Digging for Britain (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - The Romans - full transcript
We might be a small island,
but we've got a big history.
Everywhere you stand,
there are worlds
beneath your feet.
And so every year,
hundreds of archaeologists
across Britain
go looking for more clues.
Who lived here, when, and how?
You can even see
the architecture of the bone
inside the jaw there.
Archaeology is
a complex jigsaw puzzle
drawing together everything
from skeletons to swords,
temples to treasure.
She's got a very
cartoonlike face, hasn't she?
From Orkney to Devon,
were joining this year's quest
on sea, land, and air.
We'll share all of the questions
and find some of the answers
as we join the teams
in the field
digging for Britain.
From Roman times...
The mystery of a man
buried facedown
on a bed of meat,
a fabulous treasure trove
of coins
dedicated to ancient gods...
...and the shocking evidence
of 97 murdered babies
buried beneath this field.
I'm heading towards a place
close to Hadrian's Wall
where archaeologists
are finding signs
of that Roman influence
writ large.
This narrow road
with its passing places
is known locally
as the Stanegate.
It's one of hundreds
of similar roads
which crisscross this part
of northern England.
But what makes this one
stand out is that it was
once the northern frontier
of the entire Roman Empire.
And guarding the central
section of the Stanegate...
That important
east-west supply route...
Was the fort of Vindolanda.
Each year from April
to mid-September,
an army of
over 500 archaeology volunteers
comes here from all over world.
And every week
they make new discoveries.
What you've got there, John,
is a beautiful,
great big,
dark-blue glass melon bead.
And there's a bit of a debate
about those
because some people think
that Roman soldiers
just simply wore these
as decorations
or ladies wore them
as decorations.
It's a very, very corroded
lump of metal.
But what we've actually got here
is the back of the helmet,
by the looks of things.
It's very, very badly bashed,
but you sort of see it
in the side profile.
This is the neck guard
at the back,
and this is the start of the top
of the helmet coming up.
Vindolanda has been excavated
for over 40 years,
but they estimate they've
only uncovered 15% of it
and that it would take another
150 years to finish the job,
which is utterly remarkable
because the site as it stands
is absolutely massive.
Vindolanda was bought in 1929
by the renowned archaeologist
Professor Eric Birley.
His grandson Andrew is now
its director of excavations.
The Romans built four forts here
by the time
Hadrian's Wall was built, so...
Really? So the first ones
predate the wall?
Predate the wall
by a good 40 years.
And they're a long way down.
They're seven or eight meters
beneath where we're standing.
And would they have been
stone built?
No, the first six forts here
are built in timber
and the last three in stone.
And so they knock them down,
build them up,
knock them down, build them up
very, very quickly.
So in perhaps only 125 years
you get the landscape
really shooting up to the fort
we're standing in at the moment.
So this is the last fort.
There is an enormous amount
of it still in place.
It's because nine forts
have been built
right on top of each other here
that so much archaeological
evidence survives.
In just the last
couple of weeks,
the team working here
have uncovered
this wonderful flagstone street
which leads from
the northern gate of the fort
straight up
to the headquarters building.
And the stones are really worn
with centuries of use,
and you can just imagine
the sound of those hobnail boots
as the Roman soldiers marched
in and out of the fort.
As well as the excavations
within the walls
of the stone fort,
this year a separate team
is working in the vicus,
the civilian village
which lies just outside
the garrison
here at Vindolanda.
So, what are you
excavating here?
Well, it's all part
of the garrison settlement
that sprang up outside
the last stone fort
that was built at Vindolanda.
So it's a combination of sort of
workshops, shops and houses,
sort of wagon parks
and trading areas,
to supply and sort of, you know,
link in with the fort there.
So it was a bit like
retail world outside there.
Had all sorts of shops
flanking the roads.
Little bit of evidence for a pub
as well.
We had a building on there
where we found a room
right on the street front there,
and inside that room all
the artifacts that were found
were basically drinking beakers
and gaming counters.
- Fantastic.
- Yeah.
It's one of those sites where
you can almost be there.
You can virtually hear
the Romans when you're digging
because there's so many
artifacts coming from the ground
and you've got
all these buildings
that are
in really super condition.
For the past three weeks
Justin and his team have been
working on a cobbled roadway
which ran through the heart
of the Roman village.
We've been really very lucky
with this one
because we actually got
some super dating evidence
because trapped in among
the cobbles we actually found
a little silver
denarius of Severus Alexander
which was minted in A.D. 222.
So, of course, because it was
trapped in the road surface,
it means that the road surface
can't really have been made
before that coin was minted.
So we've got a super date
for it.
Just beside the Roman fort
is the conservation area
where the daily finds are taken
to Barbara Birley and her team.
Are all of these artifacts
coming out this year?
Most of them are, yes.
Oh, this is amazing,
this little griffin.
Just pull it out and
have a little bit closer look.
You can see it's got
the fabulous wings here,
and you can actually just make
out the detail of the feathers.
And then he's got the
hindquarters there of a lion.
And the Romans had
a lot of superstitious beliefs.
They felt that this type of
being would have been very good
for protecting
maybe something precious
and things
like gold or treasure.
So we know
that he's a little statue,
but we don't know
what he was possibly guarding.
The village of Hambleden,
near the Thames,
has always been
a desirable place to live...
Even so, it seems, for the
Romans, who built villas here.
I'm just up from the river now.
I'm walking along on the edge
of this beautiful field
which seems to be growing
some kind of cereal crop,
but it's not the crop
I'm interested in at all.
It's what's in the ground
underneath it.
Almost exactly
a hundred years ago,
this woman, Miss Glassbrook,
was walking along
in this very same field
and started to find some
strange pieces of pottery...
Very much like these ones...
And she decided they were worth
further investigation.
Miss Glassbrook approached
a local archaeologist,
who in 1912 would make
an extraordinary discovery
beneath the soil
in this Buckinghamshire field.
The archaeologist Alfred Cocks
had discovered the foundations
of a high-status Roman villa
which he would call Yewden.
Over the course of a year,
Cocks would excavate
and photograph the villa
while collecting the finds.
But in doing so
he would uncover a dark secret
which is
still troubling archaeologists
almost a century later.
The main villa house is what
we see in this photograph.
And there's a little bump
in the middle of the field here.
And the bump is entirely due
to that building
beneath the surface.
But it's quite nice.
You can work out where you are,
and you know it's that bump
because you can actually see
the scene in front of you.
You've got that house there
which has got a white front
on it,
a white gable end.
It's now pebble-dashed,
isn't it?
- That's it, isn't it?
- That's right.
- This is a huge excavation.
- It is massive.
He had to have a huge team
of laborers to dig this.
It was all by hand.
It's all by shovel
and wheelbarrows,
and so that would have been
a huge labor force
and an enormous cost.
So this is all still
there underneath that wheat?
Still there.
Just it's got all the backfill,
then the soil layer reinstated,
and of course crops on it
forevermore.
For many years, the
finds from Yewden Roman villa
were kept in a special museum
at Hambleden.
But when that closed
in the 1950s,
they were moved
to Buckinghamshire County Museum
in Aylesbury,
where, appropriately enough,
Alfred Cocks was once curator.
Cocks published his results
in 1921.
But it's the way
he reached his conclusions
that's interesting
archaeologists today.
Alfred Cocks was unlike
most of the antiquarian
archaeologists operating
in the early 20th century,
many of whom are, to be honest,
just treasure hunters.
But Cocks was different.
He paid careful attention
to each and every find.
He labeled them with the name,
the location,
and even the precise depth
at which they were found.
The artifacts from the 1912
excavation fill over 300 boxes.
So, Brett, all of these boxes
here are from Yewden, are they?
Absolutely.
Brett Thorn is
keeper of archaeology
at the
Buckinghamshire County Museum.
But this is all of the objects
he recovered
from the 1912 excavations.
And these, as you can see...
These are Roman brooches.
But he's not just collecting
the brooches.
There are little pieces
of just, well,
random bits of metal here
as well.
Exactly.
He didn't differentiate.
He just picked up
absolutely everything.
Not only did he collect even
the tiniest little cruddy bit,
like that little section there,
he labeled everything...
Even these tiny pieces.
Just to kind of show you
an example,
if I show you this one...
This rather crude bit of card.
Is that Cocks' writing?
This is
Cocks' handwriting, yeah.
"East side of yard,
35 inches north
of enclosure wall, Yewden."
And the date... "2/10/12."
So this is
his original display piece.
Fantastic.
So this must be really unusual
for the time.
Hugely unusual.
I mean, people...
These antiquarians
just went in and dug.
They just took out the goodies,
the pretty items to put on show,
and they weren't interested
in anything else.
All these little bits
of bronze wire,
little tiny sherds of pot
where the label is actually
bigger than the pot piece,
they wouldn't have kept that.
They'd have just
dumped it all back on site,
completely wrecked
the stratigraphy.
We wouldn't know anything
about the site.
There's so much more information
available to you now
because he's done this work,
because he's been so careful,
so meticulous.
- Yeah.
- Exactly, yeah.
Over the past year,
Jill has been taking home
the Hambleden boxes
to reevaluate Cocks'
1912 findings
with the eye and the techniques
of the
21st-century archaeologist.
But there was
one particular set of remains
which Alfred Cocks was
uncharacteristically
reticent about.
Well, in Cocks' report,
he obviously tells us
about a good number
of the finds.
Selectively. He doesn't
discuss all the finds.
And I was rather surprised
to find in his report
that in actual fact
he did find 97 infant burials.
Now, he only gives them
a paragraph or so of a mention,
which, you know, even in 1912
that's a very important find.
It's an unusually high number.
And it was rather odd the way
he just described them
rather informally as being
wrapped as little bundles
and potentially buried secretly
after dark.
Sort of
tiny little bag here of...
Oh, yeah, little infant bones.
Absolutely minute.
Beautifully preserved, though.
The bone is
incredibly well preserved,
and you've got some
little pieces of skull there
which is almost eggshell-like,
isn't it?
It's incredibly thin,
but brilliantly preserved.
The infant bones were thought
to have been lost
until last year, when Jill
and Brett rediscovered them
packed away in old cigar
and gun-cartridge boxes.
How many infants
were there buried at Yewden?
Well, that was the key thing.
We've got 97.
I mean, it's an astounding
number for the one villa.
It's quite a shocking number,
actually.
- It is.
- Yeah.
And it's actually quite normal
to have infant burials.
You're not considered to be
a proper human being
ready for the cemetery
until you're about two years old
in the Roman world,
so you do bury any babies
that are lost
between being born
and two years,
and you put them in the garden
or in the yard
or perhaps even
under your floor.
- But this number?
- But not 97.
There's something different
about Yewden.
There's something very strange
going on there, isn't there?
So these are the boxes,
are they,
that the bones were kept in?
Yeah,
this is how Cocks packed them.
Cigarette boxes.
All with his detailed notes on
about where that
particular infant was buried.
And, again,
there's sort of the date
and all of the information
that he loved to record.
But it's strange...
But what doesn't seem in keeping
is the fact
that he squirrels these away
and doesn't really
look at them again.
There's no mention anywhere
in the published report of them
other than a short paragraph
saying Cocks thought,
because the bodies kind of cut
and recut each other...
They're buried
in a very small area...
That he thought
it must have been done
surreptitiously after dark
and hidden.
I do handle human bones,
obviously,
but this is the first time
I've really had to deal
with infant bones,
and it's quite... it's quite
a strange feeling, isn't it?
It actually quite upset me
because they are obviously
very small skeletons
and they were clearly
very young babies,
so it just has
that effect on you.
Nearly a century
after Alfred Cocks
first discovered them,
the infant bones are once again
coming under
scientific scrutiny,
this time by Dr. Simon Mays.
It's quote common to find
a handful of burials
at Roman villa sites.
But what is unusual
is to come across so quite many.
There's no other site
that's yielded anything like
the 97 infant burials
that we've got from Hambleden.
Something that struck me as I
laid out skeleton after skeleton
was they all seemed
to be a pretty similar size.
The best way to determine how
old an infant was when they died
is to measure the bones.
We measure the bones
of the arms and legs.
By doing this, we can age an
infant within about two weeks.
Simon's measurements
confirmed his initial hunch.
The babies looked the same size
because they'd all died
around the same age
of 40 weeks gestation.
So it seems
what we're dealing with
is infants that died
around time of birth.
If this was natural
infant mortality,
there would be a wide range
of bone size,
but this wasn't the case.
And that made us think that
perhaps these individuals
had been deliberately killed.
The shocking evidence is
suggesting infanticide.
At Yewden Villa,
the Romans were murdering
their newborn children.
I think the fact
that we've got 97 infants
makes us look for something
systematic that was going on.
In the coming months, Simon
will carry out further tests
on the bones of those babies
once buried beneath
this Buckinghamshire field.
These investigations
may shed light on the motives
behind these awful killings.
Jill, it seems like
there's something
quite disturbing going on here.
Because to some extent,
we expect to see this.
We know that infanticide
was there in Roman society.
But at this scale?
What's happening?
The Roman army just happened
to coincidentally be
just over the hill.
There's a track, in fact,
leading off in that direction
towards where we know
there's a Roman road
and, in fact, a Roman
army encampment for some time.
The only explanation you keep
coming back to
is it's got to have been
a brothel.
Really?
It really is
the only explanation.
You can think of all sorts,
a wealth of other reasons,
but they just don't hold water.
But at the moment,
the story of Yewden Roman villa
hasn't been told
in all its fullness, has it?
Absolutely not.
And that is just my opinion.
I have no proof
of that theory, of course,
but it's one that works
for the moment.
I'm gonna continue
investigating it.
A hundred miles away, in Kent,
there are new investigations
into the beginnings
of Roman rule,
almost exactly where
the Emperor Claudius
invaded these shores.
In the year 43 A.D.,
the people living here
on the Kent coast
looking out to sea
would have been greeted
by the sight of an armada
of ships approaching.
It was almost a hundred years
since Julius Caesar had first
invaded these shores,
and the Romans were back.
This time
they were here to stay.
Just half a mile away
from where the Roman army
came ashore,
we're getting a glimpse
into the Britain
of the first century.
And it's all thanks
to an £87 million road
being built here in Kent.
Six miles long
and covering a hundred acres,
it's the last part
of a road project
linking the Channel Tunnel
and coastal ports
to the motorway network beyond.
The new road here cuts right
across a part of the country
that is incredibly rich
in archaeological terms.
Because for thousands of years,
this tip of Kent jutting out
into the English Channel
has been the gateway to Britain,
not just for the Romans
arriving in 43 A.D.,
but for those who preceded them
and those who would come
much later.
Archaeologically speaking,
this place
is something of a gold mine.
For the last few months,
"Digging for Britain"
has been following the teams
from Oxford Wessex Archaeology.
They've been tasked
with excavating
and recording the evidence
uncovered by the diggers
and bulldozers
before the ground
is once again covered up,
this time
by a four-lane highway.
The entire length
of the new road
is being carefully stripped
by earthmoving equipment,
removing the topsoil without
damaging the archaeology below.
Andrew, this is
a massive area of excavation,
but this is only a small part
of the whole scheme.
It's a very small bit.
This is the biggest dig
in Britain this year
and it's a road scheme
just over six miles long,
but it's one big
archaeological site.
Almost every single bit
is an archaeological excavation.
And how many
archaeologists have you got
working here at any one time?
At the moment
there are about
130 archaeologists on site,
but working in the offices,
backing them up,
there are others,
so about 150 people.
So you've got
this big new road being built,
and all the way along
the length of it
archaeology has to happen first.
It is. It's one of these
bittersweet opportunities,
that the archaeology
will be destroyed,
but the sweetness is we get
the opportunity to make a record
and to investigate
about this part
of the archaeology of East Kent.
Turn the clock back 2,000 years,
and this part of Kent where
the new road is being built
would have looked
very different.
Then, the Isle of Thanet
really was an island,
separated from the mainland
until medieval times
by a stretch of water
called the Wantsum Channel,
and it's here that the new road
is being built...
And more importantly for us,
where the excavations
are taking place.
The important thing is,
this is a precious opportunity
to record the archaeology here
before it disappears forever
as the new road comes through.
The rolling deadlines
for completing different
sections of the new road
mean that the team has
had to develop a fast method
of systematically
recording the objects
at the time they're excavated.
Every find is individually
numbered, plotted by GPS,
and photographed, as well
as being accurately drawn
by archaeologists in the field.
Back at the
construction compound nearby,
the data is fed into computers,
and the photos
are carefully traced.
I've come a bit further south
on the site now
to an area rather
poetically known as zone 6.
But there's really interesting
archaeology here.
2,000 years ago, this would have
been the neck of a peninsula
sticking out
into the Wantsum Channel,
and the archaeologists
are finding evidence
of the very people
who would have been living here
when the Romans arrived.
And it's here that the team
have discovered the foundations
of an Iron Age roundhouse.
And this is a typical building
of the period
before the Romans
arrive in Britain?
Yes.
For hundreds of years,
thousands of years
before the Romans arrived,
people lived in circular houses
with conical thatched roofs.
And sometimes there'd been
one or two in a small farm,
or as seems to be the case here,
maybe a small village with seven
or eight or more houses in it.
So, very typical
of the Iron Age.
So you think
this was a village, then?
We think so, yes.
As you can see,
we've got many more
of those curvilinear ditches,
which we think may indicate
where the houses were.
This one's
a nice complete circle,
but we're just catching
the edges here,
just little arcs,
edges of roundhouses.
We are really lucky
with this one.
It doesn't happen very often to
have such a good preservation.
So it would have been
a timber house.
None of the timber is there,
but we've still got this ditch
that went around the periphery.
Yes.
And is there any dating material
that's come out of that ditch?
We are quite lucky
in this respect as well.
We've had some pottery
from the outer... outer ditch,
and it suggests
it's a Belgic pottery,
which put us about a hundred
years before the Romans arrived.
So it gives you a really precise
date for the structure.
- We're really lucky.
- Yeah.
A few feet away,
the team have just uncovered
a cobbled surface
littered with animal bones.
They seem to be kind of embedded
in the stones as well.
They believe that this was
the butchery
and food preparation area
for the village,
whose very inhabitants
would have seen
Claudius's army arriving
in 43 A.D.
We've got
these two parallel marks,
which could be from a knife.
So this is the remains
of animals
that have been butchered
on the spot just here.
It looks like it, yeah.
And here
we've got a tiny gold coin
that on this side...
This coin reveals that
the inhabitants of the village
already had European connections
before the Romans invaded.
So on the back, you have
the horse with the charioteer,
and on the other side
there's just the very faint
remains of the head.
And we find coins like this,
some just a few miles away,
by Minster,
but in France as well.
And we think it may well
have been made in France
and used in Britain.
That beautiful gold coin from
the Iron Age village in Kent
suggests we already had links
with France
at the time
of the Roman invasion.
But I'm now headed west
to Dorset,
where there's hard evidence
of trading
with the Romans themselves
well before
they thought of making us
the latest addition
of their empire.
For more than 200 years
the Romans had been
expanding their empire
across the Mediterranean,
but in the first century B.C.
they started setting
their sights further afield.
Britannia, to the northwest,
might have seemed like
the end of the world,
but it had things
which the Romans wanted.
And what the Romans wanted,
they usually got.
Britain already had a reputation
for its mineral wealth,
for its gold, silver, and tin,
but there was something else
the Romans wanted from us,
and it was this... grain.
There was plenty of it growing
in this part of Dorset
back then,
just as there is today.
And in fact Britain would go on
to become the breadbasket
of the Roman Empire.
For those living
in these agricultural areas,
well, some of them
would become very rich indeed.
Traditionally it was thought
that the Durotriges,
the Iron Age tribe who occupied
this part of Dorset,
were warlike and resisted
the Roman invaders.
But archaeologists
from Bournemouth University
seem to be finding
very different evidence
at this late-Iron Age farmstead.
Well, this survey of the site,
which is a magnetic survey,
shows us the Iron Age
ditched enclosure
we call a banjo enclosure.
That's because it superficially
resembles a banjo
with the body and the neck.
And some of these necks
are very, very long.
Where are we standing
in relation
to the structures
you can see there?
Well, we're standing
right at the entrance here,
where presumably there
would have been possibly a gate.
So, we're looking at this ditch
just here?
Yeah, that's right.
That's this ditch here,
and it follows 'round
and then curving 'round
and back down.
This is where you would have
entered the site
and you would have seen one
probably substantial roundhouse
and a number
of subsidiary roundhouses
and a lot of activity going on
within this large enclosure.
These sites
are effectively wealthy,
well appointed, undefended.
But there's something else
on the site
which really is intriguing
the Bournemouth team.
They've found more than
30 cylindrical pits
carved into the chalk bedrock
by ancient tools
and now excavated by the hands
of modern-day
archaeology students.
Miles, what are these pits?
Well, these are very sort of
large cylindrical storage pits.
Basically it's been cut down
straight into the chalk,
and we're assuming that what
they're actually storing
is grain of some kind.
Have you found grain
in these pits?
Yes, yes, indeed.
We've got small pieces
of sort of oats and barley
which have come out from
the lowest levels of these pits.
Iron Age barley.
And presumably that's not just
for their consumption
- on the site here?
- No.
This, I would imagine,
is stuff that's being exported.
Right.
To some extent,
we can see the results
of that exportation
from the artifacts
that are coming up
in these pits.
- So there's artifacts as well?
- Yes, indeed.
It appears that once
the grain's come out,
they're putting a whole range
of artifacts in.
We've got these large slabs
of Iron Age pottery.
Oh, yeah. So are they using this
as a rubbish pit, then?
Ah, no, I don't think so.
We're not seeing a mass,
a random sort of deposit
of domestic waste.
We seem to be seeing a
deliberate selection procedure.
We've got fragments of horse
and cow and sheep.
It's quite peculiar.
It suggests
there's something symbolic
about placing these objects
in there.
Yes, indeed,
I mean, it might be that,
having emptied the pit, you've
got to put something back in
as a kind of offering,
perhaps to ensure
the long-term fertility
of the land,
perhaps as an offering
to the gods.
Pits that the
archaeologists are finding
all over this site seem to have
a very obvious practical use
for storage of grain.
But there's definitely
something else going on.
Objects are being placed
in the bottom of these pits
that have some kind
of symbolic value.
And it's not just objects.
It's not just animal bones
and pottery
that the archaeologists
are finding.
Of all the deposits
I've seen on the site,
this has to be the strangest.
It's an adult male
who's lying facedown
on what I suppose can best be
described as a bed of meat.
How strange.
You've got sort of horse and pig
and cow bone all there
sort of underneath him.
It looks as though he's
just been thrown into the hole.
It really doesn't look as though
he's been placed in there
with any ceremony.
It's not a formal burial, is it?
Well,
certainly to our modern eyes
it looks like
he's been rolled in.
As I said, he's lying facedown.
His legs
are slightly tangled up.
There's no obvious kind of order
or perhaps reverence to that.
It's difficult to see whether
this is a grave
in the conventional sense
and that the bone represents
food for the afterlife,
or whether
the adult himself represents
just part of the deposit.
How strange.
There's something very odd going
on with these pits, isn't there?
There is, there is.
I mean, it's almost like,
I suppose, burying an ancestor,
burying an aunt or an uncle
in a cupboard in the kitchen.
It doesn't make sense to us.
You know, this is the area
they're living, they're working,
but their dead are going in
these kind of disused pits.
Very peculiar.
Whatever the meanings
of the bones deposited
in the pits here in Dorset,
it's clear that the people
who farmed this land
prospered from trading
with the Romans.
The Bournemouth University dig
is showing that,
far from the popular image
of Roman invaders
locked in combat
with the local tribes,
this settlement at least
is suggesting
a much calmer transition.
Becoming part of
the Roman Britain
is no significant shock
to these people at all.
There's just a great deal
of continuity.
I think that's pretty much
for the whole of Roman Britain,
because we get so awed
by the high visibility
of villas and temples
without realizing that these
just represent less than 1%
of what's going on
in the countryside.
By far and away
the bulk of the population
are living the same lifestyle,
doing the same things,
completely unaffected.
30 miles north, in Somerset,
evidence is emerging
that here too local people
may have been keeping hold
of their ancient beliefs
and ways of honoring the gods.
There's nothing around
to suggest
there's anything
particularly special
or significant
about this Somerset field.
But I know for certain
that 1,700 years ago
somebody, or a group of people,
came here
and did something right here
on this very spot.
In late April this year,
metal detectorist Dave Crisp
was searching this same field.
He was about to make
the discovery of a lifetime.
I got this funny signal.
And it was an iffy signal.
It really was.
So I dug down,
and I dug a bit deeper,
and it was still there,
and I dug a bit deeper.
I'm literally
12, 14 inches down now,
and I put my hand in,
and I pulled out a black thing.
I thought, "I've got a rock."
No.
It looks like a bit of pottery.
It looks like... It looks like
a Roman bit of pot,
bit of black-burnished ware.
"That's quite interesting,"
I thought to myself.
So I put my hand in again
and pulled out a bit more clay,
and there was a little radiate,
a little bronze Roman coin.
Very, very small.
About the size of me fingernail.
Then I realized that the piece
of burnished ware I had
was the top of a pot.
And I thought,
"I've got a hoard."
And I went, "Ah!"
And I'm in the middle of nowhere
saying,
"I've got a hoard."
I've been 22 years detecting,
and I've never, never had
a hoard before that weekend.
Dave was convinced
he'd found treasure,
but instead of digging it up
he contacted the
Portable Antiquities Scheme,
which records archaeological
objects found by the public.
Finds liaison officer Anna Booth
suspected that this was
going to be a job
for a professional
archaeologist.
We actually had no idea how big
the hoard was going to be
at this stage
so it was very exciting
for us all.
And we uncovered the neck
of the vessel,
and what we could see was
a small dish in the top of it
which was actually
acting as a lid.
At first we wondered whether
this was the bottom
of quite a small vessel
and it was turned upside down.
But when we dug a bit further,
we realized
that it was actually a lid
sitting on top of an absolutely
enormous vessel of the size
that none of us had ever seen
anything like it before.
So it was absolutely fantastic.
And it was only at that stage
that we realized
that it was actually
a huge hoard of coins
that we we were dealing with.
That must have been
quite breathtaking.
It was amazing.
It was absolutely fantastic.
And then over
the following two days,
we actually undertook
the excavation.
And it did take us
the full two days,
starting first thing
in the morning
till last thing at night
until the sun went down,
just excavating thousands
upon thousands of coins
and bagging them up.
It took a huge amount of time,
but it was
absolutely fascinating
and an amazing process
to go through.
Because Dave Crisp got
archaeologists involved
right from the very start...
Archaeologists who were able to
systematically excavate the pot
layer by layer...
It's meant we have a much
better chance of finding out
why that pot full of coins
was buried in this field
all those years ago.
The Frome hoard is looking like
it might be
the biggest coin hoard
ever discovered in Britain.
They've estimated that there are
around 50,000 coins
weighing in at 160 kilos.
That's about the weight
of two adults.
But the coins
need urgent attention,
and that's why in early May
they were brought here
to central London.
The Roman coins arrived
at the British Museum
still wet and stuck together
with heavy Somerset clay.
Pippa Pearce is a metals
conservator at the museum.
For several weeks now
Pippa has been fully occupied,
carrying out the first stage
of the coins' conservation
by carefully washing
the contents of the 67 bags
which made up the Frome hoard.
Into the fume cupboard
for a quick dry.
The coins span 40 years,
from A.D. 253 to 293,
and the vast majority are made
of debased silver and bronze.
Roman coin experts
Roger Bland and Sam Moorhead
have dropped everything
to concentrate
on the Somerset coins.
Here's another coin of Tetricus.
That's Claudius.
That's the emperor standing
holding a branch.
They've been sorting the coins
by emperor
at a rate
of nearly 6,000 a week.
It's now eight weeks since
the Frome Hoard was raised,
and all the coins
have been cleaned and sorted.
But are we any closer
to finding out
how and why such
an enormous hoard was buried
in that Somerset field?
Roger, this is just a small
fraction of the whole hoard.
How many coins
do you think there are?
Well, we think
the final number's going to be
just over 52,500 coins.
So how big is this hoard
in the context of other hoards
that have been found in Britain?
It's the largest-ever hoard
found in a single pot
in this country.
There was another hoard
found in 1978
which had just
a couple of thousand more coins,
but that was in two pots.
And do you have any idea
the value of these coins?
Maybe about the equivalent
of four years' pay
for a Roman legionary soldier.
So if you were to turn that into
present-day values,
that might be about £100,000
in present-day terms.
So, Sam, this is a piece
of the pot, is it?
Yes, this is the piece of
the pot that it was found in.
When they excavated,
the pot was already broken.
And you can see it's quite thin.
Neither I
nor the conservator believe
that this
would have been able to hold
160 kilograms of metal
without breaking.
That is very thin.
And so it's almost certain
that the pot was actually buried
in the ground first
and then the coins were added
after it had been
put in the ground.
Sam doesn't think that this pot
was one person's savings scheme,
but more likely
part of an ancient ritual.
I don't believe myself
that this is a hoard of coins
intended for recovery.
And I think what you could see
is a community of people
who are actually
making offerings,
and they are each pouring
in their own contribution
to a communal ritual
votive offering
to the gods or whoever it is.
Just because it's communal
doesn't necessarily mean
it's ritual, though, does it?
Because people could be
burying something in the ground
that they were worried was going
to be taken away from them.
If you were going to bury this
for security and safety,
you'd put it
in lots of different pots
so you could easily take them
out of the ground later.
Also, if you wanted to get
these coins out of the ground,
you'd have to dig down
to the pot, smash the pot,
and then shovel them out,
which also would be
a very lengthy process.
So I believe that it was
never intended for recovery.
And you're seeing echoes here
of a more ancient tradition,
pre Roman?
I think so, yes. Absolutely.
The same people.
We know from other studies
that the people
of the West Country
were the same people
as they were
in the Bronze and Iron Ages,
so why not continue
the same practices?
I am naturally
quite a skeptical person,
and I tend to look for the most
obvious explanation for things,
but it really does seem
from talking to the experts
that whoever it was that buried
that pot full of coins
in the ground
wasn't intending
to come back to it,
in which case
perhaps this is an echo
of an ancient tradition
that we're seeing.
Maybe those coins
are a votive offering,
and perhaps this
was a sacred field.
Not all archaeological
recoveries happen as fast
as the Roman coin hoard.
There's one project
involving a catastrophic fire
and a Roman shipwreck which
has lasted for over 30 years.
St. Peter Port, Guernsey,
in the Channel Islands.
Jason Monaghan
is museums director here.
As a young student in the 1980s
along with diver, Richard Keen,
he was involved in the biggest
archaeology project
the island had ever seen.
In the course of my diving
in the harbor
and the pierheads,
picking up pottery and scallops
and whatever else I could find,
I came across a wooden wreck.
Richard thought
it was an old barge
used to build the harbor wall.
But it would be another year
before he realized
the significance
of what he had found.
There was the wreck,
more exposed,
and great big chunks
of Roman tile.
You know, you can't
mistake Roman tile.
I thought, "Oh, crumbs."
"This is going to be
really interesting."
Richard had found the remains
of a Roman ship
uniquely preserved on the
seabed for over 1,600 years.
But how did it come to be here?
St. Peter Port would
have had a wide, sandy harbor,
and this ship would have been
somewhere in the entrance...
Possibly anchored,
possibly moored.
It caught fire for
whatever reason. We don't know.
The fire raged for some time,
then the water came on board,
quenched the fire
and the ship sank.
What the maritime
archaeologists had found
were the remains
of a Gallo-Roman trading vessel
which transported cargoes
from as far south as Spain,
through the English Channel,
and possibly
even up into the North Sea.
The ship was carrying blocks
of pitch, a natural resin,
which would accidentally
preserve the wreck.
We believe the fire raged
in the back of the ship.
The back of the ship
is the best preserved
because the cargo of pitch
the ship was carrying
melted during the fire.
This spread out to cover an area
of about eight square meters.
So when the ship sank,
this quenched into a solid mass
and effectively held
the back end of the ship down.
The Roman timbers have now
crossed the Channel
to Portsmouth
and the Mary Rose Trust
where for the past decade
they have
been treated and dried.
The timbers have been
more exposed, presumably.
Yeah, they were sticking out
of the seabed at this end here.
For Jason, too,
it's been a long journey.
This was my first job
after leaving university,
so it's actually very strange
after two and a half decades
to be coming back and seeing
the timbers in the final state
that we talked about very
excitedly all those years ago.
Conservation process
has worked beautifully there.
But there's one final problem
to overcome.
The timbers are wrapped,
boxed, and ready to go home,
but there's nowhere big enough
on Guernsey at present
to house the reconstructed ship.
This is a very
important ship for Guernsey.
Roman archaeologists talk a lot
about "trade" in inverted commas
but actually we have
very little evidence
apart from inferring that this
pottery went from here to there.
So here we have
a very solid example
of how the trade
was carried out.
Ships like ours sailed
from port to port,
carrying stuff in their holds.
30 years might seem like
a long time
for an archaeological project.
But back here at Vindolanda,
they've been digging
for even longer.
And during that time it's here
where we've come closest
to knowing the Romans
who occupied Britain.
It is tempting to think
that we know everything
about the Romans already.
After all, they wrote things
down, they left us records.
But archaeology gives us
a different perspective.
It helps to fill in details
and paint a fuller picture,
but it can also challenge
our preconceptions,
and that's when sites like this
get really interesting.
So, Andrew,
what have we got here?
What we've got here
is the wonderful...
Until recently it was believed
that temples were never sited
inside Roman auxiliary forts.
That was until last year.
So this is all part
of the temple?
This is all part of the temple.
It actually stretches
from the gate
all the way up
to the angle tower.
This is all three rooms
of quite an impressive building.
What's awesome about this is
that we absolutely do not
expect to find temples
to pagan gods,
particularly eastern cults,
inside auxiliary forts.
This is the first one
that's ever been found
- anywhere in the Roman Empire.
- Really?
We were actually looking
for a toilet block under here
because we've got
barracks behind us.
So you're looking for latrines,
and you found a temple?
Looking for a loo,
we found a temple.
There is some sort of
poetry in that, I'm sure.
These little pillars here,
are they supporting a floor?
Is this a hypocaust system?
That's right. Exactly right.
- A hypocaust system.
- To warm the floor.
You can still see the burning
on some of the stones.
To show that they had
to fire it up
in the wintertime at least,
to keep them warm.
Where would the fire
itself have been?
Little furnace is
in this room behind.
And then the hot air
comes through there.
Comes through the flue.
Then circulates around here.
And they even know
the identity of the god
who was being worshiped in this
newly discovered temple,
because amongst the ruins
they uncovered
this remarkable find...
An altar to a god from Turkey
called Jupiter Dolichenus.
Here you've got
the beautiful iconography
of Jupiter Dolichenus
riding his bull on this side.
He's got his thunderbolts
clutched in his hand.
- And an ax.
- And the ax in the other hand.
So is this altar set up
by a military man?
This altar is set up
by the big chief himself,
the commanding officer
of the fort.
And if we just read
the front of it here
we can see "I.O.M."
for Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
Ah, Jupiter,
the biggest and the best.
I mean, everybody's got to be
a little bit beneath Jupiter.
And then underneath him,
you've got the actual name
of the god himself,
and it's Dolocheno...
D-O-L-O-C-H-E-N-O.
Very, very clear
on that line there.
And underneath that
you've got the dedicator.
Sulpicius...
Pudens, his second name.
And the very, very bottom line,
very common on most
inscriptions... V.S.L.M.
And that really just means
the guy willingly deserved,
he fulfilled his vow,
and what you're looking at here
is the end of a contract.
It's a contract between...
Personal contract
between Sulpicius Pudens
and the god Jupiter Dolichenus.
So he's promised to erect
an altar to this god somewhere,
and he's now
fulfilled his promise.
Yeah, exactly.
The sides
are so beautifully preserved
with the relief carving
and the writing,
but obviously
the top's been exposed.
This is all very weathered,
isn't it?
It's really well-worn,
but also it's been very, very
badly damaged as well
by people coming in when they
were demolishing the temple.
And the demolition of the temple
happened sometime, we think,
in the 350s or 370s.
And you've got
this sort of power struggle.
With Christianity
becoming the official religion,
a lot of ancient pagan cults
and shrines
end up going by the wayside.
Poor old Jupiter Dolichenus here
eventually fell victim
to such a new movement
of the northern frontier
of Roman Britain.
Christianity had arrived
at Vindolanda.
But just 50 years later,
in 410 A.D.,
the Roman army departed Britain,
this time for good.
Vindolanda too
would slowly be abandoned
and would fall into ruin.
It's the remoteness of this
part of Northumberland
which has allowed Vindolanda
and its archaeology to survive
as a legacy to the Roman
occupation of Britain.
In the 400 years
the Romans were here,
they transformed our country,
from its language
to its landscape,
leaving a lasting legacy
that remains with us today.
And yet, 1,600 years later,
we're still discovering
new things about their society.
From that terrible infanticide
on the banks of the Thames
to that massive coin hoard
found just earlier this year
in the South West,
there's so much more
to understand
about the Romans in Britain.
And so the digging continues.
but we've got a big history.
Everywhere you stand,
there are worlds
beneath your feet.
And so every year,
hundreds of archaeologists
across Britain
go looking for more clues.
Who lived here, when, and how?
You can even see
the architecture of the bone
inside the jaw there.
Archaeology is
a complex jigsaw puzzle
drawing together everything
from skeletons to swords,
temples to treasure.
She's got a very
cartoonlike face, hasn't she?
From Orkney to Devon,
were joining this year's quest
on sea, land, and air.
We'll share all of the questions
and find some of the answers
as we join the teams
in the field
digging for Britain.
From Roman times...
The mystery of a man
buried facedown
on a bed of meat,
a fabulous treasure trove
of coins
dedicated to ancient gods...
...and the shocking evidence
of 97 murdered babies
buried beneath this field.
I'm heading towards a place
close to Hadrian's Wall
where archaeologists
are finding signs
of that Roman influence
writ large.
This narrow road
with its passing places
is known locally
as the Stanegate.
It's one of hundreds
of similar roads
which crisscross this part
of northern England.
But what makes this one
stand out is that it was
once the northern frontier
of the entire Roman Empire.
And guarding the central
section of the Stanegate...
That important
east-west supply route...
Was the fort of Vindolanda.
Each year from April
to mid-September,
an army of
over 500 archaeology volunteers
comes here from all over world.
And every week
they make new discoveries.
What you've got there, John,
is a beautiful,
great big,
dark-blue glass melon bead.
And there's a bit of a debate
about those
because some people think
that Roman soldiers
just simply wore these
as decorations
or ladies wore them
as decorations.
It's a very, very corroded
lump of metal.
But what we've actually got here
is the back of the helmet,
by the looks of things.
It's very, very badly bashed,
but you sort of see it
in the side profile.
This is the neck guard
at the back,
and this is the start of the top
of the helmet coming up.
Vindolanda has been excavated
for over 40 years,
but they estimate they've
only uncovered 15% of it
and that it would take another
150 years to finish the job,
which is utterly remarkable
because the site as it stands
is absolutely massive.
Vindolanda was bought in 1929
by the renowned archaeologist
Professor Eric Birley.
His grandson Andrew is now
its director of excavations.
The Romans built four forts here
by the time
Hadrian's Wall was built, so...
Really? So the first ones
predate the wall?
Predate the wall
by a good 40 years.
And they're a long way down.
They're seven or eight meters
beneath where we're standing.
And would they have been
stone built?
No, the first six forts here
are built in timber
and the last three in stone.
And so they knock them down,
build them up,
knock them down, build them up
very, very quickly.
So in perhaps only 125 years
you get the landscape
really shooting up to the fort
we're standing in at the moment.
So this is the last fort.
There is an enormous amount
of it still in place.
It's because nine forts
have been built
right on top of each other here
that so much archaeological
evidence survives.
In just the last
couple of weeks,
the team working here
have uncovered
this wonderful flagstone street
which leads from
the northern gate of the fort
straight up
to the headquarters building.
And the stones are really worn
with centuries of use,
and you can just imagine
the sound of those hobnail boots
as the Roman soldiers marched
in and out of the fort.
As well as the excavations
within the walls
of the stone fort,
this year a separate team
is working in the vicus,
the civilian village
which lies just outside
the garrison
here at Vindolanda.
So, what are you
excavating here?
Well, it's all part
of the garrison settlement
that sprang up outside
the last stone fort
that was built at Vindolanda.
So it's a combination of sort of
workshops, shops and houses,
sort of wagon parks
and trading areas,
to supply and sort of, you know,
link in with the fort there.
So it was a bit like
retail world outside there.
Had all sorts of shops
flanking the roads.
Little bit of evidence for a pub
as well.
We had a building on there
where we found a room
right on the street front there,
and inside that room all
the artifacts that were found
were basically drinking beakers
and gaming counters.
- Fantastic.
- Yeah.
It's one of those sites where
you can almost be there.
You can virtually hear
the Romans when you're digging
because there's so many
artifacts coming from the ground
and you've got
all these buildings
that are
in really super condition.
For the past three weeks
Justin and his team have been
working on a cobbled roadway
which ran through the heart
of the Roman village.
We've been really very lucky
with this one
because we actually got
some super dating evidence
because trapped in among
the cobbles we actually found
a little silver
denarius of Severus Alexander
which was minted in A.D. 222.
So, of course, because it was
trapped in the road surface,
it means that the road surface
can't really have been made
before that coin was minted.
So we've got a super date
for it.
Just beside the Roman fort
is the conservation area
where the daily finds are taken
to Barbara Birley and her team.
Are all of these artifacts
coming out this year?
Most of them are, yes.
Oh, this is amazing,
this little griffin.
Just pull it out and
have a little bit closer look.
You can see it's got
the fabulous wings here,
and you can actually just make
out the detail of the feathers.
And then he's got the
hindquarters there of a lion.
And the Romans had
a lot of superstitious beliefs.
They felt that this type of
being would have been very good
for protecting
maybe something precious
and things
like gold or treasure.
So we know
that he's a little statue,
but we don't know
what he was possibly guarding.
The village of Hambleden,
near the Thames,
has always been
a desirable place to live...
Even so, it seems, for the
Romans, who built villas here.
I'm just up from the river now.
I'm walking along on the edge
of this beautiful field
which seems to be growing
some kind of cereal crop,
but it's not the crop
I'm interested in at all.
It's what's in the ground
underneath it.
Almost exactly
a hundred years ago,
this woman, Miss Glassbrook,
was walking along
in this very same field
and started to find some
strange pieces of pottery...
Very much like these ones...
And she decided they were worth
further investigation.
Miss Glassbrook approached
a local archaeologist,
who in 1912 would make
an extraordinary discovery
beneath the soil
in this Buckinghamshire field.
The archaeologist Alfred Cocks
had discovered the foundations
of a high-status Roman villa
which he would call Yewden.
Over the course of a year,
Cocks would excavate
and photograph the villa
while collecting the finds.
But in doing so
he would uncover a dark secret
which is
still troubling archaeologists
almost a century later.
The main villa house is what
we see in this photograph.
And there's a little bump
in the middle of the field here.
And the bump is entirely due
to that building
beneath the surface.
But it's quite nice.
You can work out where you are,
and you know it's that bump
because you can actually see
the scene in front of you.
You've got that house there
which has got a white front
on it,
a white gable end.
It's now pebble-dashed,
isn't it?
- That's it, isn't it?
- That's right.
- This is a huge excavation.
- It is massive.
He had to have a huge team
of laborers to dig this.
It was all by hand.
It's all by shovel
and wheelbarrows,
and so that would have been
a huge labor force
and an enormous cost.
So this is all still
there underneath that wheat?
Still there.
Just it's got all the backfill,
then the soil layer reinstated,
and of course crops on it
forevermore.
For many years, the
finds from Yewden Roman villa
were kept in a special museum
at Hambleden.
But when that closed
in the 1950s,
they were moved
to Buckinghamshire County Museum
in Aylesbury,
where, appropriately enough,
Alfred Cocks was once curator.
Cocks published his results
in 1921.
But it's the way
he reached his conclusions
that's interesting
archaeologists today.
Alfred Cocks was unlike
most of the antiquarian
archaeologists operating
in the early 20th century,
many of whom are, to be honest,
just treasure hunters.
But Cocks was different.
He paid careful attention
to each and every find.
He labeled them with the name,
the location,
and even the precise depth
at which they were found.
The artifacts from the 1912
excavation fill over 300 boxes.
So, Brett, all of these boxes
here are from Yewden, are they?
Absolutely.
Brett Thorn is
keeper of archaeology
at the
Buckinghamshire County Museum.
But this is all of the objects
he recovered
from the 1912 excavations.
And these, as you can see...
These are Roman brooches.
But he's not just collecting
the brooches.
There are little pieces
of just, well,
random bits of metal here
as well.
Exactly.
He didn't differentiate.
He just picked up
absolutely everything.
Not only did he collect even
the tiniest little cruddy bit,
like that little section there,
he labeled everything...
Even these tiny pieces.
Just to kind of show you
an example,
if I show you this one...
This rather crude bit of card.
Is that Cocks' writing?
This is
Cocks' handwriting, yeah.
"East side of yard,
35 inches north
of enclosure wall, Yewden."
And the date... "2/10/12."
So this is
his original display piece.
Fantastic.
So this must be really unusual
for the time.
Hugely unusual.
I mean, people...
These antiquarians
just went in and dug.
They just took out the goodies,
the pretty items to put on show,
and they weren't interested
in anything else.
All these little bits
of bronze wire,
little tiny sherds of pot
where the label is actually
bigger than the pot piece,
they wouldn't have kept that.
They'd have just
dumped it all back on site,
completely wrecked
the stratigraphy.
We wouldn't know anything
about the site.
There's so much more information
available to you now
because he's done this work,
because he's been so careful,
so meticulous.
- Yeah.
- Exactly, yeah.
Over the past year,
Jill has been taking home
the Hambleden boxes
to reevaluate Cocks'
1912 findings
with the eye and the techniques
of the
21st-century archaeologist.
But there was
one particular set of remains
which Alfred Cocks was
uncharacteristically
reticent about.
Well, in Cocks' report,
he obviously tells us
about a good number
of the finds.
Selectively. He doesn't
discuss all the finds.
And I was rather surprised
to find in his report
that in actual fact
he did find 97 infant burials.
Now, he only gives them
a paragraph or so of a mention,
which, you know, even in 1912
that's a very important find.
It's an unusually high number.
And it was rather odd the way
he just described them
rather informally as being
wrapped as little bundles
and potentially buried secretly
after dark.
Sort of
tiny little bag here of...
Oh, yeah, little infant bones.
Absolutely minute.
Beautifully preserved, though.
The bone is
incredibly well preserved,
and you've got some
little pieces of skull there
which is almost eggshell-like,
isn't it?
It's incredibly thin,
but brilliantly preserved.
The infant bones were thought
to have been lost
until last year, when Jill
and Brett rediscovered them
packed away in old cigar
and gun-cartridge boxes.
How many infants
were there buried at Yewden?
Well, that was the key thing.
We've got 97.
I mean, it's an astounding
number for the one villa.
It's quite a shocking number,
actually.
- It is.
- Yeah.
And it's actually quite normal
to have infant burials.
You're not considered to be
a proper human being
ready for the cemetery
until you're about two years old
in the Roman world,
so you do bury any babies
that are lost
between being born
and two years,
and you put them in the garden
or in the yard
or perhaps even
under your floor.
- But this number?
- But not 97.
There's something different
about Yewden.
There's something very strange
going on there, isn't there?
So these are the boxes,
are they,
that the bones were kept in?
Yeah,
this is how Cocks packed them.
Cigarette boxes.
All with his detailed notes on
about where that
particular infant was buried.
And, again,
there's sort of the date
and all of the information
that he loved to record.
But it's strange...
But what doesn't seem in keeping
is the fact
that he squirrels these away
and doesn't really
look at them again.
There's no mention anywhere
in the published report of them
other than a short paragraph
saying Cocks thought,
because the bodies kind of cut
and recut each other...
They're buried
in a very small area...
That he thought
it must have been done
surreptitiously after dark
and hidden.
I do handle human bones,
obviously,
but this is the first time
I've really had to deal
with infant bones,
and it's quite... it's quite
a strange feeling, isn't it?
It actually quite upset me
because they are obviously
very small skeletons
and they were clearly
very young babies,
so it just has
that effect on you.
Nearly a century
after Alfred Cocks
first discovered them,
the infant bones are once again
coming under
scientific scrutiny,
this time by Dr. Simon Mays.
It's quote common to find
a handful of burials
at Roman villa sites.
But what is unusual
is to come across so quite many.
There's no other site
that's yielded anything like
the 97 infant burials
that we've got from Hambleden.
Something that struck me as I
laid out skeleton after skeleton
was they all seemed
to be a pretty similar size.
The best way to determine how
old an infant was when they died
is to measure the bones.
We measure the bones
of the arms and legs.
By doing this, we can age an
infant within about two weeks.
Simon's measurements
confirmed his initial hunch.
The babies looked the same size
because they'd all died
around the same age
of 40 weeks gestation.
So it seems
what we're dealing with
is infants that died
around time of birth.
If this was natural
infant mortality,
there would be a wide range
of bone size,
but this wasn't the case.
And that made us think that
perhaps these individuals
had been deliberately killed.
The shocking evidence is
suggesting infanticide.
At Yewden Villa,
the Romans were murdering
their newborn children.
I think the fact
that we've got 97 infants
makes us look for something
systematic that was going on.
In the coming months, Simon
will carry out further tests
on the bones of those babies
once buried beneath
this Buckinghamshire field.
These investigations
may shed light on the motives
behind these awful killings.
Jill, it seems like
there's something
quite disturbing going on here.
Because to some extent,
we expect to see this.
We know that infanticide
was there in Roman society.
But at this scale?
What's happening?
The Roman army just happened
to coincidentally be
just over the hill.
There's a track, in fact,
leading off in that direction
towards where we know
there's a Roman road
and, in fact, a Roman
army encampment for some time.
The only explanation you keep
coming back to
is it's got to have been
a brothel.
Really?
It really is
the only explanation.
You can think of all sorts,
a wealth of other reasons,
but they just don't hold water.
But at the moment,
the story of Yewden Roman villa
hasn't been told
in all its fullness, has it?
Absolutely not.
And that is just my opinion.
I have no proof
of that theory, of course,
but it's one that works
for the moment.
I'm gonna continue
investigating it.
A hundred miles away, in Kent,
there are new investigations
into the beginnings
of Roman rule,
almost exactly where
the Emperor Claudius
invaded these shores.
In the year 43 A.D.,
the people living here
on the Kent coast
looking out to sea
would have been greeted
by the sight of an armada
of ships approaching.
It was almost a hundred years
since Julius Caesar had first
invaded these shores,
and the Romans were back.
This time
they were here to stay.
Just half a mile away
from where the Roman army
came ashore,
we're getting a glimpse
into the Britain
of the first century.
And it's all thanks
to an £87 million road
being built here in Kent.
Six miles long
and covering a hundred acres,
it's the last part
of a road project
linking the Channel Tunnel
and coastal ports
to the motorway network beyond.
The new road here cuts right
across a part of the country
that is incredibly rich
in archaeological terms.
Because for thousands of years,
this tip of Kent jutting out
into the English Channel
has been the gateway to Britain,
not just for the Romans
arriving in 43 A.D.,
but for those who preceded them
and those who would come
much later.
Archaeologically speaking,
this place
is something of a gold mine.
For the last few months,
"Digging for Britain"
has been following the teams
from Oxford Wessex Archaeology.
They've been tasked
with excavating
and recording the evidence
uncovered by the diggers
and bulldozers
before the ground
is once again covered up,
this time
by a four-lane highway.
The entire length
of the new road
is being carefully stripped
by earthmoving equipment,
removing the topsoil without
damaging the archaeology below.
Andrew, this is
a massive area of excavation,
but this is only a small part
of the whole scheme.
It's a very small bit.
This is the biggest dig
in Britain this year
and it's a road scheme
just over six miles long,
but it's one big
archaeological site.
Almost every single bit
is an archaeological excavation.
And how many
archaeologists have you got
working here at any one time?
At the moment
there are about
130 archaeologists on site,
but working in the offices,
backing them up,
there are others,
so about 150 people.
So you've got
this big new road being built,
and all the way along
the length of it
archaeology has to happen first.
It is. It's one of these
bittersweet opportunities,
that the archaeology
will be destroyed,
but the sweetness is we get
the opportunity to make a record
and to investigate
about this part
of the archaeology of East Kent.
Turn the clock back 2,000 years,
and this part of Kent where
the new road is being built
would have looked
very different.
Then, the Isle of Thanet
really was an island,
separated from the mainland
until medieval times
by a stretch of water
called the Wantsum Channel,
and it's here that the new road
is being built...
And more importantly for us,
where the excavations
are taking place.
The important thing is,
this is a precious opportunity
to record the archaeology here
before it disappears forever
as the new road comes through.
The rolling deadlines
for completing different
sections of the new road
mean that the team has
had to develop a fast method
of systematically
recording the objects
at the time they're excavated.
Every find is individually
numbered, plotted by GPS,
and photographed, as well
as being accurately drawn
by archaeologists in the field.
Back at the
construction compound nearby,
the data is fed into computers,
and the photos
are carefully traced.
I've come a bit further south
on the site now
to an area rather
poetically known as zone 6.
But there's really interesting
archaeology here.
2,000 years ago, this would have
been the neck of a peninsula
sticking out
into the Wantsum Channel,
and the archaeologists
are finding evidence
of the very people
who would have been living here
when the Romans arrived.
And it's here that the team
have discovered the foundations
of an Iron Age roundhouse.
And this is a typical building
of the period
before the Romans
arrive in Britain?
Yes.
For hundreds of years,
thousands of years
before the Romans arrived,
people lived in circular houses
with conical thatched roofs.
And sometimes there'd been
one or two in a small farm,
or as seems to be the case here,
maybe a small village with seven
or eight or more houses in it.
So, very typical
of the Iron Age.
So you think
this was a village, then?
We think so, yes.
As you can see,
we've got many more
of those curvilinear ditches,
which we think may indicate
where the houses were.
This one's
a nice complete circle,
but we're just catching
the edges here,
just little arcs,
edges of roundhouses.
We are really lucky
with this one.
It doesn't happen very often to
have such a good preservation.
So it would have been
a timber house.
None of the timber is there,
but we've still got this ditch
that went around the periphery.
Yes.
And is there any dating material
that's come out of that ditch?
We are quite lucky
in this respect as well.
We've had some pottery
from the outer... outer ditch,
and it suggests
it's a Belgic pottery,
which put us about a hundred
years before the Romans arrived.
So it gives you a really precise
date for the structure.
- We're really lucky.
- Yeah.
A few feet away,
the team have just uncovered
a cobbled surface
littered with animal bones.
They seem to be kind of embedded
in the stones as well.
They believe that this was
the butchery
and food preparation area
for the village,
whose very inhabitants
would have seen
Claudius's army arriving
in 43 A.D.
We've got
these two parallel marks,
which could be from a knife.
So this is the remains
of animals
that have been butchered
on the spot just here.
It looks like it, yeah.
And here
we've got a tiny gold coin
that on this side...
This coin reveals that
the inhabitants of the village
already had European connections
before the Romans invaded.
So on the back, you have
the horse with the charioteer,
and on the other side
there's just the very faint
remains of the head.
And we find coins like this,
some just a few miles away,
by Minster,
but in France as well.
And we think it may well
have been made in France
and used in Britain.
That beautiful gold coin from
the Iron Age village in Kent
suggests we already had links
with France
at the time
of the Roman invasion.
But I'm now headed west
to Dorset,
where there's hard evidence
of trading
with the Romans themselves
well before
they thought of making us
the latest addition
of their empire.
For more than 200 years
the Romans had been
expanding their empire
across the Mediterranean,
but in the first century B.C.
they started setting
their sights further afield.
Britannia, to the northwest,
might have seemed like
the end of the world,
but it had things
which the Romans wanted.
And what the Romans wanted,
they usually got.
Britain already had a reputation
for its mineral wealth,
for its gold, silver, and tin,
but there was something else
the Romans wanted from us,
and it was this... grain.
There was plenty of it growing
in this part of Dorset
back then,
just as there is today.
And in fact Britain would go on
to become the breadbasket
of the Roman Empire.
For those living
in these agricultural areas,
well, some of them
would become very rich indeed.
Traditionally it was thought
that the Durotriges,
the Iron Age tribe who occupied
this part of Dorset,
were warlike and resisted
the Roman invaders.
But archaeologists
from Bournemouth University
seem to be finding
very different evidence
at this late-Iron Age farmstead.
Well, this survey of the site,
which is a magnetic survey,
shows us the Iron Age
ditched enclosure
we call a banjo enclosure.
That's because it superficially
resembles a banjo
with the body and the neck.
And some of these necks
are very, very long.
Where are we standing
in relation
to the structures
you can see there?
Well, we're standing
right at the entrance here,
where presumably there
would have been possibly a gate.
So, we're looking at this ditch
just here?
Yeah, that's right.
That's this ditch here,
and it follows 'round
and then curving 'round
and back down.
This is where you would have
entered the site
and you would have seen one
probably substantial roundhouse
and a number
of subsidiary roundhouses
and a lot of activity going on
within this large enclosure.
These sites
are effectively wealthy,
well appointed, undefended.
But there's something else
on the site
which really is intriguing
the Bournemouth team.
They've found more than
30 cylindrical pits
carved into the chalk bedrock
by ancient tools
and now excavated by the hands
of modern-day
archaeology students.
Miles, what are these pits?
Well, these are very sort of
large cylindrical storage pits.
Basically it's been cut down
straight into the chalk,
and we're assuming that what
they're actually storing
is grain of some kind.
Have you found grain
in these pits?
Yes, yes, indeed.
We've got small pieces
of sort of oats and barley
which have come out from
the lowest levels of these pits.
Iron Age barley.
And presumably that's not just
for their consumption
- on the site here?
- No.
This, I would imagine,
is stuff that's being exported.
Right.
To some extent,
we can see the results
of that exportation
from the artifacts
that are coming up
in these pits.
- So there's artifacts as well?
- Yes, indeed.
It appears that once
the grain's come out,
they're putting a whole range
of artifacts in.
We've got these large slabs
of Iron Age pottery.
Oh, yeah. So are they using this
as a rubbish pit, then?
Ah, no, I don't think so.
We're not seeing a mass,
a random sort of deposit
of domestic waste.
We seem to be seeing a
deliberate selection procedure.
We've got fragments of horse
and cow and sheep.
It's quite peculiar.
It suggests
there's something symbolic
about placing these objects
in there.
Yes, indeed,
I mean, it might be that,
having emptied the pit, you've
got to put something back in
as a kind of offering,
perhaps to ensure
the long-term fertility
of the land,
perhaps as an offering
to the gods.
Pits that the
archaeologists are finding
all over this site seem to have
a very obvious practical use
for storage of grain.
But there's definitely
something else going on.
Objects are being placed
in the bottom of these pits
that have some kind
of symbolic value.
And it's not just objects.
It's not just animal bones
and pottery
that the archaeologists
are finding.
Of all the deposits
I've seen on the site,
this has to be the strangest.
It's an adult male
who's lying facedown
on what I suppose can best be
described as a bed of meat.
How strange.
You've got sort of horse and pig
and cow bone all there
sort of underneath him.
It looks as though he's
just been thrown into the hole.
It really doesn't look as though
he's been placed in there
with any ceremony.
It's not a formal burial, is it?
Well,
certainly to our modern eyes
it looks like
he's been rolled in.
As I said, he's lying facedown.
His legs
are slightly tangled up.
There's no obvious kind of order
or perhaps reverence to that.
It's difficult to see whether
this is a grave
in the conventional sense
and that the bone represents
food for the afterlife,
or whether
the adult himself represents
just part of the deposit.
How strange.
There's something very odd going
on with these pits, isn't there?
There is, there is.
I mean, it's almost like,
I suppose, burying an ancestor,
burying an aunt or an uncle
in a cupboard in the kitchen.
It doesn't make sense to us.
You know, this is the area
they're living, they're working,
but their dead are going in
these kind of disused pits.
Very peculiar.
Whatever the meanings
of the bones deposited
in the pits here in Dorset,
it's clear that the people
who farmed this land
prospered from trading
with the Romans.
The Bournemouth University dig
is showing that,
far from the popular image
of Roman invaders
locked in combat
with the local tribes,
this settlement at least
is suggesting
a much calmer transition.
Becoming part of
the Roman Britain
is no significant shock
to these people at all.
There's just a great deal
of continuity.
I think that's pretty much
for the whole of Roman Britain,
because we get so awed
by the high visibility
of villas and temples
without realizing that these
just represent less than 1%
of what's going on
in the countryside.
By far and away
the bulk of the population
are living the same lifestyle,
doing the same things,
completely unaffected.
30 miles north, in Somerset,
evidence is emerging
that here too local people
may have been keeping hold
of their ancient beliefs
and ways of honoring the gods.
There's nothing around
to suggest
there's anything
particularly special
or significant
about this Somerset field.
But I know for certain
that 1,700 years ago
somebody, or a group of people,
came here
and did something right here
on this very spot.
In late April this year,
metal detectorist Dave Crisp
was searching this same field.
He was about to make
the discovery of a lifetime.
I got this funny signal.
And it was an iffy signal.
It really was.
So I dug down,
and I dug a bit deeper,
and it was still there,
and I dug a bit deeper.
I'm literally
12, 14 inches down now,
and I put my hand in,
and I pulled out a black thing.
I thought, "I've got a rock."
No.
It looks like a bit of pottery.
It looks like... It looks like
a Roman bit of pot,
bit of black-burnished ware.
"That's quite interesting,"
I thought to myself.
So I put my hand in again
and pulled out a bit more clay,
and there was a little radiate,
a little bronze Roman coin.
Very, very small.
About the size of me fingernail.
Then I realized that the piece
of burnished ware I had
was the top of a pot.
And I thought,
"I've got a hoard."
And I went, "Ah!"
And I'm in the middle of nowhere
saying,
"I've got a hoard."
I've been 22 years detecting,
and I've never, never had
a hoard before that weekend.
Dave was convinced
he'd found treasure,
but instead of digging it up
he contacted the
Portable Antiquities Scheme,
which records archaeological
objects found by the public.
Finds liaison officer Anna Booth
suspected that this was
going to be a job
for a professional
archaeologist.
We actually had no idea how big
the hoard was going to be
at this stage
so it was very exciting
for us all.
And we uncovered the neck
of the vessel,
and what we could see was
a small dish in the top of it
which was actually
acting as a lid.
At first we wondered whether
this was the bottom
of quite a small vessel
and it was turned upside down.
But when we dug a bit further,
we realized
that it was actually a lid
sitting on top of an absolutely
enormous vessel of the size
that none of us had ever seen
anything like it before.
So it was absolutely fantastic.
And it was only at that stage
that we realized
that it was actually
a huge hoard of coins
that we we were dealing with.
That must have been
quite breathtaking.
It was amazing.
It was absolutely fantastic.
And then over
the following two days,
we actually undertook
the excavation.
And it did take us
the full two days,
starting first thing
in the morning
till last thing at night
until the sun went down,
just excavating thousands
upon thousands of coins
and bagging them up.
It took a huge amount of time,
but it was
absolutely fascinating
and an amazing process
to go through.
Because Dave Crisp got
archaeologists involved
right from the very start...
Archaeologists who were able to
systematically excavate the pot
layer by layer...
It's meant we have a much
better chance of finding out
why that pot full of coins
was buried in this field
all those years ago.
The Frome hoard is looking like
it might be
the biggest coin hoard
ever discovered in Britain.
They've estimated that there are
around 50,000 coins
weighing in at 160 kilos.
That's about the weight
of two adults.
But the coins
need urgent attention,
and that's why in early May
they were brought here
to central London.
The Roman coins arrived
at the British Museum
still wet and stuck together
with heavy Somerset clay.
Pippa Pearce is a metals
conservator at the museum.
For several weeks now
Pippa has been fully occupied,
carrying out the first stage
of the coins' conservation
by carefully washing
the contents of the 67 bags
which made up the Frome hoard.
Into the fume cupboard
for a quick dry.
The coins span 40 years,
from A.D. 253 to 293,
and the vast majority are made
of debased silver and bronze.
Roman coin experts
Roger Bland and Sam Moorhead
have dropped everything
to concentrate
on the Somerset coins.
Here's another coin of Tetricus.
That's Claudius.
That's the emperor standing
holding a branch.
They've been sorting the coins
by emperor
at a rate
of nearly 6,000 a week.
It's now eight weeks since
the Frome Hoard was raised,
and all the coins
have been cleaned and sorted.
But are we any closer
to finding out
how and why such
an enormous hoard was buried
in that Somerset field?
Roger, this is just a small
fraction of the whole hoard.
How many coins
do you think there are?
Well, we think
the final number's going to be
just over 52,500 coins.
So how big is this hoard
in the context of other hoards
that have been found in Britain?
It's the largest-ever hoard
found in a single pot
in this country.
There was another hoard
found in 1978
which had just
a couple of thousand more coins,
but that was in two pots.
And do you have any idea
the value of these coins?
Maybe about the equivalent
of four years' pay
for a Roman legionary soldier.
So if you were to turn that into
present-day values,
that might be about £100,000
in present-day terms.
So, Sam, this is a piece
of the pot, is it?
Yes, this is the piece of
the pot that it was found in.
When they excavated,
the pot was already broken.
And you can see it's quite thin.
Neither I
nor the conservator believe
that this
would have been able to hold
160 kilograms of metal
without breaking.
That is very thin.
And so it's almost certain
that the pot was actually buried
in the ground first
and then the coins were added
after it had been
put in the ground.
Sam doesn't think that this pot
was one person's savings scheme,
but more likely
part of an ancient ritual.
I don't believe myself
that this is a hoard of coins
intended for recovery.
And I think what you could see
is a community of people
who are actually
making offerings,
and they are each pouring
in their own contribution
to a communal ritual
votive offering
to the gods or whoever it is.
Just because it's communal
doesn't necessarily mean
it's ritual, though, does it?
Because people could be
burying something in the ground
that they were worried was going
to be taken away from them.
If you were going to bury this
for security and safety,
you'd put it
in lots of different pots
so you could easily take them
out of the ground later.
Also, if you wanted to get
these coins out of the ground,
you'd have to dig down
to the pot, smash the pot,
and then shovel them out,
which also would be
a very lengthy process.
So I believe that it was
never intended for recovery.
And you're seeing echoes here
of a more ancient tradition,
pre Roman?
I think so, yes. Absolutely.
The same people.
We know from other studies
that the people
of the West Country
were the same people
as they were
in the Bronze and Iron Ages,
so why not continue
the same practices?
I am naturally
quite a skeptical person,
and I tend to look for the most
obvious explanation for things,
but it really does seem
from talking to the experts
that whoever it was that buried
that pot full of coins
in the ground
wasn't intending
to come back to it,
in which case
perhaps this is an echo
of an ancient tradition
that we're seeing.
Maybe those coins
are a votive offering,
and perhaps this
was a sacred field.
Not all archaeological
recoveries happen as fast
as the Roman coin hoard.
There's one project
involving a catastrophic fire
and a Roman shipwreck which
has lasted for over 30 years.
St. Peter Port, Guernsey,
in the Channel Islands.
Jason Monaghan
is museums director here.
As a young student in the 1980s
along with diver, Richard Keen,
he was involved in the biggest
archaeology project
the island had ever seen.
In the course of my diving
in the harbor
and the pierheads,
picking up pottery and scallops
and whatever else I could find,
I came across a wooden wreck.
Richard thought
it was an old barge
used to build the harbor wall.
But it would be another year
before he realized
the significance
of what he had found.
There was the wreck,
more exposed,
and great big chunks
of Roman tile.
You know, you can't
mistake Roman tile.
I thought, "Oh, crumbs."
"This is going to be
really interesting."
Richard had found the remains
of a Roman ship
uniquely preserved on the
seabed for over 1,600 years.
But how did it come to be here?
St. Peter Port would
have had a wide, sandy harbor,
and this ship would have been
somewhere in the entrance...
Possibly anchored,
possibly moored.
It caught fire for
whatever reason. We don't know.
The fire raged for some time,
then the water came on board,
quenched the fire
and the ship sank.
What the maritime
archaeologists had found
were the remains
of a Gallo-Roman trading vessel
which transported cargoes
from as far south as Spain,
through the English Channel,
and possibly
even up into the North Sea.
The ship was carrying blocks
of pitch, a natural resin,
which would accidentally
preserve the wreck.
We believe the fire raged
in the back of the ship.
The back of the ship
is the best preserved
because the cargo of pitch
the ship was carrying
melted during the fire.
This spread out to cover an area
of about eight square meters.
So when the ship sank,
this quenched into a solid mass
and effectively held
the back end of the ship down.
The Roman timbers have now
crossed the Channel
to Portsmouth
and the Mary Rose Trust
where for the past decade
they have
been treated and dried.
The timbers have been
more exposed, presumably.
Yeah, they were sticking out
of the seabed at this end here.
For Jason, too,
it's been a long journey.
This was my first job
after leaving university,
so it's actually very strange
after two and a half decades
to be coming back and seeing
the timbers in the final state
that we talked about very
excitedly all those years ago.
Conservation process
has worked beautifully there.
But there's one final problem
to overcome.
The timbers are wrapped,
boxed, and ready to go home,
but there's nowhere big enough
on Guernsey at present
to house the reconstructed ship.
This is a very
important ship for Guernsey.
Roman archaeologists talk a lot
about "trade" in inverted commas
but actually we have
very little evidence
apart from inferring that this
pottery went from here to there.
So here we have
a very solid example
of how the trade
was carried out.
Ships like ours sailed
from port to port,
carrying stuff in their holds.
30 years might seem like
a long time
for an archaeological project.
But back here at Vindolanda,
they've been digging
for even longer.
And during that time it's here
where we've come closest
to knowing the Romans
who occupied Britain.
It is tempting to think
that we know everything
about the Romans already.
After all, they wrote things
down, they left us records.
But archaeology gives us
a different perspective.
It helps to fill in details
and paint a fuller picture,
but it can also challenge
our preconceptions,
and that's when sites like this
get really interesting.
So, Andrew,
what have we got here?
What we've got here
is the wonderful...
Until recently it was believed
that temples were never sited
inside Roman auxiliary forts.
That was until last year.
So this is all part
of the temple?
This is all part of the temple.
It actually stretches
from the gate
all the way up
to the angle tower.
This is all three rooms
of quite an impressive building.
What's awesome about this is
that we absolutely do not
expect to find temples
to pagan gods,
particularly eastern cults,
inside auxiliary forts.
This is the first one
that's ever been found
- anywhere in the Roman Empire.
- Really?
We were actually looking
for a toilet block under here
because we've got
barracks behind us.
So you're looking for latrines,
and you found a temple?
Looking for a loo,
we found a temple.
There is some sort of
poetry in that, I'm sure.
These little pillars here,
are they supporting a floor?
Is this a hypocaust system?
That's right. Exactly right.
- A hypocaust system.
- To warm the floor.
You can still see the burning
on some of the stones.
To show that they had
to fire it up
in the wintertime at least,
to keep them warm.
Where would the fire
itself have been?
Little furnace is
in this room behind.
And then the hot air
comes through there.
Comes through the flue.
Then circulates around here.
And they even know
the identity of the god
who was being worshiped in this
newly discovered temple,
because amongst the ruins
they uncovered
this remarkable find...
An altar to a god from Turkey
called Jupiter Dolichenus.
Here you've got
the beautiful iconography
of Jupiter Dolichenus
riding his bull on this side.
He's got his thunderbolts
clutched in his hand.
- And an ax.
- And the ax in the other hand.
So is this altar set up
by a military man?
This altar is set up
by the big chief himself,
the commanding officer
of the fort.
And if we just read
the front of it here
we can see "I.O.M."
for Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
Ah, Jupiter,
the biggest and the best.
I mean, everybody's got to be
a little bit beneath Jupiter.
And then underneath him,
you've got the actual name
of the god himself,
and it's Dolocheno...
D-O-L-O-C-H-E-N-O.
Very, very clear
on that line there.
And underneath that
you've got the dedicator.
Sulpicius...
Pudens, his second name.
And the very, very bottom line,
very common on most
inscriptions... V.S.L.M.
And that really just means
the guy willingly deserved,
he fulfilled his vow,
and what you're looking at here
is the end of a contract.
It's a contract between...
Personal contract
between Sulpicius Pudens
and the god Jupiter Dolichenus.
So he's promised to erect
an altar to this god somewhere,
and he's now
fulfilled his promise.
Yeah, exactly.
The sides
are so beautifully preserved
with the relief carving
and the writing,
but obviously
the top's been exposed.
This is all very weathered,
isn't it?
It's really well-worn,
but also it's been very, very
badly damaged as well
by people coming in when they
were demolishing the temple.
And the demolition of the temple
happened sometime, we think,
in the 350s or 370s.
And you've got
this sort of power struggle.
With Christianity
becoming the official religion,
a lot of ancient pagan cults
and shrines
end up going by the wayside.
Poor old Jupiter Dolichenus here
eventually fell victim
to such a new movement
of the northern frontier
of Roman Britain.
Christianity had arrived
at Vindolanda.
But just 50 years later,
in 410 A.D.,
the Roman army departed Britain,
this time for good.
Vindolanda too
would slowly be abandoned
and would fall into ruin.
It's the remoteness of this
part of Northumberland
which has allowed Vindolanda
and its archaeology to survive
as a legacy to the Roman
occupation of Britain.
In the 400 years
the Romans were here,
they transformed our country,
from its language
to its landscape,
leaving a lasting legacy
that remains with us today.
And yet, 1,600 years later,
we're still discovering
new things about their society.
From that terrible infanticide
on the banks of the Thames
to that massive coin hoard
found just earlier this year
in the South West,
there's so much more
to understand
about the Romans in Britain.
And so the digging continues.