Digging for Britain (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Anglo-Saxons - 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.
The Anglo-Saxons invaded
and divided our island
and ushered in the Dark Ages.
This year, archaeology
is offering fresh clues
about the people
who gave us England,
the land of the Angles...
...their warrior culture
of swords and ornate burials...
...the physical evidence
of violence
in a time of blood feuds...
And this is sliced down the
entire left side of his body.
...and the mystery
of the magnificent ring
once worn by
a wealthy Anglo-Saxon
and never seen publicly,
until now.
For almost 400 years, Britannia
was a part of the Roman Empire,
controlled by Rome's legions
and strategically
positioned forts.
But by 410 AD,
the troops had withdrawn,
and raiders began to plunder
the wealthy
and defenseless land.
In the dying years
of the Roman Empire,
the emperor Honorius received
pleas from the British people.
But with barbarians to deal with
on the home front
and the empire
on the brink of collapse,
he couldn't afford
to send reinforcements.
The people of Britain would have
to look to their own defense
The island ceased to be
part of a coherent empire,
and the legacies of Rome
were left to crumble.
Crucially, written records
all but disappeared,
ushering in
the so-called Dark Ages.
Britain was left wide open
to bands of invaders
from the continent.
They included powerful tribes
from France, Germany,
and Scandinavia who we've come
to know collectively
as the Anglo-Saxons.
And it wasn't long before
they started to feel comfortable
in their new home.
The departure of the Romans
and the arrival
of the first Germanic settlers
is a shady period
recorded by just
a sparse collection of texts.
And even the archaeology
that connects us to the people
who lived through this period
is scarce.
Dorchester-on-Thames
has thrown up
some of
the most important finds.
And a new dig is hoping to add
to the best evidence we have
for this transition,
a handful of artifacts
that emerged from the fields
around Dorchester
over a hundred years ago.
They're stored here at the
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The objects I'm about to see
were found in the 19th century,
but the fact that
they are perhaps
the best archaeological evidence
we have
of the earliest Anglo-Saxons
in Britain
gives us an idea
of just how rare
those physical traces of
the early post-Roman period are.
These artifacts
came out of the graves
of three people buried
in the 5th century.
One is a burial
which seems to be Roman
until you look more closely.
He was buried wearing
a late-Roman belt
known as a cingulum.
It's really a badge of rank,
of status,
and this would have been made
in Gaul in an imperial workshop,
but the chap wearing it,
of course,
we know lived and died
in Britain.
Now, you might just think,
"Well, why couldn't he just
have been a Roman soldier?"
This is certainly a badge of
high rank in the Roman military.
But it would be very unusual
for a Roman soldier
to be buried with his cingulum,
with his belt.
That's quite a Germanic style
of burying your dead.
So he's got Roman objects,
but he's buried in an
un-Roman way with grave goods.
Absolutely.
Next to him, a woman's grave
contained further evidence
of this mixing of Roman
and Saxon identities...
A Roman belt buckle alongside
two early Saxon broaches.
This is a so-called
little cruciform broach,
and the other is the back plate
of what's called
an applied broach,
and that proves that she was
not only wearing dress items
from the Germanic parts
of the world,
but that she was
wearing a costume
which was really Germanic.
So she's got a mixture
of both Roman
and Germanic style about her.
Absolutely, and the fact
that she was buried next to
or near to this chap
and that he was buried
in a rather Germanic way,
albeit with Roman items,
suggests very strongly
that these two
were Germanic speakers
from the other side
of the North Sea.
Another grave added confirmation
that these people were keen
to signify themselves
as both Roman and Saxon.
The question of what was
happening to identities
and how these were being
reinvented and reformulated
to meet these rapidly changing
and rather traumatic
circumstances
is extremely interesting.
It's incredibly difficult
and rare
to find objects
that can be firmly
and definitively dated to the
first half of the 5th century.
I mean, whether Roman or Saxon,
they're both rare,
and these burials are some
of the best evidence
for how people were negotiating
this very tricky period.
Connecting with the Dark Ages,
even through archaeology,
is a real challenge.
The artifacts from those graves
scattered around Dorchester
are fascinating.
They date to this time
of incredibly dramatic change
in Britain.
But they are
just a handful of objects
from a very small number
of graves.
We're not looking
at a whole cemetery,
let alone a settlement,
so we are just glimpsing
a very tiny part
of the whole story.
At this year's dig
amongst the garden allotments
of Dorchester,
archaeologists are hoping
to add substance
to our hazy picture
of this time of upheaval.
They're not just looking
for artifacts,
but for structures
and features, too,
and in situ
in their original context,
clues to make sense of two
overlapping ways of life.
We tend to think
of multicultural Britain
being a modern phenomenon,
but as we look back
through history,
we see a nation transformed
by successive waves
of people and ideas.
And we neatly compartmentalize
those cultures,
but just how abrupt
were the transitions?
Roman Britain didn't become
Anglo-Saxon overnight.
It must've been
more of a gradual process,
a blending of two cultures.
And archaeology allows us
to examine the lives of people
living through that transition.
You've probably heard
of the Venerable Bede.
He was an 8th-century
Northumbrian monk
and the most famous
chronicler of his age.
His ecclesiastical history
of the English people
is still our best source for
the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons,
but we do have to treat what
he writes with a little caution.
He wasn't out to write
an unbiased account,
and it's strongly motivated
by his Christian faith.
Bede tells us that Northumbria
was conquered and settled
by the Angles.
The commanding site of Bamburgh
became the power base of
this emerging tribal kingdom.
The castle we see today
was largely rebuilt
in the 20th century,
but we know from archaeology
that the site has been occupied
for 5,000 years,
going right back
into the Neolithic.
The castle sits
on this massive rock,
which is the strongest
natural fortress
on the coast
of northeast England.
And with commanding views
over land and sea,
Bamburgh would become the seat
of the Northumbrian kings.
But even at a royal site
like Bamburgh,
we have to work hard
to decipher the clues
left behind by the Anglo-Saxon
people who lived here.
So what have we got over here,
then, Graeme?
Well, I mean, that's
the one fortunate thing,
that it's now exposed again
so we can have a look at it.
Director of Archaeology
Graeme Young
outlined where a Saxon timber
hall would once have stood.
The people who lived here
constructed their buildings
out of wood,
which has long since
disappeared,
leaving just an impression
of the early fortress.
So this really is
negative archaeology, isn't it?
You've just got the holes left
where the timbers of this wooden
building have just rotted.
Yes, we've got enough evidence
that we can reconstruct broadly
what's above ground.
And we're standing
right inside it
and right on the edge
of the rock here,
so what would this building
have been?
Well, we think it's to do
with the gate,
because the Anglo-Saxon entrance
to Bamburgh's just behind us.
It's this cleft here.
There's a marvelous
little text from AD 774,
and it describes this...
These steps
coming up through a cleft
in a marvelous fashion,
as the author says.
And that must be it.
There's nothing else at Bamburgh
that fits the bill.
So we're standing in
the middle Anglo-Saxon gatehouse
to Bamburgh Castle?
Yeah, I think
that's pretty much it.
We know that generations
of Anglo-Saxons
lived and worked at Bamburgh
over a prolonged period
stretching hundreds of years.
And yet even here,
the footprints of the people
are faint and hard to trace.
Much of what we do know
comes from sources like Bede.
But what they tend to focus on
is the high-status individuals,
the kings and queens.
But there are people who made
much less of an impression
on Bede,
people whose
archaeological signature
is much more difficult to trace.
There's not much evidence
of their buildings
and certainly no buried treasure
or magnificent graves.
These are the ordinary people,
the farmers and workers
who populated
the rural landscape.
And they are even harder
to find.
This is rural Northumberland,
and we're right in the heart
of Bede's home territory.
Today, we exploit this landscape
for its natural resources
of sand and gravel.
But the same
industrial machinery
used to remove this material
has uncovered rare
and vital evidence
of life in
the so-called Dark Ages.
Dr. Clive Waddington
is leading the excavations
at Lanton Quarry.
Last year, his team
unearthed rare traces
of an ordinary
early Anglo-Saxon village.
In front of me here,
we've got a range of the finds
that we got from
the excavations at Lanton.
So you can see, for example,
this large stone here,
which is a local sandstone.
To the untrained eye,
it might not look like a lot,
but when you turn it over,
you can see this lovely smooth,
flat face,
and that's got this perforation
here in the center.
And this is a base
of what we call a quern stone,
which is a rubbing stone,
which would've had
a rotary quern on the top,
another stone
that would have been used
for milling grain
to create flour.
Fragments of evidence
reveal that the daily lives
of these
long-forgotten villagers
would have involved milling,
weaving, and metalworking.
But there are also
more decorative items.
We found some glass beads,
and you can see that these are
really beautifully decorated,
and we call them
polychrome beads.
They're multicolored.
These have been analyzed
and have been shown to contain
traces of metal, as well,
which they'd use
to color the glass.
It's not treasure,
but these everyday objects
are shedding light
on the workers,
farmers, and craftsmen
who settled these rural plains.
300 miles down the coast,
I'm about to meet the founding
fathers of the invasion.
According to Bede,
the Anglo-Saxon takeover
began here on the coast of Kent
with the arrival of two warrior
brothers, Hengist and Horsa.
They had been called in to help
the British king, Vortigern,
fight against his enemies
the Picts.
And they were followed by wave
upon wave of Germanic warriors
who settled in Kent.
But before long, those incomers
would turn against their host
and start to expand
the boundaries
of their new territory.
We don't know whether these
two men actually existed,
but it is clear that Germanic
tribes were settling in Kent
by the 5th century.
We're in what may have been
the territory
of the first Anglo-Saxon
warlords to settle here.
Within a hundred years
of their arrival,
their kingdom became the richest
and most powerful in Britain.
And this year, the skeletons
of the people
who lived here at this time
have been emerging
from the ground.
A huge new highway
is being built in Thanet,
cutting straight through an area
that's particularly rich
in archaeology.
A team from Oxford Wessex
Archaeology has been called in
to systematically
excavate the area
before the road can be laid.
There's a male individual.
You can see by the
very prominent eyebrow ridges.
The very, very robust clavicles,
or collarbones.
As well as Saxon graves,
archaeologists have found pits
full of discarded shells,
evidence of the food eaten
by local settlers.
They record their findings
using satellite technology,
eventually linking together
all the graves
and finds across the site.
When the work is finished,
all the information
they've discovered here
will form a detailed
computerized map.
This excavation
is absolutely massive,
but it's just one
of over 20 similar sites
up and down the road scheme.
Here we've got the two largest
archaeological units in the U.K.
coming together.
There are over a hundred
professional archaeologists
on site at any one time,
making it the largest excavation
in Britain this year.
And when they've finished,
it will all disappear once more
beneath the tarmac and cars
that will eventually
pass this way.
But the archaeologists' work
will continue.
Analysis will be carried out
on the skeletons.
Eventually, we should know
their age, their sex,
and even the diseases
they suffered from.
It may take years.
But archaeology isn't
just about the digging.
In 2008,
another Anglo-Saxon cemetery
was discovered 30 miles away.
And it's only now, after
nearly two years of research,
that it's yielding remarkable
insights into their world.
You might wonder what I'm doing
in a car park
outside a shopping center
in Sittingbourne,
but I promise you, if you come
with me through these doors,
there's evidence
of Anglo-Saxon Kent
at the height of its powers.
Archaeologists have recovered
2,500 objects
from around 230 graves
at a site called The Meads.
It's an enormous collection
of clues
dating back nearly 1,500 years.
And processing this volume
of material
demands a unique approach.
Right, I think this must be it.
Dana Goodburn-Brown is
an archaeological conservator.
A year ago, she pioneered
a radical new scheme,
encouraging local volunteers
to get involved
with conserving the grave goods
of people who may have been
their ancestors.
So have you got people coming in
who have never done
anything like this before?
Oh, yeah, no,
no one's done anything
exactly like this.
No, they go through
a training session,
and we have
some practice pieces,
and then they start working
on the real thing.
So what are the artifacts that
you're working on here, Dana?
Well, this is a side view
of this block,
which seems to have this
enormous brooch that's gilded.
You can just see a little bit
of gild... gold coming out,
so there's quite an intricate
design going on there.
But they could see that
there was a series of rings.
Now, if they lifted them
out individually,
you'd kind of just have
a series of rings,
and you wouldn't really know
what it was.
But if you X-ray it as a block,
you can see the relationship
between one and the other,
so this was something
that went around the waist,
and probably keys or things
might've hung off of it.
Dana's innovative project
is opening up archaeology
to everyone
and is already proving popular.
We've had almost 10,000 people,
and so you get people
just dropping by.
Some people come back
again and again,
and we've been open
several months,
and people are still
just discovering us new.
Don't you think it's great?
Because loads of people
can see it.
Normally conservation work
goes on
behind closed doors in a museum.
And I love what I do,
and it's really nice to share it
with other people.
I do have stop myself sometimes
and think,
"Ah, this is 1,400 years old,
and some craftsman made this,
and then someone wore it."
It's quite special, yeah.
This is such a great
example of community engagement.
Anybody in this shopping mall...
They might be coming here
to get their weekly shop
or for a cup of tea...
Can pop in here and find out
more about conservation,
archaeology, and local history.
And if they're
really interested,
they can also volunteer,
but right now,
I want to find out more
about the artifacts
from those graves.
Once they've been cleaned,
you get a sense
of the incredible craftsmanship
that's gone into making
these stunning objects.
But what can they tell us
about Anglo-Saxon life?
Dr. Andrew Richardson of the
Canterbury Archaeological Trust
has been interpreting
these finds for over two years.
Andrew, these are
wonderful objects just here.
- Are they brooches?
- Yes.
I mean, if you look at this one,
this is what we call
a plated disc brooch.
It's basically
a silver back plate
with a gold front plate,
then gold cell work
and then inlaid with garnets
and very, very fine gold
filigree wire.
It's also very delicately made.
It is. It's very highly skilled
craftworking.
And when you show this sort
of thing to modern jewelers,
they say that they would
have to charge you
an enormous amount of money
to make a copy of this.
The woman who owned this,
who wore this,
would probably have been
at the top of the social scale
in this community.
Incredibly high status,
possibly even royal connections.
Definitely, I think, yeah.
Many of the people buried here
by their grieving loved ones
were adorned with
magnificent pieces of jewelry.
But the whole community is here,
some buried with ordinary,
everyday items
like this iron knife.
If you think about, you know,
the full range of objects
we've got from this site,
it's a huge investment
in wealth in the ground
that isn't recovered by them.
It's only when we excavate it
that it emerges
into the light again.
The people interred here
were part of a wave of settlers
who'd come to make their mark,
and nearly 1,500 years on,
this cemetery is allowing us
to glimpse how
their society functioned.
A member of
a powerful family dies,
the family have to
sort of reaffirm
that that family still
has power and status.
Because this certainly
isn't costume jewelry, is it?
I mean, this is the real thing.
These are incredibly
prized items.
This is the real thing.
I mean, for their time, these
are the top-of-the-range jewelry
that Anglo-Saxon England
can produce.
We can suppose
that these settlers
were seen by the people already
living here as invaders.
And power in these times was
wielded at the end of a sword.
The cemetery bears witness
to the importance
of these weapons.
These are iron weapons.
You've got spearheads.
Some of these spearheads
inlaid with gold.
You've got some
decorated pyramid mounts
from a sword belt.
They are amazing.
- Can I pick that up on its base?
- Yes.
These exquisite items
are over 1,000 old.
Shaped in silver, inlaid with
gold, and topped with garnet,
an extraordinary amount
of effort
has gone into crafting them.
I think they're real,
functional weapons,
but they have a symbolic role.
Young children,
people who are severely disabled
have been found
buried with weapons,
people who could never
have used them in battle.
But still see
themselves somehow as warriors.
They do, they do, and I think
Anglo-Saxon culture,
if you look at their poetry,
their artwork,
is very, very centered
on warfare.
It's about communicating
a message
about how they see themselves,
how the family see the deceased
in the funeral rite.
This amazing cemetery
has let me back
into a long-vanished world
of Anglo-Saxon warlords
and their much-loved
wives and daughters.
But the finds reveal
that this was a world
not just of warfare,
but of feasting, too.
What about these vessels
here in the center?
They're rather intriguing.
Well, these are replicas
of two cut-glass cone beakers
that were excavated in one
of the graves at this site.
They actually were found intact.
They're quite curious.
You obviously couldn't
stand that up on a table.
And I think these are, again,
about communal feasting.
I think they used to be passed
around the mead table.
And these were found together
in the grave of somebody
with a sword,
so perhaps a warrior
but certainly a man,
and making a statement about
perhaps his love of feasting,
his love of mead.
And it's ironic that the site
is called The Meads
and they've built a pub on it.
There is so little
documentary evidence
of early Anglo-Saxon society,
so cemeteries like this
and those amazing grave goods
offer us a really precious
insight into that culture.
And we start to be able to
really focus on those people
in the forgotten cemetery,
who themselves have long since
faded from memory.
The idea of a Christian God
was slowly gaining ground,
but the pagan gods and goddesses
were so deeply rooted
in Anglo-Saxon culture
that they wouldn't disappear
overnight.
Christianity had returned, and,
like the invaders' own arrival,
it would wash through the land,
slowly but surely.
One important aspect
of this change
is that by the 8th century,
hundreds of minsters
and nunneries had taken root
all over Anglo-Saxon Britain.
The presence of these
monastic communities
molded the entire future
of the country,
not least because
they reintroduced
widespread literacy.
But apart from inside
the very greatest
of these religious houses,
we have very little idea
of what life was like in them.
And that's what makes
our next story so exciting.
It's a rare opportunity
to excavate and understand
an Anglo-Saxon nunnery.
This is Berkeley Castle
in modern-day Gloucestershire.
Some of the castle dates
to the 12th century,
but its roots go back
to the Christian conversion
of the Anglo-Saxons.
17th-century manuscripts
speak of an Anglo-Saxon nunnery
based within these grounds.
And my friends from
Bristol University
are hoping to find its walls.
Looking good, guys,
looking good.
Dr. Stuart Prior is
co-directing the excavations.
He's been able to put a date
on some of the early structures
that are emerging.
Just from this area here,
we got this absolutely fantastic
Anglo-Saxon strap end.
Would have been
on the end of a belt,
and essentially, it's in the
shape of a little beast's head,
a little dragon's head,
and it's 9th century.
And this was buried underneath
a section of collapsed wall.
So what that shows is that this
building just here behind me
has to be 8th
or early 9th century.
Goes out of use.
Part of the wall collapses and
seals this particular object,
and essentially, what this does
is it gives us
really good dating evidence
to say this is Saxon
and it's probably the nunnery.
Go off to there 20 meters long.
There.
Also directing the dig
is Professor Mark Horton.
He's finding
some intriguing evidence
of life inside
the Anglo-Saxon nunnery.
The thing about
Anglo-Saxon archaeology
is that finds
are incredibly rare.
But we've been really lucky
in finding an extraordinary
quantity of material
from this excavation, metalwork
like buckles and so forth.
But maybe the most interesting
are these three.
This is a whetstone,
or hone stone.
It probably would have hung
around somebody's neck.
What it was used for
was sharpening the knife
that you would then
sharpen the quill,
which you would use
for illuminating manuscripts,
parchment manuscripts.
So it's evidence of learning,
of scholarship,
literacy
in the middle Saxon period.
This find might be tiny,
but it's a rare piece
of physical evidence
from a world in flux,
a direct link to the revival
of the written word
throughout Anglo-Saxon Britain.
And this is
an extraordinary piece.
It's 8th century.
Experts are really divided
on what it really is,
but I think it's
what's called an aestel.
It would've had a bone pointer
attached to one end.
It would have been used
to help reading manuscripts.
We know that these
religious houses
were not just places of worship.
And as the digging continues,
artifacts are gradually
emerging from the ground
that reveal that
they were also focal points
for commercial activity.
This was only found yesterday,
just up there on that surface
up there.
And it is the earliest type
of coinage
used in Anglo-Saxon England.
Dates from around 690
to around 740.
It's known as a sceat.
Now, these things are very,
very rare in western Britain.
They're found in some quantity
in places like London
and Ipswich and Southampton.
But here in the west,
they're virtually unheard of.
Why it's so exciting,
it tells us two things.
One is that this place
was really important
for trade and commerce.
And the second reason
is that this find
puts the site back much earlier.
The first documentary evidence
we've got
is in the middle part
of the 8th century.
This coin suggests
there were people here
in the late 7th
or early 8th century,
right at the beginning
of the conversion
of this part of the world
to Christianity.
The jewel in the crown
of this Anglo-Saxon nunnery
is a quite incredible object.
No one seems to know exactly
where it was found or how,
and as far as I know, it's never
been seen by the public before.
So it's incredibly exciting
that we're getting a chance
to examine it.
That is fantastic, isn't it?
Absolutely fantastic.
It's actually bigger
than I imagined.
Yeah, it's an
extraordinary thing.
You know, you've seen
photographs or drawings,
but when you see
the thing itself,
it is a wonderful,
wonderful piece.
Leslie Webster, former curator
of Anglo-Saxon archaeology
at the British Museum,
is astonished by the level
of its artistry.
The craftsmanship,
which is magnificent,
and the sort of sheer quantity
of gold that's gone into that.
So the question I've got to
ask you, Leslie, how old is it?
Well, looking at
the style of the piece,
my feeling is that it belongs
to the first third
of the 9th century.
That's amazing.
Although we can't say for sure
that the ring is Christian,
it seems to be
in the shape of a cross.
Leslie suspects that it was worn
by someone of very high status,
but whether a bishop or a king,
we just don't know.
The other question I really
need to ask, obviously,
is how do you think it was made?
Well, if I can seize it from you
and get a closer look.
It is absolutely superb.
I mean, what we've got
are four little animal creatures
with pointy ears, long snouts.
We've got little staring eyes,
so it does look quite wolflike,
I think, or houndlike.
Now, the filigree's
also wonderful.
It's so fine,
and this lovely plaited work
'round the outside here,
very, very delicate.
Again, that's quite
an early-ish feature.
The craftsmanship
is just magnificent.
I can't believe
that it's survived
in such amazing condition.
It's a very imposing,
monumental ring,
and in its whole character
and style, it is unique.
Perhaps what's most interesting
about this process
of the re-Christianization
of Britain
is that it's not one neat,
linear story.
Various missionaries arrived at
different times from overseas,
preaching the religions of
the Celtic and Roman churches
and attempting the conversion
of the pagan Anglo-Saxon kings.
According to Bede,
the Northumbrian King Oswald
brought Christianity
to his people.
He called for a missionary
to come from the Irish monastery
on the island of Iona
to convert his people.
And when the monk Aidan arrived,
Oswald granted him land to build
a monastery on Lindisfarne,
over there, and the island
became a cradle of Christianity.
This was the golden age
of Northumbria.
The royal capital of Bamburgh
would have been a magnet
for people
from across the kingdom,
perhaps from across the world,
who came here seeking fame,
glory, and gainful employment.
12 years ago,
archaeologists located
an extensive burial ground
right next to the castle.
Buried beneath the sand dunes
were the remains
of the residents
of the Anglo-Saxon
fortress of Bamburgh.
100 skeletons were removed,
just a portion
of the total number
believed to be buried there,
and taken to Durham University
for extensive analysis
and research.
I'm an osteologist, someone
who studies human bones,
so I know how much these
physical remains can reveal
about the lives of past people.
Archaeologists
can tell a certain amount
about ancient lifestyles
by looking at objects
that people have left behind,
but long after we die,
our bones hold an enormous
amount of information about us.
Dr. Sarah Groves was involved
in the excavations at Bamburgh
as a student
and has been analyzing
the skeletons ever since.
Her findings,
due to be published next year,
reveal some fascinating
observations
about the community
living there.
The vast majority
of the population
did have quite bad teeth.
Almost every individual,
adults and children alike,
had calculus on some
of their teeth, at least,
and a really high proportion
of them had caries, as well,
so that's tooth decay,
like this individual here.
That hole's massive.
It's taken away almost the
entire top of the root there.
Just hanging on to the crown.
And the tooth
next to it's completely gone.
All we've got left
is the roots remaining there.
Yeah.
We all know the pain
of toothache,
and these people
didn't have modern drugs
or dentists to ease their pain.
So, why do you think
there were such high rates
of tooth decay and gum disease
in this population?
Well, it's got to be something
to do with the diet
that they're eating.
Because it's affecting
the whole population,
so they must be eating
something in their diet
which is making them more prone
to having these dental diseases.
And what could that be?
Well, I think that they must
be eating quite a lot of meat,
and we're seeing that from
the archaeological material,
and also eating a lot of flour,
which is quite starchy
and leads to sugars
building up in the mouth.
And also things like beer
and wine and mead,
all of which are quite sugary,
and if you're drinking
a lot of drinks like that,
then that can also lead
to tooth decay.
So, rather bizarrely,
these atrocious teeth
are telling us that these people
had quite a luxurious lifestyle?
Potentially, yeah.
And very rarely,
the stories told
by individual skeletons
contain clues
about the way these people
interacted with each other.
So is this a young person,
a juvenile?
It's a young person, but I don't
think it's really a juvenile.
If you look at the state
of fusion,
it could be an individual
who's between 10 and 16 years.
So looking here, the end
of the radius in the forearm,
that's still
completely separate,
and the ends of these
finger bones, as well,
are still separate.
But if you come up here
and look at the teeth,
you can see that actually
they've got quite
an adult dentition.
Do these teeth really belong
with this skeleton?
They do, and if I hadn't been
there during the excavation,
I would have asked
some questions
about whether the skull
did belong with the body.
But it really does.
So we're looking at somebody
who, from their teeth,
looks as though they're in their
late teens, early twenties,
but from the rest of their bones
looks as though
they're a child still.
A picture was emerging of
a seriously disabled young man
whose skeleton was ravaged
by a debilitating condition.
And if you go right down there
to the knee,
you can see this right knee
is really abnormal.
That's very odd.
If I pick up the left knee,
as well, for comparison,
it just looks odd, doesn't it?
It's very flared.
The knee joint is so malformed
that it probably would've caused
them problems with walking.
So this person had
a congenital problem.
They're very short.
They probably look
slightly deformed, as well,
but they're being buried
in this high-status cemetery.
Yeah, and you can imagine
that this is somebody
who's potentially had to be
cared for throughout their life.
And yet they've still managed
to reach early adulthood.
So it suggests that
as the population,
their family, their friends,
are looking out for them,
they're looking after them and
affording them all the dignity
in burial that everybody else
in the cemetery was given.
So it really shows you
that this is a community
so much like us now,
you know, caring for our sick,
for our young people,
for our elderly,
and for people
with disabilities.
What's emerging is a different
picture than we might expect
of these so-called barbarians.
We're starting to see them
as people like us,
members of families
with friends and loved ones,
and this isn't just
the perspective
that we're getting at Banburgh.
300 miles away to the southwest,
Mark Horton has been researching
a wonderful story
of Anglo-Saxon royalty
and a Wessex princess in love.
Inside Malmesbury Abbey
in Wiltshire
is a tomb dedicated to
the first king of all England,
Athelstan.
Athelstan,
remarkably for his period,
was not just somebody
who wanted to expand
the frontiers
of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom,
but also wanted to create
alliances with Europe.
And he systematically
married off his sisters
to all sorts of European rulers
and princes and dukes.
The most successful alliance
was between his sister Edith
and Otto of Germany.
Not only was this
a politically astute move,
but it also proved
to be a great love affair.
Edith captured the imagination
not only of Otto,
but also his court
and the people around her,
because she was clearly
stunningly beautiful.
We know that Otto
was very much devoted to her.
He gave Magdeburg as a dowry,
this town on the frontier,
where she ended up being buried
and where Otto himself
ended up being buried later on.
During recent excavations in
Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany,
archaeologists
set about exploring
a 16th-century sarcophagus
dedicated to Edith.
It was thought to be a cenotaph.
It was thought to be
an empty tomb.
But actually, inside was found
a lead casket.
And in that
was an inscription that said,
"These are the remains
of Queen Edith
that were placed here
in the year 1510."
But in the Middle Ages, people
constantly moved bones around.
Relics was big business,
so we really had to be certain
that the bones
were those of Edith
and not come random person
that had been scooped up
in order to give this tomb
some credibility.
If these were her remains,
it would be
an extremely significant find,
providing a direct link
to the first king of England,
Athelstan.
And only science can help us
determine whose body this is.
Two of the teeth
found within the coffin
were sent off to be analyzed
at Bristol University.
Dr. Alistair Pike
planned to measure
strontium isotopes in the teeth
to find out where
this individual grew up.
Strontium is found in soil and
absorbed by plants and animals.
It finds its way
into the bones and teeth
of the people who eat them.
Because teeth form
during childhood,
the strontium found
in dental enamel
reflects where a person
was born and raised.
And in Edith's case,
this would have been in Wessex,
the royal kingdom at the heart
of an emerging England.
As far as Alistair's concerned,
the results from the Magdeburg
tomb are conclusive.
I think that
we can be 99% certain
that we have the remains
of Princess Edith,
partly because the
archaeological evidence suggests
she's of the correct age,
but using
the strontium isotopes,
we can show that the results
are consistent
with someone who's been brought
up on the kind of geology
that surrounds
the Winchester area,
which is what the historical
accounts suggest
Princess Edith did.
Although Edith died
over 1,000 years ago,
she remains proof
of our timeless fascination
with princesses.
She came back to England
in a way that, in her lifetime,
she would never have
expected to do,
and she was an exceptional lady
and somebody who really
is at the fountainhead
of sort of modern Europe,
whose blood probably runs
in the veins
of most royal families
in Europe today.
If Edith's bones tell
a royal love story,
the skeleton of one young man
from Bamburgh
encapsulates the violence
of the Anglo-Saxon years
and bears witness
to his untimely death.
This is his left arm.
It's part of his left shoulder.
You can see that this
has been sliced away
across the top of the shoulder.
And this is something
which has happened in life,
rather than something
which has happened
- to the bones in the ground.
- Yeah, definitely.
You can see if I put the rest
of the shoulder together there
that we've got another piece of
bone which has been sliced away.
So this has happened
while these two bones
were actually still together
as a joint.
Something has sliced
through them.
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's been a cut
across his shoulder there.
And you can see here
on the pelvis,
a great big slice of bone
has been completely cut away.
Oh, my goodness, yeah, yeah.
Cleaved right across.
It has, so that's sliced away
the front of the pelvis
quite cleanly.
Mm, and all the way down
to his left knee.
- Really?
- Down here.
Again, sliced off
right on the left-hand side.
Really clean slice.
So it's, again,
taken off the side of his knee.
And this has sliced down the
entire left side of his body.
Yeah, it's really exciting
because it gives us
the possibility
of even reconstructing
how he was standing
when the blow was struck.
So because of the way
that his shoulder is cut,
we can tell that his arm
must have been slightly forward
and across his body,
so he's probably standing
in a defensive pose,
so he's actually involved
in the fight which happened,
which led to the accident.
And it's left side,
which makes sense
if you've got
a right-handed aggressor.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And potentially somebody
who's coming
from a little bit above him,
as well.
Do you think that he might
have been a warrior?
It is possible.
Even though he's quite small,
we know that men
in the Anglo-Saxon period
started their careers
quite early,
so we have evidence
for boys as young as 7
being sent to monasteries
to train as monks,
and we know that the elite
started training with weapons
from quite a young age, as well.
So from maybe around 7 or 8,
he might have started
learning how to use weapons.
So this is a young man
who had a very tough,
physically demanding,
but very short life.
By looking at skeletons
like these,
we can tell so much more
about past societies,
and new technologies are
allowing us to get at evidence
that's locked away
inside their bones and teeth
about diet or even
where they grew up.
But when you look at the bones
laid out like that,
the skeleton of that young man,
for instance,
who died with
that horrific injury,
you realize there are also
much more personal stories
to be told.
The warrior kings of Northumbria
ruled Bamburgh at sword point
for hundreds of years.
And they left us
one final reminder
of their turbulent times,
almost unrecognizable now.
These swords are the ultimate
symbols of Anglo-Saxon power.
These are quite magnificent
items, aren't they?
They're both... I mean,
obviously they're corroded now,
but when we X-ray them,
we can see the deep structure,
and they're pattern-welded,
which means that they're made
out of a series of rods
welded together, with a blade
added to the outside.
This one is particularly fine.
You can see that
it actually survives.
There's a lot of metal in it.
It's very strong, very coherent.
This has six billets
in the core of the blade.
So this would've been
a high-status sword?
Definitely. I mean, six-stranded
swords are very, very rare.
There are very few
in Western Europe,
so the likelihood is that
we're looking at something
that may even be more than
just an aristocratic warrior.
This may have been genuinely
an heirloom of the royal house.
It may have been
carried by kings.
And looking at this sword,
I can't help but remember back
to the skeleton
from the cemetery here
who was obviously a young man,
who died at the hands
of somebody
wielding a weapon
just like this.
The royal swords, and indeed
the entire site of Bamburgh,
are fitting symbols for the
whole of Anglo-Saxon Britain.
There are still so many
unanswered questions,
and the mysteries
will remain a challenge
for archaeologists
and historians to unlock
for many years to come.
But it does offer us
tangible connections, too.
So what have I learned?
Well, in many ways, these people
were just like us.
They had holes in their teeth.
Some were healthy,
others marked by disease and
cared for by their communities.
But this was a time
of great unrest and violence.
Weapons became symbols
of status,
and people died by the sword.
The struggle for power
played out across all levels
of society,
and even the dead were co-opted,
buried with treasures of gold
and precious stones,
whose real value seemed to be
as badges of identity.
These people may not have
left us detailed records
of their lives,
but archaeology is bringing them
within our reach.
And the digging goes on.
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.
The Anglo-Saxons invaded
and divided our island
and ushered in the Dark Ages.
This year, archaeology
is offering fresh clues
about the people
who gave us England,
the land of the Angles...
...their warrior culture
of swords and ornate burials...
...the physical evidence
of violence
in a time of blood feuds...
And this is sliced down the
entire left side of his body.
...and the mystery
of the magnificent ring
once worn by
a wealthy Anglo-Saxon
and never seen publicly,
until now.
For almost 400 years, Britannia
was a part of the Roman Empire,
controlled by Rome's legions
and strategically
positioned forts.
But by 410 AD,
the troops had withdrawn,
and raiders began to plunder
the wealthy
and defenseless land.
In the dying years
of the Roman Empire,
the emperor Honorius received
pleas from the British people.
But with barbarians to deal with
on the home front
and the empire
on the brink of collapse,
he couldn't afford
to send reinforcements.
The people of Britain would have
to look to their own defense
The island ceased to be
part of a coherent empire,
and the legacies of Rome
were left to crumble.
Crucially, written records
all but disappeared,
ushering in
the so-called Dark Ages.
Britain was left wide open
to bands of invaders
from the continent.
They included powerful tribes
from France, Germany,
and Scandinavia who we've come
to know collectively
as the Anglo-Saxons.
And it wasn't long before
they started to feel comfortable
in their new home.
The departure of the Romans
and the arrival
of the first Germanic settlers
is a shady period
recorded by just
a sparse collection of texts.
And even the archaeology
that connects us to the people
who lived through this period
is scarce.
Dorchester-on-Thames
has thrown up
some of
the most important finds.
And a new dig is hoping to add
to the best evidence we have
for this transition,
a handful of artifacts
that emerged from the fields
around Dorchester
over a hundred years ago.
They're stored here at the
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The objects I'm about to see
were found in the 19th century,
but the fact that
they are perhaps
the best archaeological evidence
we have
of the earliest Anglo-Saxons
in Britain
gives us an idea
of just how rare
those physical traces of
the early post-Roman period are.
These artifacts
came out of the graves
of three people buried
in the 5th century.
One is a burial
which seems to be Roman
until you look more closely.
He was buried wearing
a late-Roman belt
known as a cingulum.
It's really a badge of rank,
of status,
and this would have been made
in Gaul in an imperial workshop,
but the chap wearing it,
of course,
we know lived and died
in Britain.
Now, you might just think,
"Well, why couldn't he just
have been a Roman soldier?"
This is certainly a badge of
high rank in the Roman military.
But it would be very unusual
for a Roman soldier
to be buried with his cingulum,
with his belt.
That's quite a Germanic style
of burying your dead.
So he's got Roman objects,
but he's buried in an
un-Roman way with grave goods.
Absolutely.
Next to him, a woman's grave
contained further evidence
of this mixing of Roman
and Saxon identities...
A Roman belt buckle alongside
two early Saxon broaches.
This is a so-called
little cruciform broach,
and the other is the back plate
of what's called
an applied broach,
and that proves that she was
not only wearing dress items
from the Germanic parts
of the world,
but that she was
wearing a costume
which was really Germanic.
So she's got a mixture
of both Roman
and Germanic style about her.
Absolutely, and the fact
that she was buried next to
or near to this chap
and that he was buried
in a rather Germanic way,
albeit with Roman items,
suggests very strongly
that these two
were Germanic speakers
from the other side
of the North Sea.
Another grave added confirmation
that these people were keen
to signify themselves
as both Roman and Saxon.
The question of what was
happening to identities
and how these were being
reinvented and reformulated
to meet these rapidly changing
and rather traumatic
circumstances
is extremely interesting.
It's incredibly difficult
and rare
to find objects
that can be firmly
and definitively dated to the
first half of the 5th century.
I mean, whether Roman or Saxon,
they're both rare,
and these burials are some
of the best evidence
for how people were negotiating
this very tricky period.
Connecting with the Dark Ages,
even through archaeology,
is a real challenge.
The artifacts from those graves
scattered around Dorchester
are fascinating.
They date to this time
of incredibly dramatic change
in Britain.
But they are
just a handful of objects
from a very small number
of graves.
We're not looking
at a whole cemetery,
let alone a settlement,
so we are just glimpsing
a very tiny part
of the whole story.
At this year's dig
amongst the garden allotments
of Dorchester,
archaeologists are hoping
to add substance
to our hazy picture
of this time of upheaval.
They're not just looking
for artifacts,
but for structures
and features, too,
and in situ
in their original context,
clues to make sense of two
overlapping ways of life.
We tend to think
of multicultural Britain
being a modern phenomenon,
but as we look back
through history,
we see a nation transformed
by successive waves
of people and ideas.
And we neatly compartmentalize
those cultures,
but just how abrupt
were the transitions?
Roman Britain didn't become
Anglo-Saxon overnight.
It must've been
more of a gradual process,
a blending of two cultures.
And archaeology allows us
to examine the lives of people
living through that transition.
You've probably heard
of the Venerable Bede.
He was an 8th-century
Northumbrian monk
and the most famous
chronicler of his age.
His ecclesiastical history
of the English people
is still our best source for
the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons,
but we do have to treat what
he writes with a little caution.
He wasn't out to write
an unbiased account,
and it's strongly motivated
by his Christian faith.
Bede tells us that Northumbria
was conquered and settled
by the Angles.
The commanding site of Bamburgh
became the power base of
this emerging tribal kingdom.
The castle we see today
was largely rebuilt
in the 20th century,
but we know from archaeology
that the site has been occupied
for 5,000 years,
going right back
into the Neolithic.
The castle sits
on this massive rock,
which is the strongest
natural fortress
on the coast
of northeast England.
And with commanding views
over land and sea,
Bamburgh would become the seat
of the Northumbrian kings.
But even at a royal site
like Bamburgh,
we have to work hard
to decipher the clues
left behind by the Anglo-Saxon
people who lived here.
So what have we got over here,
then, Graeme?
Well, I mean, that's
the one fortunate thing,
that it's now exposed again
so we can have a look at it.
Director of Archaeology
Graeme Young
outlined where a Saxon timber
hall would once have stood.
The people who lived here
constructed their buildings
out of wood,
which has long since
disappeared,
leaving just an impression
of the early fortress.
So this really is
negative archaeology, isn't it?
You've just got the holes left
where the timbers of this wooden
building have just rotted.
Yes, we've got enough evidence
that we can reconstruct broadly
what's above ground.
And we're standing
right inside it
and right on the edge
of the rock here,
so what would this building
have been?
Well, we think it's to do
with the gate,
because the Anglo-Saxon entrance
to Bamburgh's just behind us.
It's this cleft here.
There's a marvelous
little text from AD 774,
and it describes this...
These steps
coming up through a cleft
in a marvelous fashion,
as the author says.
And that must be it.
There's nothing else at Bamburgh
that fits the bill.
So we're standing in
the middle Anglo-Saxon gatehouse
to Bamburgh Castle?
Yeah, I think
that's pretty much it.
We know that generations
of Anglo-Saxons
lived and worked at Bamburgh
over a prolonged period
stretching hundreds of years.
And yet even here,
the footprints of the people
are faint and hard to trace.
Much of what we do know
comes from sources like Bede.
But what they tend to focus on
is the high-status individuals,
the kings and queens.
But there are people who made
much less of an impression
on Bede,
people whose
archaeological signature
is much more difficult to trace.
There's not much evidence
of their buildings
and certainly no buried treasure
or magnificent graves.
These are the ordinary people,
the farmers and workers
who populated
the rural landscape.
And they are even harder
to find.
This is rural Northumberland,
and we're right in the heart
of Bede's home territory.
Today, we exploit this landscape
for its natural resources
of sand and gravel.
But the same
industrial machinery
used to remove this material
has uncovered rare
and vital evidence
of life in
the so-called Dark Ages.
Dr. Clive Waddington
is leading the excavations
at Lanton Quarry.
Last year, his team
unearthed rare traces
of an ordinary
early Anglo-Saxon village.
In front of me here,
we've got a range of the finds
that we got from
the excavations at Lanton.
So you can see, for example,
this large stone here,
which is a local sandstone.
To the untrained eye,
it might not look like a lot,
but when you turn it over,
you can see this lovely smooth,
flat face,
and that's got this perforation
here in the center.
And this is a base
of what we call a quern stone,
which is a rubbing stone,
which would've had
a rotary quern on the top,
another stone
that would have been used
for milling grain
to create flour.
Fragments of evidence
reveal that the daily lives
of these
long-forgotten villagers
would have involved milling,
weaving, and metalworking.
But there are also
more decorative items.
We found some glass beads,
and you can see that these are
really beautifully decorated,
and we call them
polychrome beads.
They're multicolored.
These have been analyzed
and have been shown to contain
traces of metal, as well,
which they'd use
to color the glass.
It's not treasure,
but these everyday objects
are shedding light
on the workers,
farmers, and craftsmen
who settled these rural plains.
300 miles down the coast,
I'm about to meet the founding
fathers of the invasion.
According to Bede,
the Anglo-Saxon takeover
began here on the coast of Kent
with the arrival of two warrior
brothers, Hengist and Horsa.
They had been called in to help
the British king, Vortigern,
fight against his enemies
the Picts.
And they were followed by wave
upon wave of Germanic warriors
who settled in Kent.
But before long, those incomers
would turn against their host
and start to expand
the boundaries
of their new territory.
We don't know whether these
two men actually existed,
but it is clear that Germanic
tribes were settling in Kent
by the 5th century.
We're in what may have been
the territory
of the first Anglo-Saxon
warlords to settle here.
Within a hundred years
of their arrival,
their kingdom became the richest
and most powerful in Britain.
And this year, the skeletons
of the people
who lived here at this time
have been emerging
from the ground.
A huge new highway
is being built in Thanet,
cutting straight through an area
that's particularly rich
in archaeology.
A team from Oxford Wessex
Archaeology has been called in
to systematically
excavate the area
before the road can be laid.
There's a male individual.
You can see by the
very prominent eyebrow ridges.
The very, very robust clavicles,
or collarbones.
As well as Saxon graves,
archaeologists have found pits
full of discarded shells,
evidence of the food eaten
by local settlers.
They record their findings
using satellite technology,
eventually linking together
all the graves
and finds across the site.
When the work is finished,
all the information
they've discovered here
will form a detailed
computerized map.
This excavation
is absolutely massive,
but it's just one
of over 20 similar sites
up and down the road scheme.
Here we've got the two largest
archaeological units in the U.K.
coming together.
There are over a hundred
professional archaeologists
on site at any one time,
making it the largest excavation
in Britain this year.
And when they've finished,
it will all disappear once more
beneath the tarmac and cars
that will eventually
pass this way.
But the archaeologists' work
will continue.
Analysis will be carried out
on the skeletons.
Eventually, we should know
their age, their sex,
and even the diseases
they suffered from.
It may take years.
But archaeology isn't
just about the digging.
In 2008,
another Anglo-Saxon cemetery
was discovered 30 miles away.
And it's only now, after
nearly two years of research,
that it's yielding remarkable
insights into their world.
You might wonder what I'm doing
in a car park
outside a shopping center
in Sittingbourne,
but I promise you, if you come
with me through these doors,
there's evidence
of Anglo-Saxon Kent
at the height of its powers.
Archaeologists have recovered
2,500 objects
from around 230 graves
at a site called The Meads.
It's an enormous collection
of clues
dating back nearly 1,500 years.
And processing this volume
of material
demands a unique approach.
Right, I think this must be it.
Dana Goodburn-Brown is
an archaeological conservator.
A year ago, she pioneered
a radical new scheme,
encouraging local volunteers
to get involved
with conserving the grave goods
of people who may have been
their ancestors.
So have you got people coming in
who have never done
anything like this before?
Oh, yeah, no,
no one's done anything
exactly like this.
No, they go through
a training session,
and we have
some practice pieces,
and then they start working
on the real thing.
So what are the artifacts that
you're working on here, Dana?
Well, this is a side view
of this block,
which seems to have this
enormous brooch that's gilded.
You can just see a little bit
of gild... gold coming out,
so there's quite an intricate
design going on there.
But they could see that
there was a series of rings.
Now, if they lifted them
out individually,
you'd kind of just have
a series of rings,
and you wouldn't really know
what it was.
But if you X-ray it as a block,
you can see the relationship
between one and the other,
so this was something
that went around the waist,
and probably keys or things
might've hung off of it.
Dana's innovative project
is opening up archaeology
to everyone
and is already proving popular.
We've had almost 10,000 people,
and so you get people
just dropping by.
Some people come back
again and again,
and we've been open
several months,
and people are still
just discovering us new.
Don't you think it's great?
Because loads of people
can see it.
Normally conservation work
goes on
behind closed doors in a museum.
And I love what I do,
and it's really nice to share it
with other people.
I do have stop myself sometimes
and think,
"Ah, this is 1,400 years old,
and some craftsman made this,
and then someone wore it."
It's quite special, yeah.
This is such a great
example of community engagement.
Anybody in this shopping mall...
They might be coming here
to get their weekly shop
or for a cup of tea...
Can pop in here and find out
more about conservation,
archaeology, and local history.
And if they're
really interested,
they can also volunteer,
but right now,
I want to find out more
about the artifacts
from those graves.
Once they've been cleaned,
you get a sense
of the incredible craftsmanship
that's gone into making
these stunning objects.
But what can they tell us
about Anglo-Saxon life?
Dr. Andrew Richardson of the
Canterbury Archaeological Trust
has been interpreting
these finds for over two years.
Andrew, these are
wonderful objects just here.
- Are they brooches?
- Yes.
I mean, if you look at this one,
this is what we call
a plated disc brooch.
It's basically
a silver back plate
with a gold front plate,
then gold cell work
and then inlaid with garnets
and very, very fine gold
filigree wire.
It's also very delicately made.
It is. It's very highly skilled
craftworking.
And when you show this sort
of thing to modern jewelers,
they say that they would
have to charge you
an enormous amount of money
to make a copy of this.
The woman who owned this,
who wore this,
would probably have been
at the top of the social scale
in this community.
Incredibly high status,
possibly even royal connections.
Definitely, I think, yeah.
Many of the people buried here
by their grieving loved ones
were adorned with
magnificent pieces of jewelry.
But the whole community is here,
some buried with ordinary,
everyday items
like this iron knife.
If you think about, you know,
the full range of objects
we've got from this site,
it's a huge investment
in wealth in the ground
that isn't recovered by them.
It's only when we excavate it
that it emerges
into the light again.
The people interred here
were part of a wave of settlers
who'd come to make their mark,
and nearly 1,500 years on,
this cemetery is allowing us
to glimpse how
their society functioned.
A member of
a powerful family dies,
the family have to
sort of reaffirm
that that family still
has power and status.
Because this certainly
isn't costume jewelry, is it?
I mean, this is the real thing.
These are incredibly
prized items.
This is the real thing.
I mean, for their time, these
are the top-of-the-range jewelry
that Anglo-Saxon England
can produce.
We can suppose
that these settlers
were seen by the people already
living here as invaders.
And power in these times was
wielded at the end of a sword.
The cemetery bears witness
to the importance
of these weapons.
These are iron weapons.
You've got spearheads.
Some of these spearheads
inlaid with gold.
You've got some
decorated pyramid mounts
from a sword belt.
They are amazing.
- Can I pick that up on its base?
- Yes.
These exquisite items
are over 1,000 old.
Shaped in silver, inlaid with
gold, and topped with garnet,
an extraordinary amount
of effort
has gone into crafting them.
I think they're real,
functional weapons,
but they have a symbolic role.
Young children,
people who are severely disabled
have been found
buried with weapons,
people who could never
have used them in battle.
But still see
themselves somehow as warriors.
They do, they do, and I think
Anglo-Saxon culture,
if you look at their poetry,
their artwork,
is very, very centered
on warfare.
It's about communicating
a message
about how they see themselves,
how the family see the deceased
in the funeral rite.
This amazing cemetery
has let me back
into a long-vanished world
of Anglo-Saxon warlords
and their much-loved
wives and daughters.
But the finds reveal
that this was a world
not just of warfare,
but of feasting, too.
What about these vessels
here in the center?
They're rather intriguing.
Well, these are replicas
of two cut-glass cone beakers
that were excavated in one
of the graves at this site.
They actually were found intact.
They're quite curious.
You obviously couldn't
stand that up on a table.
And I think these are, again,
about communal feasting.
I think they used to be passed
around the mead table.
And these were found together
in the grave of somebody
with a sword,
so perhaps a warrior
but certainly a man,
and making a statement about
perhaps his love of feasting,
his love of mead.
And it's ironic that the site
is called The Meads
and they've built a pub on it.
There is so little
documentary evidence
of early Anglo-Saxon society,
so cemeteries like this
and those amazing grave goods
offer us a really precious
insight into that culture.
And we start to be able to
really focus on those people
in the forgotten cemetery,
who themselves have long since
faded from memory.
The idea of a Christian God
was slowly gaining ground,
but the pagan gods and goddesses
were so deeply rooted
in Anglo-Saxon culture
that they wouldn't disappear
overnight.
Christianity had returned, and,
like the invaders' own arrival,
it would wash through the land,
slowly but surely.
One important aspect
of this change
is that by the 8th century,
hundreds of minsters
and nunneries had taken root
all over Anglo-Saxon Britain.
The presence of these
monastic communities
molded the entire future
of the country,
not least because
they reintroduced
widespread literacy.
But apart from inside
the very greatest
of these religious houses,
we have very little idea
of what life was like in them.
And that's what makes
our next story so exciting.
It's a rare opportunity
to excavate and understand
an Anglo-Saxon nunnery.
This is Berkeley Castle
in modern-day Gloucestershire.
Some of the castle dates
to the 12th century,
but its roots go back
to the Christian conversion
of the Anglo-Saxons.
17th-century manuscripts
speak of an Anglo-Saxon nunnery
based within these grounds.
And my friends from
Bristol University
are hoping to find its walls.
Looking good, guys,
looking good.
Dr. Stuart Prior is
co-directing the excavations.
He's been able to put a date
on some of the early structures
that are emerging.
Just from this area here,
we got this absolutely fantastic
Anglo-Saxon strap end.
Would have been
on the end of a belt,
and essentially, it's in the
shape of a little beast's head,
a little dragon's head,
and it's 9th century.
And this was buried underneath
a section of collapsed wall.
So what that shows is that this
building just here behind me
has to be 8th
or early 9th century.
Goes out of use.
Part of the wall collapses and
seals this particular object,
and essentially, what this does
is it gives us
really good dating evidence
to say this is Saxon
and it's probably the nunnery.
Go off to there 20 meters long.
There.
Also directing the dig
is Professor Mark Horton.
He's finding
some intriguing evidence
of life inside
the Anglo-Saxon nunnery.
The thing about
Anglo-Saxon archaeology
is that finds
are incredibly rare.
But we've been really lucky
in finding an extraordinary
quantity of material
from this excavation, metalwork
like buckles and so forth.
But maybe the most interesting
are these three.
This is a whetstone,
or hone stone.
It probably would have hung
around somebody's neck.
What it was used for
was sharpening the knife
that you would then
sharpen the quill,
which you would use
for illuminating manuscripts,
parchment manuscripts.
So it's evidence of learning,
of scholarship,
literacy
in the middle Saxon period.
This find might be tiny,
but it's a rare piece
of physical evidence
from a world in flux,
a direct link to the revival
of the written word
throughout Anglo-Saxon Britain.
And this is
an extraordinary piece.
It's 8th century.
Experts are really divided
on what it really is,
but I think it's
what's called an aestel.
It would've had a bone pointer
attached to one end.
It would have been used
to help reading manuscripts.
We know that these
religious houses
were not just places of worship.
And as the digging continues,
artifacts are gradually
emerging from the ground
that reveal that
they were also focal points
for commercial activity.
This was only found yesterday,
just up there on that surface
up there.
And it is the earliest type
of coinage
used in Anglo-Saxon England.
Dates from around 690
to around 740.
It's known as a sceat.
Now, these things are very,
very rare in western Britain.
They're found in some quantity
in places like London
and Ipswich and Southampton.
But here in the west,
they're virtually unheard of.
Why it's so exciting,
it tells us two things.
One is that this place
was really important
for trade and commerce.
And the second reason
is that this find
puts the site back much earlier.
The first documentary evidence
we've got
is in the middle part
of the 8th century.
This coin suggests
there were people here
in the late 7th
or early 8th century,
right at the beginning
of the conversion
of this part of the world
to Christianity.
The jewel in the crown
of this Anglo-Saxon nunnery
is a quite incredible object.
No one seems to know exactly
where it was found or how,
and as far as I know, it's never
been seen by the public before.
So it's incredibly exciting
that we're getting a chance
to examine it.
That is fantastic, isn't it?
Absolutely fantastic.
It's actually bigger
than I imagined.
Yeah, it's an
extraordinary thing.
You know, you've seen
photographs or drawings,
but when you see
the thing itself,
it is a wonderful,
wonderful piece.
Leslie Webster, former curator
of Anglo-Saxon archaeology
at the British Museum,
is astonished by the level
of its artistry.
The craftsmanship,
which is magnificent,
and the sort of sheer quantity
of gold that's gone into that.
So the question I've got to
ask you, Leslie, how old is it?
Well, looking at
the style of the piece,
my feeling is that it belongs
to the first third
of the 9th century.
That's amazing.
Although we can't say for sure
that the ring is Christian,
it seems to be
in the shape of a cross.
Leslie suspects that it was worn
by someone of very high status,
but whether a bishop or a king,
we just don't know.
The other question I really
need to ask, obviously,
is how do you think it was made?
Well, if I can seize it from you
and get a closer look.
It is absolutely superb.
I mean, what we've got
are four little animal creatures
with pointy ears, long snouts.
We've got little staring eyes,
so it does look quite wolflike,
I think, or houndlike.
Now, the filigree's
also wonderful.
It's so fine,
and this lovely plaited work
'round the outside here,
very, very delicate.
Again, that's quite
an early-ish feature.
The craftsmanship
is just magnificent.
I can't believe
that it's survived
in such amazing condition.
It's a very imposing,
monumental ring,
and in its whole character
and style, it is unique.
Perhaps what's most interesting
about this process
of the re-Christianization
of Britain
is that it's not one neat,
linear story.
Various missionaries arrived at
different times from overseas,
preaching the religions of
the Celtic and Roman churches
and attempting the conversion
of the pagan Anglo-Saxon kings.
According to Bede,
the Northumbrian King Oswald
brought Christianity
to his people.
He called for a missionary
to come from the Irish monastery
on the island of Iona
to convert his people.
And when the monk Aidan arrived,
Oswald granted him land to build
a monastery on Lindisfarne,
over there, and the island
became a cradle of Christianity.
This was the golden age
of Northumbria.
The royal capital of Bamburgh
would have been a magnet
for people
from across the kingdom,
perhaps from across the world,
who came here seeking fame,
glory, and gainful employment.
12 years ago,
archaeologists located
an extensive burial ground
right next to the castle.
Buried beneath the sand dunes
were the remains
of the residents
of the Anglo-Saxon
fortress of Bamburgh.
100 skeletons were removed,
just a portion
of the total number
believed to be buried there,
and taken to Durham University
for extensive analysis
and research.
I'm an osteologist, someone
who studies human bones,
so I know how much these
physical remains can reveal
about the lives of past people.
Archaeologists
can tell a certain amount
about ancient lifestyles
by looking at objects
that people have left behind,
but long after we die,
our bones hold an enormous
amount of information about us.
Dr. Sarah Groves was involved
in the excavations at Bamburgh
as a student
and has been analyzing
the skeletons ever since.
Her findings,
due to be published next year,
reveal some fascinating
observations
about the community
living there.
The vast majority
of the population
did have quite bad teeth.
Almost every individual,
adults and children alike,
had calculus on some
of their teeth, at least,
and a really high proportion
of them had caries, as well,
so that's tooth decay,
like this individual here.
That hole's massive.
It's taken away almost the
entire top of the root there.
Just hanging on to the crown.
And the tooth
next to it's completely gone.
All we've got left
is the roots remaining there.
Yeah.
We all know the pain
of toothache,
and these people
didn't have modern drugs
or dentists to ease their pain.
So, why do you think
there were such high rates
of tooth decay and gum disease
in this population?
Well, it's got to be something
to do with the diet
that they're eating.
Because it's affecting
the whole population,
so they must be eating
something in their diet
which is making them more prone
to having these dental diseases.
And what could that be?
Well, I think that they must
be eating quite a lot of meat,
and we're seeing that from
the archaeological material,
and also eating a lot of flour,
which is quite starchy
and leads to sugars
building up in the mouth.
And also things like beer
and wine and mead,
all of which are quite sugary,
and if you're drinking
a lot of drinks like that,
then that can also lead
to tooth decay.
So, rather bizarrely,
these atrocious teeth
are telling us that these people
had quite a luxurious lifestyle?
Potentially, yeah.
And very rarely,
the stories told
by individual skeletons
contain clues
about the way these people
interacted with each other.
So is this a young person,
a juvenile?
It's a young person, but I don't
think it's really a juvenile.
If you look at the state
of fusion,
it could be an individual
who's between 10 and 16 years.
So looking here, the end
of the radius in the forearm,
that's still
completely separate,
and the ends of these
finger bones, as well,
are still separate.
But if you come up here
and look at the teeth,
you can see that actually
they've got quite
an adult dentition.
Do these teeth really belong
with this skeleton?
They do, and if I hadn't been
there during the excavation,
I would have asked
some questions
about whether the skull
did belong with the body.
But it really does.
So we're looking at somebody
who, from their teeth,
looks as though they're in their
late teens, early twenties,
but from the rest of their bones
looks as though
they're a child still.
A picture was emerging of
a seriously disabled young man
whose skeleton was ravaged
by a debilitating condition.
And if you go right down there
to the knee,
you can see this right knee
is really abnormal.
That's very odd.
If I pick up the left knee,
as well, for comparison,
it just looks odd, doesn't it?
It's very flared.
The knee joint is so malformed
that it probably would've caused
them problems with walking.
So this person had
a congenital problem.
They're very short.
They probably look
slightly deformed, as well,
but they're being buried
in this high-status cemetery.
Yeah, and you can imagine
that this is somebody
who's potentially had to be
cared for throughout their life.
And yet they've still managed
to reach early adulthood.
So it suggests that
as the population,
their family, their friends,
are looking out for them,
they're looking after them and
affording them all the dignity
in burial that everybody else
in the cemetery was given.
So it really shows you
that this is a community
so much like us now,
you know, caring for our sick,
for our young people,
for our elderly,
and for people
with disabilities.
What's emerging is a different
picture than we might expect
of these so-called barbarians.
We're starting to see them
as people like us,
members of families
with friends and loved ones,
and this isn't just
the perspective
that we're getting at Banburgh.
300 miles away to the southwest,
Mark Horton has been researching
a wonderful story
of Anglo-Saxon royalty
and a Wessex princess in love.
Inside Malmesbury Abbey
in Wiltshire
is a tomb dedicated to
the first king of all England,
Athelstan.
Athelstan,
remarkably for his period,
was not just somebody
who wanted to expand
the frontiers
of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom,
but also wanted to create
alliances with Europe.
And he systematically
married off his sisters
to all sorts of European rulers
and princes and dukes.
The most successful alliance
was between his sister Edith
and Otto of Germany.
Not only was this
a politically astute move,
but it also proved
to be a great love affair.
Edith captured the imagination
not only of Otto,
but also his court
and the people around her,
because she was clearly
stunningly beautiful.
We know that Otto
was very much devoted to her.
He gave Magdeburg as a dowry,
this town on the frontier,
where she ended up being buried
and where Otto himself
ended up being buried later on.
During recent excavations in
Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany,
archaeologists
set about exploring
a 16th-century sarcophagus
dedicated to Edith.
It was thought to be a cenotaph.
It was thought to be
an empty tomb.
But actually, inside was found
a lead casket.
And in that
was an inscription that said,
"These are the remains
of Queen Edith
that were placed here
in the year 1510."
But in the Middle Ages, people
constantly moved bones around.
Relics was big business,
so we really had to be certain
that the bones
were those of Edith
and not come random person
that had been scooped up
in order to give this tomb
some credibility.
If these were her remains,
it would be
an extremely significant find,
providing a direct link
to the first king of England,
Athelstan.
And only science can help us
determine whose body this is.
Two of the teeth
found within the coffin
were sent off to be analyzed
at Bristol University.
Dr. Alistair Pike
planned to measure
strontium isotopes in the teeth
to find out where
this individual grew up.
Strontium is found in soil and
absorbed by plants and animals.
It finds its way
into the bones and teeth
of the people who eat them.
Because teeth form
during childhood,
the strontium found
in dental enamel
reflects where a person
was born and raised.
And in Edith's case,
this would have been in Wessex,
the royal kingdom at the heart
of an emerging England.
As far as Alistair's concerned,
the results from the Magdeburg
tomb are conclusive.
I think that
we can be 99% certain
that we have the remains
of Princess Edith,
partly because the
archaeological evidence suggests
she's of the correct age,
but using
the strontium isotopes,
we can show that the results
are consistent
with someone who's been brought
up on the kind of geology
that surrounds
the Winchester area,
which is what the historical
accounts suggest
Princess Edith did.
Although Edith died
over 1,000 years ago,
she remains proof
of our timeless fascination
with princesses.
She came back to England
in a way that, in her lifetime,
she would never have
expected to do,
and she was an exceptional lady
and somebody who really
is at the fountainhead
of sort of modern Europe,
whose blood probably runs
in the veins
of most royal families
in Europe today.
If Edith's bones tell
a royal love story,
the skeleton of one young man
from Bamburgh
encapsulates the violence
of the Anglo-Saxon years
and bears witness
to his untimely death.
This is his left arm.
It's part of his left shoulder.
You can see that this
has been sliced away
across the top of the shoulder.
And this is something
which has happened in life,
rather than something
which has happened
- to the bones in the ground.
- Yeah, definitely.
You can see if I put the rest
of the shoulder together there
that we've got another piece of
bone which has been sliced away.
So this has happened
while these two bones
were actually still together
as a joint.
Something has sliced
through them.
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's been a cut
across his shoulder there.
And you can see here
on the pelvis,
a great big slice of bone
has been completely cut away.
Oh, my goodness, yeah, yeah.
Cleaved right across.
It has, so that's sliced away
the front of the pelvis
quite cleanly.
Mm, and all the way down
to his left knee.
- Really?
- Down here.
Again, sliced off
right on the left-hand side.
Really clean slice.
So it's, again,
taken off the side of his knee.
And this has sliced down the
entire left side of his body.
Yeah, it's really exciting
because it gives us
the possibility
of even reconstructing
how he was standing
when the blow was struck.
So because of the way
that his shoulder is cut,
we can tell that his arm
must have been slightly forward
and across his body,
so he's probably standing
in a defensive pose,
so he's actually involved
in the fight which happened,
which led to the accident.
And it's left side,
which makes sense
if you've got
a right-handed aggressor.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And potentially somebody
who's coming
from a little bit above him,
as well.
Do you think that he might
have been a warrior?
It is possible.
Even though he's quite small,
we know that men
in the Anglo-Saxon period
started their careers
quite early,
so we have evidence
for boys as young as 7
being sent to monasteries
to train as monks,
and we know that the elite
started training with weapons
from quite a young age, as well.
So from maybe around 7 or 8,
he might have started
learning how to use weapons.
So this is a young man
who had a very tough,
physically demanding,
but very short life.
By looking at skeletons
like these,
we can tell so much more
about past societies,
and new technologies are
allowing us to get at evidence
that's locked away
inside their bones and teeth
about diet or even
where they grew up.
But when you look at the bones
laid out like that,
the skeleton of that young man,
for instance,
who died with
that horrific injury,
you realize there are also
much more personal stories
to be told.
The warrior kings of Northumbria
ruled Bamburgh at sword point
for hundreds of years.
And they left us
one final reminder
of their turbulent times,
almost unrecognizable now.
These swords are the ultimate
symbols of Anglo-Saxon power.
These are quite magnificent
items, aren't they?
They're both... I mean,
obviously they're corroded now,
but when we X-ray them,
we can see the deep structure,
and they're pattern-welded,
which means that they're made
out of a series of rods
welded together, with a blade
added to the outside.
This one is particularly fine.
You can see that
it actually survives.
There's a lot of metal in it.
It's very strong, very coherent.
This has six billets
in the core of the blade.
So this would've been
a high-status sword?
Definitely. I mean, six-stranded
swords are very, very rare.
There are very few
in Western Europe,
so the likelihood is that
we're looking at something
that may even be more than
just an aristocratic warrior.
This may have been genuinely
an heirloom of the royal house.
It may have been
carried by kings.
And looking at this sword,
I can't help but remember back
to the skeleton
from the cemetery here
who was obviously a young man,
who died at the hands
of somebody
wielding a weapon
just like this.
The royal swords, and indeed
the entire site of Bamburgh,
are fitting symbols for the
whole of Anglo-Saxon Britain.
There are still so many
unanswered questions,
and the mysteries
will remain a challenge
for archaeologists
and historians to unlock
for many years to come.
But it does offer us
tangible connections, too.
So what have I learned?
Well, in many ways, these people
were just like us.
They had holes in their teeth.
Some were healthy,
others marked by disease and
cared for by their communities.
But this was a time
of great unrest and violence.
Weapons became symbols
of status,
and people died by the sword.
The struggle for power
played out across all levels
of society,
and even the dead were co-opted,
buried with treasures of gold
and precious stones,
whose real value seemed to be
as badges of identity.
These people may not have
left us detailed records
of their lives,
but archaeology is bringing them
within our reach.
And the digging goes on.