Time Team S17-E12 Dinmore Hill

two years ago a couple of local archaeologists stumbled on this a vast undiscovered earthwork hidden here in these Herer woods they thought it could be man-made even prehistoric but they got really excited when they discovered this aerial photo which appears to show a large curve here in the snow which is in this field adjacent to the forest and they wondered if the bank and ditch there might be linked to the curve here except the two features are 500 M apart if they're at opposing ends of one big structure encircling this entire Hilltop then the archaeologists believe they found one of the largest Iron Age monuments in all Britain but are they right we've got just 3 days to find out [Music] our site is here in rural herfordshire dinmore Hill is a vast promet flanked by escarpments to the north and south and surrounded on three sides by the wonderfully named River lug and it's the setting for a curious ious puzzle we were up here in the winter surveying through this Woodland and uh we came across this way and came up to this big bank here as the county archaeologist discovered there's something mysterious lurking in these Woods you can see then a huge ditch but that's not all is it well we went back to the office and looked at the records that we had and further along here uh there's a what looks like a big bank and ditch on the outside there too and you reckon this could all be Iron Age well it's certainly of the right scale it's a massive earthwork massive Bank ditch on the outside have you noticed that in the ditch there's an ex-president of the Council of British archaeology Francis you've been poking around in there for some time do you think this could be an inh Hill for well the scale's certainly right Tony but the thing is Hil Fort means almost anything it could be about soul soers um it could be a communal Center it could be a village it could even be a large cattle Corral but of course that begs the question is it Iron Age well exactly that's the other thing Tony I mean some of these Hilltop enclosures could be up to 6,000 years old Keith what other information have we got about this site has any other archaeology been done none any survey work none so apart from an aerial photo and an old ditch and your assertion that it could be Iron Age really this dig could be about any period in history couldn't it well that's life that's time team Francis well that fills me with confidence this site feels suspiciously like the lucky dip at the archaeological funfare still Iron Age Hil Fort at least we know what we're looking for the purpose of Hill fors is the subject of heated debate but they do at least all have one or two things in common a set of vast Earthworks in one continuous circuit usually with a couple of entrances and some houses or sto rooms inside so if we've got one here it shouldn't be hard to miss except this site is more than 40 acres it's huge we've got our work cut out just surveying it which is why John's recruited a small army of geophysics boffins to lend a hand and there's no hanging about down at the other end of the site either it's it's not even 10:30 and we already seem to be opening our first trench I haven't even finished my tea yet Francis bit Hasty putting a trench in already isn't it well thing is Tony it's an enormous sight and we can't hang around we've only got three days so I thought I'd put a trench right across the defenses here why did you put the trench here do you remember that air photo it very clearly showed something that looked like ramp Parts precisely here so early this morning I told John to skip his breakfast and to do some G how'd it go John not very well oh I can't see the hill for defenses at all to be honest I mean you can see all the canes stretching off into the distance and these are the results I mean ignore these speckled there just stray bits of iron at best we've got a sort of trend that follows that line but I'm not seeing a ditch and to be honest when I look in your trench I can't see a ditch no it does all look uniformly Brown Francis it doesn't look very hopeful I have to say Tony um at this stage but you know we got to keep on we got to keep on so what I plan to do is go down a little bit further see if it's looking ditch like right and then I'll double up the width and we'll go back about 40 m 40 m well there are basically two things we've got to discover Tony we got to get the ditch and then we want to go on the inside because I want to get the very inside of the Hill Fort if that's what it is oh and the third thing um we might find some structures on the inside might we John I don't think so I've got a slight feeling of Doom about this dig in spite of there being no sign of anything much on John's GE Fizz we've opened our first trench here we're looking for the big ditch and bank we saw on Keith's aerial photo and as always we need finds Pottery bone metal work anything that might tell us what this was and when it was built cool that's a bit nice over at the other end of our site Phil's checking out the earthwork in the woods that is a serious bank is it it is yeah and you can see the stone right at the top I mean and a lot of the work has actually been done for us because this is the bank and this bit here is just a bit of bit of muck that's falling down all we got to do is is clear this out of the way we'll have a nice clean section through the bank itself and just down there will be the old ground surface hopefully yeah just through there of course this isn't the end of the bank it's just where it's been cut through to create this track so the bank would have continued round through here so presumably then the best place to get a section through the ditch is going to be down in here cuz we don't really want to go into the woods do we well yeah and you're just standing to towards but not at the middle of the ditch there Phil so if we run a trench through here and out through there through there yeah and then through through across to where the bank was that's the way to do it let's have a digger in and get on with it hacking away the undergrowth has revealed what an impressive earthwork this must have been so Phil's going to dig a section through the big Bank in the woods here out in the field next door Jon's team have been investigating what Francis is calling an intriguing Mound but looks more like an unappealing bump to me it's clearly there on the ground um but we've not got an enclosure around it or anything but what is exciting at this end of the field we've got these ditches now could they be internal divisions of the Hill Fort Francis does this geiz help you decide what we should do next um yes it does actually Tony okay so we didn't get much around the mound um but I it's so prominent um I think we got to dig there but those ditches over there are really intriguing I mean if they are prehistoric I think we've got to have a go yes but what I really want to do now is go back to the ditch in the wood because what we can see on the surface looks pretty tasty it does seem as though this site's going to be a bit of a struggle but there's one big Plus in that wood there's something that's man-made it's big it's not modern and we don't know what it is and we've still got two and a half days to find out this is dinmore Hill in herfordshire and in that wood over there are a bank and ditch which we think might be part of a huge Iron Age Fort that's the good news the bad news is that the bank and ditch which we think might have been associated with it down there we can't find and in this field frankly John the GE Fizz has been pretty desery I think that's fair don't you last time you looked it's getting better it's definitely getting better we still haven't got any joy around the mound that's at that end but if we look at this end of the field now we saw ditch lengths earlier now we've expanded the survey the ditches are continuing and these blobs they could well be pits these are the sorts of responses you might get inside an in age Hill for yeah but you might get those in medieval times might you yes you might or in the 18th or 19th century yes they they might even be natural they could be Victorian for all we know I I'm sorry I don't want to be too negative it's just that France is I don't really understand why you're focusing so much attention on this part of the site when we've got superb archaeology in the woods and yet you seem obsessed by this dribbly stuff well look Tony those huge ditches were dug by people for a reason they just didn't dig them for their good health you know this was an important place to them it was the top of the hill it was a place where they probably lived um they probably buried their dead here those pits were where they stored grain we'll probably find post built granaries there's all sorts of stuff here this is crucially important in fact I would say it was more important than those ditches so you could say that the only reason the ditches were dug is because of this part of the site absolutely I've just argued myself totally out of my original position thank you go away anytime I do like to be accommodating flying in the face of my skepticism Francis has decided to focus attention on the interior of our site so we're opening a third trench to investigate one of John's pits if we are inside a hill Fort Tracy and Fa should find evidence of occupation houses and domestic hards used by the living Graves and burial mounds occupied by the dead no sign of either yet but it's early days is that going to be the back of the round part yeah it looks like a rear event wall possibly the stone underneath there back in the woods we found the first tantalizing signs of how this huge Bank was constructed that's noce and it laid in there it's Classic this could be really well built there's another one there yeah yeah yeah yeah but this would be an indicator that it might be an Iron Age construction not only that it could be an indicator that this is an entrance this is great if this does turn out to be the entrance to an Iron Age Hill Fort it'll be an exciting discovery on the other hand we shouldn't be surprised this entire landscape is packed with Prehistoric monuments some are 2 and a half th000 years old and Iron Age some go further back into the Bronze Age others earlier still into the Neolithic but if there's one type of prehistoric monument heraia has in Spades it's Iron Age Hill forts as our historian betany Hughes is finding out this is classic Hill for territory here we've got major river valleys cutting through the landscape we've got the river lug coming up here winding its way around the site and up to the north we' got the river Arrow coming in here and we've got a number of quite famous Hill fors in this area for instance we've got coft amre up here got Ken Hill down here Sutton walls here I tell you the only thing that bothers me though that we know there's Bronze Age activity here so why are we obsessing about the Iron Age why is this not some special Bronze Age s and we've got to remember that you know the world doesn't start with the Iron Age there's there's what there 2 3,000 years going back to to the neic period before that and if something's good in one period it's going to be potentially good strategically in another period so we've got to to some extent keep an open mind about what might be on here well if there is a hill Fort here kind of embraced by the river lug it's going to be a pretty enormous one it is I mean that that's slightly worrying to some extent because I've had a look at the area if it is a hill for it's going to be 43 Acres which is enormous cracky if this place really is 4 3 acres that's twice the size of any of the other Hill fors in the area and that's not the only thing I find baffling where have Fay and Tracy gone why is there no one in that trench it was only put in about an hour ago yeah well they're saying it's natural I there's nothing man-made there but John that was where you said there was going to be pits and ditches well I hope there would be I did actually say there's a possibility it's just natural features the geology is making things difficult it's difficult to see things that's why we've not seen the big deep ditch because of all the geology on top and is that why you've put in this one well this is I'm even more hopeful about this one sure you're you're going to say I'm clutching at straws but look at the results now in amongst all this detail here can you see that curving Arc I can just in case you couldn't there now we've put the trench in there I'd like to interpret that as a central Pit half and part of a roundhouse they're going to prove me right or wrong that would be good wouldn't it because if we've got some kind of entrance to our inh Hill Fort if that's what it is and if we've got some kind of bank and ditch there's got to be some activity in the middle yes and this is the best we've got so far so we're having another stab at finding Signs of Life on this hill by putting in a fourth trench here it's very clean again isn't it y i me if it is a roundhouse and John's right about the feature at this end if it is a half pit or fire pit or something like that it should show up fairly clearly but it didn't show up that clearly for a fire not on the it might be painfully slow going up here but over in trench one we've had our first big breakthrough wow Matt so it was all covian it all yes hidden underneath this there's your ditch there it is look there's the uh well you can see there's the gray natural there there's the line of the edge of the ditch and then there's the fill of the ditch the kind of blue gray silt perfect better still our environmental expert Mike Allen has gotten intriguing find oh look at that that's Oak isn't it yeah this is Oak and the oring did show that we might have water logging at the bottom of this ditch and indeed we have and this is as you cly say it's probably Oak but it's also probably a steak so a wooden steak driven into the ground and it's now fallen into the ditch and you got um bits of charcoal and all sorts in here I mean it's Rich isn't it there charcoal all over the place there bits in here and here so this is part of the occupation within the the site or part of the destruction but that's not all we have got here other pieces of wood other than the steaks badly preserved but for Upland sight mag log wood is almost unprecedented this is more like it we've found the giant ditch we saw on Keith's aerial photo and it looks like it may have been defended by a palisade of sharpened Stakes on the bank behind it the archaeology in the woods is beginning to look pretty spectacular too wow that's fantastic but you've got real strateg graphy I know it's a cracking section it's a very very complicated story see I think the right the beginning is this one that's coming over like that and going right the way down there and you can see what what they've done they've really really carefully built it because they've capped it off with these lovely flat slabs of stone and I do wonder whether or not that phase may have had a palisade at the front because look at the way these two stones tip in like that just wonder whether there may not have been some sort of Timber Palisade there but then you see after that what they've done they've actually enhanced the uh the bank made it bigger by putting in that Rubble there and then finally they've capped it off with all this material that sits on the top so you've got at least three phases possibly four it's a very very complicated story but the best if you like is yet to come because here's the back of the ramp part look at these Stones tipping down like that that's the back of the rampart and there's a it's separated by this it's a solid stone wall look we've got these vertical pitch Stones there and vertical pitch Stones there and the whole Gap in between is filled in with these horizontal packing Stones I mean for all the world that looks more like building than Rampart doesn't it is crucially important what the soite must contain this is great stuff evidence of phases indicates that whoever built this Bank came back to reinforce it again and again over some considerable time more importantly it looks like there may have been a wooden Palisade at this end of the site too but whether these are two sections of one continuous Earth workor that encircled the top of this hill we don't yet know back in trench 4 there's no sign of John's roundhouse in fact there's no sign of anything much at all and does make me a question if we don't start to begin to find stuff in here whether we had any occupation up here at all evidence of settlement up here is proving elusive but it being late July there's a far bigger problem Brewing the weather and unfortunately it's turning out to be a typical British summer lovely I think it's above and beyond the call of juicy for you to keep digging in this rain what is it that's kept you going it's really exciting Tony it looks like we've got a bank up at that end of the trench and it looks like actually had some kind of stone lining where's that if you look underneath Peter's feet there can you see the stones that's the top of the stones if you follow the line along there's some pale clay there another couple of stones there on the edge of the bank the rest of them have slid all the way down and they're in a pile down at the bottom there and how long do you think it's going to be before we get to the bottom of the ditch well I thought we were only a couple of inches off the bottom but Mike did an Aug down there and we've got about 40 cmet to go this has been a really frustrating day when we started out we thought we had really good archaeology with the bank and the ditch and the wood which might spread over to here and then into that far field there but the more we dug the less evidence we got that is until late this afternoon when suddenly we realized we didn't have nothing actually we've got a big something we've got this huge ditch a big Bank we've got this Stone lining this is really well engineered but what is it what's its date we still don't know still we've got another two days left although according to the weather forecast the rain's going to get even [Music] worse beginning of day two here at denmore Hill in herfordshire and I was right this site is doomed I thought the problem would be the archaeology but in fact it looks like the archaeolog is going to be really good the issue is the weather it's rotten rotten rotten rotten 25 mm of rain forecast by 4:00 this afternoon in fact it's so bad that none of us really knows what to do we're Excavating what we think is an Iron Age Hill Fort at least we would be if it wasn't pelting [Music] down well that looks a bit dodgy M doesn't it it's not as full of water as I actually thought it was going to be I thought it was going to be a sful it's the sliding which is going to be the problem isn't it yeah and you're also going there's a danger of a mud slide too I don't think we could possibly put people down there so I'm afraid we'll just have to close this down for the time being and um call it a day sorry about that folks yeah there there it is back [Music] home but even if Works ground to a halt here at least the woods provide some cover down at the other end of our site aided by this state-of-the-art weatherproofing kit brought in a huge expense where did you get this stuff from some local car boot s look going to good is here I'll tell you what the longer you stand farting around with it the more it's going to break well let's put it over the trench well you do your second best thing stop talking how I'm directing pitching a tent in the rain's bad enough but at least it's better than having to do gef F this is ridiculous well ventilated well it's well ventilated and we got some light that's the main thing and we we dry this will be a good place to work are we going to be able to dig here all right today too right we are rather lit work in here than out there but the problem is the ground slopes that way isn't it all going to run into the archaeology well considerate of you to mention that but uh we have ways of dealing with that at least we'll be dry true theyve no idea how they're going to dig today have you no idea at all what have you what have you got here we've got the most amazing Bank I mean it is a superb thing look at it you can see it's not just built in one phase it's a series of events where people have actually made this thing bigger and bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger and stronger in defense the wonderful thing about it too is that we've got this wall stub end of a war coming out what does that tell you Francis well I think that could be what they called in Victorian days a guard housee they very characteristic of Hill fors in this part of the world basically it's a sort of semicircular building building just inside the entranceway and for all the world that looks like to me a guardhouse in which case we are in an entrance way into the hill and then the other thing that we do have here also is the ditch we want to get a complete section through the ditch because if we can demonstrate that the construction of this ditch is the same or different to what mat's got it will help us to understand whether we're dealing with one site or two SES and that's how problem at the moment we've got two bits of unconnected archaeology the big Earth Bank in the woods here and the ditch down at the other end of our site the question is are they part of one big Monument to find out Phil's extending his trench to excavate the ditch you've done this before the last lesson's on Friday if both sections of earthwork are constructed in the same way then most of our archaeologists think we've got one big enclosure and more than likely a giant Iron Age Hill Fort most that is apart from Stewart who as usual doesn't agree with anyone in fact he's now found something exciting in the woods and he's Keen to show it to betany we've all heard that one before here so we're still walking along the top of the bank and it starts to get quite interesting when we get just to this dip of over here as you can see we're starting to to drop down very rapidly oh yeah definitely and it's a nice flat area there's no signal up Bank whatsoever but when I get to here I'll tell you I I'll just stay down here you can you can go investigate out there you see I'm back up on top of the bank again I can see it heading off that way big ditch outside it the bank starts again so what we've got here is a very genuine Gap it's not the sort of thing that you get where a a actors bus through or anything like that modern yeah I think this is a genuine entrance through this big bank and ditch here well it does raise the possibility now of course that if this earthwork is not one long thing but it's composed of a series of sections with more than one entrance and if what they've got over there is an entrance then that may push it further and further in back in time because you get um boundary monuments which are built in sections so we have the possibility that we've got a monument that sort of starts here in the perhaps even in the athic period continues right through in news and and this we're still here today I'm so glad you brought me here so we've narrowed it down something's going on it could have been a thousand years ago it could have been 2,500 could have been 3,500 years ago great good stuff Stuart if this earth work isn't continuous but has a series of gaps through it Stuart suspects it could be several thousand years older than the rest of us think to resolve that one way or another we need datable finds frustratingly that's one thing we haven't seen at all on on this side until now F mhm look what we've got here charcoal mashes and mashes of it I'm stting to collect it look at that oh black as your hat lovely lovely charcoal and it's not just the fact that it's charcoal look it's where it comes from look there's the charcoal mhm and there is the bottom of the ditch oh I think that is you think you're right yeah so it means that that charcoal was dropped in the bottom of the ditch pretty soon after it was dug so that should give us a date basically for the bottom of the ditch absolutely it's just been the most crucial thing we've wanted to try and find out when was this ditch dug we were hoping hoping and who knows we might still get some pottery but in the absence of pottery this chold should allow us to radiocarbon date Phil's ditch it's a big breakthrough even if what this EXT extremely puzzling place was remains a mystery virtually all our archaeologists are absolutely convinced that what we've got up there is an Iron Age Hill Fort and not just any old Iron Age Hill Fort but a massive one one of the size of somewhere like maiden Castle so obviously they're pretty excited about that but on time team there's always a fly in the ointment and he's sitting over there behind that table Stuart what's this I hear that you're questioning the notion that what we've got is a hill for now when you start to look at the physical evidence we've got it's very interesting now this is where Phil's dig in just here we can see the bank and ditch it comes through the Woodland down there it's very well preserved but no evidence at all of it coming round here as you would expect with Iron Age Hill fors it doesn't happen here and when you look at all Hill fors they've all got continuity of Defense around circuits that's very common thing absolutely no evidence that's ever occurred at all what do you think it is well what we've got I think coming across here first of all is something called a crossridge dyke now this is a sort of land boundary is this IR age well they can be used in the I AG they often actually predate the ion age it can be bronze aging date and continue to be used through into the Iron Age and even beyond that as boundaries but what about all this archaeology here well that that is interesting because uh again just if if you if you look at this aerial photograph here this is where Phil's digging trench there we've got appears to be a cross Ridge Dyke which comes down here which goes across the ridge the postulation was that that was one large Hill for coming all the way around here there's no evidence these features come back along here if you look at the aerial photograph closely can you see that bank and ditch which was extent in 1946 when this Photograph was taken actually turns a corner and comes back around here there's absolutely no no evidence it continued towards the escarment edge there have you told the others yet not yet you can do that for Stuart seems determined to blow our Iron Age Hill Fort Theory out of the water he thinks the ditch in Matt's trench doesn't carry on to complete a full Circuit of this Hilltop but turns back on itself and could be a small Iron Age farm and he's convinced the earthwork Phils Excavating is a crossridge dyke built 2,000 years earlier in the Bronze Age if he's right we could have two completely separate bits of archaeology built at two completely different periods in prehistory oh dear we may be splitting into opposing factions but at least feels happy he thinks his ditch is one of the most impressive bits of prehistoric archaeology he's ever seen what is it that's so wonderful about this trench then it's just the sheer scale of being in the bottom of this ditch and you really have to get into the bottom of it just to appreciate just how big it is look when you cast your eye up there look at the top of the ramp part yeah think about a lot of this material that's in this ditch would have come from the top and that ramp part just think of the scale of it and this was all cut by hand absolutely Tony it all cut through this Solid Rock just using people with their bare hands and and literally iron tools and piics I mean it's taken us half a day to do this with a machine just think how much longer it would have Tak to do it by hand how long do you reckon it is in either direction in either direction about 300 M so it's at 600 M overall and the interesting thing is it looks as though we've probably got the entrance here this massive ditch is not something we expected to find is it no but I mean it is it is just a privilege and a pleasure to be able to dig it and stand in it it's astonishing to think that an army of people must have hacked this 600 M earthwork out of the solid rock using root Force [Music] alone out on sight the chaos continues Francis this is madness You' closed that trench down this morning cuz it's raining so much but You' stuck in another one well the thing is Tony we can't just stop we've only got 3 days and I'm not having people biging these trenches it's just being done by a machine so there's no health and safety problems I actually extended that other trench over there but there's a flat bit behind the bank and that's where normally you'd expect to find houses we didn't find any so I then came over here but this is another flat area you can see we're in a natural Hollow and this again is where you'd expect to have houses but you're protected from the winds blowing over there and have you found anything nothing absolutely not a sausage so are you going to keep on digging more trenches or are you going to stop and think now uh I'm going to stop and think and have a bath I think it's the end of day two we've dug here here and here but we failed to find any evidence of people living on this hill and yet we've got two giant Earthworks this place is still a total Enigma so despite the rain we've hit two magnificent ditches Matts and Phils but of course we still don't know whether or not they're linked but you think they are I do Tony I mean they're so similar both the ditches I mean the filling similar and the sizes and the depths so I think they are say you're shaking your head St yeah I disagree with it I think we've got two distinctly separate monuments one that goes right the way across the Ridge one we've got here uh but over in the field where Matt is I think we've got good evidence that it's a distinctly separate Monument what fascinates me about this ditch though is the amount of work that must have gone into it how many people do you think it would have taken to build the whole thing oh a lot of people Tony hundreds maybe even thousands so why are there no signs of life at all on the inter ire side well that's a good question Tony but we've just discovered that here there was a probable entrance way into the interior of the Hill for now we know from other Hill fors that just inside the entrance way and that would put us over there in the other field that's where you have most of the buildings and most of the evidence for people so I think tomorrow morning that's where we start digging first thing it's been a quite extraordinary day even though we have had so much rain and one of the most extraordinary things is that the weather forecast said the rain would stop at 6 and I think it stopped dead on 6 and they say that tomorrow is going to be much better and maybe not any rain at all fingers crossed beginning of day three here at denmore Hill in herfer and you see it's not raining the weatherman actually got it right and if that isn't enough cause for celebration take a look at that trench you see the side of that ditch all made of Rock all cut by hand it's got to be one of the most dramatic pieces of prehistoric archaeology that we've ever found and hopefully we're going to be able to date it later on today and if we can't date the ditch then we may be able to date that Ram party thing behind it and in addition you see these Stones here they could be part of some kind of building which is tucked in behind that mound so we're going to extend this trench and have a closer look at that and over here on the other side of the site things are also looking pretty good we had to close down all the archaeology in this field yesterday for health and safety reasons but Matt presumably now it's full steam ahead it is I mean it's not in a very good State at the moment though I mean you can see all the water in there and not just that but the collapse shows how dangerous these trenches do get in the rain when the weather's tur now so we can get going but still got a lot to do so when you say it's full steam ahead it isn't full steam ahead not quite yet not really Tony no we've got to make this trench safe so I'm going to get ear and in with the big digger and we're going to batter the sides back you know they going to be people working right at the bottom that we must get it right fair enough before we can start digging again we need to clean out and secure our [Music] trenches back at the earthwork in the woods there are still no finds but soil scientist Mike is in his element this may look like a pile of muds to you and me but Mike can read it like a book what we do have is about this Horizon here a nice intact insitu soil this is the land surface on which people would have walked so this isn't a woodland soil so we know therefore it must be after the woodlands have been cut down and the landscape opens so it's this dates to after the early Bronze Age I've also said this hasn't been plowed and we know this landscape was plowed very intensively in the medieval period so it has to be Prem medieval okay not a good date Prem medieval post early Bronze Age over to you so basically that gives us a window of like I don't know two and a half thousand years it's better than you had before well no no no we we'll definitely try and refine that nice try Mike so we're still struggling to date this earthw work and we still don't understand how it fits into the story of this place though Stuart has a theory of his own here's our site here's the river lug coming coming round here now at the northwest of this bit of high ground there's a an Iron Age Hill Fort called ivington camp this has got lots of Banks and ditches around it it's sort of classic Hill fort in every respect to the word but on the opposite side of the river lug there's risbury another Hill Fort again with classic bank and ditch around it and this finger of land that comes down from it points into this territory over this is the point of contact between them it's almost like a Gateway between what's going on over here in the Iron Age and what's going on over here so I suppose in a way this this whole place is like a kind of formal entrance from one world into another I think the whole thing is that's brilliant way to put it the whole thing is the entrance to the landscape of ivington Camp surprise surprise Stuart and betany have arrived at a completely different interpretation of our site they think denmore Hill was crossed by a pair of dkes making the whole hill a formal point of contact between two Hill Fort territories centered around ivington camp and risbury out on sight Francis is determined to prove otherwise he's opening trench six to try and find the continuation of the earthwork if it's here it should line up with the big ditch and Bank in Phil's trench back in the incident room Mike's pouring over the remains of this wooden Stak from trench one painstaking microscopic work like this tells us as much about this site as the big archaeology does this is almost definitely Oak it's a branch or a Stave that's been selected from Woodland specifically to make a fence post or a rail of some kind now how can you tell that it's been specifically selected because we can see that it's a nice round piece of wood yeah and so they've gone into the Woodland and selected pieces very carefully which are nice and straight and round four building or fencing and that has lots of other really quite subtle and interesting implications like what like if they're doing that they're probably managing the Woodland the Woodland isn't just a load of trees it's a resource which they are using and utilizing so from this little piece of wood we can suggest there's quite a complex organized Society Somewhere Out There managing the Woodland for construction if Mike's right the people who built the earth work were also cassing trees to produce wood for fencing and cutting back trunks for bigger Timbers back on site there's no sign that the earthw work continued through our new trench Phil's face says it all this place is proving such a tough nut to crack time to step back and have a rethink the big question that's really puzzling everybody is do we have a huge Iron Age Hill Fort that starts around about here somewhere and goes right through into the woods or do we have two enre irely separate pieces of archaeology how do we resolve that well we get geir to work all the way over this field and see what Clues they come up with which we've already done looks pretty interesting doesn't it except that this interesting looking big line here is a much later trackway that appears on the tithe map so that's no use to us and these intriguing lines here are all natural geology so really there are no clues here at all so we got less than a day left and a massive question that's entirely unresolved Francis you're the leader of the pro Hill for faction aren't you well I am Tony because I like simple explanations there are hundreds of Hill fors in Britain and they have large ditches they have high Banks and we've got large ditches and we got high Banks we've got them over in the wood and we've got a ditch over here which we don't yet fully understand yes he's right we have got very big bank and ditch over there and we've got a ditch evidence over here what we haven't got is the connection between the two round the top of the hill which is usually how you define a Hilltop enclosure a hill for but the people who were constructing that bank and ditch over there were doing so with the same care and the same complexity as they did with something else so I don't think it's just a dyke I'm glad we're all agreed on that then but while the bickering continues our residence geophysicist is waiting in the wings with a big smile on his face I thought you were just watching the scene but actually you had an alterior motive didn't you yeah well that's the plot you were looking at we hadn't surveyed this area and that's where Francis wanted the ditch to extend through but look we've now done it you see this clear line even with a possible entrance at that point so we've got the dit well I hope so I mean the only problem is the reason we hadn't done it is the sound Aerials are actually that point there it's just possible it's an effect of those so we're going to have to move the Aerials I think really we need to Steve come here you're the soundman can we move your aerial well of course that's all right then the archaeological stalemate has been broken thanks to John who thinks he's found the continuation of Matt's ditch along with another possible entrance here digging it should resolve what this place was one way or the other meanwhile steuart's Grand focal point of contact between two Hill fors theory is about to come tumbling down flatter areas are in red running through to the Steep areas which are blue so that's each side of our Hill um now this is where Phil's been digging and you can see the bank running through there yeah I see it really clearly on side can also see it continuing down through here as well so you you've got where where Matt's Matt's trench is across here you can see actually that ditch features running right through here is there anything that suggests the two actually physically linked together that's a really tantalizing questions to you because if you look here we've got the bank and ditch which feels in working is where mats one should come in now between the two can you see this pale blue line now that is an area which is slightly flatter you I think they're terracing this area it make it artificially steeper so what we have is an earth workor it changes form into this Terrace then becomes a bank and ditch again going around so it looks like we have an enclosure so maybe it is continuous so and we've got nothing absolutely cre that they all join together yet have we no I feel confident they it is complex isn't it there's nothing simple about this Hilltop no not at all this is a big step forward and a pie in the face for Stuart Henry's convinced that the sides of our Hill have been deliberately cut back to make the escarpments harder to climb so that means we haven't got two separate sites it's far more likely one giant earthwork encircled this entire Hilltop so it's all down to our final trench to find the missing piece in the puzzle found it yet Matt oh hi Ian hold on a sec um well I think we're just getting to the top of the natural there can you see the gray can you show show exactly where we are then we've put the trench in and what we think is the break the entrance here this has to be a ditch whether it's Iron Age or not that's up to you if we can complete the circuit we'll have proved Beyond Reasonable Doubt this was Iron Age Hill fort with just 5 minutes left we haven't got long really the issue is whether this is actual real it could be there was no it's not is it collapsed oh hang on no that is is that hard that's real okay that's it that's the edge there it's 6:00 it's been tough wet and muddy but our time's up oh you got something yeah well the geophysics showed this huge ditch coming along here with a brake in it just in front of me that's what we've got I'm standing in the Terminus of it here at the end and you can see it's massive cut straight through the Bedrock do you think that this ditch aligns with the other ditch that you were digging down there yesterday yeah it does we've clearly got it on the geophys it's going straight through this field then curving off around there Francis it's been a site all about ditches it has Tony and what ditches I mean over there in the wood that Sensational deep ditch and the bank that went with it typically Iron Age and the way that all the ditches we've looked at are subtly different suggests to me that they were probably dug by different groups of people who came to this area as a sort of central meeting place think of it as a sort of irage Stonehenge it's where people came to meet fines Keith well that's the remarkable thing now Tony we are beginning to turn up fines not lumps of poy indicating permanent occupation but evidence of feasting what we've got here is an antler and attached skull from a red deer at last we've got confirmation of a single giant earthwork but this was no ordinary Hill Fort a radiocarbon date from our final trench indicates that its earliest phase was built 3,000 years ago in the late Bronze Age so although Stuart's vision of a crossridge dyke wasn't right his instincts were spot on we think the Western section was reinforced a thousand years later in the Iron Age to form a grand entrance the Gateway into a giant assembly area where surrounding communities gathered to perform religious rights and celebrate seasonal festivals but it would be willful not to make one last visit to our fantastic ditch which I reckon must be the best piece of Iron Age archaeology that we've ever excavated on time team Phil Great Piece of engineering it is an incredible piece of engineering Tony and remember this trench here is only a fragment of the entire ditch that goes around the hill but why is one side of it virtually vertical and that side slanting it is the ultimate defensive weapon I can climb down there relatively easily but when I get here I'm met by this vertical sheer rock face and if there are people up there hurling rocks at you you are not going to get out of here you know that rock was worked on by hundreds of people over hundreds of hours using metal tools might not seem to us as dramatic as swords and shields but 2,000 years ago that would have been a really powerful statement in the landscape by an Iron Age tribe saying we are here Thursday at 9: and it's filmmaker Martin Durkin on Britain's trillion pound Horror Story hard talk on Britain's finances and on Wednesday at 8 get back to the animal mad house where this week the stallion has an intimate [Music] problem

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 403,852

Keywords: Time, Team, Full, Episodes, Season, Timeteam, Archaeological, Sites, Serie, argeologie, archaeological

Id: 2aDN42Ezedw

Length: 47min 44sec (2864 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2013