Britannia Digging for Britain

'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 into our story... Who lived here? When? And how?'

There was a blade in here...here... So he's being attacked from all angles.

'Archaeology is a complex jigsaw puzzle, drawing everything together

'from skeletons to swords, temples to treasure.'

-He's biting his shield.

-Biting his shield, yeah.

'From Orkney to Devon, we're joining this year's quest... on sea, land and air.

'We share all of the questions, and find some of the answers,

'as we join the teams in the field Digging For Britain.'

We know that the Romans invaded and occupied our land

for nearly four centuries, covering it with roads and cities.

But this year, archaeologists are uncovering surprising new evidence which challenges our preconceptions

and offers us a fresh perspective on Roman Britain, revealing a vanished landscape.

Even today, astonishing finds are still emerging from the soil,

bringing us face to face with the people of Britannia.

A newly-discovered town in rural Devon turns history on its head.

The mystery of the 97 dead babies thickens.

And, the Roman god buried for 1,700 years beneath a fort.

The Roman military occupation probably began on the southeast corner of England,

where the Romans are thought to have first landed.

In the story of Roman Britain the mighty legions are famed,

while its fleet, the Classis Britannica, is practically unknown.

For nearly four centuries though, hundreds of wooden ships,

all long vanished, patrolled the Channel.

But I'm on my way to a dig that I'm hoping will take me straight to the control room

of Britain's first major navy...

bringing me closer to the man who ruled Britannia's waves.

There's been a suggestion of a connection between the Roman navy

and a very particular site up here on the cliffs at Folkestone.

So this year archaeologists are excavating that site,

hoping to uncover new evidence and test that possible connection.

On the edge of these cliffs, volunteers are helping to unearth

a magnificent Roman villa in Folkestone, Kent.

First discovered in 1923, the site was re-opened last year.

Those digging know they are probably close to the spot where the Romans

first landed in Britain, under Emperor Claudius, in 43AD.

The excavation of this villa on the edge of Folkestone is being directed by professional archaeologists,

but depends on an army of local volunteers, who are all passionate about the history of their area.

And this site occupies such an amazing place, with a spectacular view looking out over the Channel.

Its location, and the size of this villa, makes archaeologists think it belonged to somebody important.

I'm meeting Andrew Richardson, site supervisor since it re-opened last year.

-The building itself looks almost palatial...

-It is.

Well, this is only a small part of it.

This is one wing, of two wings projecting from the front of a long rectangular building.

And you've got further blocks beyond the fence over there,

and a third block which would have been a bath block,

and quite a lot of that has actually gone over the cliff, has been lost to erosion.

The extraordinary size and prime location suggest that the inhabitant was well-connected.

So what sort of person would have lived in a villa like this, with its own bathhouse?

Obviously somebody... Either an individual or a family of immense wealth and power.

Somebody who's come from the empire, said, "I like this spot,

"and I'm going to build myself a proper Roman residence."

But something more concrete is needed to pinpoint the individual's actual identity.

Dozens of trademarked roof tiles have come up from the soil linking

the former inhabitant to the Roman navy, the Classis Britannica.

These are two very special tiles, because they're stamped -

with a circular stamp and the letters CL BR.

-So what does this stand for?

-It stands for Classis Britannica.

-So this is the stamp of the Roman fleet in Britain?

-Yes,

and we do know that the fleet was commanded by prefects.

So this position, the prefect of Classis Britannica,

that's kind of equivalent to an admiral?

Equivalent to an admiral, yeah, and perhaps commanding 30 ships and several thousand men.

Probably its primary role was transport for the army,

but it certainly also had a role in both patrolling the seas, and also exploration,

establishing just how big this island the Romans had come to was.

In the island of Britannia, whoever commanded the sea controlled the land.

Seven possible Roman fortified harbours cluster around the Kent peninsula,

with Folkestone in the centre, facing Boulogne.

The quantity of the tiles found here and the villa's geographical position

raises the tantalising possibility that this villa

once housed the commander of the fleet.

One suggestion is it's the admiral's, the prefect's house.

It looks straight out to Boulogne which is the headquarters of their main fleet base, a large fort.

Further along the coast at Dover, they've got a fort,

and they've got another fort at Lympne to the west.

And this is almost halfway between Dover and Lympne.

You can imagine that, you know, the commander of what is effectively

the most powerful military organisation in the region at the time

is the sort of person who would have the clout to live at a place like this.

The idea that this was the home of one of Britain's first, and most important, naval commanders,

is incredibly exciting.

The volunteers are re-discovering the layout of this once luxurious home.

It is amazing just to touch a piece of archaeology - something that you know that

you're the first person that has touched it in 2,000 years or more.

-So, Ian, we heard you just found something?

-That's right, yes.

-A coin, probably Roman... A minim.

-Just come up?

-Yup.

-So, Ian, you've just found this?

-Yup.

-Can I have a look?

-Yeah.

-What is it, Keith?

I should guess it's late 3rd- or 4th-century Roman.

Oh, I'm amazed you managed to find that, Ian, it's absolutely tiny.

Ian's coin adds to the hundreds found here,

suggesting the site existed for most of the Roman period,

stretching from the Claudian invasion in 43AD

right into the 360s - 50 years before the end of Roman Britain.

It was forgotten for nearly 1,500 years more - and now...

it faces destruction.

There is a particular sense of urgency to the excavations here at Folkestone,

because this villa is slowly but surely slipping down the cliffs into the sea.

The bathhouse has already disappeared.

And this is partly why so many local people have volunteered here -

because they know that it will soon be too late.

Project director Lesley Hardy knows that this is, in every sense, archaeology on the edge.

This really is a rescue excavation, isn't it, because this villa is under threat.

Yes. You can see... This is a photograph that was taken in 1924,

and here what we've done is we've superimposed a line which shows

the current cliff edge, and you can see how much has already been lost.

So it looks like part of the Roman buildings have actually been lost.

Which area is this?

This is the bathhouse area of that block,

and it's largely gone now over the edge of the cliff.

It tends to go in clumps and big bites. It's just sliding down,

sliding down, constantly, bringing all the archaeology with it.

The sea is waiting to claim this unique site.

In this race against time, the archaeologists must get there first,

salvaging material forgotten for one and a half millennia,

in search of more evidence

that this was indeed the home of the commander of the Roman navy.

But often in archaeology, the discovery of objects is merely page one, chapter one

in the reappraisal of history,

for the finds themselves frequently baffle us.

I'm travelling towards Buckinghamshire, where, last year,

we discovered a truly shocking mystery -

the bones of 97 babies, which had been buried beneath

a Roman villa called Yewden, just outside the village of Hambleden.

There's something very strange going on there, isn't there?

97 babies in one rural site, all about the same age.

Horrifying conclusions were unavoidable.

What we're dealing with is infants that died around time of birth

and that made us think that perhaps these individuals had been deliberately killed.

But why?

The only explanation you keep coming back to is it's got to have been a brothel.

The case of the 97 dead babies at Yewden Roman villa was, I think,

the most disturbing story that we covered last year.

And it caught the imagination of people not just in Britain but around the world.

It really is a mystery.

Were those babies murdered?

And, if so, why?

Well, when I looked at the bones more closely when we'd finished filming,

I noticed what I thought was probably a cut mark on one of them,

so it all sounds even more sinister and I had to investigate further.

Hello. Hello. Simon, have you brought the bones?

I have indeed, yes.

'I asked two other experts in human bones, Simon Mays and Kate Robson-Brown,

'to help me find out if those cut-marks were ancient,

'or if they could have been made by an archaeologist's trowel.'

What do you think of those, Kate?

You can't quite tell how deep they go.

So can we look at these underneath the light microscope, just to see what those cuts look like?

I think that would help.

Have a look and see if there's any sediment in them.

If these cuts have got sediment in them, then that suggests they're genuine old Roman cuts.

'The microscopic image suggests that a knife was indeed taken to this baby,

'cutting the flesh right down to the bone.'

Now I think you can see that one does look like

there's sediment in it and you can almost see

the mineral sparkle of the soil there.

So there's definitely soil inside those cut marks.

Right. That does suggest then that we're looking at something ancient rather than recent.

Oh, that's really intriguing.

The presence of the soil that they were buried in, embedded deep inside the cuts,

strongly suggests that the cuts are very old.

They could have been made around the time of the baby's death.

But why might these babies have been killed?

Romans sometimes limited family size by killing babies, especially female ones.

The appearance of these bones can't tell us if the babies were male or female...

but their DNA can.

Wrapped up to prevent contamination, Keri Brown,

an expert in ancient human DNA, chose ten of the skeletons.

But extracting ancient DNA is a painstaking task.

The results, however, are clear.

Five girls...

and five boys.

It's only a tiny sample but now we know it wasn't just female infanticide.

But can the artefacts found at the villa tell us if the deaths

were close enough in time to justify the grim conclusion of murder?

I met the archaeologist Jill Eyers to find out when the objects were produced.

We were absolutely blessed with a wealth,

about 34 kilograms of material that is very datable.

Just as an example, that little vessel is a cup.

I've got "Crobiso". It's "Crobiso M", which... M is short for MANU.

"Manufactured by the hand of Crobiso."

So this is a potter between 135 and 180,

so I can say absolutely that the babies we have the dates for are 150 to 200AD.

So many infant deaths over just 50 years in one rural site.

It seems too many to be the result of natural causes.

It points to foul play.

Now when I spoke to you about this last year,

you suggested the idea of a brothel

as a potential explanation for a lot of unwanted children.

Where are you now with your brothel theory?

Do you think this is the most likely explanation?

Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't want to favour it.

I put it forward as a suggestion to get people going.

Now, studying all the artefacts, all the data,

every alternative for natural explanations I can think of,

I'm back with the brothel.

First of all, we've got a lot of females on site

as shown by female artefacts.

So are these some of the female artefacts?

Yeah, I've just brought a couple of little things to show you.

Beautiful little hairpins, beautiful carved items.

A whole range of these on site.

Jill has further evidence that she believes may bolster her theory that this was a brothel,

a fragment of pornographic pottery.

Oh, that is quite naughty.

I can see what they're doing.

So there's one person standing here.

There's another person standing behind them.

And something unmentionable is going on just there.

So, a suggestive clue.

But where would the customers have come from?

Hambleden is in the middle of nowhere.

That was my biggest problem when I tentatively suggested it

because where are the clientele coming from? It's a rural location.

Then we discovered some of the trackways.

Trackways that lead from the river, the major arterial route in the Roman world.

We've got a track leading from the river, right past Yewden,

and goes directly to Dorchester.

Jill also believes that there might once have been a ford near Yewden villa.

Divers have told her that the Thames is unusually shallow here.

I'm going to see for myself.

The river really does seem shallow enough that, in Roman times, it might have been a ford.

Perhaps passing trade had to unload here

and then turned to Yewden brothel for some refreshment?

Over the last year, Jill has been looking again at the finds from Yewden

and the wider landscape and exploring her brothel idea.

I'm intrigued by Jill's theory about Yewden being a brothel,

but I'm not at all convinced by it -

it seems to be based on almost entirely circumstantial evidence.

Well, now I'm hoping to look at some hard evidence,

in the from of artefacts from the villa excavations

and they're held at Buckinghamshire County Museum where I'm going to meet the curator.

'His name is Brett Thorn.'

Brett, what do you think of Jill's theory about the villa being a brothel?

I'm not convinced, I have to say.

It's too far from any major population centres.

What we have here are some objects from the excavation.

These finely-crafted objects suggest something other than the cold-blooded murder of babies,

a far more benign explanation.

One that's been suggested involves the cult of the mother goddess.

There are, from thousands of objects on the site,

three which relate to the mother goddess cult potentially.

A beautiful piece of pottery bears signs of this cult.

-This is wonderful.

-This is a mortarium.

It's a grinding bowl

and what's special about this one is the decoration you can see.

-It's got peacocks on it.

-Exactly. So the peacock is the symbol of Juno,

a Roman goddess, who is involved with childbirth.

Well, the top Roman goddess.

Exactly. The Queen of the gods. yeah.

There's more evidence as well -

a scarab beetle evoking the Egyptian mother goddess, Isis,

and an intriguing sherd of pottery.

This one is a favourite and it's only a tiny fragment of a statuette.

What you've got here is an arm holding a baby.

I can see the little baby there in the crook of her arm.

And this is the side of a chair. It's a woman holding, usually a baby on each breast, nursing.

This is the Dea Nutrix, the nursing goddess.

It looks almost like a Madonna and child.

It's like iconography which happens in Christian times.

Exactly, it's the mother and child. It's an eternal symbol.

So you have a Roman mother cult.

You have a Gaelic or Celtic mother cult.

And then you have this carved stone scarab beetle...

Isis is the Egyptian mother goddess.

If you've got a cult of the mother goddess there, then...

it could be somewhere to go for protection, for help, during times of birth.

So perhaps women used Yewden villa as a birth centre,

with a doctor present.

Could this explain those cut-marks I saw on one of the baby's bones?

One of the possible explanations for this that Simon Mays and I discussed

was that they might have been cut marks that were made

during an embryotomy, in order save the mother's life.

If this was a dead baby, then that could be an explanation,

so maybe there was something going on in terms of obstetrics.

Somebody who was trying to help, yeah.

Be it the priestesses of the cult or the local midwife or whoever.

If you have women regularly coming to give birth, somebody will know what to do.

If women from the region did come to Yewden to give birth,

the large number of infant deaths could be explained without citing murder.

Yet the evidence for Brett's idea is no less circumstantial than Jill's.

So what we've got here at Yewden is an infant cemetery

with ages at death that strongly suggest infanticide.

But are we looking at something which is simply an extreme of what was normal for Roman society?

Because we know that the Romans did practice infanticide.

Or is there something else going on here to explain all of those dead babies?

Could this have been a birthing centre or a brothel?

Well, the evidence as it stands is, I think, inconclusive.

I'm going to sit on the fence on this one, and wait for more evidence to come to light.

So, at the moment, Yewden remains a bit of a mystery.

At times, archaeology merely tantalises us.

But I'm on my way to an entire lost Roman town

that promises to radically rewrite the history books.

It lies beyond a supposed boundary of Roman rule, Exeter,

in an area where mighty legions once feared to tread.

Or did they?

In 2009, two metal detectorists, Jim Wills and Dennis Hewings, made an unexpected discovery

in a field outside a tiny village in South Devon, 30 miles west of Exeter -

a Roman coin.

Then they found another,

and another. They carried on finding them.

Soon they had dozens.

An extraordinary story was beginning.

But this doesn't seem to make any sense.

There aren't really meant to be any Roman settlements west of Exeter.

The metal detectorists contacted the Portable Antiquities Scheme,

the organisation that manages finds like these,

made by the general public, right across the UK,

and the people at the PAS realised that this was potentially a very important discovery.

This March, Danielle Wootton - Devon's PAS officer -

began leading the excavations.

Yet more coins began to appear, suggesting an astonishing story.

This was probably a missing Roman town,

in a region they were never supposed to have settled.

Danielle took me to the top of the hill to look over the fields,

where an entire town lies waiting to be unearthed.

This large field here is the field we can see over there,

with the trench in. It's where we put one of the trenches.

There's features in all these fields. We have 13 fields' worth of features.

-And that's over a huge area, then.

-Over a massive area, absolutely.

What has been discovered of this town

already covers many acres of land.

And there may be more.

Danielle knows that these now-tranquil fields were once bustling with life.

What an amazing site. You know, sites like this always astound me

because what you're looking at now is just a rural landscape with lots of fields.

I know, that's the amazing thing.

I mean it's very, very quiet and rural now

but what we've got to try and imagine actually are houses,

round houses, set within enclosures, little paddocks,

where there's perhaps horses, cows, sheep, children running around,

playing games, smoke coming up from the roofs of the houses.

Just amazing to look out on this landscape

and just imagine life here 2,000 years ago.

The digging resumed in June with the help of dozens of eager local volunteers.

Hundreds of objects - rare pieces of pottery and scores of coins -

started to come up out of the ground.

We've got a large selection of coins.

Our earliest coin is a Roman Republican coin.

It's a coin of Acilius, which dates back to 49BC.

Oh, right. So this is... How is this getting to Britain, then?

Britain's not part of the Empire then.

No, absolutely not. We think what's happening here is,

because the silver's such good quality,

that it's staying in circulation much later on, in later centuries.

So it's kind of the equivalent of having some Victorian change on you when you come over to Britain.

So this is a coin that was minted in the first century BC

-but probably came over here in the first century AD.

-Absolutely.

That's lovely.

The coins suggest a long life for this town,

from the first years after the invasion, until the last century of occupation.

This was no passing encampment,

but a substantial Romano-British settlement of almost 400 years.

Danielle's other finds suggest that this was no rural backwater, either.

So when you started excavating, what other artefacts did you find?

-We've got a large selection of pottery. For instance, this is a bit of amphora handle.

-Oh, lovely.

Amphora is kind of like a big jug.

Yeah. Big wine vessels, weren't they?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And these were being imported.

This has come from Spain.

It's dated to the first to the second century AD.

And it would've had, for instance, wine or olive oil

or even this horrible thing called garum, which was rotting fish guts.

Oh, that sounds disgusting!

They used to put it on all their food.

But this is a really good example of pottery coming over.

Why? Why is it coming over here in South Devon?

This is the really interesting thing.

These discoveries are building a picture of a thriving town,

but in an area always thought too dangerous to occupy.

And the clincher is the discovery of a Roman road,

connecting the town to the wider world.

Danielle, this is very exciting. Did you expect to find this?

This came up as a result of doing geophysics.

We could see there was something traipsing along through the site,

through the settlement, and what you can see here is a section of it.

-Yeah.

-So we're actually standing on top of a 2,000-year-old road here.

So from the orientation of this road,

where do you think it goes from and to?

I suspect part of it is going to Exeter,

probably heading out towards the coast.

Perhaps we've got a trade route here.

Given that we've got all this imported pottery, it would make sense.

So far, archaeologists have found 97 coins,

hundreds of artefacts, and even a buried Roman road.

But towns house people.

While I was on site, Danielle's team was uncovering the first evidence of the town's forgotten inhabitants.

You can just see the top. We have some human remains.

We have part of a skeleton coming up through the soil.

-Can I... Can I get down here?

-Yeah, sure.

So this is, um... Well, the outline of a skull, so...

so the top half or the side of the skull has been taken away.

I think we've got some teeth down here.

Then we're just seeing the outline of the skull coming around here.

The people who lived, worked, and died in this forgotten town

are coming up out of the ground,

revealed by the archaeologist's trowel,

unearthing a possible burial ground.

-Is that another one over there?

-And there's another one here.

So here you can see we have the top of a skull.

And so this is kind of throwing up even more questions than we were expecting, really.

We were just looking for the road and now it looks like we've got possibly some kind of a cemetery.

If this chance find is a cemetery, we will one day know much more

about the long-vanished town and its people.

It's so exciting being here at the beginning of something,

which I imagine is going to turn out to be a massive archaeological story.

I can imagine that in 10 or 20 years' time, people will be writing history books

and will be talking about this site

as the one that revolutionised our understanding of the Romans in the Southwest.

I'm travelling from Exeter to Wales, to Caerleon,

in the tracks of the mighty Second Legion Augusta,

which abandoned Exeter in 75AD.

This amphitheatre is part of the massive Caerleon fort complex,

also started in 75AD, by General Frontius.

It was first dug in 1909.

But more than a century later, it is throwing up objects

that breathe new life into the legion's long-dead men.

Caerleon Roman amphitheatre is one of the great symbols of Roman Britain,

up there with Hadrian's Wall.

And for many local children, it's their first real experience of the Romans.

I certainly remember coming here on a primary school field trip

and it had a big impact on me.

But just last year, new excavations unearthed something extraordinary -

a warehouse full of objects

which give us an insight into the Romans' private lives.

Inside the warehouse, the archaeologists made an unexpected discovery -

beautiful artefacts. Tiny clues to a bigger picture,

which presented an intriguing mystery -

why were they abandoned in the first place?

The archaeologist in charge of the dig is Peter Guest.

Peter, this is an extraordinary collection of finds to come from one excavation.

And what you see in front of you is just a selection of the 1,200 or so

metal and other objects that were recovered over six weeks last year.

And I've never seen such a beautiful assortment of Roman artefacts from one site.

Amongst them, these fish brooches.

Originally, they would have had enamel in the eye.

Very beautiful examples of their type

and to find three together is extremely rare.

These exquisite brooches probably once belonged to long-dead legionnaires and their wives.

So, too, did this head of the goddess Minerva.

And then this extremely nice fitting which is a...

You can see the lion's head there.

He's fantastic. What would that have been?

Part of a piece of furniture?

Probably from a piece of furniture. You can see the iron tang

that would have gone into the side of a wooden object.

This lovely lion's head was perhaps intended for a funerary casket,

breaking before it could be used and ending up in the warehouse instead, with everything else.

It seems like such a motley collection of objects. It's almost like a junk shop.

Or possibly a lock-up kind of store, you know,

like the things that we use today

where if you've got too many things in your house,

you hire a small unit and you put all the things you don't really need immediately away there.

Amongst those objects, destined for Caerleon's Roman Legion Museum,

was something mysterious and utterly unique -

pieces of a Roman garment.

They are being painstakingly conserved in Cardiff.

Penny, what have you got here?

This is one of the lumps that we actually excavated from Caerleon

and, basically, it came to me like this.

We had to sort of wrap it up carefully,

so it could be transported.

But when the top was taken off,

we seem to have this extremely interesting sort of fish-scale effect,

which has been created through very tiny sort of flat-headed pins.

I mean, it almost looks like sequins, doesn't it?

Yes, they are, and they've been laid on top of each other

in such a way to move and create a sort of shimmering effect.

Penny thinks she has a garment here unlike anything previously discovered.

So is this unique? There's nothing like it in the whole of the known Roman Empire?

I've never seen anything like this before,

and, as far as I know, the curators are not aware of anything like this before

from the Roman Empire.

Is it some kind of armour?

Possibly part of it, a decorative part of it.

Another piece of this garment provides one more clue to the owner's identity,

suggesting this could indeed have been armour.

There was another...

That... Oh, that's got a little face on it. So this was part of it?

That was and it's got a solid head of Mithras attached.

This is quite an extraordinary garment.

It would have been wonderful with the fish scales glimmering.

Then you've got these little details, like the head of Mithras.

And he is a god, I think, who's particularly associated with the Roman army.

Very much, yes.

This tiny little head brings me closer to the person who once wore this garment,

to the soldiers from every corner of the empire who came to Caerleon Fort

and adopted the weird male-only warrior cult of Mithras,

bathing themselves in bull's blood.

This garment is a one-off, with all the individuality of a person.

We may never know who owned this or exactly when he wore it.

When this armour is finally restored,

it will present cryptic clues to the crumbling of Roman power in Caerleon.

It's thought that, by the early fourth century here,

the Roman military presence had, if not completely disappeared, at least been significantly reduced.

So you can imagine the people staying on, struggling to maintain what had once been a great fortress

as buildings fell into ruins about them.

And in a corner of a crumbling warehouse, that forgotten suit of armour.

Well, those objects that were missed by people all those centuries ago

were preserved for archaeologists to find.

So after 1,700 years of oblivion they've gained a new life.

The once-glittering armour, adorned with the head of the warrior-god Mithras,

brings us face-to-face with the Roman soldiers of Caerleon

and how they worshipped.

And 70 miles away, in rural Dorset, deep inside Roman Britain,

a site is throwing up exciting clues to a complex pattern of belief across Britannia.

Most people know that the Romans were capable of religious intolerance,

doing things like throwing Christians to the lions, for instance.

But returning to Bere Regis, a site I visited last year,

they're now finding evidence that life here was much more harmonious

and even curiously modern.

More than 200 students work on what is one of the country's largest digs.

My day here is, I am told, the rainiest day in its three-year history.

And as the day progresses, it becomes a mud-fest worthy of Glastonbury,

trowels dredging up a mud-spattered Roman Britain.

For the Romans, Bere Regis was probably an ideal colony -

a profitable farmstead made rich by grain and pottery,

with a compliant ruling class.

By 350, Britannia was part of an officially Christian empire.

But the truth, as site director Miles Russell knows, is much more complicated.

Miles, where are we standing right now?

We're standing, at the moment, in the remains of a very late Roman...

probably not a villa as such but it is a very Romanised building,

and this, I think, is probably our most impressive find to date.

It's a little pendant, it's pierced in the middle there.

This is actually a re-used coin.

It's actually of the Emperor Magnentius in the 350s AD.

And from our point of view, the key interest is that it's a Christian symbol.

It's a Chi Rho...

Yeah, so you can see the Rho and Chi,

-so that's the first two letters of Christ's name.

-Exactly.

So someone's taken that coin and has obviously turned it into a pendant

to identify themselves as an adherent to Christ, to the Christian God.

But Christianity was only one religion in Dorset,

in rainy Britannia, at this time.

So have you got evidence of other religions, or other faiths,

still being practised at the same time as Christianity?

Yes, indeed, we've got this nice little bone handle,

and you can see this female figure with a very ornate headdress

and then a series of eagles and birds around the outer side.

They're lovely... wow!

This is an image of Medusa.

I can't see any snakes round the head, though.

No, no. I mean, it's actually her being shown as a healer, as associated with animals.

But the key thing is this is being used at the time that someone is wearing this Christian pendant.

If Christianity has become the state faith,

whereby all other faiths have to be rejected,

then this is the kind of object that shouldn't be used.

But it's quite clear from this and from other material

that people are still accepting of the non-Christian gods.

It's interesting that towards the end of the Roman period on this site,

we're seeing a spirit of religious tolerance,

with different faiths being practised alongside each other.

And in fact, there's a similar story right at the beginning of the Roman period.

We don't see an abrupt transition from one lifestyle and set of rituals to another.

And we're seeing that very clearly from the burial practices on this site.

The archaeologists think they've found a cemetery for the elite.

Dated to the late first century, these people would have interacted with the earliest Roman officials.

And each is buried in a strangely contorted position,

alongside symbols of wealth, pots.

This is evidence of a local religion which you might have expected the Roman conquerors to stamp out.

Miles, looking at these two burials here, there seem to be a lot of similarities.

They're obviously both in a crouched position.

All the burials that we get here, across this part of Dorset,

they're all the same - they're all crouched, or sort of...

The knees are up towards the chest.

They're all lying on their right side.

The head is always at the eastern end of the grave cut, so the face is facing north.

And I think these burials show that the impact of Rome

wasn't that extreme to begin with,

that people are still carrying on their practices, still worshipping their gods.

And in terms of these particular burials that we're looking at just here,

do you think these are the elite that we're looking at?

I think they probably are. These are the well-to-do elements.

Possibly these are the last set of people

who are harking back to an earlier age, to a more sort of British culture.

So it seems that some people living here were doing very well indeed out of being part of the Roman Empire.

But what we have to remember is that those crouch burials

are high status - that's the wealthy elite we're looking at.

Life wasn't nearly so rosy for everyone else, as their bones reveal.

Dozens of other skeletons from the dig have been brought to the mobile unit on site,

where bone expert Martin Smith is examining them for tell-tale signs of their lives and deaths.

Martin, we've got some clues about what was going on

with this population as they became part of the Roman world. But what do their bones tell us?

Yeah, this individual has a few things going on here...

This is someone who is in...sort of moving into later adolescence,

as far as we can tell from looking at their bones.

We've seen, in some individuals' teeth,

these horizontal lines running across the teeth

and what these are showing up is episodes of arrested development

when this person was very young, so the enamel stopped developing, and then restarted again.

So these are telling us about specific episodes of either severe illness or of malnourishment.

The long bones seem to support this dark picture of widespread starvation,

of lives blighted by poverty.

This is from a child aged about nine or ten.

If we look here, this is an X-ray of that bone.

-Of this actual bone?

-Absolutely, so that's an X-ray of the tibia.

And I can see the... I can see the problem there immediately. I can see these tide lines in it.

Each of these little lines, similar to what we were seeing in the teeth.

Each of these represent a specific episode of arrested growth in that individual.

So this person was either severely ill or really quite badly malnourished.

So would you say that there was an unusual level of physiological stress

-in this population during Roman times?

-That's a good question.

And it may be the case that people who were owning the villa may have been doing very well for themselves.

But the people who were actually working the land -

who possibly may actually have been slaves -

may not have had the same kind of access to resources

and the same kind of access to interesting diets and so on.

What we're looking at here is a window onto a third-world population.

Martin's examination of these young people's bones

provides us with a stark reminder of a brutal world,

a world that only archaeology can recapture.

Throughout the Roman period, extreme poverty existed alongside great wealth.

But it's the rich, with their sculptures and chattels,

their trinkets and their artefacts, not the poor, who are most visible.

300 hundred miles north, near the Scottish border,

a recent find is a stellar example of the splendours of Roman Britain and its mighty legions.

This beautiful helmet was found just outside the tiny Cumbrian village

of Crosby Garrett,

less than 50 miles from the border town of Carlisle,

which itself nestles beneath the shadow of Hadrian's Wall.

It was discovered in a field by a metal detectorist last May.

At first, he was baffled by the 70 loose pieces of metal he'd found.

He thought they were Victorian.

But re-assembled, this proved to be an extremely rare

Roman parade helmet, used for ceremonies and mock battles.

Once the helmet was restored, it became, almost overnight,

a national icon, but then, not long after, the cause of bitter controversy.

The story of the Crosby Garrett helmet is all about money.

First of all, the Romans' love of costly adornment

and then, what happens when money and modern archaeology come into conflict.

The British Museum's famous Ribchester Helmet is curated by Ralph Jackson,

who was stunned by this one, found in Crosby Garrett.

It was a very exciting moment.

This was a face mask from a cavalry sports helmet, a rare find.

Not only did we have the face mask but we had the helmet behind it

and also the crest that went on top of it.

These three pieces, which made a complete cavalry sports parade helmet,

made it something truly unique. And most remarkable of all, really,

is looking into that face from the past

and that, of course, is the thing that grabbed everyone's attention.

Andrew Mackay, collections manager at Carlisle's local museum

coveted this helmet for his new Roman gallery,

entranced by its beauty.

The reason that they were tinned and gilded, I think,

is to catch the light.

So, on parade, your eyes were drawn

to these magnificent cavalry men on horseback.

And it was a status, saying, "These are the elite people,

"we really need to take notice."

And they had feathers and ribbons hanging at the back as well,

so they really were a beautiful sight.

The public may have assumed that the mask would soon be at a gallery for all to see.

But the Treasure Act of 1988,

which was passed to keep great finds in the public realm,

only protects objects containing gold or silver.

The helmet was made of bronze.

The finder and the farmer, on whose land it was buried,

were free to sell it to the highest bidder.

Andrew launched a campaign to buy it for the new gallery of the Tullie House Museum,

raising an extraordinary £2,000,000 in only three and half weeks.

And finally for this morning, ladies and gentlemen, the Crosby Garrett helmet, lot number 176.

£150,000. 150, thank you, sir.

160, 170, 180, 190, 200.

At the start of the auction, the price was estimated at £200,000 to £300,000.

480,000. I've got 500,000 in a new place.

Within seconds, bids exceeded this.

It goes 700,000.

800,000.

950,000.

More seconds passed.

£1,000,000. 1,600,000. 1,800,000.

A few more seconds later, the bid had topped 2,000,000.

2,000,000.

-At £2,000,000.

-Andrew had to withdraw, leaving two other bidders to battle it out.

Sold! Thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

The helmet finally sold for almost £2,300,000,

about ten times the estimated value.

Since then, it has vanished from the public eye,

its whereabouts a complete mystery.

I think this story is really important,

because it makes us look at the moral and political dimensions

of treasure hunting and archaeology.

And it's all about who owns our history.

If you think, as I do, that in fact the heritage out there in the landscape belongs to all of us,

then it seems terribly unjust that one person should be able to lay claim to a particular object,

that that object would then disappear off into the vaults of some wealthy collector.

But a change in the law governing treasure could stop that happening again.

Last year there were almost 1,000 reports of discovered treasure, most made by metal detectorists.

But these discoveries exist alongside the less glamorous toil

of archaeologists at hundreds of digs every year.

Along Hadrian's Wall alone, there were four huge Roman excavations this year.

Just south, along the Roman road of Dere Street,

I'm on my way to a dig that has thrown up astonishing evidence

about what happened inside the forts after the Romans left Britain in 410AD.

So what do we know about the Roman occupation of Britain?

Well, they arrived here in 43AD.

They ruled here and they built here for nearly four centuries.

Then they packed up and left in 410,

snuffing out the flame of civilisation,

and plunging Britain into the Dark Ages.

But what if the Romans never actually left?

What they're finding now at Binchester raises that very possibility.

More than 100 students work on this dig.

But as the weather worsens, they begin leaving.

The digging is becoming more difficult by the minute.

At 3pm, it is judged unsafe and the dig is closed.

I return the next day and the rain is once more falling.

The last days of Roman Britain are emerging from the dark mud.

It seems like there was some kind of floor surface that's been laid down,

-re-using other stone and then this bit's been robbed out.

-Yeah.

It has long been assumed that when the Roman Empire

stopped paying their troops, the soldiers were forced to leave, in search of a new living.

But excavations in Binchester's barracks are illustrating an untold story,

in which the soldiers stay on and go native.

And the tale starts somewhere quite unremarkable,

a hole filled with animal bones.

So what are we standing in here?

We're standing in a very big stone-lined pit.

We're almost certain that what we've got here

is evidence for a tanning industry.

Turning cow hides into leather,

and it's quite a complicated process, which involves soaking the hides

in a variety of different noxious substances, scraping all the fat off the cow hides.

This hole is certainly large enough to soak a few cow hides,

but David Petts has other evidence to support his theory.

The first thing is these are big holes, bit pits.

And the other thing is we've got lots of animal bone out of these pits,

-skull fragments and fragments of the feet.

-And you've got some bones here.

We've got a range of the things we've been finding.

-We found this.

-Part of a cow's skull.

Cow's skull, out of this pit.

We've got lots of other jaws, fragments of horn, of skull,

and these exactly the kind of things you get with a tannery,

because when you skin the cow, the skull and the feet come with it.

David thinks he's discovered evidence of an industry

that grew up after Rome stopped its soldiers' wages...

and perhaps the Romans never really left.

So you actually think it's the Roman soldiers who stayed here?

Absolutely. When governments go, the people don't.

The people are still there, they've still got to find a way of living, of going on.

-No matter what happens.

-And how remarkable that you've managed to identify the industry

that they were engaged in here.

Binchester is the largest Roman fort in County Durham,

and only a tiny part of it has been excavated so far.

The discovery of objects revising our understanding

of the Roman withdrawal makes it an important site.

More evidence is emerging out of the soil, not just of a tanning industry,

but something even more unexpected -

jewellery workshops continuing when civilisation was thought to have collapsed.

We also think we're getting evidence for either very late or immediately post-Roman jet working.

-We've actually got lumps of raw jet, so that must actually have come up from Whitby.

-Yeah.

And we've also got things like this, a fragment of a jet bangle.

It's still unfinished, it hasn't been polished off.

It must've been broken when it was being produced.

So clearly it's being used by the local people.

Specialist craftwork and a trade in jewellery after the collapse of civilisation?

Could these really have emerged from the shadows of the Dark Ages?

In order to see some better-preserved small finds,

I'm visiting what was once the Commander's house, and custodian Rob Collins.

Rob, you've got some wonderful finds here.

Binchester has produced a load of material, really, in just the two and a half seasons we've done.

I love these beads.

Yes, we have a number of different beads. They're segmented beads.

They're nice. Are they actually drilled through?

They actually do drill through them and you get strings of them.

That's really beautiful.

The jet is very friable, so it breaks and splits quite easily

if you don't know how to work it properly. It's interesting that we've got...

specialist craftworkers on site,

-in probably the years after the end of the Roman Empire.

-Right.

Some of this jewellery looks significantly more Roman than others.

Officers and magistrates would have worn these crossbow brooches

to proclaim their importance in the Roman hierarchy.

But after 410AD, the crossbow brooch vanishes from the dig

and the Romans who stay on here adopt a style of brooch from times

before the army ever set foot on Britannia's shores.

A penannular brooch, shaped like a broken circle.

This is a terminal of a penannular brooch...

so it would be C-shaped in its full form and that's just the tiny end of it there.

But that's much more of a British type of object.

And what is quite interesting is that the crossbow brooches -

those large, honking Roman symbols of power -

don't continue on in the post-Roman years.

But penannular brooches do.

Why do you think they don't continue making brooches in the Roman style?

I suspect that the frontier is a dangerous place.

And I think as Roman power is withdrawing,

the people who are here need to make new alliances,

so perhaps it's better to display your Britishness

rather than your Roman-ness.

-So life is changing.

-Life is changing very much.

As the archaeology at Binchester shows,

it's much too simplistic to imagine one epoch - Roman Britain -

suddenly ending as another - the Dark Ages - begins.

In truth, one period always bleeds slowly into the next.

People don't abandon their beliefs and lifestyles overnight

and in our material culture, the past often lives on into the present.

This church, just a few miles away from Binchester Roman fort,

is one of the earliest in England.

It was built by the Anglo-Saxons, using stone from the fort.

And it represents the endless recycling of materials by subsequent generations and cultures.

And here those Roman stones are part of a building which is still in use today.

From this church built after the Roman withdrawal,

to the magnificent villa near the place they probably first landed,

the Romans are still very much with us,

even in the soil beneath our feet.

It always surprises me that during this period of history -

the Roman occupation of Britain spanning nearly four centuries -

we are still learning new information from archaeology,

like the discovery of an unexpected Romano-British settlement to the west of Exeter,

and here, at Binchester, what seem to be Romans staying on,

long after their army has packed up and left.

It brings it home to me that there are still many discoveries to be made,

and so, even as I speak, the digging continues.

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