- [Announcer] This channel is part of the HistoryHit network. (soft music) (lively drumming) - If you found a piece of this
in England, you'd celebrate. It's called Beaker pottery,
and it's about 4,000 years old, and the people who made
it, the Beaker folk, are a huge mystery. But here, an American archeologist reckons he's found a whole Beaker settlement. He doesn't know how long
the Beaker folk lived here or how big the settlement was, but if we can help to prove that it was part of the
sophisticated, organized community, then this area could turn out to be one of the most significant
archeological sites in the whole of Europe. Our archeologist has
worked here for 30 years. We've got just three days. (lively music) (birds singing) We've come to Deya, in the mountains on the
northwest coast of Mallorca, in search of Copper Age buildings where the Beaker folk lived. - The area is... - The third site.
- The third site. - [Tony Voiceover] Side
co director Pep Ensenyat is showing Carenza an area
called the Maze, our first site. It's hard to believe this
rubble-strewn scrubland hides any clues to the
mysterious Beaker folk, but Pep thinks he's found
evidence of a building under this pile of stones, or claper. - Here we have an alignment that would be one wall of a building. - [Carenza] Oh, I see. Just this line of stones sticking
up through the grass here. - One, two, three, four, five, six, and go right into the claper. And on the opposite side, we have another, another alignment that goes
right inside, again, the claper. - [Carenza] Right, well, theoretically, it sounds wonderfully easy, doesn't it? We just take the stones
off, take the scrub off, and there's our building. (cheerful music) - [Tony Voiceover] But
there's at least four tons of rubble to shift here, and our diggers are all
local archeology students who don't speak any English and seem to be going about
the task rather delicately. It'll need to speed up a bit, because as Mick and I discovered from site director Bill Waldron, we've got lots to do this weekend. - What have you got here? - Well, we've got a
excellent aerial photograph showing the three sites
that we're interested in. This is the Son Oleza
Copper Age settlement, which is a site here. - [Mick] This is where we now. - [Bill] Yes, that's where we are now. On this place here, we have a ritual area, which is the Son Mas sanctuary site. - [Mick] Yeah. - [Bill] And then we
have this mystery site in the middle here, which
is we call the Maze site. - [Mick] Right. - And that's where I think most of our efforts
should be concentrated. - [Tony Voiceover] We will be looking at the other two sites, the Beaker settlement at Son Oleza and the sanctuary at
Son Mas in due course, but Carenza's site, the Maze, is the key, because if what's under the claper there is a Beaker building, then Bill will know the whole area was once home to a rare Beaker community. - [Bill] We do know there is a connection between this site and this site, and that's the Beaker bit. - [Mick] Yeah. - [Bill] Now, it would be marvelous we'd find the Beaker bit here, too. - [Mick] Right. - So essentially we want to
see whether there is a link between all these three sites?
- Right. - How the heck do we
do that over a weekend? - Well, you've got the expertise. You've got the things that I don't have. (cheerful music) - [Tony Voiceover] Some of that expertise has just arrived at the Maze. The geophysics team are
going to test the area around the claper to see how
far the building extends, though there's hardly any topsoil, and they might have trouble
telling buildings from bedrock. And nearby, Bernard and Stewart are setting up the global
positioning system, or GPS, which uses satellites to
give exact grid references for geographical features and finds. Or it will, if Bernard can master the kit. (cheerful music) By the end of the weekend, all of the geophysics and GPS
data will have been plotted onto an incredibly detailed
three-dimensional map, showing the precise location of trenches, geophysics results, and finds. And then there's my favorite
piece of technology. - One of the aspects of Time Team that the archeologists find most useful is when we get those big aerial shots so they can see how this site fits into the geography of the area, but as you can see, the only helicopter that we've
been able to find in Mallorca is that little thing, and there's not room for
two people plus the pilot, so I can't go up in it and I'm
pretty hacked off about that. And Carenza can't go up in it, and her absence speaks volumes, and the only person who's allowed up, says our chief archeologist, Mick, is our chief archeologist, Mick, and he's gonna tell us what he can see. I'll stay here, and Carenza's
over there somewhere. Are you ready to go, Mick? - [Mick] Yes, I can hear you. - Okay, good luck. Have a good flight. (helicopter chopping) (lively music) - Can you hear me clearly? - [Mick] Yes, very clearly. - It's working. - [Tony Voiceover] Mick
heads straight for the Maze. You can just see the claper
in the corner down here, but it's just one feature in
what could be a huge site, and we won't have time
to investigate it all, so Mick's looking to see if
there are any natural boundaries which might limit our search. But first he's gotta find Carenza. - [Mick] Carenza, are you
there down below in the Maze? I can't see you at the moment. - Can you see me? I'm right below you here. - [Mick] Yeah, I can see you now. You were behind a tree. Over there, look. Behind this tree there. Okay, I've got you now
where I can see you. - It's great, this late 20th-century
communications, isn't it? - There should be an
edge to the site here. There's a whole line
of sort of rock outcrop that I'm standing on. It's curving around along here. - [Mick] Yeah, if you keep
going in that direction. Yeah, a bit to your right. Bit further over, heading
towards that building. Now, you're coming up to sort
of stones in a row there. It's just behind the tree. Hang on. - [Tony Voiceover] Mick
agrees that the rock outcrop looks like a natural boundary, with the site on this side of it, and he soon spots something else, though what he can't see is Carenza's got a hell of a job keeping up with his instructions. - [Mick] Bit to your right. Bit to your right. Bit to your right. - [Carenza] Bit to the right. - [Mick] Now, can you get over? Those stones that are coming out. - So this is really good
from the ground as well. This is like sort of flat. We thought it looked like an entranceway almost to the terrace
where the clapers are. We sort of got this, all this rocky area, very bare rock outcrop
that you couldn't build on, and the more level area where
you could build on above it, and then sort of this flat, almost like terrace winding around. Seems like maybe an entrance
way coming up to it. - [Mick] So let's assess
the site from here. - [Tony] Mick, when you've
finished drooling over it all, can you get down? - [Mick] All right, okay. I'll take a bit of photography first. I'll see you shortly. Over and out. - He wants to take some photos,
so he says over and out. (helicopter chopping) Come down now! He's turned it off. - [Tony Voiceover] While
Mick's mucking around in the helicopter, Carenza's returned to the claper
to find problems mounting. The first set of geophysics
results were ruined by the bedrock sticking
through the top soil, so they're having to try again. And three hours of stone shifting has made virtually no
impression on the claper. - [Carenza] Pep, your archeologists have been at this for a while now trying to get the stones off this claper, and we're not really making
very much progress on it. Is there any way we can
speed things up a bit? - Well, the claper is
actually a bit large. What we could do is to
just take one quarter or section of the claper off, right next to the structures
or the alignments of stones, and see if the structures go well inside. - [Tony Voiceover] If
we ever get down to it, the building underneath the rubble may turn out to be something
like our second site, the Beaker settlement at Son Oleza. Here in a compound the
size of a football pitch, Bill's found houses, artifacts, and more Beaker pottery than
we have in the whole of the UK. - So would this have been a wall? - Yes, yeah, you can see
that the two facing sides are very large stones, which are about three
and a half meters wide. - [Tony] So it would have been tall? - Oh, yes. That thing would've gone up at least three and a half meters. - [Tony] Wow. - Which is roughly about eight to 10 feet. - This is quite a sophisticated peak. - Yes, yeah. There's a lot of manpower's
been put into this. - What's this little thing? - This is a little alcove. We call it the guard's niche. - [Tony] For the soldier to? - Not a soldier, no, no. We know that there was
a probably a guard dog, because we have gnawed
bones that we've excavated from in between the crevices of the rocks, and that's one of the indications that they probably had a dog there. There's a whole water system, hydraulic water system that moved in here that literally brought
water right into the houses, back of the houses. - It's hard to believe, isn't it? That people who apparently
just came out of the Stone Age would have these great big
high walls and water systems. - Well, not if it took 1100
years, 1200 years to do it. Look what we've done in
the last 1100, 1200 years. - Yeah. - [Tony Voiceover] But Bill's
not finished with this site. He wants to find out when
the Beakers first came here. We know they lived during the Copper Age between about 2500 and 1300 BC. But Bill thinks this settlement dates from the very end of that period, so he wants us to dig under a wall here to find out if there are any remains of earlier Beaker huts underneath. - [Bill] These could very
well be a feature here. If it is... - [Mick] That's these lines. - [Bill] Yeah, these stone lines. You see this? It could be a feature in here, and then of course you could
go right on out through there. - [Phil] That's it there, isn't it? - Right, yeah. And so right out to the wall,
these two walls are on here. - So if we took a one meter trench... - Right through the middle. - All the way through, it
would be really something. - Yeah, that would really fit
your plans then, would it? - Yeah, fine. Show me what's there ahead of time. - [Mick] Can they get the diggers. - See if we can get
some diggers on the go. Hello, Phil to Carenza, over. - Hello, Phil. Yeah, over. - [Phil] Look, Carenza, we're
about to start digging here. Could you send some
diggers over for us please? - Phil, we've not really got
anyone to spare over here. I mean, we're trying to move
several tons of rocks here, and it's taking quite a while as it is. Can you not manage with the
number you've got over there? Over. - Well, I mean, come on. Fair is fair. I mean, you can't have a monopoly on all the diggers, surely. - How many have you got
there at the moment? - Well, not very many. - One and a half. - [Bill] All professionals. - [Carenza] I'll have a think about this. - [Phil] How long's a think take? - They need a couple of the other site. - We can send two. - You can spare two? - Yes.
- All right. Phil, we can send you over two. Is that any help? Over. - [Phil] Yeah, that'll do fine. That'll do fine, if you
can send 'em on over. - Yeah, that's great. Could they go over to the other site then? - Okay. (cheerful music) - [Tony Voiceover] In fact, it wasn't until after lunch
that the reinforcements arrived at Son Oleza. - [Phil] Ah, diggers! Diggers! - [Bill] Right, it's about time! (Phil laughing) - Come on this way! Come on! - [Tony Voiceover] Though
I think Bill was expecting more muscle and less glamor. - [Phil] Well, this is it. Let's get on with it. - All right. - [Tony Voiceover] Bill's
decided to divide the trench into a series of one-meter units. We're not allowed to call them holes. Phil's unit progresses noticeably faster than any of the others, but with most of the finds likely to be deep in the
crevices in the bedrock, it'll take a while before
he gets anything out. Back in the incident room, Steve and Bernard are hard
at work on the 3D map. - [Tony] What will it do? - The idea of having the
landscape we're working and modeled in the computer is that we can plot the work that we do during the weekend onto it, and we can view it from any angle. We can animate it, and we can
change the lighting and so on, so it's much easier
for us to deal with it. - Is it really gonna be
useful to you, Bernard, or is it just a sort of rather
trendy piece of presentation? - No, I think it is useful. It's certainly, there
are aspects of this site that are with alignment
of one site on the other, and this will enable us to study that and view it quite accurately. - And how long is it gonna take you to create the whole thing? - Well, for now we've got the land mass. All we're doing is waiting for the GPS and geophysics results, and hopefully they're gonna plot in within an hour or two of coming in, and we'll be out sitting on the land mass and fly around them then. - So you can convince me
at the end of the weekend when it's all up and running and it doesn't just look
like something on the paper. - Okay, we'll try our best. - See you later.
- Okay. - [Tony Voiceover] Four
o'clock at the Maze, and they're still not digging. The latest estimate is tomorrow morning for the start of the excavation. - Well, we've done... - [Tony Voiceover] And
there'll be no guidance from geophysics on where to dig. The bedrock has beat them. - [Steve] It's probably
better without glasses. - It is better, actually. Once I defocused, this is a cracking site. It's all there, it's all there. - [Steve] You can see everything, yeah. What more can you say? - [Tony Voiceover] It's going
a bit better at Son Oleza. Bill's found a few more diggers, and Phil's just found our first
fragment of Beaker pottery. We should be grateful for small mercies. In this case, very small. - That's very delicate. - Something about like that. Very, very delicate, very thin walled. The only thing's missing
here is the incisions on it. - [Phil] So I mean, is that
like virtually a Plain Beaker? - Plain Beaker is what you would put, what I would call it, yeah. (gentle music) - [Tony Voiceover] When archeologists talk of Beaker pottery, they mean something like this. It was pottery for special occasions and is recognizable by
its distinctive bell shape and carved pattern. Phil's part would've looked like this, but without the pattern,
hence Plain Beaker. But the Beaker folk also made
pottery for everyday use, so-called domestic ware, and there's plenty of that coming out of all the other units. - [Phil] That's a big old sherd, isn't it? - Yeah, that's a big one. It's a big domestic pot. Something like that would be an indication that there's some kind of a hut base around somewhere in this area. Whether it's in these
squares or not, or out there. It could be over here. - [Phil] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, more. That's a good quality stuff, isn't it? - Yeah, and it's sharp. It's a beauty. It's Copper, Copper Age. I wouldn't be to surprised
that we'll maybe tomorrow find more of that there. - Will we?
- Yeah. With rim sherd that
might even connect to it. (Phil laughing) If we're lucky, if we're lucky. - Yeah. - [Tony Voiceover] But so far, no sign of the hut bases themselves. That'll be for tomorrow. - End of day one. This is the first time I've
been to this part of the site, and all the diggers have gone home, and I'd assumed that this entire claper would have disappeared by now, but the only bit that's come
is this little bit here. What's gone wrong? - You try moving it, Tony. There's a lot of it. We actually changed our strategy. We decided that as the structure or what's our possible structure runs under this end of the claper, it made sense just to work
to remove this end of it, and that will enable us to
see, get down to the structure, see if we get any dating material off it. Seems silly to move the whole lot of it. Was a huge amount of work
when the information we need is where this structure
runs in at this end. - And we've been having a discussion about different a strategy
for the rest of the site, to try and define what
activity there might be here on this big grid. - You're twitching. What's going on? - Having been up in the helicopter and seeing the position of
this on this promontory, you know, a good place to live, really, and Bill's found pottery from here. We've been talking about
how best to try and define the extent of the site. - That's our problem, really. We know there's a structure here, and there are a few others, possibly. What we don't know is how far it goes. Nothing's been mapped yet. We don't know how far, how
big this site might be. - So I've suggested something
could upset you tremendously, that we ought to do some test pits across the areas over the back here. - Little arbitrary holes in the one vague hope that we might... - One meter square holes. - I'm a bit worried about this, because I think it's very
likely we'll miss it. I think we should do more in
the way sort of field walking to see if there's a difference in the distribution of pottery, whether it falls off beyond that. - But we're not going to,
in this sort of stuff, you've got so much sort
of stuff on the surface. - [Carenza] Yeah, but you see... - You're gonna have to have a real expert to even see the stuff in there. - [Tony Voiceover] Whatever
the outcome of this exchange, it means extra work at the Maze tomorrow, and we've still not started
digging under the claper yet. Are we being too ambitious? Join us after the break. (lively drumming) - Margarita. One there. (tool tapping) One here, there. - Okay. (tool tapping) - One here. - [Tony Voiceover] The
change of plan at the Maze means Carenza's about
to run out of diggers. She and Mick couldn't agree whether field walking or test pits would be the best way to
get an overview of the site, and have decided to do both. So they're going to
sink a line of test pits running up the site from the claper, and while Carenza is busy organizing that, the rest of her team
are clearing undergrowth and looking for surface finds,
but resources are stretched. - There are no more people? - [Tony Voiceover] In fact,
there are only two left to start the calper trench. It's not enough, so
Mick's gone to Son Oleza to persuade Phil and Bill to give up the hunt for the hut bases and send their diggers to the Maze. - [Phil] We gotta keep going with it, and you said to me yesterday. - Yeah. - You said we got a load of pottery, which is the pottery, and you said to me quite
clearly, that given another day, we'd have so much pottery from here that, you know, we'd have
just an amazing collection. - Well, we will, we will. - We've got enough people here. We can keep going. - We would have another day. - I want you to leave somebody here. - But if we can leave you at
the end of these three days with the potential of a new site. - Right. - Because we've done
all this previous work that we've put into it.
- Right. - That's actually more useful than us digging for you
and with you, isn't it? Because you can do that. - Yeah, yeah we can do that. That's not a question of that. It's a question of establishing that. - Yeah, yeah. - It seems like at the moment, you won't let go of this site. - Yah, I mean, no, no, no.
- We're not suggesting that. What we're suggesting is not putting a great
deal of work into this, because Bill can do that. - I wanna see the three... I wanna see you guys
establish the three things that you set out to do. - Okay, let's do that. - Which was to basically to establish what's going on at this site
right here at these levels in this particular area. - Okay. - Of the site. We know what's going on in
the other parts of the area, but we wanna know what's in this area. - But in order to do that, where are we going to
deploy our resources? - Well, you can leave
a skeleton crew here. We're agreed with that. I'm not against that,
leaving a skeleton crew here. - He needs you here. - I don't see dropping it. I don't wanna see it dropped
and pull everybody off. - What we really is, what is, can we use the maximum we can gather to put into the Maze site,
to try and sort this out for Bill when we're finished. - Right.
- You're happy with that? - It's not perfect, but that's all right. - [Mick] Let's get cracking with it. - [Phil] Let's do it, then. - [Bill] Well, okay, okay. - [Tony Voiceover] With that, the search for the hut bases is abandoned. Just two of these diggers will remain here to tidy up the trench. The rest are off to the Maze. - Mick, I don't think you're a happy man. What's your problem? - There's lots of things, isn't there? There's the terrain, there's the... - [Tony] The time it takes to
get from one place to another. - Well, yes and the time
to dig, and I don't know. I mean, there's different
approach to things. - [Tony] In what way? - Well, I suppose it's summed
up at the base site, really. You know, Bill's got some
walls going under a claper, so that's the target, whereas my approach is much
more to look at the whole area, and then hone in on it as a result of doing various field working evaluation techniques. - [Tony] Rather than excavating simply to support one theory? - Yeah, I mean, one has to say, of course, that you know, it's worked
for Bill in the past. You know, he's been there a long time. - [Tony] Are we gonna get what we want? - Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, well, in the
sense that Bill was anxious for us to get involved because we've got so many
techniques at our disposal, which is why, you know,
I argued very strongly that we should do the Maze settlement, because that is the one
area we can try that out. Otherwise we're just
continuing what he can do in his own time. - [Tony] Sure. - He's digging more little holes. - [Tony] It's gonna take the
gear box out in a minute. - [Mick] Yeah, it's on these,
I mean, outcrops as well. - [Tony] Mick, I've come to a dead end. (Mick and Tony laughing) (cheerful music) - [Tony Voiceover] With the test pits and field walking well
underway at the Maze, the new diggers are put to
work on the claper trench. They're excavating the whole
cleared area at the end, and the alignment of stones is
looking promisingly wall-like but the finds are almost all Roman. Not a good sign for this
being a Beaker building. (cheerful music) (waves crashing) Meanwhile, Phil's tempering
his disappointment at stopping the Son Oleza dig with a gentle boat trip. He and Pep are looking
for a crucial ingredient of Copper Age life. - I think the copper was a very important
part of the settlement, having a copper source nearby. - It must have been an amazing discovery to find they had actual ore there, and that they can actually use it. - [Pep] Absolutely. - [Tony Voiceover] They're
heading for a cove here, right underneath our three sites, to look for the copper seam Pep believes the local
Beakers would have mined. - So we're gonna be able
to land right on the beach? - We're going to land right in front of the where the the sources are. The only problem is that
you may get a little wet. - I thought there'd be
a catch in it somewhere. - So I think you better
start taking your boots off. (waves lapping) - [Tony Voiceover] They're
not just here for the view. Phil's going to try and
smelt copper from the ore, so he and Pep have got some mining to do. - Oh! Oh! Yeah. Now, where is this copper, then? (hammer tapping) Oh, look at that! Go on, keep going. (hammer tapping) Let's have some of that. Really is green. I mean, I dunno what color
I'd expected it to be, but it really is copper. (hammers tapping) I'm beginning to think they
probably did walk down the cliff and didn't come in by boat, 'cause it's far too
uncomfortable for your feet. - Look out. Here comes trouble! - Hi, Bill. Have seen you up here yet. - [Tony Voiceover] It's nearly lunchtime, and Bill's come to see what the diggers he lost
this morning have been up to. - Well, this is the trench
we're putting on the alignment over by the claper. That's going on well, but we're
still quite high above it. It's only classical stuff at the moment, but we sort of expanded out a bit. We've done some field walking, sort of surface collection here, looking for prehistoric pottery. You can see the sort of red
pegs where bits have turned up. Bernard's just measuring
them with the GPS, so they straight on the computer. - [Bill] So that will all go on to the... - [Carenza] Right, we'll
get a distribution map of the whole site with all
the prehistoric pottery. What we're also doing is
putting in some test pits in a sort of line. Come down here, 'cause we've got a whole
line of them across the site. One up there. We've got about 10 in a line right down to that big
line of boulders there, which we're thinking
might mark a natural limit to the area to occupy up here. - [Bill] Very nice. - [Tony Voice] The test pits will take a while to produce results. In the meantime, Carenza's anxious for a verdict
on the field walking finds. - [Bill] (whistles) Oh, that's
familiar, though, wasn't it? - [Carenza] What do you think of that from a date point of view? - [Bill] To me, that's Copper Age, and the age would be
somewhere at 1300 and 2500. - [Carenza] Right, so that's exactly the period we're interested in. - This stuff always
accompanies Beaker ware. - [Carenza] Really? - Yes. - [Carenza] Really? - This type of pottery,
this particular form, this trunk and conic form always
is found with Beaker ware. - [Tony Voiceover] So the
Beakers were definitely here at the Maze. We've just got to find
what it was they lived in, single building or whole settlement? And is this wall anything
to do with them them, or was it built later? - But what I don't understand is why, in a tiny little backwater like this, was an ancient people
building such big walls and big settlement and a big sanctuary? - What makes you think
that this was a place that's been off of the beaten track? - Well, it's a little island. - Islands, that doesn't mean a thing. Islands are, if they're
the right kind of islands, they're very closely
related to the mainland. - So they would have... - Especially these islands,
especially these islands. These islands form actually
a set of stepping stones between here and the mainland. If you look at a map, you'll see that there's, there's
Menorca, Mallorca, Ibiza, and then the Spanish mainland, and you never get out of sight of land. And this Beaker pottery we find here is exactly like the Beaker pottery that you find anywhere in the mainland, like anything that you find
in the south of France, and what you find in England. In fact, these things that
you've been looking at here, part of them, the oldest
part of it is contemporary with Stonehenge and Avebury in England. - All right, so at the same
time as this was going on here. - [Bill] Right. - Similar people with similar customs were making Stonehenge
and the Avebury ring. - Exactly, exactly, exactly contemporary. - [Tony Voiceover] In
fact, Mick is even now getting his first glimpse of the local equivalent of Avebury, our third site, the sanctuary at Son Mas. It lies one kilometer down the coast from the Son Oleza settlement, with the Maze in between the two. The building you can see is Iron Age, but Bill's also found Beaker pottery here, which suggests that there was an earlier
Copper Age sanctuary. If we can find it or prove it existed, we'll know it was part of
the same Beaker community as the Son Oleza settlement. First on the case are geophysics. - Where we're gonna go, the far side. - [John] Oh, it's almost a lawn. That's got soil on it. That's actually quite moist. We aren't hitting bedrock, are we? - No, no, no. I think we might actually get away with taking some resistance
measurements on here. - [Tony Voiceover] If there
was a Beaker sanctuary on this site, it must have been built here for a reason. So while John and Chris get
to work with the geophysics astoarcheologist Michael
Hoskin is trying to work out if this site aligns with important stars the Beakers might have worshiped. Not surprisingly, this has attracted the skeptical
interest of Mick and Phil. - This very unusual stone here. - [Mick] Yeah. - Appears to be hollowed out and looking right up the valley. So taking this as a clue. - [Mick] Yeah. - [Michael] I look at the gap in the hill. - [Mick] Yeah. - And then I have a
catalog of star positions in prehistoric times, and that will enable me to establish what interesting objects there
were in the sky at the time. - [Mick] This is because it alters? - Yes. - Year by year then? - It alters because the Earth
is not a perfect sphere. It's flattened at the poles. - Right. - And so the gravitational
pull of the moon and the sun causes the axis of the earth to wobble. And from here, we have to
imagine the Earth tilting away. - [Mick] Yeah. - And what it appears is that the sky, the stars are going down. - Right, so you're gonna
take all your calculations and see which stars and whatever
we're visible through that in line with that mountain. You'll be able to tell us that tomorrow. - I will indeed. - We better leave you to it - Okay, thank you very much. - Just hope it's Hale-Bopp
or Alpha Centauri or something like that. - I'll do my best. - Okay, thanks, Michael. Bye-bye!
- Bye! - [Tony Voiceover] A
few hundred yards away, Stewart's looking for
spiritual guidance, too. He's found a path running
along the cliff edge from the Maze settlement to the Sanctuary. It's the most direct route
from one to the other. - You come up over here, you're actually right on
the edge of the cliffs. - [Tony] Oh, yes, yes. - Can you see over there? - [Tony] Yeah. - Well, we know there's a connection, early burials along cliffs,
sanctified sites there, and we're looking towards a
sanctified site over yonder. And as you come along this path here, and you see you come down here. - Oh, this is definitely
cut out, isn't it? - It is, yeah. - This is human, yeah. - As you come down, this is what appears to be a set of steps. - Definitely like that. - They may be foot-worn, but
they're artificial aren't they? And if you come here, you can see behind you,
there's a double-faced wall, typical of the sort of walls we've got. - You think this whole
thing is one massive wall? - I do, yes. - You wouldn't just get that
on a mountain path, would you? - You see how it encloses this big area of stone cliffs and so on.
- So beautiful. - It feels mystical in a way, doesn't it? - Half of me's saying,
oh, wow, this is amazing, all these Copper Age
people dressed in robes on their way to the Sanctuary, and the other half of me's saying it could be a load of tosh. These could just be stones together. - I've got the same feelings
myself, unfortunately, but archeologically you have to establish there's a sanctuary over there. It's an important site. You've got settlement over there. - They've gotta get from one to the other. - That's right. - But will Mick buy this? - I don't think Mick will
buy the thousand years, but there's archeological evidence here. We've seen the walls, and it'd be nice over a period of time. I don't think we can do anything. - We can't prove it this weekend. - But Bill, over a longer period of time, if we point him at this, he'd be able to answer some
of the questions we can't. - Is there any more? - The path continues for quite a way. It just continues round the cliffs. - [Tony Voiceover] But
as the day nears its end, the chances of finding a Beaker dwelling, let alone a settlement at the
Maze, seem to be receding. The test pits at the top of
the site have hit bedrock with no finds. Those nearest the claper
haven't hit anything, and no one will put a date on the wall still being uncovered
in the claper trench. Ominously, they've had no
Copper Age finds from here. In the incident room, Sue's busy reconstructing
our few Beaker sheds, watched by two-week-old daughter Millie, while Millie's dad
struggles with the 3D map. It seems to be taking
forever to get the GPS data. And just outside, Phil's had to recruit
two passing Americans to help him build a kiln
for the copper smelting. It all seems to be a bit uphill. - [Mick] How have you been getting on? - [Tony Voiceover] So it's
about time for some good news, and at the Sanctuary, geophysics look as if
they might have some. - What are we looking at? - Okay, well, basically we've
looked at this flat area here. It's only a small area
from our point of view, about 10 meters, seven meters. We've gone in with magsus and resistance, so we're looking for magnetic contrasts. - Yeah. - Between any walls,
boulders, and the soil. And then for any electrical contrasts. - Right. - If there's any wall lines and so on, and we've actually got some. - Have you got some? - Yeah. - Well, what have we got, then? - We've got a, looks like a
linear coming through here. - [Mick] Through towards
where these boulders are? - Yeah, right over there, yeah. - Would that be buildings, occupations? - Well, it looks the solar might
be a wall line through here with the build-up of soil on either side. - Yeah, okay, well, that's... - I mean, that's encouraging
in its own right, isn't it? - It's amazing. (Phil laughing) (gentle music) - [Tony Voiceover] On that positive note, Time Team gather a few miles down the road at Bill and his wife Jackie's house to make the final excavation of the day. (team cheering) Can we get to the bottom of
this fantastic Mallorcan paella? And tomorrow, can we get to the bottom of our two remaining sites? Can we find out what the
Beakers lived in at the Maze, and what they worshipped
in at the Sanctuary? - Well, here's to a great bunch, huh? - [Team] Cheers, cheers! - [Tony Voiceover] Join
us after the break. (lively drumming) If this wall was part
of a Beaker building, these diggers should be coming up with lots of Copper Age finds. Well, early this morning, they finally got some,
so it still could be, but the bulk of pottery has
been Roman and Iron Age. (pottery clanking) - [Carenza] That's the classical stuff. - So this is all Roman? - Yes, all of that sort of date in here. Huge pieces coming out. But then we've also got... That's a hammer stone there. This is Bronze Age,
Iron Age stuff in here. You can see the difference. Some quite nice pieces coming out there. And we've just found a few
bits of Copper Age stuff, which would have been
contemporary of the Beakers, just starting to come out. - But if you've got pottery
from three different periods, can you tell what age that wall was? - Well, not at the moment because it's all mixed up together. What we need is pottery
in separate layers. - Yeah. - In this trench, we've got
something really exciting, where we are starting
to get distinct layers. We put in these test pits. - Yes. - And in this one, we decided to, 'cause they're quite hard
work digging these test pits. That's very dry, hard soil. We decided to just take
down one side of it, look to see how deep it went, and we found that, and that is Bronze Age. There are two Roman layers on top of this, then we've got the Bronze Age layer, and we're still not
down onto the red soil, which is the Copper Age. - [Tony] So we could get the
Copper Age underneath that? - [Carenza] That's what we're hoping. - [Tony] So we would be able
to date it really clearly? - That's exactly what we're hoping. You ready to take that out yet, Pep? - I think so. One piece. - [Tony] Oh, it's crumbling, isn't it? - That's where I hit it with the pick, so that's where it's crumbling. And that's the last piece. - [Tony] Oh, that's lovely. That's so nice. - [Carenza] Which way it went there, yeah. - [Tony] Is that right? Brilliant. - [Tony Voiceover] While Pep digs deeper in search of a Copper Age layer, outside the incident room, Phil and Bill are pulverizing copper ore. - [Phil] Well, that looks... - [Bill] Yeah, it's the
smaller pieces you can get. We don't wanna make it a powder, 'cause that'll disappear in the kiln. - [Phil] Right. - But if it won't break,
don't worry about it. - [Phil] I mean, is this
good quality, do you reckon? - I think it's very poor quality
ore, to be honest with you, but it's enough. You can see here, there's
a nice piece of... - [Phil] Oh, wow. - [Bill] That. - [Phil] Yeah, that is... - [Bill] That's nice and rich. - [Phil] That is, isn't it? - [Tony Voiceover] But then comes the part Phil's been dreading. To stop the crushed ore
disintegrating in the furnace, he's got to bind it in horse dug. - [Phil] That is pretty disgusting. - Well, you can have that job. You can make your sausages,
and I'll tell you... I'll tell you, would you like
to spit on it a little bit? - [Phil] No, no! Horse dung sausages. Well, I've done some things in my time, but this is gonna be one of the best. (cheerful music) - [Tony Voiceover] But
that's the easy bit. To smelt the ore, Phil's got to get the kiln to
over 1000 degrees centigrade, and that's gonna mean lots of bellowing. (cheerful music) (bellow puffing) At the Sanctuary, Bill's decided the wall
geophysics found yesterday is part of a modern terrace. He thinks the Copper Age sanctuary is more likely to be closer
to the Iron Age building, so that's where Mick's digging. There's even less topsoil
here than at the Maze, so we'll soon find out if he's right, especially as Phil's turned up to supply extra digging power, leaving Steve, who'd nipped
out for a break from his map, temporarily stranded on the bellows. - John, Paul, just the people. Listen, I've really gotta
get back in the chapel and get on some 3D land mass. - Come on. They need the experts. That's why we've been called in. - Do you know what you're doing? - [John] No, I don't. - Just make sure you open at the bottom and pull up just so it
doesn't suck any air back in, flame back in. - [John] You want me to... - Yeah, good luck. You're gonna enjoy this. - I'll do the work, you do the talk, okay? - All right, I'll see you later. - Hello, Bill. It's John at this end. Can you tell us what
we're meant to be doing with the bellows? Over. - [Bill] What color
does the fire look like? - I've only just arrived. I'll have a look. Hello, Bill. It's glowing red at the bottom, but it's only half full of charcoal. Do we need any more? - You've got all of the ore in already? - I don't know about the ore, Bill. All I've been told is to add charcoal. - It's not a question of charcoal now. It's a question of air and muscle power. - Air and muscle power. Shall I have a go? - You're not gonna get
that fire up high enough if you don't put muscle into
it, I can tell you that. So bellow, fellow. (bellow puffing) - [Tony Voiceover] By
lunchtime, it's still not clear whether this is a Beaker wall, and the test pits haven't reached a Copper Age layer, either. But yesterday's surface finds mean there must be a Beaker
building here somewhere, so Pep and Carenza are plowing on. Whether they find the building or not, we've got lots of
information from the Maze that'll help Bill in the future. Steve's compiling it onto the 3D map. Onto a plan showing the
claper and the rock outcrop, he's plotted Carenza's
path and the test pits. Pep's pot came from this one, and the distribution
map of Copper Age finds will help Bill decide where
to dig when we've gone. (lively music) - [Mick] And look at that. - [Phil] That's just
bedrock all the way across. - It's pretty well. - I'm getting straight down onto it. - Yeah. - But like you say, there's nothing sort
of really solid there. - Well, I reckon it's okay. We clearly haven't got it here. - No. - But Bill, come on, have
a look at this, will you? - [Tony Voiceover] In fact, none of the Sanctuary
trenches have hit structures, but at least Bill's has
produced more evidence that there was a sanctuary
here in the Copper Age. - [Mick] Show Phil that bit
of early pot, 'cause that's... - This is what we're really looking for. Unfortunately, I put a pick in it. - Oh, well.
(Mick laughing) The best finds are always
found like that. (laughs) - [Mick] So what date is this, Bill? - Ah, this stuff is the real stuff. This is the really old material. This could be anywhere from 2000, 2500. - Right, right. - If I was finding this in caves, I'd say it could even be older than that. - Right, so it's the early
stuff you've had off this site? - It's domestic ware. It's not Beaker, but it's domestic ware, and it is the oldest stuff that we've got. - [Phil] Well, can I
actually have a look at it? - Yeah, yeah. If I can get it together. I gave it a mighty whack here. There we go, okay. You hold that, and I'll
put the pieces on for you. That way, right there. - What, that way? - [Mick] Ah, right. - So that's... No, not that way. - Not that way. - That way, right straight up like that. - [Tony Voiceover] Any the wiser? Nor am I. Luckily Sue has been
able to reconstruct it. It's a domestic pot
from early Beaker times. It would have been about six inches high with straight sides, a flat bottom, and lug holes, so it
could be hung on a wall, which suggests there must have been a Copper Age building here somewhere. The horse dung sausages
are in the furnace, but the heat's still too low, and John's running out
of energy on the bellows. It's time to cheat. - [Paul] John? Here comes the fan. (team chattering) - That's what you can do, just connect. - Do you want to fire up first? - Just like that. (fan whirring) - [John] Go on, go on. (fan whirring) - [Tony Voiceover] The
Beaker copper smelters will be turning in their burial mounds. - [Michael] Hello, Mick. - [Mick] Yeah, hi, there. - [Tony Voiceover] Mick's last chance to prove there was a
Copper Age sanctuary here lies with our astroarcheologist, and he thinks he's cracked it. - Now we look up this valley. - Yep. - And we've got the hill on the
left, the hill on the right. - Right, yeah. - And we're living in 2000 BC. - Yeah. 2000 BC? - 2000 BC. - That's the date you've come up with? - Well, for example. - For example. - For example.
- Right. - [Michael] And as night falls. - [Mick] Yeah. - [Michael] From the left-hand hill. - [Mick] Yeah. - There emerges the sensational appearance of the Southern Cross, and it would look just beautiful. It looks beautiful
anywhere now to anybody. - I've never seen it. - But to see it framed in those two hills would be absolutely fabulous. - [Mick] Yeah? - Then you have to remember that, because of the tilt of the Earth's axis. - Yeah. - Year by year, century by century, this Southern Cross would
get lower and lower. - [Mick] Right. - [Michael] Until the
bottom star of the cross was no longer visible. - [Mick] Right. - And that was about the year 1700, 1,700 years before Christ. - Yeah, BCE, yeah. - And so it would seem
to me that at that date, something really serious happened here. - Right. - Because what I imagine
them as looking towards and possibly even worshiping if they identified the
constellation with a god. - Suddenly disappearing
in front of their eyes. - Were suddenly disappearing
in front of their eyes. - Yeah. - [Tony Voiceover] Astonishingly,
this theory is supported by the previous findings of Bill's radio carbon dating expert. - I have dates here
from 2200 BC until 1740. - Yeah. - And then I have a gap of 400 years, so the site looks abandoned for 400 years, until another culture comes
in much later, around 1300 BC. - [Tony Voiceover] So it
looks like the sighting stone is the only remaining part
of the Beaker sanctuary. The rest of the building
would have been abandoned or even destroyed when the object of the Beaker's worship fell from the sky in 1700 BC. The rubble may have been reused to build the sanctuary we see today. (lively music) It's five o'clock on day three, and the weather's closing in. The kiln now looks fantastic, which is more than can be said for Phil. - [John] Well, what can I say? - (laughs) Hey! - This isn't compulsory dress. This wasn't in the contract. - It was needs must when
it rained, that's all. - You wanna watch you don't melt. - I know, I know, this is.... - It's going brilliantly,
though, isn't it? - Yeah. I mean, look at that. Now that, we'd have never
got that with the bellows. Whoa!
- Whoa! - Still just red, isn't it? - Well, I don't know. I mean, that is gonna be
really hot down in there. - Whoa! That's going really orange. - That's as orange as we've
had it, yeah, isn't it? - [John] That's hot, isn't it? - [Phil] That is hot. - [Tony Voiceover] But will it
be hot enough to get copper? (gentle music) By six o'clock, the test
pits have hit the bottom without hitting the Beaker building. And nor is it the wall
in the claper trench, which Pep now thinks is part
of an Iron Age building. Nevertheless, it's been a
profitable weekend here, because not only have we found
enough Copper Age pottery on the site to be sure that there was
a Beaker building here, we've also narrowed the
area it could be in. And of course, the stretch of wall means Bill may be able to
add an Iron Age settlement to his collection. (fan whirring) - What are you doing with a
Copper Age generator, then? - Oh, that's it. We're done. - [Tony] Does it matter if stuff falls in? - No, not at all. - Should I pull it back any more, or? - Yeah, we'll have whole chute off, the whole super structure,
as you might call it. - What do you reckon the chances are of us getting some copper outta here, too? - God knows, Tony. I mean, I'll tell you what,
won't be for the sake of trying. I mean, we put a lot of work into this, and I mean, we've had doubts, and then I suppose we've
had bits where it's gone, you know, you think, yeah,
yeah, we're really gonna do it. - And I thought there was
gonna be punch ups earlier on. - Well, you know, I'm sort
of like betwixt and between. One half of me says, yeah,
it's really gonna work, and the other half of me
says, well, maybe it ain't. (Phil and Tony laughing) - This is the Maze and
this is the Sanctuary here. - [Tony Voiceover] It's seven o'clock, and the 3D map is finally
ready for the official viewing. This will be the first
time Bill's seen in detail how the three sites relate to each other. - This I hope I'm gonna get a... - Copy. - Copy of it. - That's going down to the sea. (gentle music) - [Tony Voiceover] At the top, Bill's Beaker settlement at Son Oleza. The huge perimeter would have
enclosed these communal houses which would have been directly
connected to a water supply by a stone channel carved into the rock. (gentle music) 800 yards along the coast,
our main site, the Maze, home probably to a small
group of Beaker folk and certainly to an Iron Age community. Its inhabitants might have walked through the gap in the rock outcrop, a long Stewart's clifftop path, to worship at the Iron Age
sanctuary building at Son Mas. More than a thousand years
earlier, in the Copper Age, the Sanctuary would have looked like this, a bit like the British Beaker sanctuaries at Stonehenge and Avebury. Here, the Beaker inhabitants
of Son Oleza and the Maze would have gazed on the Southern Cross until it fell from the sky in 1700 BC. - Bill, what do you reckon on Phil's first attempt
at copper smelting? - I think it was a success. - Never doubted it for a minute. (laughs) - You call this a success? - [Bill] I would call that a success. - [Tony] Because? - [Bill] Because that
is copper, my friend. That is copper. - So we got there by
the skin of our teeth? - You got that through
the skin of your teeth. You got there. - Well, that just about sums
up this weekend, I think. We just about managed it logistically. I think we just about
got there on the dates, and we got this little bit of copper. But given that this is the
first step between the Stone Age and late 20th-century computers, I don't think we did too bad. I think we could say that
Phil did marginally better than most Stone Age men. (team laughing)
