These islands we call home have a rich and varied history
stretching back thousands of years.
But hidden under the ground and under water
are some amazing treasures just waiting to be found.
Wow!
So each year, all across the country,
archaeologists dig, dive,
and explore their way down...
Oh, this is brilliant.
...searching for fresh discoveries...
And it is completely intact.
...revealing traces of ancient cultures...
This shoe is 2,803 years old.
Oh, wow.
...and unearthing fascinating artefacts.
Ooh, that's a nice thing. What is it?
I've never seen anything quite like it in my career.
Every dig adds new pieces
to the ever-growing archaeological jigsaw...
That's so cool, isn't it?
...That is the epic story of our islands.
This year, I visit digs in some extraordinary locations.
The ceiling just got a bit lower.
And I call on the help of a trio of expert investigators...
It's quite difficult to find any other evidence of things
that just don't leave a mark in the archaeology.
This is a really powerful document because we're getting to hear
the voices that we don't usually hear.
...Who delve deeper to answer the questions raised by the finds.
Is all of this already recorded in books?
There was none of this in a book anywhere.
Finally, the archaeologists bring their most amazing discoveries
into our tent...
Astonishing!
...for up-close analysis.
Genuinely rewriting history.
Welcome to Digging For Britain.
This year, because of the sheer number of brilliant digs there,
we're returning to the west of the United Kingdom.
In the middle of a modern city,
we unearth evidence of people living here 3,000 years ago...
What we've got here is the oldest house
yet known in Cardiff.
...With a treasure trove of finds.
And what was it like when you found them?
Find of a lifetime for me, that is.
- Right on my doorstep. - Yeah. Yeah.
Teetering on the edge of a crumbling cliff,
a forgotten fortress finally gives up its secrets.
We didn't know that we were going to find this stonking great big
stone roundhouse.
Big, chunky stone building, super clear to see, very satisfying.
And a new discovery at one of our best known Roman villas
shocks the experts...
I couldn't believe it.
This date goes against the established narrative.
...And could revolutionise our understanding of Britain's past.
It's one of those times we can genuinely say
this is rewriting history.
The west of Britain is home to some of our most well-known castles,
like the stunning 11th century Chepstow Castle...
...and the Norman fortress at Skenfrith,
both guarding the ancient border between England and Wales.
But other castles have almost disappeared into the landscape here.
Our first dig takes us to the village of Snodhill,
12 miles west of Hereford.
This is Snodhill Castle.
It's actually quite easy to drive straight past it,
up The Golden Valley, without noticing it's here.
There's just a couple of romantic ruins
cresting the top of the hill.
But now archaeologists are getting the chance to excavate it
and uncover just how important this castle was in its medieval heyday.
Left to fall into ruin,
the castle was declared critically at risk of collapse in 2016.
This prompted a group of locals and enthusiasts to set up
the Snodhill Castle Preservation Trust,
to conserve and investigate the site...
...probing its 14th century origins...
...at the height of the medieval period.
This year, they're getting a helping hand...
...with volunteers and students from Manchester and Cardiff Universities
joining the excavation.
They're revealing impressive walls...
...and unearthing intricate finds.
This is perfect. We're discovering things.
- Oh! - Wow!
The castle is surprising the archaeologists -
it's so much larger than expected.
Tim Hoverd is leading the dig.
- Tim, hi. - Hiya.
- So what are you finding out about this castle?
We're just beginning to find out that it was actually
a very complex castle and a very large castle,
and probably a very important one.
So where are we here? Where am I standing?
This looks like a doorway or a gateway.
You're standing in the middle of the back door of the castle,
so the postern gate.
So this is the way that they would have come out of the castle,
- their emergency exit, if you like. - Yeah.
The postern gate would have been guarded by a heavy metal grill
or portcullis.
Through it, soldiers could have snuck out,
perhaps to launch surprise attacks
against any enemy laying siege
to the castle...
...but this postern gate has some unusual features.
Normally we just have one postern gate
which goes out into a gatehouse.
Here we have a postern gate that leads out into a corridor,
which turns around 90 degrees
and goes through yet another postern gate,
with yet another doorway and portcullis.
- A double portcullis? - Yes. - Yeah. - Yes.
They appear to be utterly paranoid about people getting into
- this castle. - Is that another portcullis slot over there, then?
That's the other portcullis slot over there.
This means that this castle was one of the strongest castles.
- Really? - The defence in depth is amazing. - Yeah.
I mean, you've not only got a two-and-a-half-metre thick wall,
but then you've got at least two, if not three,
defended gateways to get through.
- And that's just the back door. - Yeah. - It's quite remarkable.
And this isn't the only bit, presumably.
No, this isn't the only bit.
I mean, if you think this is a strong piece of castle,
then you ought to see the panic room.
- The panic room? - Yes, the panic room.
- Definitely want to see that. - Right. Well, that's just round here. - OK.
Last year, the team excavated within this monumental tower.
The walls here are the thickest in the entire castle,
even stronger than the outer defensive walls...
...so if Snodhill ever came under attack,
the castle's elite could retreat inside this inner sanctum,
which even had its own well.
Well, these walls are absolutely enormous.
I mean, they're so thick.
They're huge, aren't they?
- Yeah. - It's complete overbuild.
Here, they're three metres thick when compared to the curtain wall,
which is only two metres thick.
So this was built for a purpose,
for people to use this space in an emergency.
And when do you think this is built?
This is part of a strengthening of an existing castle.
Under the floor, we found a selection of pottery.
We've got these green-glazed wares,
and the date range all coincides with a date of around
the very late 1390s to 1400 range.
- OK. - So we're looking at something that must have been built
by about 1405, 1410, something like that.
OK. So the obvious question is,
you've got a date for this strengthening of the castle,
what is it they're worried about?
They're worried about the Welsh,
but more specifically, they're worried about
the revolt of Owain Glyndwr.
- OK. - And he, we know,
got to this part of Herefordshire and North Herefordshire
in about 1406 and laid waste.
Owain Glyndwr led a long and bloody Welsh revolt
against English rule starting in the year 1400.
After racking up several victories,
he was crowned Prince of Wales in 1404.
It's precisely around the time when the fortifications
at Snodhill Castle were revamped...
...with new gatehouses and this extra strong panic room.
Now, across on the other side of the site,
the team are unearthing the remains of an enormous chapel,
more than 25 metres long and housed within the castle walls.
This chapel holds more clues to the castle's importance.
The chapel ends just here,
but then we have this room that's been added to it,
possibly again in the early 1400s,
which appears to have been a strong room
- with a cupboard and then a small cupboard... - Ah.
...Which is known as an aumbry.
So we think that whatever silver plate, etc., was being used
in the services in the chapel were being stored in here.
This is where the treasures are kept.
- That this was built to keep things very, very safe indeed. - Yeah. - Yes.
And we had this little figure...
- Oh, wow! - ..which is quite remarkable.
- Can I open it? - You can indeed, yeah.
It's French, from Limoges, from about 1250 to 1275.
And it is a little person. You can see the face there.
- Yes, in a robe. - Isn't that lovely?
And there's traces of gilding on him as well.
- So that would've been really beautiful. - Yes.
And it's designed to be attached to something.
Yes, it was riveted to something.
What was it riveted to?
- Either a processional cross... - Yeah.
- ...Or a reliquary box. - OK.
So a box that held very important things, perhaps bones of a saint
or something like that.
Perhaps hence the strong room.
- Yeah. And the heavy defences. - And the heavy defences, yes.
You've got a lot of unusual features in this castle, haven't you?
- Yes. - An unusual postern gate with two portcullises,
an unusually large tower there on the north side,
and now an unusual chapel.
What's it all telling us?
It's telling us that Snodhill is a remarkable castle.
It's almost forgotten about in terms of its importance.
- Very much so. It became hidden. - Mm.
- And, as you say, forgotten. Indeed. - Yeah. - Yeah.
Thanks to the team digging here, we're starting to understand
how Snodhill Castle fitted into the wider medieval landscape
in these battle-ravaged borderlands.
There really are only a few fragments of this castle
surviving above ground.
But it's also clear that the archaeologists
have been genuinely surprised at how much remains
below the surface.
And what they're discovering is that this castle was
much more complex and much larger than they'd originally thought.
Takes us back to this time of great turmoil and strife
in this landscape,
when Snodhill Castle was one of the largest and most impressive
in Herefordshire.
♪ Just a lonely radio
♪ Just a makeshift show and tell
♪ Playing out the lives of the lost and found... ♪
The west of Britain was only partially conquered by the Romans,
but they certainly left their mark on the landscape.
The region is home to some of the best preserved Roman remains
in the country, like the world-famous baths in Bath.
And the amphitheatre at Caerleon,
built to entertain the Roman Legion that was based here.
The transition from Roman Britain into what we call the Early Medieval
period was a time of radical change,
political instability.
We know that.
But, actually, this period is quite murky.
We just don't have much in the way of documentary evidence,
so it means the archaeology is really, really important.
And this next dig is incredibly exciting because it's showing us
that some of our assumptions about what was happening
in this period are just wrong.
Our next dig takes us to the village of Chedworth,
14 miles east of Gloucester.
This is the world-famous Chedworth Roman Villa.
It's a sprawling complex with more than 30 rooms,
and elaborate mosaics.
Grand villas like this were thought to have been abandoned
even before the Roman army withdrew from Britain in 410,
marking the beginning of the Early Medieval period.
In 2017, a team from the National Trust
re-excavated a stunning mosaic that had been covered up
ever since the villa's original discovery in the 19th century.
They used photogrammetry to record the intricate patterns
and then reburied the mosaic to preserve it.
Martin Papworth led the investigation.
One of the things we did,
we decided to take radiocarbon dates,
and then the results came back.
I looked at it and I couldn't believe it.
The results were a complete shock.
This initial radiocarbon date suggested the mosaic
wasn't actually Roman.
It was created later, in the post-Roman or Early Medieval period,
when it's long been thought that villas like this
had been abandoned.
The earliest it could possibly be, in a 95% probability range,
was 424AD.
So no-one really wants to believe that.
The radiocarbon date didn't seem to make any sense.
Martin needed to be sure,
so this year he used a different method to double check the date
of the mosaic.
You shouldn't be making mosaics in the mid to late fifth century.
You shouldn't be.
This date goes against this established narrative
that the Roman Empire just stopped and everything collapsed.
But they produced this.
That looks huge,
so we're here to test it.
To take the samples,
Martin needs to uncover the mosaic again,
and it's drawing quite a crowd.
It's really good to see it again.
It's very exciting.
Had quite a crowd for the uncovering.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the mosaic in all its glory.
You've got Blue Lias, which is this blue stuff here,
Cotswold limestone of different types-
there's whiter and yellowy types -
and these are just sawn-up bits of clay roof tile,
these little red ones. So you've got red, white, yellow and blue
forming all these patterns.
The team is taking samples for a dating method called
optically stimulated luminescence.
Martin is hammering a plastic tube into the foundations
just beneath the fragile mosaic.
It's a delicate thing to do.
Well, that was relatively painless, wasn't it?
So this is a tube of soil from directly under the edge
of this mosaic before it was covered.
And therefore, if we date this soil,
it'll say how old this mosaic is.
Martin and the team set about reburying the mosaic
to preserve it for future generations.
It's difficult to know when it will be ever seen again.
It could be hundreds of years.
Martin has sent the sample to the lab
for optically stimulated luminescence dating,
and bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman has come to find out more.
I'm at the University of Gloucestershire,
where Martin's samples are being processed.
I'm going to meet Phil Toms to find out exactly
how optically stimulated luminescence dating actually works.
Phil runs the luminescence dating laboratory,
measuring and dating samples from all around the world.
To avoid contaminating the sample,
it needs to be prepared in darkroom conditions.
So, Cat, we're now in the measurement lab.
We've extracted fine sand quartz from that sample,
so you end up with a small tube with a little bit of white powder
at the bottom of it. And if you just have a look down
your low-powered microscope there...
- Yeah. - ..you should be able to see a little one-centimetre disc.
Oh, yes.
And it's got a ten by ten grid
of 200 micron holes in there.
Tiny little holes.
OK, I've got a funny feeling I'm going to have to put a grain
- of sand in. - Yeah, so you don't have to do it one at a time.
OK, brilliant.
And we're just going to tip the sand onto the disc.
And now your job, Cat, is to try and grip the disc
at the same time as brushing across it.
- OK. - You can't muck it up.
- OK. - Well, you can.
Well, you say that! I can try.
Each of these tiny grains are quartz crystals found in the sample
from underneath the mosaic.
When the Chedworth mosaic was first built,
it covered over thousands of these crystals
that exist in the surface soil.
Once covered by the mosaic,
radiation that occurs naturally passes through the quartz,
trapping electrons inside the crystal.
These electrons steadily build over time.
When they are then exposed to light again,
the electrons within the quartz are freed,
creating a signal that we can measure called luminescence.
The amount of luminescence we detect
tells us how long the quartz has been underground.
Gosh, quite tricky, isn't it?
I keep getting new grains over.
You have to have a very steady hand, don't you?
You get used to it fairly quickly.
Yeah, I can imagine.
But I keep on thinking I'm done and then I see a little grain.
That's looking pretty good to me.
Phil loads the slide into the machine, which fires very precise
lasers at each of the microscopic grains of quartz.
So each one of these is one grain,
and these big spikes are what we're looking for.
Absolutely. That big initial spike followed by decay,
that means we've got an optically stimulated luminescence signal
in there.
And so how long is this going to take, then, for this to be finished?
For Chedworth, we expect the sample to be in for about three days.
Right, OK. So now I just wait.
The original radiocarbon date suggested this mosaic was created
well into the fifth century.
If that's true, it means that wealthy people carried on living
a Roman lifestyle in their luxurious villas and
commissioning fabulous decorations long after the Roman period
officially came to an end in Britain.
Now the new test results are in,
and I want to know if they'll back up that fifth century
radiocarbon date,
so I've invited Martin Papworth to the windswept and rain-soaked
Digging For Britain Tent.
So, Martin, you've been reinvestigating
one of the most famous Roman villas
in Britain, and you've come up with something
which is actually mind-blowing.
- That's right. - Yeah. - Yes.
Once again, nice clear cut result.
420AD-560AD.
5th-6th century.
No, no, no, no.
This isn't right for a Roman villa.
Yes. The thinking is, you shouldn't have a mosaics industry surviving
into the late fifth century.
- Yeah. - Because behind that is an economy with towns, urbanism.
Mm. I mean, this is when we start talking about Anglo-Saxons.
- Yes. - You're moving us into what we conceive of as a very different
period in British history.
- There's a huge amount still to talk about in this period. - Mm.
This is so exciting, and it's unlikely to be unique.
- Yeah. Why would it be? - It's unlikely that this is the only villa
that carries on into the fifth, maybe the sixth centuries.
We have to go back and look at all the rest.
It's one of those times where we can genuinely say,
this is rewriting history.
- You can feel the electricity, can't you? Yeah. - Yeah.
♪ The grass is long in the valley, my love
♪ And there we'll go to lie
♪ When the hawk is high above the house for us
♪ And he guards over the blue sky
♪ Let's gather us up to the heavens above
♪ We can always come back, my love. ♪
Some of the most dramatic archaeological features
in our landscape are Iron Age forts like this one,
some of them inland, others right on the edge,
right on the coast, where they're very much
threatened by erosion.
And our next dig sees a team of archaeologists racing against time
to rescue archaeology before it falls into the sea.
Now we journey to the western edge of Wales,
just a mile to the south of St Davids,
to Caerfai Bay.
This headland is the site of an Iron Age coastal promontory fort.
Today, this coast is a haven for sea birds, seals, and dolphins.
But it was once home to prehistoric tribes
living on the edge...
...in the Iron Age.
Crashing Atlantic waves are continually eroding these cliffs,
and the remains of the fort above are in real danger.
This year, a team of volunteers working with DigVentures
are racing against time to investigate the promontory fort
before parts of it disappear forever.
The dig is being led by Stephanie Duensing.
There is very little known about these hill forts
and what people were doing inside of them,
and what they were using them for.
The promontory is defended by a series of four
formidable banks and ditches.
Huge barricades like these would have helped to protect the people
inside against any threats from less-than-friendly neighbours.
But it's always hard to find any hard evidence of hostilities.
We haven't actually got a lot of evidence to show that
there's been a lot of conflict or a lot of warfare going on.
So there are other options that we are trying to consider
about why you would maybe want to put so much work into
making these big ramparts.
This year, the team are focusing their attention
just inside the ramparts,
on the isthmus that gets narrower every year.
Archaeologist Jodie Hannis is supervising the excavation.
People coming together and doing this - and it would have been
a monumental effort to do this -
there's got to be some value and some reason to do that.
So much archaeology must already have been lost to erosion,
but remarkably, they've still found something very exciting.
This is trench three,
and, as you can see, we are right at the edge of the cliff here,
and we didn't know when we opened up this trench that we were going
to find this stonking great big stone roundhouse.
It's an absolutely massive stone structure, really obvious.
Big, chunky stone building,
super clear to see, very satisfying.
This roundhouse, with its sturdy stone walls, would have provided
shelter against the strong winds that batter the site.
And the team have even found traces of the hearth inside.
So you can see that we've got that really nice dark charcoal-y band
that suggests that there have been fires.
And within that, where we've been finding chunks of animal bone,
you can just see a little bit poking up here as well,
they're cooking here, and they're disposing of their waste.
The roundhouse is full of evidence of domestic life,
but nearby, the team are also finding subtle traces of industry.
One of the most interesting things that has come out
as we've been clearing down through all of this nice rubbly fill
is this lovely, very smooth, very tactile whetstone.
So this is a lovely thing that just fits right in your hand.
Most likely, these things are for sharpening blades and tools,
perhaps smoothing leather and things like that.
Clean up my crumbs.
The impressive ramparts grab the attention,
and it's easy to focus on those defences,
but the archaeology here is revealing another side to the fort,
with domestic and industrial activity.
I think the romantic view with this stuff is that it's all
out-and-out tribal warfare and everyone's always
at each other's throats and fighting.
We can't say that for sure.
And the bigger question is,
why were people living here on this windswept promontory?
With the dig coming to a close,
I've asked Steph to battle through the wind and rain to join me
in the Digging For Britain Tent and share everything the team
have learned about Iron Age life at Caerfai.
Steph, you're there digging the site because it is under threat,
so this really is a chance to get some evidence that is at risk
of disappearing forever. What have you found?
So we've actually found quite a bit of material,
considering the constraints.
What you can see here is we've got a post structure roundhouse here.
Where are the posts?
- So the post holes are these spots here. - Yes!
- They come all the way around. - Yeah. - Like that.
- So they're holding up the roof timbers. - That's right.
And then you've got a stone-built roundhouse?
- Yes, so a lovely stone structure. - This was a bonus!
It was completely hidden underneath a mountain of rubble.
- Yeah. - It was amazing. We were very pleased to find that, yes.
And inside those roundhouses, you've got some vines.
Yes. This one came from the stone roundhouse,
which shows up a lot more domestic use.
- Yeah. - And we weren't quite sure what it was, to be honest.
It looks a bit like wood, but it doesn't quite feel like wood.
It's heavy, isn't it? It's heavier than wood.
Heavier than bone.
So that is actually part of a shale bracelet.
- Ah, right! OK. - So it's delaminated quite badly on the outer edges,
- as you can see there. - Yeah.
Which gives it that striated effect
that makes it kind of look like wood.
Yeah, it really does, doesn't it, under here? Yeah.
But it's actually just the layers of the shale
- that have started to separate. - That's right.
You're quite lucky to have got to that before it completely
- fell apart in the ground. - Absolutely.
I mean, it looks like it's not going to have survived for much longer.
That's right, yeah, so we were just thrilled.
We've got finds from both of our roundhouses.
The timber structure was clearly the locus of industry.
And what have we got over here?
A lovely crucible there, that lovely chunk with copper alloys still...
- Yes, that's right. - Yeah! That lovely green.
- It was beautiful. It just jumps right out at you. - Yeah.
- On a site like this, with not a lot of colour on the ground... - Yeah.
...It just peeked out of the soil. It was a fantastic last-day find,
of course. You always find the best thing on the last day.
- Yeah, isn't that lovely? - Isn't it beautiful?
So if they were standing together, you've got a domestic house,
the stone structure with a lean-to workshop.
Yes! It is really genuinely what it seems to be.
And just to put it in its wider context,
what do we think this promontory fort was about?
Why is it there in such an exposed place?
It IS an exposed place, but I think that the bigger picture
that is starting to emerge here is that this was
a very prominent location for a reason.
The ramparts are kind of backwards in the sense that they are taller
- in the back and get smaller as you go into the interior. - Yeah.
Which I think, more and more, it's looking like they were
trying to announce their whereabouts across the seas.
They wanted to be noticed and they wanted to be a landmark of sorts.
So I think that it was some kind of an industrial trade post,
perhaps. We know that they're processing bronze on the site.
- We've got the remnants of it from the metalworking hub. - Mm.
- But they're also clearly trading with seafaring individuals. - Yeah.
Other people along the coast or possibly even in Ireland.
It means that, actually, it is well defended, but it's not necessarily
about defence all of the time.
Along the coast, archaeologists may choose to dig sites
that are under threat from erosion.
In our cities, with their deep layers of history,
archaeologists face different challenges.
Our next dig takes us to the capital of Wales -
Cardiff.
Excavating in the middle of dense modern cities
often means digging down
through centuries of occupation layers.
But this green space in Cardiff
has never been built on...
...in living memory.
Recent surveys, though, suggest that interesting archaeological remains
may underlie this manicured turf.
This is Trelai Park,
and it's home this summer to a fantastic community dig,
which is very apt because this is a wonderful green space
enjoyed by all the community -
walkers, runners, people playing football and rugby.
But over there, they're going down underneath this beautiful turf
and uncovering evidence of what people were doing
in this area 3,500 years ago.
Now, as part of a project to involve the community in archaeology,
a team of local volunteers and students from Cardiff University
are focusing on the remains of a very ancient building.
A building that dates all the way back... to the Bronze Age.
The team are excavating the site in a chequerboard pattern,
keeping track of the finds emerging from each square.
This is a rare opportunity to take a detailed look at how people
were living here in the west of Britain 3,000 years ago.
I've come to meet lead archaeologist Oliver Davis.
It is an absolute hive of activity, and the archaeology is interesting.
I can spot the features, I think.
These round pits are significant, are they?
They certainly are, Alice.
What we've got here is the oldest house yet known in Cardiff.
Cardiff's first house.
It was made of timber, and obviously the timber, the wood's all rotted
away, and we're left with the holes that people dug
to put the timber posts in
to create the walls that kind of define the house.
- So these are all post holes, are they? - Exactly.
You can see them in their kind of curving arc here,
and they take up the entire trench, and the trench is ten metres wide.
So that gives you a sense
of the scale of this house.
- Yeah. - It's at least ten metres in diameter.
So it's a really vast structure,
enormous amount of resources and effort
- had gone into building it. - Yeah. Can we get down into the trench?
Go for it.
Within the maze of post holes,
the team has found evidence of a burnt area
in the middle of the roundhouse.
So this is the centre of the action.
- This is the hearth. - This is the centre of the house.
Exactly right. And we've got the hearth just in front of us here,
and then we've got a spread of ceramics, of pottery,
- all sorts of decorated and... - What's in there?
...Undecorated Bronze Age sherds coming up,
presumably for either cooking or serving food.
I want to kind of try and imagine what it looked like
in my mind's eye as well.
So it's a ten metre diameter house with a conical roof.
How tall do you think that roof was?
Well, that roof's going to have to be pretty tall.
And you imagine when you walk into it, it's going to be dark.
There might be a fire here burning in the centre of the house,
it's going to flicker light around the house.
It's going to be smoky, it's going to be smelly.
So it's going to be a sort of a blast of the senses, I think.
I almost feel like I'm there.
The team are also investigating a bank and ditch enclosure
which surrounds the house.
And here, archaeologist Anna-Elyse Young
has found a particularly delicate flint artefact.
- Anna, hi. - Hi!
I know you've had some very beautiful finds coming out.
- Yes, we have. - And there was something in particular
- that really piqued my interest. - Yes, yes.
From the ditch over here,
we've had this very lovely arrowhead come out.
You'd expect it to have two little barbs coming down
on either side.
- Yes. - But it hasn't quite worked. - It hasn't quite worked.
We have also found at this site, but from the roundhouse,
a complete barb and tang.
- Oh, that is... - You can see...
- Isn't that beautiful? - Yes!
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because obviously we're talking about the Bronze Age.
We know that people are using metal, but flint is a fantastic material.
You don't ditch that, you just start to use bronze for some things.
Yes. Yeah. And in this area particularly,
flint is quite a rare commodity
because there's no naturally occurring flint in this area,
so it had to have been brought in from somewhere else.
And do you know where it might have been brought in from?
The complete arrowhead looks to be chalk-based flint,
- so possibly from Wiltshire or somewhere like that. - Yeah.
So we're looking at, you know, raw materials
- moving around the landscape as well. - Yes. Yeah.
You learn so much, don't you, just from looking in detail
- at one small object? - Yeah. - They're wonderful.
With no natural source of flint in what is now South Wales,
this arrowhead provides evidence of people moving around
or trading with other communities. in Bronze Age Britain.
25,000 people live in the suburbs surrounding Trelai Park.
It's a green heart for this part of the city,
well used by dog walkers, sports teams,
and for leisurely strolls.
The excavation here is proving to be another great way
for the community to come together and learn about their heritage.
We've had lots of finds, so it's really interesting
and it's just amazing, the history that exists in this park as well.
I love history.
I never really got a chance to study history in school.
This gave me the opportunity, then, to learn about the Bronze Age.
Some lucky locals are making extraordinary discoveries.
Metal detectorist Wes Offer has brought along a couple
of small objects he found just 200 metres away
from our Bronze Age roundhouse.
- Can I have a look? - Of course you can. - Wow.
So these are axe heads?
Yeah.
And what was it like when you found them?
- How did you feel? - Incredible.
- Yeah! - It was just one of the best feelings.
I mean, I just can't describe.
So this is a bronze axe head.
This is called a flanged axe.
- Yeah. - And that probably dates to about the same time
as our roundhouse.
So if you imagine all the timber that was needed to build
- that roundhouse... - Yeah.
...You would have needed a few of those to help you cut all that down
and shape it. And I wouldn't be surprised -
I can't prove it - but I wouldn't be surprised if that axe was used
to make one of these houses.
- Yeah! - Wouldn't that be a wonderful story?
Oh, isn't that beautiful?
But this is the one that you really like, isn't it, Wes?
It is, yeah.
It's just a monstrous heavy axe head.
- That's actually called a Migdale axe. - Right.
And it's a little bit earlier than our house -
- it dates to the early Bronze Age. - Yeah.
So maybe a few hundred years before our house was built,
but it shows that people are in and around this area.
Yeah. And when you first found them, did you know immediately
what they were? Did you know they were ancient?
I definitely knew this one was definitely ancient.
- Yeah. - This one, I thought when it first came out of the ground
that it looked a bit modern.
But as soon as I gave it a little wipe,
I could see the lovely brown and the green on it...
- Yeah. - ..I knew it was definitely ancient. - Yeah.
- So then, I'm part of a club... - Yeah.
- ...Which we have a finds liaison officer there. - Yeah.
- So I handed them in. They do a report... - Yeah.
...Obviously for the date, and then return them to me
- three months later. - Yeah. That's brilliant.
So that's all kind of entered the archive.
- Yeah. - We know exactly where they were found, what they are.
- Fantastic. - Incredible. - It's part of the story of the Bronze Age.
- It is, yeah. - Here. - A find of a lifetime for me, that is. - Is it?
- It is, yeah. - Yeah. - Right on my doorstep. - Yeah, yeah.
During the excavation, the team were filming themselves
as they discovered the most dramatic find of the dig -
a large Bronze Age pot...
So we've got the top of the pot here,
we've got the base here,
and then another bit of the base coming in here.
...Which had lain undiscovered for more than 3,500 years.
A lot of mud underneath it, but that's keeping that together.
So that's...
The fragments of this Bronze Age pot
are rushed to the conservators for restoration.
To find out the latest from the site and see the reassembled pot,
I've invited Ollie and conservator Leonie McKenzie
to the Digging For Britain Tent.
Ollie, you just had a couple of days left excavating at Trelai Park
after I left you.
What else did you find?
And now, having had a bit of time to reflect,
how have your ideas changed?
Well, it's really what we found out after the dig
that's the really exciting thing.
- Mm. - There was something underneath the roundhouse, a series of pits.
But when we plotted out where all those features are,
you can see that they're in that beautiful circle.
That just looks like another roundhouse, surely, Ollie!
So for some reason, they've decided to demolish the house
and then completely rebuild it,
- but rebuild it in exactly the same location and the same footprint. - Mm.
There's various theories about why people might do that in the past.
One idea is that houses themselves might be related to the lifespans
of important individuals or households,
and when that household comes to an end or that person dies,
the house itself almost has to die as well,
and they take it down, they rebuild it, and it's kind of
a new household then comes in and lives in it.
- That's a dramatic renovation, isn't it? - A dramatic... Yes. - Yeah.
Speaking of pottery jigsaws, Leonie,
you've been very busy.
Yes, very.
This is quite incredible.
To start with, how many sherds of pottery are in that?
So we found 83 sherds of pottery.
83 sherds of pottery! So how long did it take you to reconstruct it?
You've had to do quite a bit of filling in the gaps here,
- haven't you? - Yeah. It took me about 120 hours just to clean the sherds.
- Goodness me. - And then about another sort of 50 to 60 hours
sticking it together and doing the fills and all the colour matching.
And there's lots of decoration on the side of it here.
Yep. So we've got this wonderful horseshoe decoration.
Actually, there's three horseshoes.
And then you've also got a pattern just above that,
which looks like it's been pressed in.
Yes. It's either cordage or a wooden comb,
and it's just a repeated diagonal pattern.
And in terms of that pattern, is it something that we see elsewhere?
Is this a kind of recognised style?
The impressed chord is very characteristic of a type of
pottery called Trevisker Ware.
It was very common in the Bronze Age in places like Cornwall and Devon.
- Right. - But the horseshoe shape and actually the shape of the vessel
is much more akin to a type of pottery called Deverel-Rimbury,
which is very common in southern England in the Bronze Age.
- Yeah. - Where we found this, in Cardiff,
is kind of the midpoint between these two styles.
So here we've got this kind of merging of ideas
or exchange of ideas.
I think this is so fascinating, isn't it, when we look at
culture of this time, because the only way that styles
- are going to move is with people. - Absolutely.
It's all going to be face-to-face.
It's all going to be people moving.
They've been in one place.
This is the way we do the pots there.
They've moved to another place.
They're bringing those ideas with them.
And then to see that kind of blending, I think, is fantastic.
- Yeah. - It's incredible, isn't it?
I mean, you don't expect this in that park.
- Really don't, no. It's a wonderful find. - Yeah.
The west of Britain is home to Salisbury Plain,
300 square miles of rolling hills and chalk grasslands.
The area is famous for its rich, ancient archaeology
and some of our most iconic landmarks,
like the nearly 5,000-year-old Stonehenge.
But not all archaeology here is so ancient.
Until recently, many small communities lived throughout
Salisbury Plain, and I even have a personal connection
with one of them.
Our next story takes us to a restricted location
in the middle of Salisbury Plain,
20 miles southeast of Bath.
This is Imber.
It's a completely deserted village.
It was once home to a bustling, close community.
But the farmers and their families that lived here
in the Second World War were evacuated,
and this whole area was commandeered for military training.
In 1943, the residents of Imber, around 150 people,
were given just seven weeks' notice before they had to pack their bags
and leave their village.
Since then, most of the village's original buildings
have been demolished, and some replaced
with new breeze block structures to help simulate urban warfare.
The lost village of Imber became part of the largest military
training ground in Britain,
with troops regularly taking part in live firing exercises.
The story of how Imber came to an end is well-known, well-documented,
but the archaeologists want to go back centuries earlier,
to look at the history of the people farming in this area.
Imber was mentioned in the Domesday Book,
and its church, St Giles, dates back to the 13th century.
Now the military wants to dig new foxholes and combat trenches
at Imber, so a team of volunteers and ex-soldiers
from Operation Nightingale
have come to investigate what's left of the medieval village
under the ground.
Richard Osgood is leading the dig.
- Hello! - Hello. How are you? - Welcome to Imber, good to see you.
So this is a ghost village?
It is a ghost village. This was evacuated in 1943,
and we're trying to find traces of what remains below the turf line.
You obviously think there's something in this field.
Yeah, that's right. Well, we've got the map from the earlier part
of the 20th century.
Now, the maps show us that a load of buildings were once here.
Where are we standing, then, with this map?
We're standing pretty much around this point here.
- OK, so there should be buildings all around us. - There should be!
Ah, so you've only had the trenches open for a couple of days?
Yeah, it's really, really early stages, and it's small holes
- to start with. - There's something in that one.
Yeah, there's a nice wall in that.
That's certainly going to bear further investigation.
Judging from the maps, we're on the location of a place
- called Brown's Farm. There is no physical trace. - Mm.
So that's why archaeology is so important,
that we will find what lies still in the ground.
Dig diaries capture every moment of discovery...
...as the team uncover evidence of the lost village.
This is the pond that was here,
and it's been back filled full of lots of rubbish.
This we've just a few seconds ago pulled out.
It doesn't look like any of the cottages of then,
- but that's really ornate, and that's a surprise. - Yeah.
- Digging away here, just found a key, which is fantastic. - A key!
- Absolutely brilliant. Maybe a cupboard key? - Cupboard key.
Yeah. We're hoping it's a jewellery box,
but I won't tell you if I find it.
Veterans Elaine and Cecily are excavating what they believe
to be part of Brown's Farm.
Hello, Elaine and Cecily.
- How are you doing? - Fancy seeing you here!
And they're starting to find evidence of life here
in recent centuries before the village was abandoned.
You have found something. What is it?
Well, hopefully it's part of Brown's Farm.
- This bit here seems to be solid stone so... - Does it?
- ...We don't know if it's a door lintel or... - Yeah.
And in terms of finds, what have you got coming out?
Bits of pottery.
- A few bits of pottery. A quarry tile. - A tile.
- Some nice nails. - Oh, yeah.
Now, what I want to know is whether there's anything earlier.
We did have a little bit of clay pipe.
- Ooh, yeah. - That's from the person who lived here.
Which I think we claim is the first pipe found in sit...
Do you? Because there was a bit of clay pipe
found in trench one as well. But do you think this one was found first?
- I think so. - Well, we've announced it first, so we'll claim it. - OK.
We'd had it for a while before we declared we had it, so...
I like this healthy competition.
I think you've got to beat them by finding the first bit
of definitely medieval archaeology on site.
I'll let you know what we find.
- Good luck. - Thanks very much. - Thank you.
The dig has only just got started, so I'm going to leave the team
to hunt for clues of medieval life here.
But before I go, I'm going to take this rare opportunity
to explore what's left of Imber village.
Rather strangely, there's a bit of a connection here for me as well,
in that a close friend of my family,
well, HER family used to live here in Imber.
This photograph, taken in 1912,
shows the Dean family standing outside Seagram's Farm,
the building they called home for generations.
So this building here is what remains of Seagram's Farm.
I've seen old photographs of it,
and it seems to be a much longer building with a second storey,
so I need to have a bit of a closer look.
Ah, now, this is looking familiar.
These stone window surrounds - mullions -
are there in the old black and white photo.
But then it's been extensively remodel led.
You can see a bit of the chimney sticking out there,
so it's been brought down to just a single storey.
So this is really new.
This is breeze block, but this is old brick down here,
and this stone is going down to the floor.
So I think what we've got here is the front door.
And if I stamp that down...
Yes, look at that.
That's what remains of the hinge.
So 80 years ago, I would have been standing in the front door
of the farmhouse.
So it's changed a lot over the decades,
but it's still recognisably the same building.
After my visit, the dig carries on for another week...
...and the team eventually begin to uncover traces
of medieval Imber.
We're beginning to get some medieval data.
We're getting pottery, roof slabs, and some carved stone,
so hopefully we'll get an earlier origin for this part
of the village of Imber.
Just found these two pieces of pottery.
Probably it's medieval, but it could even be a bit earlier.
Ooh.
So we're definitely getting some diagnostic stuff out here,
aren't we, for dating this?
Ooh, that IS nice, isn't it? That's medieval.
Yeah, it came out just... quite deep, that was.
- That's all right, isn't it? - Have you just found that?
- Yeah, quite deep. - Yeah. - Quite busy here.
- Absolutely. - That's exciting.
Yeah.
I've invited Richard Osgood to the Digging For Britain Tent
to share all his latest finds.
So the big question is, did you find medieval Imber?
Yes, eventually.
So one of the buildings did eventually get down to some
post holes that were medieval.
And we know that from the pottery that we were finding within it,
and it's quite tightly dated.
It's this sort of material here.
Green-glazed ceramic you get in the sort of 13th, 14th centuries.
- Yeah. - Really quite diagnostic.
So it's not huge amounts of evidence, but it's all we needed.
- But it's definitely there. - Definitely medieval. - Fantastic.
And then what about these objects here?
- This looks like roof tiles. - Yeah, it does.
And you've got two phases here of the roofing.
We've got quite a few of these, and these are at the lower levels,
in and amongst the pottery and this sort of thing.
- So this is a stone roof tile. - Yeah. - You can see the hole for the nail.
So this is more your medieval, and this is a bit more modern.
- Yeah. - The clay roof ridge tile.
- So again, you can see the house has been rebuilt. - Yeah.
Along with these clues to Imber's medieval past, the team have found
some artefacts dating to the very end of its occupation.
We're looking at it being your less fancier Pompeii,
where you've got an exact date
for the ending of a settlement.
- Yeah. - And that's a rare experience in archaeology,
- to see where a village just stops. - And a really abrupt end as well.
Very much so.
Most of the pottery we were finding is fairly kind of rudimentary,
and this is the fanciest thing.
- Believe it or not, that's what's left of a teapot. - Oh, is it?
We're postulating whether that might have been a wedding present
left behind in one of the houses, or maybe got broken and then binned,
because it's fancier than all the other pottery we're finding,
which is very utilitarian.
And then you've got a bit of a bullet here.
That is a bullet case, and you've even got the stamping on it.
It's got a couple of letters. "SL" and "43" on it.
So you've got a date on it.
1943, and SL is Saint Louis. Saint Louis, Missouri.
So that's an American case, and that represents the American
- training taking place in Imber, and that's why it was evacuated. - Yeah.
So that is from the year that it ceased being a lived-in village.
That's right. So that really does mark the sort of ash and pumice
layer you get at Pompeii, that tells you the dates
- of the evacuation of Imber. - Yeah, and that was it.
That WAS it.
Yeah. I mean, it's quite a curious story, isn't it?
It's a sad story. For the people that were tenants at the time,
it must have been horrible,
I guess the argument being if it saved one life on D-Day,
then maybe it was worth it. But it must have been really tough
- for those villagers. - Mm.
You think about the soldiers making sacrifices
and the families of soldiers during the Second World War,
but all of those people living in that village
made a significant sacrifice.
Completely. That's their contribution to the war effort.
So this is definitely representative of that total warfare
- that takes place in the Second World War. - Yeah. Yeah.
We also found one more thing which marks, again, a full stop,
and that was actually a discovery made in the archives.
We found an image of the site in 1943.
- Oh, fantastic. - Just before it was evacuated.
- And you didn't know you had it? - No. - No!
Brilliant!
- So there you go. This is... - An aerial photograph.
- This is dated in March 1943. - Yeah.
So this is literally a few months before the village is evacuated.
The Second World War is at its height at this point.
- That's extraordinary, isn't it? - Completely.
At this point, there were still functioning pubs like The Nag's Head
- over here... - Yeah. - ..or The Bell over at this point.
It's really quite a powerful image, I think.
It's a real snapshot of the end of life as those people knew it.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
And that would be great for all of the families,
- the people whose ancestors lived there. - Yeah, I think so. - Yeah, yeah.
What are you finding in here?
Apart from rocks.
Absolutely mind-blowing.
It is a bit, yeah.
♪ We dig for the gods that leave no bones... ♪
What a year of archaeological adventure it's been.
Archaeologists have been able to peel back time
and reveal a Neolithic tomb...
...Medieval monasteries...
...and the first archaeological evidence of a mud dock.
We've crisscrossed our islands,
uncovering more traces of people who once lived here.
An astonishing archaeological discovery just here.
Magnificent.
Wherever we went, new stories were waiting.
I do love an archaeological mystery.
Look at that colour!
What is it?
I want to clean that up. Have you got a spare trowel?
Absolutely.
Who built that castle?
This is the big question!
We've got brutal and violent British history...
...disease...
...climate change...
...and the end of civilisation.
That makes it quite exciting, doesn't it?
Well, that's part of the challenge.
If it was simple, we'd have finished years ago.
- That's tiny! - This is our special find.
I mean, it's outrageous!
I'm already wondering what archaeological discoveries
are lying in wait for us next year.
♪ Coins for the eyes
♪ And keys for the door
♪ Fortress, grave goods, chambered tomb
♪ Abandoned villages, rumours of war
♪ We dig for pattern, read the rune
♪ And so a clue to who we are
♪ And where we were and why we will
♪ Inheritors of knowledge now
♪ And ancestors to those who still might
♪ Dig for us as we have done
♪ To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪