think there are different people on the top of the hill zone I think perhaps up here we might actually be seeing the incoming Saxons on these hilltops on these defensive sites you're slightly AG places where perhaps newcomers into a countryside where they don't know what their welcome is might well finish it up eventually the Saxons interbred with the native British and today it's possible using DNA to investigate whether someone's ancestors were incoming Saxons we've commissioned a test on our own Phil Harding he's got a Saxon isalud surname after all Phil gave a DNA sample a few weeks ago and he and Helen demonstrate how he did it it's great briskly against the inside of the cheek for 20 strokes you are connecting cheek cells not saliva so be sure to press firmly against the cheek and rotate it while you're going oh oh oh oh okay okay okay brilliant that one goes in there too is that it no yes no no seal the packet with tape and write your name in the box we'll find out about Phil's ancestry tomorrow we'd been hoping we'd find even more of the Saxon settlement on the slope of the hill but there's no sign of Saxon structures but with GF is continuing to cover the field it's not long before another target appears look we've got lots of Isis and these look quite interesting whether they're small enclosures pits it's gotta be worth trying to date these so if you got a likely place that you'd like us to look at there well I think if we went into that sort of corner there where we've got the ditch attorney okay well let's mark that out and let's let's get a hole in and see what it is keep our fingers crossed it sucks so Tracy and Ian move to open trench three near the top of the hill stewards and historian are out investigating our Hills position in the landscape there are Saxon name villages around our site called the lanterns Church liked a nice light to West Langton for plankton Turlington what does always like tuna it's a real Saxon derivation Oh a Langton is that is the long the long enclosure like long town long town right the lanterns are separated from nave hill by a river with a Ford linking them this river was once the boundary of the hundred a Saxon administrative area I love these old routes where they almost got forgotten now you almost can imagine yourself walking the same route as Eddie all those generation our Gator Land Rover yep Richard this is a good place to see the sight from his neck sounding see the people walking along the horizon up there got there where I've brought you it we shall drove along through the lane turns up Blair there's a site there tooth or plankton and we're at that crossing here of the river although this stream looks fairly insignificant now you can see on the map the major topographic boundary it's also a hundred boundary everything seems to be coming together converging at this point we've got a major river crossing we've got major Sachs and territorial administrative boundaries we've got roots all coming together and on the skyline up there is a settlement that landing so the river was a boundary in Saxon times route ways led to the Ford crossing from which the hill occupied a prominent position suggesting an important site and on the hill fills revealing more evidence of a Saxon structure cracking Post oldest wrong Jackie you're sure shaping up Lloyd well it is not the same shape as yours for a starter which might be you could see yeah it's not as deep as I I think I'm getting close to the bottom here but it's really horrible stuff down the bottom I'm not entirely convinced I'm quite there yet it's very very mixed material the other thing to obey with mr. Shaw use of them they're much much bigger look at that they're going after one there yeah they're quite substantial aren't there here they gotta be structural I think sorry some damping fence oh not very likely it not only that not only that if it was a fence you'd expect to see it running on in both direction yes this is a discrete set of post holes I think sure it must be one side of a building yeah so not a fence but a wall we still need more evidence to assure there was a Saxon settlement here and at the far end of trench one Matt's are just beginning to unearth something Paul we got a couple of minutes I'm just half sectioning look at this bit that's coming out and yeah there you go let's get that's the biggest thing I've seen on site so far well that's not sex and that's I've seen that one cleaned up but that's RNA I think right absolutely typical just like so many times before on time team we look for a Saxon settlement and come up with something else but then more pottery surfaces on top of the hill um however look I'd like a car like that into don't try this at home kids yeah signage so even more Iron Age on our site evidence of people living here over five hundred years before the Saxons even arrived in England and it's not long before Paul's dashing back to trench one tree come down yeah come down here I'll start handing you the goods Oh fantastic ate all the same pot in it yeah ah but look at this bit oh you got the Oh fabulous look at that that's quite like Iron Age I think isn't it that's really unusual and seen one quite like that because that's presumably the rim the rims up here is yeah the top yeah might still be in there actually that break looks utterly fresh well there we go yes he does Oh fastest oh yeah nice it keeps coming although Mo's of it and some more yeah it's all the same poppers also invert is a break in the scoring there's a deliberate is that part of the decoration yeah it's all the same vessels definitely alley yeah see if we can reconvene some of these are really big I mean so yes good where jars we're talking about things like maybe this oh really in it oh yeah oh yeah oh he's on the sand Destin oh no sorry it's a bit of stuff is it easier oh it's a bigger than it yep oh I can't go another dog okay ah oh God because fabula that wasn't quite the romantic side okay hey you guys yeah that's how do you make an accent well again Lee doesn't love wheels Rhonda so it's beautifully made yeah so great find we'd be proud of on any dig and the geophysics results keep leading us to fascinating Iron Age features but these results and fines aren't helping us find the Saxon site and in our quest for a Saxon settlement there's another surprise the best part of eight hours ago you said that they were going to start to excavate this grub part yeah well they don't look like they've done very much had they finished it you're kidding yeah well it's not there there isn't it grab my wrist grubs you're joking no I mean we saw this rectangular stain I'm the guy that's dug a lot of them locally said yet he thought it probably was that but when we emptied it you see it's only about six inches deep and it's actually over the top of a light Roman ditch so it's not grubs at all we lost that I can hardly hear what you're saying my head is ringing with guilt after I digged up this idea that we got the greatest anglo-saxon site we've ever found well we may still have because you remember the posts over here I do well this is the row here look we've a farm on Homer yeah what about this one here this is huge that's produced anglo-saxon pottery as well and that may be the doorway through the snip the side wall of this building could be the doorway of a fence no because if you come here yeah which might be the corner post you can see their other post holes going off at right angles to this row one there one there yeah yeah and we're working on the basis that these buildings are often sort of four meters wide and 10 meters long and then you see Phil's working at the top end there on what might be the corner post ten meters away that way Phil does that look to you like a corner post I definitely got a post earlier Tony but whether it's the corner that I can't be sure you could remember it could even be longer this building climbing but the problem is you see we've got a big area that we haven't dug there yeah which is where the side wall will be if it goes up that way it ought to be one two three four five six seven eight nine ten so we ought to find the other post somewhere around here that's right so that would be the side wall that over the end and if we find another post here then we could have our very first anglo-saxon Hall absolutely yeah yes bring it on as day two comes to an end an entire Saxon building seems tantalizingly close but one Saxon building doesn't make a settlement and we don't have the second structure we thought we had I don't think I've ever known a trench with more highs and lows in it than the one behind me first of all we were incredibly skeptical then we found the post holes then we found a grub heart then we lost the grub hearts then we thought that the post holes might be a building and it is that building an anglo-saxon Hall well we'll know that if there are more post holes underneath where the machine is currently working and the archaeologists start work there tomorrow beginning of day three here in Leicestershire where we're looking for an anglo-saxon settlement we may have a rare anglo-saxon Hall here but we won't know till the archaeologists have discovered whether or not there are any post holes in this bit but apart from that it's been a dig of real highs and lows we thought we might have a grub Hut here but then that kind of disappeared on us we thought that we might have the anglo-saxon settlement come on we should have you come but when we look closely at this jiffy's and started to excavate it all we found was ia stuff so Mick come here where is this settlement that Hall wouldn't have been stuck up there on its own no Kurt stuck the top of the hill but extremely unlikely it's on its own it would have been with others so where's the settlement well I think it probably is under the scatter anglo-saxon pottery when we we started by picking this area because it was the one of the densest areas wrangler sex and pottery the other dense area is in the field next door so there's probably you know row of buildings all down the ridge yeah but hold on we've got a big scatter here we've got a big scatter in the next field yeah the gap between it is frankly huge that's right that's right so we can only strip part of that area in the time that we've got so what are we gonna do well I think we take a piece we take a strip along the top of the hill where there's I mean this is puffy all across the top of the hill and also along the top of the ridge is a very good site for these buildings and we strip earlier on there and hopefully find the post I was underneath but with one day left that's gonna be an enormous amount of work 80s but we've got a lot of people here Oh free from all the trenches have been done we've got some new people coming in from the hallerton group anyway so we're have enough people to do that our chances aren't great at finding anything no no I mean if it's there we find if it's not well you know but if there's a haystack and a needle Tylar team always knows how to extricate it I can never say that were not content with finding one rare Saxon building with just one day left we're determined to find more of the settlement there should be more building somewhere other Saten settlements have had dozens so Raksha opens trench for where there was a high concentration of pottery fines with such a challenge we've asked for help from the local hallerton group who found the original pottery and mixed giving a briefing first of all thank you all for coming along we really need your help today no machine at the moment taking off the topsoil get you down to the level we might see the post holes but in this sort of conditions it will dry out so quickly you'd be like scraping sort of lumps of concrete off in no time at all so you know something we can do about that but is gonna be hard work for I'm afraid faster you work them all lunch and tea we have yesterday Phil uncovered more post holes of what we think is a rectangular Saxon building today he's trying to uncover the whole layout to confirm it's a time team first an anglo-saxon Hall but spotting post holes in the Sun isn't that easy very good Eno he still can't see anything every flange on the drive you see that you see the NCIS yeah you came just about sheep actually you got a better view up here than you do down there and I stand up here watch I'll shove all the room I know we're there because I got here somewhere I could see the edge of the ditch looking for a post oh oh you're under we did for nothing yeah loads of post holes holes yeah back in the new trench and yet again we're overturning fifteen years of failing to find sacks and structures got a post hole here in this hopefully there should be a corresponding one just over there but look at these you can see them really clearly there's another set just here very good Rock Shows post homes are evidence of another building if it turns out to be Saxon we hope that he might hold preserved clues to the people here on nave Hill and Stuart and Sam have found more reasons why people would have settled here so chaps why is our settlement on this null in this field and not somewhere else I think there are three good reasons white wire here think one is that there's quite a tradition of Roman settlement in this area anyway quite close to the Roman Road so there's a continuity of Agriculture potential already here the second is this this River Valley that goes round the edge you've got obviously you've got a source of water there you've got really rich alluvial about so it's good for arable so strong good farmland basically and the third very good reason is that you're on the high Dry Ridge here given the context of flooding here is easy it won't flood so it's very very simple reason we're here but if that's okay why isn't the village on there now yeah it's all around I can see the villages on the you know but they're on this nolle oh there isn't a joke goes green or lankton here we've got Church lankton a tower there you see a spy ouchies Turlington yeah these are all become modern villages yeah well they're all that side of the river that's a different hundred in the Sexson period this is the administrative area that's right we're in another hundred now and on this side we've got one settlement in this parish church is over that hill over there called Staunton whyville yeah but what seems to happen is that this pattern of dispersed little farm stains have effectively been wiped out and they communities brought together into one so eventually a settlement here would have disappeared when its people moved into villages leaving the land for farming it's not that one's looking like it's got quite square ditches yeah but we're hopeful of finding more Saxon evidence that survived that time then in our first trench Matt and Helen begin to uncover something mysterious you can almost see a kind of regular yeah kind of coming up with your dinner much you need to think of something that's got a ring off post of tiny little posts and some in the middle I've seen films which have the hubcaps underneath the floor and then you can just pass the heat underneath them but don't really think they have something there intercepts yeah this is yeah this is kind of underneath underneath well that's still way off there while in our new trench the determined work is paying off these bottoms don't belong to the time team they belong to the hallerton group who are the people who found the anglo-saxon pottery here when they were field walking and we've put this trench in to see if we can at last find our anglo-saxon settlement first signs are good they think they're starting to find some post holes but are they anglo-saxon me I think they'd probably are because from over the top of them in the topsail we've got a lot of bone okay that could be of any date but we're getting anglo-saxon pottery sherds as well we just got this Anglo Saxon knife come out a knife that's a good find as me I'm it's the sort of thing every Anglo Saxon would have carried with them you know as a domestic item so I think it's work is really encouraging things looking good again at last we're finding the everyday things that the anglo-saxons would have used and crucially the finds show that postholes must be from a saxon building we think that have been even more buildings here in sacks and times spread over the hill and on top of the hill Tracy's been investigating geophys anomalies to see if their Saxon or Iron Age having found an Iron Age ditch now she's got pottery have you got on then we've got late Iron Age pottery but we've got early Roman as well oh right things like that that's rather nice it's nice wheel thrown so Roman and Iron Age on top of the hill but no Saxon site at all there's also been lots of Iron Age pot in our first trench as well as a strange feature Matt and Helen uncovered well this is pretty spectacular Paul what is it it's a bread oven as far as we can tell Tony well while they're all these holes in it well you've got the solid clay base and they're doing a dome over it to keep the heat in so the holes are where they would have stuck wooden poles in the ground when they were building it to support the clay down the course once a close by you fire it it fires the dome he goes hard and all the wood burns out anglo-saxon Iron Age what about all these lovely pottery is that line aged - it is yeah it's actually from the oven it's from a feature nearby but the oven is the same date as well what do you think it is it's a big storage jars absolute beauty how big would that have been probably about that sort of height very typically the latest Iron Age pottery we get round it it's beautifully decorated with all this comber oh yeah very nicely my idea but don't you find it frustrating Meg that we came here looking for anglo-saxon and we keep bumping into Iron Age stuff well not really because you often get two on the same site you know we often find anglo-saxon sites because we're looking for an Iron Age site because we can see an Iron Age site on the geophysics because on the ditches and on the aerial photographs we feature show up why do you get them in the same place it's mainly because it's the same sort of economy it's a subsistence economy these are farmers who got to produce all that they need from their own patch of ground then that's true of the anglo-saxon period it's true of the Iron Age the contrast is with the medieval the Roman period always live after the marketplace and get where you can't produce these chaps have got to produce the same all their own materials from from the land around so tend to go for the same type of ground the same areas and in our search for traces of the anglo-saxons our last trench keeps on giving we've got you've got a few hours left and people are working frantically hard in this trench raksha anything else come on well we've had a great flurry of activity and we have evidence of occupation here don't see this red patch around here yeah that's evidence of burning the question is is it a half we don't know we need to investigate that I know we don't have over three hours two hours so not just another building in our Saxon settlement but very rare evidence of Saxon occupation but just how many people gathered around fires on nave Hill one thing that seems blindingly obvious about this landscape is that there are hardly any people in it would it have been the same in anglo-saxon times no there were a lot more people in the anglo-saxon times maybe there were up to about a hundred people on this site alone and then we've got all sorts of other sites up the valley I still find it hard to believe what it would have been like with 100 anglo-saxons living just down there do we know from the documents what they might have been doing well we know for one thing from the language in the poetry that they they really knew how to have a good time and we know that as a primary out the cultural economy the agricultural year would have been punctuated with the festivals with great parties so anglo-saxon life wouldn't have been as bleak and horrible as the phrase Dark Ages leads us to believe earlier the Dark Age is really a complete misnomer they were they were prospering in a very rich agricultural environment know the word celebration was certainly one they knew a lot about these party loving anglo-saxons have left their mark on the modern population and several weeks ago we submitted a DNA sample from Phil Harding to investigate whether he's descended from Saxon immigrants or the native British turn on a catering van we've had a sweepstake as to Phil's ancestry fell come here you got the results your DNA's cancer you look a bit nervous sort of certain element of trepidation really on your mother's side we looked at the mitochondrial DNA and we found that your descendent of a woman who lived 20,000 years ago in the dawn yes I like it I like it why do you like it so much hey why the fists in the air cuz they're a good flint knapper Singh don't do 20,000 years ago yes I knew there wasn't seed that's where I get it from her descendants moved up following the herds of big gift big game and eventually crossed into Britain so I think from this result it looks as though your maternal ancestor was one of the first people to come to Britain after the last ice age no man that is better that's on the on the female side so it's also looks at your y chromosome which is coming down your male side you've got it from your father who got it from his father and back okay tell me it's Roman no it's bent and there's a very clear signal in some cases of Roman laughs no I you're not having a lot in your yeah which makes you a Celt well oh yeah you're positively prehistoric it seems filled couldn't be more British if he tried but is he representative of the modern population the genetic bedrock if you like of the whole of Britain and Ireland is Celtic the Saxons and the Vikings really only contribute up to 10 20 percent so they were they they were they're the sort of basic sort of invaders and that settled in amongst the Celtic people that were already living didn't displace them they didn't push them off into Wales and Scotland as a common myth says they didn't kill them all either they just come on the Celts weren't here from the Year dot you were an invader - but we were amongst the first people to colonize it you've heard what he's just said certainly on your mother's side that that's that's almost certainly true yeah so the land belongs to you eh does it yes there's a few flies in your jumper get off my land if you want to know more about DNA and your heritage visit the time team web site Phil's ancestors were here when the Saxons arrived with their distinctive Germanic building designs and after finding even more postholes we can finally begin the job of recreating the building we've found now here on this side you'll notice that there are these two posters so Phil's showing the layout off to our designer race an and we think this might have been more likely where the doorway comes in so that you could actually come in your wall line or even be somewhere slightly inside of that and that's all in east-west axis is it the actual main building it is West yet fifteen years and at last we've got this time team's first anglo-saxon Hall Phil are you now absolutely confident that we've got our Anglo Saxon home absolutely confident Tony in fact I'm so confident that I decided to stand in the middle of it does it make you feel tougher after 15 years we finally got one it's been worth the wait though and I nah-uh and just when we think our site couldn't possibly deliver any more it's so well fixed in but look can you see that's definitely being polished look you know is that bono it could be both it's very dark I think it's a needle there's there's one very like that from i kettle B oh wow look is one of those big needles so what would they abuse that for that well something course something something like nets or something like that like a fishing net yeah cuz that would that would go that quite well wouldn't it sort of winding through this yes as day three comes to an end we found a preserved piece of early anglo-saxon life archaeologists in Britain have found very few buildings and settlements from the so-called Dark Ages but at nave Hill Time Team have found two extremely rare Saxon structures they'd have been nestled within a substantial community where people lived and worked leaving us a few precious glimpses of their lives Raksha does this trench come up to expectations this trench has been nothing short of fantastic we know that sucks and people lived and worked here in the seventh century we have pottery dating to that and also out of one of the post holes we found this fantastic row needle what a lovely way to end the day the anglo-saxon period is one of the most important times in English history but the archaeology from it is frustratingly hard to find hopefully though here at nave Hill we've managed to get a little bit closer to the people who decided to make their home here 1400 years if this week's escalation has inspired you to dig a little deeper visit the website at channel 4 accomplished time team for exclusive video clips games and the time team forum at 7 religion and science are clashing in the girl with eight limbs a body shock special that's after the news which is next in the 14th century King Edward the third built a Great Hall for 300 nights for centuries that building has been lost until time team found it welcome to the story of the round table of windsor castle the real knights of the round table a time team special Monday at 9:00 on 4:00

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Views: 667,427

Rating: 4.8290687 out of 5

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

Id: 58Pr1mvMpDQ

Length: 48min 15sec (2895 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2013