0:00:04 > 0:00:05Priceless treasures.
0:00:09 > 0:00:11Ancient ruins.
0:00:14 > 0:00:17And the fragile remains of long dead people.
0:00:20 > 0:00:22Archaeology isn't like written history.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27It's the very stuff of the past.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31And people throughout history have always been fascinated
0:00:31 > 0:00:35by the ancient remains that survived under their very feet.
0:00:35 > 0:00:37Ever since the Renaissance, the men of Europe
0:00:37 > 0:00:40are becoming increasingly interested in
0:00:40 > 0:00:43the glittering civilisations of Greece and Rome.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46They saw in their mighty achievements
0:00:46 > 0:00:50a mirror image of their own amazing accomplishments.
0:00:50 > 0:00:53That fascination with civilisation was, however,
0:00:53 > 0:00:57worlds away from archaeology's earliest beginnings.
0:00:59 > 0:01:00In this series,
0:01:00 > 0:01:04I've been tracing the very history of archaeology itself,
0:01:04 > 0:01:11a story that began with a quest to discover Christian truth.
0:01:11 > 0:01:14This is meant to be one of the nails
0:01:14 > 0:01:17with which Jesus Christ was crucified.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20But over hundreds of years, archaeologists revealed
0:01:20 > 0:01:25the vast depth of time that went far beyond that of the Bible.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29The most iconic archaeological find ever.
0:01:32 > 0:01:36Now I'm going to follow another of the great archaeological quests.
0:01:39 > 0:01:43Not only mere objects, or even monumental treasure,
0:01:43 > 0:01:47but the very foundations of civilisation itself.
0:01:49 > 0:01:54It'll take me into the world of the 18th and 19th centuries,
0:01:54 > 0:01:56when archaeologists began to search
0:01:56 > 0:01:59beyond the great monuments of antiquity
0:01:59 > 0:02:02for new clues
0:02:02 > 0:02:05which led them to dig deep underground.
0:02:14 > 0:02:18In the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in 1738,
0:02:18 > 0:02:22the world's very first large-scale archaeological dig began.
0:02:23 > 0:02:28Classical scholars knew that the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD
0:02:28 > 0:02:32had destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
0:02:33 > 0:02:36So they must still exist,
0:02:36 > 0:02:40deep under its deadly layer of mud, lava and ash.
0:02:40 > 0:02:43But it took a Spanish engineer to find out for sure.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48His name was Rocque de Alcubierre,
0:02:48 > 0:02:51and the excavation he began
0:02:51 > 0:02:53was a watershed in the history of archaeology.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03Nearly 300 years after Alcubierre's dig,
0:03:03 > 0:03:05his original diaries are kept at
0:03:05 > 0:03:08the National Archaeological Museum in Naples,
0:03:08 > 0:03:11giving us a remarkable insight into his methods.
0:03:11 > 0:03:14This is a really fascinating document
0:03:14 > 0:03:20and, in Spanish, it sets out in really blunt and ruthless terms
0:03:20 > 0:03:21quite what his mission was.
0:03:22 > 0:03:24All stones of utility...
0:03:25 > 0:03:30..and greatness were immediately to be removed.
0:03:30 > 0:03:33In other words, anything precious like statues,
0:03:33 > 0:03:35or anything that could be re-used
0:03:35 > 0:03:37for the multitude of building projects
0:03:37 > 0:03:39which were going on in the area.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42And if they didn't find anything like that,
0:03:42 > 0:03:46then excavations were to be "abandone", abandoned.
0:03:48 > 0:03:50There are things in this diary
0:03:50 > 0:03:53which are truly horrifying to any archaeologist.
0:03:53 > 0:03:55There's all sorts of references
0:03:55 > 0:03:58to objects which they considered not to be of value,
0:03:58 > 0:04:00little things, small things from everyday life,
0:04:00 > 0:04:03which we consider to be incredibly precious.
0:04:03 > 0:04:06What did they do with them? They just chucked them away.
0:04:09 > 0:04:14'These documents reveal the sheer ambition of the excavation,
0:04:14 > 0:04:16'hundreds of workers digging to a plan
0:04:16 > 0:04:20'and on a scale that had never been seen before.
0:04:32 > 0:04:36'Handling Alcubierre's diaries was thrilling enough,
0:04:36 > 0:04:37'but as an archaeologist,
0:04:37 > 0:04:41'I've been given special access to his original excavations.'
0:04:43 > 0:04:47'To explore Herculaneum, just as he did in the early 18th century,
0:04:47 > 0:04:51'as he dug through the ancient volcanic lava of Vesuvius.'
0:04:52 > 0:04:54You can see here, if you look here,
0:04:54 > 0:04:57you can probably see all the marks
0:04:57 > 0:05:00where they've basically... they've picked through this.
0:05:02 > 0:05:04Wow, and look up here,
0:05:04 > 0:05:08we get a sense of the extent of the structure.
0:05:09 > 0:05:11You'd have to be very precise with your planning.
0:05:11 > 0:05:15I imagine it took an awful long time to chip away at all of this.
0:05:15 > 0:05:18So you'd want to dig this very, very strategically.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27'As Alcubierre's men dug down,
0:05:27 > 0:05:31'the remains of the Roman Empire began to appear in all its glory.
0:05:33 > 0:05:36'Miraculously, and sometimes almost perfectly
0:05:36 > 0:05:39'preserved for nearly 2,000 years.'
0:05:40 > 0:05:43You can see what's on the outside.
0:05:43 > 0:05:49You've got...beautiful red, a deep red-coloured plaster,
0:05:49 > 0:05:51and then just above it on the line there,
0:05:51 > 0:05:54you've got a white.
0:05:54 > 0:05:58The ancient world was certainly not all black and white,
0:05:58 > 0:06:00and here, you get a sense of that.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07'The excavators even left behind their own marks.'
0:06:07 > 0:06:12This is a really wonderful little piece of writing, graffiti.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16This is Pascale, maybe Zeno.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21This is a worker, and he's saying, "This is my house."
0:06:21 > 0:06:23Now, imagine working down here,
0:06:23 > 0:06:25it must have been completely claustrophobic and awful.
0:06:25 > 0:06:32This very dark, somewhat forbidding place,
0:06:32 > 0:06:35he considered, perhaps ironically, to be his home.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44See, look, look, where the excavators
0:06:44 > 0:06:50have just stacked all of the bits of stone and bits of mud
0:06:50 > 0:06:52and all the other material that they've dug through,
0:06:52 > 0:06:54because, of course, he wanted the good stuff,
0:06:54 > 0:06:59he wanted all the statues and other valuable materials.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02'All this digging was one giant treasure hunt.'
0:07:09 > 0:07:14My word, you can see, here, traces of a statue head.
0:07:14 > 0:07:16Obviously, the excavators have come along
0:07:16 > 0:07:18and they've taken it out,
0:07:18 > 0:07:22but he's still left his imprint, so he is still here.
0:07:26 > 0:07:28'The Roman statues were eagerly collected.
0:07:32 > 0:07:37'But within the tunnels, there was something even more extraordinary.'
0:07:37 > 0:07:41Ha-ha! Now, this is amazing.
0:07:41 > 0:07:44'An entire Roman theatre.'
0:07:44 > 0:07:46This is the stage.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48So you're digging, and you come down to this!
0:07:50 > 0:07:53This must have been like discovering a lost world.
0:07:53 > 0:07:55You must have just been completely disorientated.
0:07:55 > 0:07:58Just all of a sudden, you've entered somewhere completely different,
0:07:58 > 0:08:00you've gone back in time
0:08:00 > 0:08:03to somewhere which was completely mothballed.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21'Stuck in time, as if left after its last performance,
0:08:21 > 0:08:25'the theatre yielded more treasures.'
0:08:25 > 0:08:27Here, in niches,
0:08:27 > 0:08:31you'd have had statues of nymphs and gods and goddesses.
0:08:36 > 0:08:41But also, statues of local dignitaries.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43You can actually see the inscriptions
0:08:43 > 0:08:45which they would have sat upon,
0:08:45 > 0:08:49and those early excavators weren't interested in the inscriptions.
0:08:49 > 0:08:50That's why they're still here.
0:08:50 > 0:08:53It was the valuable statues they wanted.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56Just imagine! It must have completely freaked them out.
0:09:00 > 0:09:03Alcubierre's excavation was the first step in
0:09:03 > 0:09:07one of the most remarkable stories in the whole of archaeology.
0:09:12 > 0:09:17The revelation of the entire Roman city of Herculaneum.
0:09:32 > 0:09:35As each new generation of excavators set to work here
0:09:35 > 0:09:38during the 19th and 20th centuries,
0:09:38 > 0:09:41they discovered not only statues and houses,
0:09:41 > 0:09:45but whole streets, with all of their people and possessions intact,
0:09:45 > 0:09:48frozen in time under lava and ash.
0:09:48 > 0:09:52All of this must have made even the most hardened treasure-hunter
0:09:52 > 0:09:54stop and think.
0:09:57 > 0:10:01'It seems extraordinary that something as violent as a volcano
0:10:01 > 0:10:04'could have preserved, as well as destroyed.'
0:10:09 > 0:10:10This is Roman life,
0:10:10 > 0:10:15still almost perfectly preserved after 2,000 years,
0:10:15 > 0:10:18and Herculaneum is still one of the most important
0:10:18 > 0:10:20archaeological discoveries ever made
0:10:20 > 0:10:22and, for me, the most captivating.
0:10:25 > 0:10:30'What Alcubierre had begun in 1738 changed archaeology.
0:10:31 > 0:10:33'Herculaneum made it clear
0:10:33 > 0:10:36'that the past didn't only exist on the surface,
0:10:36 > 0:10:37'but hidden,
0:10:37 > 0:10:40'ready to be revealed from deep within the earth.'
0:10:47 > 0:10:50Alcubierre's work in the early 18th century
0:10:50 > 0:10:53had shown that the secrets of ancient civilisations
0:10:53 > 0:10:56could be discovered through excavation.
0:10:56 > 0:11:02And if the past of Athens and Rome could be revealed,
0:11:02 > 0:11:06then what about ancient societies that came before?
0:11:11 > 0:11:13Pushing back the boundaries of civilisation
0:11:13 > 0:11:17meant looking beyond the familiar territories of Italy and Greece.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28Attention turned to the Middle East
0:11:28 > 0:11:31and, in particular, Egypt,
0:11:31 > 0:11:34explored in 1798 by Napoleon,
0:11:34 > 0:11:37France's most famous military commander.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50When, in 1798, Napoleon marched into Egypt with his army,
0:11:50 > 0:11:52he didn't just bring soldiers,
0:11:52 > 0:11:57but academics, geographers, engineers, and also surveyors.
0:11:57 > 0:12:02And he wasn't just there to uncover one small city like Herculaneum,
0:12:02 > 0:12:04but a whole civilisation.
0:12:06 > 0:12:10'Napoleon was no archaeologist, but he believed that
0:12:10 > 0:12:13'to rule this foreign land as part of his growing empire,
0:12:13 > 0:12:15'he had to understand it.'
0:12:17 > 0:12:21His men set about scrutinising Egypt in immense detail.
0:12:23 > 0:12:26All of a sudden, the wonders of Greece and Rome
0:12:26 > 0:12:28seemed, well, such old hat.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33If you really wanted to find out about civilisation,
0:12:33 > 0:12:35then Egypt was where it was at.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42A contemporary record of Napoleon's expedition
0:12:42 > 0:12:46is kept at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
0:12:49 > 0:12:52This extraordinary book is one of 23
0:12:52 > 0:12:57created by the 160 academics that Napoleon took with him to Egypt.
0:12:59 > 0:13:02And they recorded virtually every aspect of Egyptian life.
0:13:04 > 0:13:06Everything from religion to geography
0:13:06 > 0:13:09was precisely measured and recorded.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13Europeans at this time didn't know much about Egypt.
0:13:13 > 0:13:16Sure, they'd heard about the pyramids at Giza,
0:13:16 > 0:13:18but they didn't know why they had been built,
0:13:18 > 0:13:22and as for the rest of Egypt well, that was a real mystery.
0:13:26 > 0:13:30If you look at this illustration, you get a real sense of
0:13:30 > 0:13:33what an epic journey of discovery this was.
0:13:35 > 0:13:37And the excitement of the French
0:13:37 > 0:13:41as they came across giant, colossal ancient buildings,
0:13:41 > 0:13:43half-submerged in the desert sands.
0:13:52 > 0:13:55Only a thousand copies of these volumes were ever created,
0:13:55 > 0:13:57and at huge expense,
0:13:57 > 0:14:01but they created an enormous stir amongst those that saw them,
0:14:01 > 0:14:03and fuelled a new mania
0:14:03 > 0:14:05for Egyptology.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17The systematic exploration of ancient Egypt
0:14:17 > 0:14:22was another sign of archaeology's ever-increasing ambition.
0:14:22 > 0:14:25But the excavators had a problem
0:14:25 > 0:14:29how to get such vast sculptures back home.
0:14:29 > 0:14:30To the rescue
0:14:30 > 0:14:34came one of the most extraordinary figures in archaeology,
0:14:34 > 0:14:40an unlikely, larger-than-life Italian called Giovanni Belzoni.
0:14:41 > 0:14:47The son of a barber, Belzoni came to Britain as a circus acrobat,
0:14:47 > 0:14:51before re-styling himself the Patagonian Samson.
0:14:52 > 0:14:56But there was more to Belzoni than just being a circus strongman.
0:14:56 > 0:14:58He was also really interested in engineering.
0:15:03 > 0:15:08Belzoni headed to Egypt to sell a new type of irrigation pump,
0:15:08 > 0:15:09but it wasn't wanted.
0:15:10 > 0:15:13Unabashed, he switched attention to
0:15:13 > 0:15:17a huge statue of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II.
0:15:18 > 0:15:23The showman had turned archaeologist.
0:15:23 > 0:15:26Dragged to the Nile by 160 workers,
0:15:26 > 0:15:30the 3,000-year-old statue was headed for Europe.
0:15:34 > 0:15:37The statue had been discovered by Napoleon,
0:15:37 > 0:15:41but in 1818, it ended up in London,
0:15:41 > 0:15:44and it still sits proudly in the British Museum.
0:15:49 > 0:15:51At war in Egypt and elsewhere,
0:15:51 > 0:15:55Britain and France were looking to outdo each other at every turn,
0:15:55 > 0:15:58from empire to archaeology.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05And this competition extended to their national museums,
0:16:05 > 0:16:06as they strived to build
0:16:06 > 0:16:09the very best collections in the entire world.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16This was about national pride.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20As well as owning the planet,
0:16:20 > 0:16:22they wanted to own the past.
0:16:29 > 0:16:35So why is there so much Egyptian art and artefacts in the British Museum?
0:16:35 > 0:16:38The French, who were there as part of a military campaign,
0:16:38 > 0:16:42conducted fantastic research on the antiquities
0:16:42 > 0:16:45and were very serious about selecting the best pieces,
0:16:45 > 0:16:47so they weren't just picking up any old scraps
0:16:47 > 0:16:51on their way through the... through the deserts.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53And then, of course, when Nelson defeated them
0:16:53 > 0:16:57at the Battle of the Nile in 1798,
0:16:57 > 0:16:59the British went, "We want that."
0:16:59 > 0:17:03It was booty, and when it arrived on the steps of the museum,
0:17:03 > 0:17:04they had nowhere to put it.
0:17:04 > 0:17:09It sat out in the rain and, you know, in the pollution of London.
0:17:09 > 0:17:10This collection of material
0:17:10 > 0:17:13draws millions of people from all over the world.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17It was the first public collection of Egyptian antiquities
0:17:17 > 0:17:20that was like a set to go on show,
0:17:20 > 0:17:23so it had a massive impact on the public.
0:17:23 > 0:17:25They'd never seen anything like it,
0:17:25 > 0:17:28and I have seen some lovely early engravings
0:17:28 > 0:17:30of people actually crawling on these sarcophagi...
0:17:30 > 0:17:33- Oh, fantastic!- ..crawling into them, peering into them.
0:17:33 > 0:17:35So to what extent was collecting
0:17:35 > 0:17:38driven by this sort of geopolitical competition
0:17:38 > 0:17:41between the Brits and the French?
0:17:41 > 0:17:44People looked at these objects not as antiquities,
0:17:44 > 0:17:48but as symbols of British might, British worth, British victory.
0:17:48 > 0:17:49They loved them.
0:17:49 > 0:17:53And one of the obelisks indeed has engraved down the side,
0:17:53 > 0:17:55"Captured by the British Army."
0:17:57 > 0:17:59The vast excavations of Herculaneum
0:17:59 > 0:18:03and this shifting of giant monuments from Egypt
0:18:03 > 0:18:07had moved archaeology into a new, almost industrial, age.
0:18:10 > 0:18:14And archaeology was changing in other ways, too.
0:18:14 > 0:18:16With the development of public institutions
0:18:16 > 0:18:18such as the Louvre and the British Museum,
0:18:18 > 0:18:22archaeology became increasingly democratised.
0:18:22 > 0:18:26These beautiful artefacts were no longer just the preserve
0:18:26 > 0:18:29and the playthings of a rich, aristocratic elite.
0:18:36 > 0:18:41By the early 19th century, national museums held collections
0:18:41 > 0:18:45that gave the public access to hitherto unseen treasures.
0:18:48 > 0:18:52And with artefacts from far-flung ancient civilisations
0:18:52 > 0:18:54now easily accessible,
0:18:54 > 0:18:57they could also be much more easily studied.
0:18:59 > 0:19:01BELLS RING
0:19:10 > 0:19:13This is my old college in Cambridge, Trinity Hall,
0:19:13 > 0:19:14on graduation day.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19Nowadays, the place is full of academic archaeologists,
0:19:19 > 0:19:23but in the early 19th century, it was a very different story.
0:19:25 > 0:19:30Back then, the word "archaeology" didn't even exist.
0:19:30 > 0:19:31But before long,
0:19:31 > 0:19:36as the quest to discover the roots of civilisation gathered pace,
0:19:36 > 0:19:39academia began to take an interest.
0:19:47 > 0:19:50Considering all the competition between France and Britain
0:19:50 > 0:19:51for artefacts and glory,
0:19:51 > 0:19:55it's perhaps surprising that the first Professor of Archaeology
0:19:55 > 0:19:57didn't come from one of those countries.
0:19:57 > 0:20:00In fact, the first Professor of Archaeology, in 1818,
0:20:00 > 0:20:04was appointed at the University of Leiden, in Holland.
0:20:08 > 0:20:13Here in Cambridge, archaeology began to be taught in 1851.
0:20:18 > 0:20:20Now, 150 years later,
0:20:20 > 0:20:25there are over 3,000 students of archaeology in Britain,
0:20:25 > 0:20:29something that would have been inconceivable to the Victorian dons.
0:20:32 > 0:20:36But the importance of this wasn't just ivory towers.
0:20:36 > 0:20:38The entry of archaeology into academia
0:20:38 > 0:20:42fundamentally changed the way we viewed the past
0:20:42 > 0:20:44and the treasures of the ancient world.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55At its heart was a new academic quest
0:20:55 > 0:20:57not to own the past,
0:20:57 > 0:20:59but to understand it,
0:20:59 > 0:21:02to solve its mysteries.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04And one of the first riddles
0:21:04 > 0:21:08was posed by a stone tablet recovered from Egypt.
0:21:12 > 0:21:13The Rosetta Stone.
0:21:15 > 0:21:19Today, the Rosetta Stone is one of the treasures of the British Museum.
0:21:21 > 0:21:26Millions of people come every year to visit an archaeological icon.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31Unlike the Egyptian statues,
0:21:31 > 0:21:35it is important not because of its beauty or magnificence,
0:21:35 > 0:21:39but because of the story of its written inscription,
0:21:39 > 0:21:41its information.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49Before being put on public display,
0:21:49 > 0:21:53it was sent to the Society of Antiquaries in London to be copied.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58This is a copy of an engraving of the Rosetta Stone,
0:21:58 > 0:22:00done here in 1801.
0:22:02 > 0:22:04You might ask why this is so important.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07Well, this is a real turning point for archaeology,
0:22:07 > 0:22:12because archaeologists and their patrons began to realise
0:22:12 > 0:22:14that the real glory in their profession
0:22:14 > 0:22:17wasn't in the possession of objects,
0:22:17 > 0:22:21but in the idea of deciphering the information that they contained.
0:22:22 > 0:22:24And from this letter,
0:22:24 > 0:22:28we know that four plaster-cast copies were made of the stone
0:22:28 > 0:22:32and distributed to four universities
0:22:32 > 0:22:33Oxford,
0:22:33 > 0:22:35Cambridge,
0:22:35 > 0:22:36Edinburgh,
0:22:36 > 0:22:38and Dublin.
0:22:40 > 0:22:43Now, the Rosetta Stone and its prints,
0:22:43 > 0:22:45literally hundreds of them were produced
0:22:45 > 0:22:46and spread across Britain
0:22:46 > 0:22:50and sent to both individuals and to institutions.
0:22:51 > 0:22:53And the copying didn't stop there.
0:22:53 > 0:22:56Direct copies were also made from the Rosetta Stone itself,
0:22:56 > 0:22:59with ink being smeared over its surface,
0:22:59 > 0:23:00before paper was laid down on it.
0:23:03 > 0:23:06Even with academics poring over all the copies,
0:23:06 > 0:23:09the Rosetta Stone took 20 years to decode.
0:23:11 > 0:23:14It was a ground-breaking achievement,
0:23:14 > 0:23:17and one that this time was won by the French.
0:23:19 > 0:23:21The decoding of the Rosetta Stone was a massive advance,
0:23:21 > 0:23:24because if you could read this document,
0:23:24 > 0:23:26then you could read all documents
0:23:26 > 0:23:28in which Egyptian hieroglyphs had been used.
0:23:30 > 0:23:31For the first time,
0:23:31 > 0:23:34scholars could now work out a chronology of Egyptian history,
0:23:34 > 0:23:39and what they had long suspected now became crystal clear,
0:23:39 > 0:23:43that Egyptian civilisation was far, far...
0:23:43 > 0:23:45in fact, thousands of years older
0:23:45 > 0:23:47than anything in Greece and Rome.
0:23:50 > 0:23:53Academics had discovered a new age,
0:23:53 > 0:23:57one in which clues to ever earlier civilisations
0:23:57 > 0:23:59could not only be discovered,
0:23:59 > 0:24:02but deciphered from their mysterious writings.
0:24:05 > 0:24:08And this new age would be brought into focus
0:24:08 > 0:24:12by a new technological breakthrough,
0:24:12 > 0:24:14the invention of photography.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20Some of the very first archaeological photographs
0:24:20 > 0:24:23are held in the French National Archives,
0:24:23 > 0:24:27and have been studied by historian Mirjam Brusius.
0:24:28 > 0:24:30Oh, that's fantastic!
0:24:30 > 0:24:34This is taken in ancient Mesopotamia,
0:24:34 > 0:24:36in what is now Iraq.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40What you have here was a French expedition in the early 1850s.
0:24:42 > 0:24:46And when you see this, you realise things haven't moved on that much,
0:24:46 > 0:24:48so if you looked at the photographs
0:24:48 > 0:24:51of my excavation in Carthage, in Tunisia,
0:24:51 > 0:24:54they're using exactly the same picks, exactly the same tools.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00I love this guy, kind of lounging nonchalantly against a trench wall.
0:25:01 > 0:25:06Photography represented a whole new way to record finds in context,
0:25:06 > 0:25:10as well as providing perfect reproductions for study...
0:25:11 > 0:25:15..especially when finds themselves sometimes went astray.
0:25:17 > 0:25:21Talking about reproduction and reproducibility,
0:25:21 > 0:25:23it's rather important with this one,
0:25:23 > 0:25:25because what we see here on the photograph
0:25:25 > 0:25:28actually got lost on the way to France.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31- Oh!- Quite a few boxes,
0:25:31 > 0:25:34I think we're talking about hundreds, actually,
0:25:34 > 0:25:36got lost in the river.
0:25:36 > 0:25:42And so all we have now is the photograph of some of these objects.
0:25:42 > 0:25:44And you can still see archaeologists
0:25:44 > 0:25:47working with these photographs as proxies
0:25:47 > 0:25:49and reproducing them,
0:25:49 > 0:25:52and people can actually work with this material.
0:25:52 > 0:25:53That's wonderful.
0:25:56 > 0:25:59Here's some...some cylinders and some tablets.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01We also have photographs,
0:26:01 > 0:26:05where you can actually see the script of the tablet.
0:26:05 > 0:26:08And these photographs would be sent to scholars,
0:26:08 > 0:26:12who were then about to decipher the script,
0:26:12 > 0:26:16because nobody could actually read what was on the clay tablets.
0:26:24 > 0:26:26Thank you so much.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32The Rosetta Stone had been meticulously copied,
0:26:32 > 0:26:35but with photography, information could be recorded
0:26:35 > 0:26:38and circulated more widely than ever before.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44During excavations in Mesopotamia in 1855 to 1856,
0:26:44 > 0:26:47thousands of photographs were taken
0:26:47 > 0:26:50of cuneiform tablets which had been found there.
0:26:52 > 0:26:54They were covered in a mysterious language
0:26:54 > 0:26:56which nobody yet understood.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02The photographs were distributed all over Europe,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05and all of its finest scholars quickly got to work,
0:27:05 > 0:27:09in a race to try and decipher this mysterious code.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14It was these photographs which led to a breakthrough
0:27:14 > 0:27:18in our quest to understand how civilisation began.
0:27:20 > 0:27:21Sometimes, as a scholar,
0:27:21 > 0:27:25you can spend days, weeks, years working on the coalface,
0:27:25 > 0:27:27without seeming to make any progress,
0:27:27 > 0:27:31and then suddenly, you have a eureka moment.
0:27:31 > 0:27:35And that's what happened to the German scholar Jules Oppert.
0:27:37 > 0:27:39One day, he was reading one of these cuneiform tablets
0:27:39 > 0:27:42when he came across the word "Sumer".
0:27:46 > 0:27:49And he realised that that must be the place
0:27:49 > 0:27:52where this mysterious language had come from.
0:27:52 > 0:27:54And, in fact, the Sumerians were the people
0:27:54 > 0:27:56that had invented writing in the first place.
0:28:00 > 0:28:02The discovery of the Sumerians
0:28:02 > 0:28:06pushed back the dawn of civilisation by several thousand years.
0:28:11 > 0:28:17It seemed that civilisation went back even further than Egypt,
0:28:17 > 0:28:19deep into the Middle East
0:28:19 > 0:28:22when people began to create the first written records.
0:28:24 > 0:28:28But there was another question that remained unanswered.
0:28:28 > 0:28:32Was Mesopotamia the single root of human civilisation,
0:28:32 > 0:28:37or just one branch in something more complex?
0:28:37 > 0:28:39For a few radical thinkers,
0:28:39 > 0:28:44the answer to that lay not in the Old World,
0:28:44 > 0:28:47but much, much further afield.
0:29:01 > 0:29:05It's hard to imagine that even by the middle of the 19th century,
0:29:05 > 0:29:08large areas of the world were still unmapped.
0:29:12 > 0:29:19Much of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australasia remained a mystery.
0:29:19 > 0:29:20But all that was changing.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28Archaeology was heading off to new, unexplored areas of the world.
0:29:31 > 0:29:33In this spirit, two mavericks
0:29:33 > 0:29:36John Lloyd Stephens, an American writer,
0:29:36 > 0:29:38and Frederick Catherwood, a British draughtsman,
0:29:38 > 0:29:43who had both previously worked documenting the monuments of Egypt -
0:29:43 > 0:29:47set off west and 7,000 miles away
0:29:47 > 0:29:48to Central America.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11'Catherwood and Stephens were drawn to Mexico in the 1830s
0:30:11 > 0:30:15'by reports of ancient abandoned cities.
0:30:16 > 0:30:18'But they faced an immediate problem.
0:30:20 > 0:30:22'Its deep, dense jungle.'
0:30:49 > 0:30:51I've only been doing this for a short while,
0:30:51 > 0:30:55but I'm already absolutely knackered, I feel drained of energy.
0:30:58 > 0:31:02I can't imagine what it was like for Catherwood and Stephens,
0:31:02 > 0:31:05who had to do this day after day,
0:31:05 > 0:31:07week after week, month after month.
0:31:15 > 0:31:16Not only that,
0:31:16 > 0:31:19but they also had to contend with the sweltering heat,
0:31:19 > 0:31:22mosquitoes, malaria,
0:31:22 > 0:31:25ticks, leeches,
0:31:25 > 0:31:27as well as hostile indigenous people.
0:31:30 > 0:31:32After weeks of trekking,
0:31:32 > 0:31:35they began to get tantalising glimpses
0:31:35 > 0:31:37of the work of ancient hands.
0:31:39 > 0:31:40When you first look at this,
0:31:40 > 0:31:43it just looks like a mound of stones in the forest,
0:31:43 > 0:31:46but, of course, there's something suspicious about these stones.
0:31:46 > 0:31:49Look, they're cut...straight.
0:31:49 > 0:31:52These have been prepared by human beings.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54This is a wall of some kind.
0:31:54 > 0:31:56This great mound is some kind of building.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06What these remains led them to was so incredible and unexpected
0:32:06 > 0:32:08that archaeology
0:32:08 > 0:32:11and our understanding of ancient civilisation
0:32:11 > 0:32:13would never be the same again.
0:32:19 > 0:32:23Wow! This place is absolutely stupendous.
0:32:29 > 0:32:30You're in the middle of the jungle,
0:32:30 > 0:32:33and then you're suddenly confronted by this,
0:32:33 > 0:32:36these towering edifices rising out of the trees.
0:32:36 > 0:32:40You can only imagine the reaction of Catherwood and Stephens
0:32:40 > 0:32:42when they came across this in the 1830s.
0:32:43 > 0:32:47Now, Stephens admitted that he was a man who wasn't easily impressed,
0:32:47 > 0:32:50but this place blew his mind,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53and looking around here now, I'm not surprised.
0:32:53 > 0:32:55What Catherwood and Stephens had come across
0:32:55 > 0:32:58was the ancient magnificent city of Palenque.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13All this was the creation of a sophisticated
0:33:13 > 0:33:15and previously unknown civilisation,
0:33:15 > 0:33:19right in the heart of a Mexican jungle.
0:33:21 > 0:33:24They set up camp here, in a corridor in this palace.
0:33:28 > 0:33:29Their Indian guides
0:33:29 > 0:33:31were too frightened to stay here after nightfall
0:33:31 > 0:33:33and left them here, alone.
0:33:39 > 0:33:41On the first night, they heard a loud crash
0:33:41 > 0:33:45and thought somebody was trying to break in.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49Fearing for their lives, they let off a volley of shots,
0:33:49 > 0:33:53before blocking off the passageway and barricading themselves in.
0:33:58 > 0:34:00Stephens later described
0:34:00 > 0:34:04what this new world of extreme archaeology was like.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07"The next night, the mosquitoes were beyond all endurance.
0:34:07 > 0:34:09"The slightest part of the body,
0:34:09 > 0:34:13"the tip end of a finger exposed was bitten.
0:34:13 > 0:34:16"With the heads covered, the heat was suffocating
0:34:16 > 0:34:19"and in the morning, our faces were all in blotches."
0:34:19 > 0:34:22And that wasn't the worse thing.
0:34:22 > 0:34:25There were also flesh-eating insects that burrowed into one's body,
0:34:25 > 0:34:28and the only way of getting rid of them
0:34:28 > 0:34:30was cutting them out with a knife.
0:34:33 > 0:34:36Made of stern stuff, Catherwood and Stephens
0:34:36 > 0:34:39spent weeks meticulously exploring their new discovery.
0:34:42 > 0:34:44And there was one obvious mystery.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50What were pyramids doing 7,000 miles from Egypt?
0:34:51 > 0:34:52And who could have built them?
0:34:56 > 0:34:58In this temple, Catherwood and Stephens discovered
0:34:58 > 0:35:00what they thought was a cross.
0:35:00 > 0:35:02You can see it running down here,
0:35:02 > 0:35:03and then the horizontal line here.
0:35:05 > 0:35:06The local Christian priests
0:35:06 > 0:35:10argued this had to be something to do with Jesus Christ
0:35:10 > 0:35:14and this temple must be dated to around the 3rd Century AD.
0:35:14 > 0:35:19Stephens and Catherwood were rightly sceptical of such a conclusion.
0:35:19 > 0:35:21They thought it was entirely possible
0:35:21 > 0:35:24that there was a New World civilisation here
0:35:24 > 0:35:27that was not connected in any way to the Old World.
0:35:33 > 0:35:37If this was true, where had this ancient culture come from?
0:35:42 > 0:35:44The key were these
0:35:44 > 0:35:47the faces on the stucco that covered many of the buildings here.
0:35:49 > 0:35:51They noticed that they bore a strong resemblance
0:35:51 > 0:35:54to the people that still lived in the area
0:35:54 > 0:35:57and, from that, deduced that they must be their ancestors.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10Today, we know that Palenque was built by local Mayan people
0:36:10 > 0:36:12nearly 2,000 years ago.
0:36:14 > 0:36:18For those traditional archaeologists of the 19th century,
0:36:18 > 0:36:21who saw civilisation as a torch
0:36:21 > 0:36:25passed down from Egypt, Greece and Rome
0:36:25 > 0:36:28to Napoleon's France or Queen Victoria's Britain,
0:36:28 > 0:36:30well, they were beginning to realise
0:36:30 > 0:36:33that it didn't quite work like that at all.
0:36:36 > 0:36:38Archaeology had moved on massively,
0:36:38 > 0:36:39and the more that was found,
0:36:39 > 0:36:42the more there seemed yet to be discovered.
0:36:44 > 0:36:45At a time when many scholars
0:36:45 > 0:36:49were arguing for one single founding civilisation,
0:36:49 > 0:36:53Catherwood and Stephens' findings seemed to suggest the possibility
0:36:53 > 0:36:56of civilisations springing up all over the world
0:36:56 > 0:36:58independently of one another.
0:37:01 > 0:37:03They'd not only called into question
0:37:03 > 0:37:07beliefs about the beginnings of civilisation,
0:37:07 > 0:37:08they'd blown them apart.
0:37:19 > 0:37:21In the 18th and early 19th centuries,
0:37:21 > 0:37:24archaeology had seemed so simple.
0:37:25 > 0:37:26The more you dug,
0:37:26 > 0:37:29the more evidence of past civilisations you could find.
0:37:33 > 0:37:35And with the insights of academia,
0:37:35 > 0:37:39these discoveries were becoming better understood.
0:37:39 > 0:37:44But by the mid-19th century, Catherwood and Stephens had shown
0:37:44 > 0:37:48that things were far more complex than anyone had previously thought.
0:37:50 > 0:37:54It had been an engineer who had revealed Herculaneum,
0:37:54 > 0:37:59a circus strongman who had shifted Egyptian statues,
0:37:59 > 0:38:01and a writer-illustrator duo
0:38:01 > 0:38:05who had taken archaeology to the New World.
0:38:05 > 0:38:11But now there was about to be a new way of revealing the past,
0:38:11 > 0:38:13through science.
0:38:26 > 0:38:29This new era of scientific archaeology
0:38:29 > 0:38:33was pioneered in a ground-breaking excavation in Turkey.
0:38:36 > 0:38:38An excavation organised by
0:38:38 > 0:38:41one of archaeology's most notorious figures,
0:38:41 > 0:38:44a hugely wealthy German entrepreneur.
0:38:47 > 0:38:53Someone who wasn't out to discover something bigger or earlier,
0:38:53 > 0:38:56but something many people didn't believe existed at all.
0:39:05 > 0:39:06One of the men who best embodied
0:39:06 > 0:39:10the buccaneering spirit of the early treasure-hunters,
0:39:10 > 0:39:13as well as this new rigorous scientific methodology,
0:39:13 > 0:39:17was Heinrich Schliemann, a German business tycoon.
0:39:17 > 0:39:21And here is a painting of him and his wife.
0:39:21 > 0:39:24Schliemann used his fortune to follow his dream,
0:39:24 > 0:39:27one of the most elusive prizes in archaeology,
0:39:27 > 0:39:29the ancient city of Troy.
0:39:36 > 0:39:39Today, Schliemann's discovery
0:39:39 > 0:39:43is one of the most visited ancient sites in the world
0:39:45 > 0:39:48A magnet for many of Turkey's millions of tourists.
0:39:50 > 0:39:54The attraction even has a trademark Trojan horse.
0:39:56 > 0:40:00140 years ago, though, most right-thinking academics
0:40:00 > 0:40:04thought Troy was no more than fiction a myth.
0:40:06 > 0:40:10Schliemann, with the romantic zeal of an amateur,
0:40:10 > 0:40:12thought that they were wrong.
0:40:17 > 0:40:21In 1871, when Schliemann first arrived here,
0:40:21 > 0:40:23there were few surface clues to guide him.
0:40:26 > 0:40:30But as a man of science, Schliemann had a method.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33He was the first archaeologist to dig test pits,
0:40:33 > 0:40:37and he used a new technique pioneered by geologists
0:40:37 > 0:40:39called stratigraphy.
0:40:41 > 0:40:43He had to dig a series of trenches,
0:40:43 > 0:40:45and the first one,
0:40:45 > 0:40:47you can see down here.
0:40:47 > 0:40:51And almost immediately, he started to find evidence of an ancient city.
0:40:55 > 0:40:59This was what Schliemann first found, part of the temple of Athena,
0:40:59 > 0:41:01and Schliemann immediately recognised
0:41:01 > 0:41:03that this was Graeco-Roman,
0:41:03 > 0:41:06and that if he wanted to find Homeric Troy,
0:41:06 > 0:41:08then he needed to dig much deeper.
0:41:13 > 0:41:17Schliemann employed hundreds of men,
0:41:17 > 0:41:21using his considerable wealth to excavate on a massive scale.
0:41:23 > 0:41:26And only stopping when he reached bedrock.
0:41:30 > 0:41:32He was working on a wild hunch,
0:41:32 > 0:41:35that there really was a factual basis
0:41:35 > 0:41:39to Homer's epic references to the great city of Troy.
0:41:42 > 0:41:44Now, Schliemann, as he dug down,
0:41:44 > 0:41:46did try and take a scientific approach
0:41:46 > 0:41:48and analyse what he had found.
0:41:48 > 0:41:51When he reached this level, Troy II,
0:41:51 > 0:41:53the second earliest settlement on the site of Troy,
0:41:53 > 0:41:56he thought that he had hit pay dirt.
0:41:56 > 0:42:00And the reason for that was because he found this,
0:42:00 > 0:42:04which is a destruction layer made up of burnt objects and charcoal.
0:42:04 > 0:42:07And he knew from reading Homer's Iliad
0:42:07 > 0:42:09that Troy had been burnt to the ground.
0:42:13 > 0:42:16Schliemann had proved that Troy was real,
0:42:16 > 0:42:21although in his enthusiasm, he'd unknowingly dug straight through it
0:42:21 > 0:42:23to an even earlier settlement.
0:42:25 > 0:42:28In digging through a mound and finding an ancient city,
0:42:28 > 0:42:30Schliemann had opened up the possibility
0:42:30 > 0:42:33of excavating all the other thousands of mounds
0:42:33 > 0:42:35that existed across the Near East.
0:42:35 > 0:42:37Think about it for a moment.
0:42:37 > 0:42:40In the search for the beginnings of civilisation,
0:42:40 > 0:42:44you no longer needed to wait for clues to appear spontaneously,
0:42:44 > 0:42:48but could start excavating anytime, anywhere.
0:42:51 > 0:42:55Schliemann was pioneering a new scientific approach,
0:42:55 > 0:42:57but he was still fascinated
0:42:57 > 0:43:02by something that had always drawn archaeologists treasure.
0:43:05 > 0:43:08Schliemann wrote that while working on a trench roughly here,
0:43:08 > 0:43:12he first discovered a copper and then a gold object.
0:43:12 > 0:43:15Not trusting his workmen, he called an early lunch
0:43:15 > 0:43:19and then cut the artefacts out of the ground using a knife,
0:43:19 > 0:43:22before smuggling them away in his wife's shawl.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25Now, he'd claim this was a massive horde of weapons,
0:43:25 > 0:43:27jewellery and other artefacts
0:43:27 > 0:43:31that must be the treasure of Priam, King of Troy,
0:43:31 > 0:43:33hidden when the city fell to the Greeks.
0:43:35 > 0:43:38Schliemann even took pictures of his wife
0:43:38 > 0:43:40modelling the precious jewellery.
0:43:40 > 0:43:42To the modern archaeologist,
0:43:42 > 0:43:47the idea of putting on ancient artefacts that you've found
0:43:47 > 0:43:48is absolutely shocking.
0:43:50 > 0:43:53These days, many archaeologists suspect that
0:43:53 > 0:43:56although some of this jewellery did come from the find site,
0:43:56 > 0:43:59that Schliemann actually added to it
0:43:59 > 0:44:01from material that he found elsewhere.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09Schliemann smuggled Priam's treasure out of Turkey
0:44:09 > 0:44:12and was promptly banned from ever coming back.
0:44:15 > 0:44:20Unperturbed, he turned his attention to another of Homer's cities -
0:44:20 > 0:44:22Mycenae, in Greece,
0:44:22 > 0:44:25this time hoping to discover a connection
0:44:25 > 0:44:28between Troy and their epic Greek enemies.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36This is a copy of Schliemann's most famous find,
0:44:36 > 0:44:38the so-called Mask of Agamemnon,
0:44:38 > 0:44:41and it far surpassed anything that he found in Troy.
0:44:41 > 0:44:45He found it in a tomb inside the city of Mycenae,
0:44:45 > 0:44:47and it is said that in celebration,
0:44:47 > 0:44:50he romped round the tomb afterwards with his young wife.
0:44:54 > 0:44:57It was another incredible discovery,
0:44:57 > 0:44:59but Schliemann still faced a challenge
0:44:59 > 0:45:04to convince the world that his two sites were connected.
0:45:04 > 0:45:06What he did next
0:45:06 > 0:45:09showed just how far ahead of the game Schliemann really was,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12because like any good 19th-century German,
0:45:12 > 0:45:15Schliemann believed in the power of science,
0:45:15 > 0:45:19and particularly, the power of analytical chemistry.
0:45:22 > 0:45:26Schliemann sent samples back to metal experts in Britain
0:45:26 > 0:45:27for scientific testing.
0:45:30 > 0:45:34Here at Goldsmiths' Hall in London, analytical chemists
0:45:34 > 0:45:37still use similar techniques to test precious metals.
0:45:46 > 0:45:48By studying his ancient gold,
0:45:48 > 0:45:51Schliemann hoped that he would discover compositions
0:45:51 > 0:45:54that matched metal from Mycenae
0:45:54 > 0:45:57to metal he had previously found at Troy.
0:45:59 > 0:46:02This is exactly the same sort of process
0:46:02 > 0:46:04that Schliemann's artefacts would have been through,
0:46:04 > 0:46:08and you can imagine him anxiously waiting for the test results.
0:46:10 > 0:46:12The Science Museum in London
0:46:12 > 0:46:15holds some of Schliemann's original samples,
0:46:15 > 0:46:18together with the all-important results.
0:46:19 > 0:46:20This was gold leaf,
0:46:20 > 0:46:24taken from the wrappings around the bodies in the tomb of Mycenae.
0:46:25 > 0:46:28And what the analysis seemed to show
0:46:28 > 0:46:31was a link between this gold leaf from Mycenae
0:46:31 > 0:46:34and gold leaf that Schliemann had found in Troy.
0:46:35 > 0:46:39So through scientific analysis, Schliemann thought he had found
0:46:39 > 0:46:43that all-important connection between Mycenae and Troy.
0:46:47 > 0:46:51Nowadays, it's impossible to imagine archaeology without science,
0:46:51 > 0:46:53but in the late 19th century,
0:46:53 > 0:46:58these new advances seemed to promise a new way of doing archaeology,
0:46:58 > 0:47:01a move away from vague theorising
0:47:01 > 0:47:05to solid scientific results.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08Now, Schliemann might have been a treasure-hunter,
0:47:08 > 0:47:12but he was also a man who believed in the power of science,
0:47:12 > 0:47:16and that's what makes him such a giant in the history of archaeology.
0:47:29 > 0:47:30Heinrich Schliemann
0:47:30 > 0:47:33established archaeology as a scientific discipline,
0:47:33 > 0:47:37but it took the man that lived here to take it to new heights.
0:47:37 > 0:47:43His name was General Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers.
0:47:45 > 0:47:49General Pitt Rivers was the quintessential Victorian gentleman.
0:47:49 > 0:47:53A career soldier, he'd had a distinguished military record
0:47:53 > 0:47:57and was both intelligent and eccentric.
0:47:59 > 0:48:02But there was more to Pitt Rivers than just military matters.
0:48:02 > 0:48:03Whilst abroad,
0:48:03 > 0:48:06he'd assembled a very impressive ethnographical collection,
0:48:06 > 0:48:10and when ill health prompted an early retirement from the army,
0:48:10 > 0:48:14he was able to devote himself to his passion archaeology.
0:48:19 > 0:48:24Fortunately for Pitt Rivers, his retirement had coincided with
0:48:24 > 0:48:28an inheritance of almost royal proportions.
0:48:28 > 0:48:30This, Cranborne Chase,
0:48:30 > 0:48:3430,000 acres of rolling Wessex countryside.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39The old soldier now had the time, the money,
0:48:39 > 0:48:42and the perfect place to pursue his passion.
0:48:44 > 0:48:46It had once been a royal deer park,
0:48:46 > 0:48:48so it had been protected from modern building,
0:48:48 > 0:48:51but it was still crammed full of ancient settlements.
0:48:51 > 0:48:53It was an archaeologist's dream.
0:49:00 > 0:49:05Cranborne Chase became the General's personal archaeological laboratory.
0:49:05 > 0:49:06Each day, come rain or shine,
0:49:06 > 0:49:10he'd go out with a group of draughtsmen and excavators.
0:49:10 > 0:49:12And this photograph says it all.
0:49:12 > 0:49:14Here, you've got the big man himself,
0:49:14 > 0:49:17sitting in his horse and carriage,
0:49:17 > 0:49:19with all of his workmen assembled,
0:49:19 > 0:49:21standing to attention around the trench.
0:49:21 > 0:49:23It was said that, to keep the spirits up,
0:49:23 > 0:49:28he sometimes had a brass band playing whilst they worked.
0:49:28 > 0:49:30But I have to say if you look at this photograph,
0:49:30 > 0:49:32the tools aren't stowed away very carefully.
0:49:32 > 0:49:34Shame on you, Pitt Rivers!
0:49:36 > 0:49:38Over a century after he dug here,
0:49:38 > 0:49:40evidence of his excavations
0:49:40 > 0:49:42at Cranborne Chase still exists.
0:49:43 > 0:49:45Pitt Rivers
0:49:45 > 0:49:48literally left his mark right across Cranborne Chase,
0:49:48 > 0:49:52and down here, we're going to try and find one of his stone markers
0:49:52 > 0:49:55that he put down on one of his many excavations.
0:49:57 > 0:49:59Now, it's quite overgrown...
0:50:01 > 0:50:03..so we're going to have to look quite carefully.
0:50:05 > 0:50:09'The estate manager has told me one still exists close to here.'
0:50:09 > 0:50:12So this looks like a ditch around an ancient settlement.
0:50:12 > 0:50:14Let's have a look up here.
0:50:22 > 0:50:23Ah! There we go.
0:50:29 > 0:50:31It looks like a gravestone.
0:50:32 > 0:50:33"This Roman well...
0:50:35 > 0:50:39"..five feet in diameter."
0:50:39 > 0:50:42This stone tells us a lot about Pitt Rivers
0:50:42 > 0:50:45in his attitude towards the ancient past.
0:50:45 > 0:50:47Firstly, it tells you about his precision.
0:50:47 > 0:50:52He wanted to mark down, with this expensive stone,
0:50:52 > 0:50:55exactly where ancient monuments were,
0:50:55 > 0:50:56where he'd found them.
0:50:56 > 0:51:00It was important to him to give people precise information.
0:51:01 > 0:51:04And the second thing is that this is just a well.
0:51:05 > 0:51:09You know, it's not a temple, or some other fine building.
0:51:09 > 0:51:12But Pitt Rivers was interested in the everyday life
0:51:12 > 0:51:15of the people that lived on Cranborne Chase
0:51:15 > 0:51:17hundreds, thousands of years before.
0:51:22 > 0:51:24Over 17 years,
0:51:24 > 0:51:29Pitt Rivers excavated sites all over Cranborne Chase,
0:51:29 > 0:51:32uncovering everything from Bronze Age barrows
0:51:32 > 0:51:35to Roman farmhouses and Saxon burials.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40Each site meticulously documented.
0:51:42 > 0:51:45Evidence of Pitt Rivers' ground-breaking approach
0:51:45 > 0:51:48to archaeology can be found in Salisbury Museum.
0:51:51 > 0:51:55'Adrian Green is a Pitt Rivers expert.'
0:51:55 > 0:51:58With Schliemann and other earlier collectors,
0:51:58 > 0:51:59often, what we find is
0:51:59 > 0:52:02a rather imprecise way of recording what you've found
0:52:02 > 0:52:05and a rather cavalier way of presenting it.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08With Pitt Rivers, was he more scrupulous in a way?
0:52:08 > 0:52:09Yeah, absolutely.
0:52:09 > 0:52:13He's often referred to as "the Father of modern scientific archaeology,"
0:52:13 > 0:52:16because he had such a precise approach to recording his evidence.
0:52:16 > 0:52:19So it wasn't enough for him to just say it came from a particular site.
0:52:19 > 0:52:21He wanted to be able to demonstrate
0:52:21 > 0:52:25exactly where the objects came from on his excavations.
0:52:25 > 0:52:26He would number that pit
0:52:26 > 0:52:28and actually say at what depth an object was found,
0:52:28 > 0:52:30because if that object was used
0:52:30 > 0:52:33for dating that particular feature or that particular site,
0:52:33 > 0:52:37he wanted absolute proof there in the record, for posterity, basically,
0:52:37 > 0:52:40as well as his contemporaries, to prove what he had found.
0:52:40 > 0:52:42This is a marvellous example of
0:52:42 > 0:52:45technical drawing, isn't it?
0:52:45 > 0:52:47It is, absolutely, and it's a catalogue.
0:52:47 > 0:52:48I think that's what it is.
0:52:48 > 0:52:51Each object is numbered and carefully drawn,
0:52:51 > 0:52:54then coloured, to give you an idea of what it may have looked like.
0:52:54 > 0:52:57I mean, it's extraordinarily detailed.
0:52:57 > 0:52:59I'm just looking here, and you can see
0:52:59 > 0:53:01where the illustrator has painted in
0:53:01 > 0:53:03so that we can see corrosion.
0:53:03 > 0:53:06Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a real labour of love, this, actually,
0:53:06 > 0:53:08the work and the effort that's been put into it.
0:53:08 > 0:53:10Yeah, they are almost like works of art.
0:53:10 > 0:53:13In fact, they ARE works of art, aren't they?
0:53:14 > 0:53:19'For Pitt Rivers, though, even these exquisite drawings weren't enough.'
0:53:19 > 0:53:21So what's this?
0:53:21 > 0:53:24This looks almost like a sort of board game or something.
0:53:24 > 0:53:25It does, doesn't it? Yeah!
0:53:25 > 0:53:28It's actually one of the General's contour plans,
0:53:28 > 0:53:31which were basically a series of models
0:53:31 > 0:53:37that were made of the archaeological sites that he excavated.
0:53:37 > 0:53:42- I love the skeleton, relaxing, a very relaxed pose.- Yes!
0:53:42 > 0:53:45'Pitt Rivers' care, his attention to detail,
0:53:45 > 0:53:48'is simply astonishing.'
0:53:48 > 0:53:51So am I looking here at an early example of 3D modelling?
0:53:51 > 0:53:52You are indeed, yes.
0:53:52 > 0:53:54It's the site to scale,
0:53:54 > 0:53:57showing the locations of the features from one particular area.
0:53:57 > 0:53:59He wants to show the context, that's what he's doing,
0:53:59 > 0:54:01and that's one of the things you see in this model.
0:54:01 > 0:54:05The pits and things are all shown, but also he's painted on labels
0:54:05 > 0:54:07showing where the objects in the pits were found, too,
0:54:07 > 0:54:10and the depth at which they were found.
0:54:10 > 0:54:14How useful to the modern archaeologist
0:54:14 > 0:54:19do you think the, erm... references that he's left are?
0:54:19 > 0:54:20I think they're invaluable,
0:54:20 > 0:54:25because I think you can tell precisely where the features were.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28You can see where some of the major finds were recovered.
0:54:28 > 0:54:31You can see that through the publications.
0:54:31 > 0:54:35You can see that also through the models that he produced as well,
0:54:35 > 0:54:37so these are very useful to modern archaeologists.
0:54:39 > 0:54:42In Pitt Rivers and his meticulous records,
0:54:42 > 0:54:46we're seeing the very birth of modern archaeology.
0:54:46 > 0:54:49And more than a hundred years later,
0:54:49 > 0:54:53everything Pitt Rivers found is still carefully stored.
0:54:55 > 0:54:58Not only pottery and coins, but something else
0:54:58 > 0:55:03that many archaeologists of earlier times would have cast aside.
0:55:04 > 0:55:06Human remains.
0:55:08 > 0:55:09In the 19th century,
0:55:09 > 0:55:12all of those treasure-hunters didn't see any use for these skulls,
0:55:12 > 0:55:15and they often used to put them to one side.
0:55:15 > 0:55:18Unless, of course, you were Pitt Rivers.
0:55:18 > 0:55:22We now know that these are incredibly useful artefacts,
0:55:22 > 0:55:24because you can tell what people died of,
0:55:24 > 0:55:25what diseases they had,
0:55:25 > 0:55:28and sometimes, even what their religious beliefs were.
0:55:28 > 0:55:30Now, one of the reasons why
0:55:30 > 0:55:33we see Pitt Rivers as being such a visionary
0:55:33 > 0:55:35was that he understood that in the future,
0:55:35 > 0:55:38archaeologists might have new scientific techniques
0:55:38 > 0:55:41that would allow them to extract new types of data
0:55:41 > 0:55:43from artefacts like this.
0:55:46 > 0:55:51Just 150 years separates the work of Alcubierre in Herculaneum
0:55:51 > 0:55:53and Pitt Rivers.
0:55:53 > 0:55:57During that time, archaeology had been transformed.
0:55:59 > 0:56:02We've seen the first massive excavations in Herculaneum...
0:56:05 > 0:56:08..the first great state-backed enterprises in Egypt...
0:56:11 > 0:56:12..the first academics.
0:56:14 > 0:56:15And on top of all of that,
0:56:15 > 0:56:20Schliemann and his belief in the use of scientific analysis.
0:56:21 > 0:56:23But for me, as an archaeologist,
0:56:23 > 0:56:27it seems that modern archaeology begins with Pitt Rivers.
0:56:29 > 0:56:32Although most of his work was conducted in the 1880s,
0:56:32 > 0:56:36he feels like a 20th-century archaeologist,
0:56:36 > 0:56:38and many of the developments in that century,
0:56:38 > 0:56:40I'm sure, would have thrilled him.
0:56:43 > 0:56:44'Next time...
0:56:47 > 0:56:50'..archaeology moves into the 20th century...'
0:56:51 > 0:56:54Well, that is absolutely extraordinary.
0:56:54 > 0:56:57'..from civilisation and kings...
0:57:00 > 0:57:01'..to the common man...'
0:57:01 > 0:57:03What I really like about this
0:57:03 > 0:57:07is that it's a very, very different snapshot of our past, isn't it?
0:57:07 > 0:57:10- Of everyday life, lived by everyday people.- Yeah.
0:57:12 > 0:57:15'..as science creates ever more powerful tools
0:57:15 > 0:57:18'to get even closer to our most ancient ancestors...'
0:57:19 > 0:57:21Oh, what's that? Yes, yes!
0:57:21 > 0:57:23Beautiful, beautiful, look!
0:57:24 > 0:57:29'..but, in the process, becomes tinged by politics and ideology.'
0:57:53 > 0:57:56Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd