East Digging for Britain

Hello, and welcome to Digging For Britain

the programme which brings you this year's

most exciting new archaeology.

In this show, we'll be looking at highlights from all the digs.

We'll get some in-depth analysis

and we'll be looking at treasures from the past.

CHEERING

Once again, over the last year, archaeologists

have been unearthing our history in hundreds of digs across Britain.

Go on!

It's a tooth.

They've gone to extraordinary lengths

to uncover secrets from the past.

Retelling our story in a way that only archaeology can.

-It's in perfect, mint condition.

-Yeah, amazing. Well done.

-Whoo!

And our archaeologists have been out filming themselves

so we have been there for every single moment of discovery.

And then we're coming back here, to Norwich Museum,

and seeing if we can really make sense of the new discoveries.

In this series, we'll be touring the country

and tonight we're in the South East.

First, we hear about incredible finds

at a Bronze-Age Pompeii in The Fens.

We unearth an amazing hoard hidden in desperation

as Queen Boudica's Tribe hunted down the Romans.

And we discover weird burial rituals revealing

the secrets of Anglo-Saxon motherhood and childbirth.

Norwich Castle Museum, originally a Norman fortress,

is now home to the archaeological riches of the Southeast.

Norfolk is the treasure capital of England and each year 20,000

finds are reported to the museum. More than in any other county.

Finds like the Happisburgh Axe.

Dating to half a million years ago, it comes from what's

become one of the most important prehistoric sites in Britain.

And the Snettisham Hoard.

The richest Iron-Age treasure ever found in this country.

Our first story takes us 70 miles away from Norwich,

right into the heart of The Fenlands.

Must Farm in Cambridgeshire is being called

the Pompeii of the Bronze Age. Preserved in the wetlands

of The Fens, this site is giving us an unparalleled

glimpse of prehistoric life, going back over 3,000 years.

In the past, archaeologists have uncovered ancient causeways

running through the Fenland basin,

making them think that Bronze-Age people

saw this watery landscape

as a sacred place, only visiting it on special occasions.

But now, on the edge of a quarry,

they're finding evidence of industrialised fishing

opening up a whole new perception of life in The Fens.

It's something never seen before and, more importantly,

they believe it could stretch for miles.

This is archaeology on a massive scale.

Mark Knight from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit

has been analysing some of the most recent finds from

a lost side channel of the River Nene.

Often we dig sites of the sort of Bronze Age in this region

and we find one vertebrae and we say that that's evidence

for fish in the diet or we say that maybe it's a chance find.

But we're just finding lots and lots of fish

and we're finding things like pike and perch and carp and smelt.

And then when we went to excavate the channel properly,

we then found about 20 really beautifully preserved

sort of sock-shaped baskets that are definitely fish traps.

But alongside those, we're finding these sort of chevron-shaped

wattle fences, forming these weirs across the length of the channel,

regularly spaced along the entire area of the channel

that we excavated and there's a real sense here of an industry.

Perhaps something sort of ad hoc and stuff.

Remember, we've dug 300 metres

and we're looking for a channel that we can trace for at least 10km.

If it's typical then, you know, we're talking about hundreds of weirs

and thousands of fish traps being set within its course.

Mark, what an extraordinary site.

I mean, the preservation there is beautiful.

It's stunning, yes.

It's one of those sites where you don't have to do a lot of describing

to visitors, they can see for themselves just what's there.

And it seems that fishing was going on

on an almost industrial scale, then?

It's a surprise, I suppose,

because we don't normally find fish bones.

So there we are, finding weirs and traps everywhere.

So we know where these people were working, there must have been

tens, hundreds of people, possibly, working in this industry.

So where did they all live?

Really good question. It's my opinion that, basically,

they're living in the Fens, they're living on the peat,

they're living on the rivers and we've got good evidence of that.

And the sense that it corresponds to a phase within the dry land sites

where there is no settlement.

So it's as if they are colonising the wet, basically.

And the traps and the weirs are part of that new landscape.

I think we've got some more from this incredible site.

As the team continue their excavations

in the side channel of the Nene, they started to find metalwork.

So we dig 300 metres of channel

and we come up with a whole host of swords, spears and metal objects.

Finds like these are rare,

but some have been found on other Bronze-Age sites

leading to theories that they were ritual offerings for watery deities.

But Mark believes the weapons recovered at Must Farm

had a more practical use.

The sheer quantity of swords and spears.

The sort of sense that this is a landscape

that appears to be newly colonised.

We're starting to think that maybe the metalwork being

found in the wet places was actually an indication of just

the scale of occupation of the wet spaces themselves.

So they were living on the rivers

or they were living on the marshlands themselves.

Some of these swords also have nicks on the sides of the blades.

Signs of violence.

Swords like this were used to sort of slash things

and the idea was that, if you were hitting someone,

you'd get sort of marks on here,

but if you were defending, then you'd get marks on here.

And we've found swords with those consistent

signatures of conflict, I suppose, of them

being used in anger rather than just being sort of symbolic objects.

You arrived being prepared to protect yourself, at the very least.

Or maybe even upset people that were already in that landscape.

So, Mark, you think these really were weapons?

They're not just symbols.

I just find it impossible to think that all those swords

and all those spears were just purely there for show, basically.

So, it seems like quite an idyllic environment,

-but perhaps not as idyllic as all that.

-Yeah.

I suppose like any landscape that we occupy as human beings,

there is this sort of tendency to want to hang on to what you've got.

You get a real sense within Fenland that there is a territory,

the idea that this is our place.

So do you think this really was Bronze-Age prime real estate, then?

I get the feeling that basically this is the place to be

and essentially the sort of switch had come from Stonehenge

over to the main rivers of eastern England.

Right, we've got some more from your amazing site.

The River Nene is an extensive wetland which was first

created 4,000 years ago when sea levels rose.

But the people of Bronze-Age Britain took this climate change

in their stride. In fact, they flourished here.

Evidence of this resourcefulness is backed up

by a significant discovery.

Not one, not two,

but eight log boats.

And unusually, virtually intact.

The boats have been moved to Flag Fen and are now being

conserved using the same methods that helped save the Mary Rose.

There's a real sense here that we're seeing the vessels of transport,

of movement, maybe of fishing.

But also of about the actual occupation

and the settlement of Deep Fen.

The first time we actually step off dry land and get into

the deep sediment, we find eight log boats in 300 metres of channel.

So, either we've found the one spot in the whole of Fenland or this

is representative of the rest of that landscape and if it is representative

of the rest of the landscape then the scale is astonishing.

In the sense that there are thousands of these boats

up and down those channels and river courses.

And they represent that sense of mass settlement of that wetland.

We often think that climate change always has a negative impact

and that the wetlands would have been

an inhospitable environment for humans.

But Mark has other ideas.

What we're suggesting, from our evidence,

was that it was the opposite of that.

It was no longer an impediment to settlement

and nor was it something that made you retreat, it was actually

a landscape that you were quite keen to inhabit.

And the people had the imagination to find ways of getting into that space.

And they maintained that link to the channel as well.

As in the English Channel

and the continent and I think that's really important.

It's just extraordinary.

I mean, those are quite big boats that you're finding there.

Yeah, one's nine metres in length, so...

Why do you think they're at the bottom of the river?

Is it anything to do with the swords and the other depositions?

You've got to remember there's 1,500 years of history

in that channel so... And there are boats throughout the sediment so

it's not necessarily the same story for each of the boats,

but some of the boats are pristine

and they seem to have a connection with the weaponry.

And it's quite often in the Fens that you find

boats close to swords or spears.

So there seems to be a connection there.

And at the same time, there are fragments of human skeletons

within the channel, as well.

So, if we wanted, we could form a triangle here

of swords, boats and bodies.

And we can start maybe thinking about an association with

maybe burial, or something like that.

This is fascinating, because when I think about

Bronze-Age burials, I think about

cist burials, stone-lined, crouched burials.

I don't think of people having burials in water.

Yeah, but I think... Remember this is the later Bronze Age

and if we try and find the burial record for that period, we can't.

It's conspicuous by its absence and I like that idea that...

We're not the first people to suggest

that people were being buried in rivers.

The Thames is famous for its Bronze-Age skulls

and things like that and the association with swords and things.

Maybe some of those boats, their pristineness,

is the fact that they had a body attached to a sword

in its scabbard and things and it was sunk in that river and things.

So these are the possibilities that we're coming across.

So you're pushing archaeological boundaries?

Yeah, I think so, I think so.

You feel like we're on a slope to the bottom of the North Sea

and on the way down there, we're going to explore

the whole of the British prehistory

and I think that's the excitement about it.

Must Farm, with its amazing wealth of finds, is the perfect

example of how new archaeological discoveries can completely

change our ideas about the past.

And while Bronze-Age people rose to the challenge of The Fenlands,

creating a highly productive fishing industry,

it seems that they were also respecting the watery landscape

with ritual offerings of swords to the gods.

Like this stunning Bronze-Age dirk, or long dagger

back here in the museum.

So, Tim, what have you brought in for us today?

What I really want to show you is something that the museum has

just acquired and is an absolute star object

for showing you something like ritual from the Middle Bronze Age.

Wow, incredible. It's huge. And that's the blade along there, is it?

It is. It's the blade edge, but one that's never been sharpened, so it's

deliberately made, but not with the intention of ever using as a weapon.

And the same goes for the hilt here,

-it's never actually been hafted on.

-Why's it so large?

Well, it is because it's purely for ceremony.

We don't quite understand why, but it's one of only six in Europe.

There are two from England, two from France

and two from Holland that are now known.

Something that suggests there's a North-Sea trade link, perhaps.

So it's real proof that in the Bronze Age there really was

-a proper, organised trade network across Europe?

-Absolutely.

The interesting thing about this is in being

the second from England, both of them are from Norfolk.

I mean, it looks like a very sturdy object. How come it's been bent?

Well, we often find with Bronze-Age weapons

that they seem to be bent or deliberately destroyed

before they're placed in the ground

and that seems to be part of the ritual killing of the object itself.

So, again, it's putting it out of commission

and again it's part of presumably the ritual involved

in why you have them in the first place.

For thousands of years, the East coast has been

the entry point for successive waves of invaders.

And just 50 miles from our museum,

Colchester was once the beating heart of Roman Britain

until an uprising led by a British warrior queen.

In various eras, Boudica has been described by historians

as a blood-thirsty savage, a freedom fighter

and even a feminist icon. But it's archaeology that's revealed

the harsh realities of the Boudican revolt.

In AD 61, Colchester was the first town to feel the full wrath

of the Queen and her Iceni tribe.

Archaeologists digging behind a Fenwick store in the town centre

are unearthing a story of one Roman woman whose house was

burned down in the fighting.

It's quite amazing when you stand at the excavation

and you can almost feel you're standing on the burnt out

remains of her house, because the floors are all

scorched red and black and the walls are all reddened.

Big lumps of clay, block wall lying on the floors.

The team are trying to trace the last moments of this house

and its owner.

Back at the Colchester Archaeological Trust,

project officer Adam Wightman has taken up the trail.

This is the remains of charred foodstuffs.

We found one or two wooden planks which either came from some

shelves or a table.

And spread over the top of those were foodstuffs

that have been preserved as they've been carbonised.

Here we have... These are burnt figs,

you can see all the little seeds in those. These are burnt dates.

And this selection here has been hand-picked out of this soil

sample and these are a selection of peas and small wheat grains

and possibly some various other sorts of legumes.

Were these blackened foodstuffs the interrupted last meal

prepared by the lady of the house?

It's very touching to see it lying there, scattered,

blackened on the floor.

And just outside the incinerated home,

what appears to be evidence of a violent death.

These were discovered actually on the edge of a Roman street.

These two bones appear to exhibit injuries.

This mandible here is missing a slice of bone, there.

And this tibia is also missing a piece, there.

The cuts appear to be quite clean.

They look like they've been done by a sharp blade.

More comparable to a butchery mark on an animal bone

rather than, you know,

the mark of a shovel or a spade from the clearance of the building.

So the chances are, these bones tell us even more of a gruesome

tale than just having been spread on the side of the road.

Behind all this violence was Boudica.

Originally, she was an ally of the Roman invaders,

but they annexed her lands, flogged her and raped her daughters.

In 61 AD, a revolt swept across the East.

The Romans who weren't murdered fled for their lives.

The team believes that this house

was right in the path of the rebels

and that the woman who lived here hid something before she left.

What we found in this excavation was an extraordinary

discovery of this desperation act.

This well-off lady had taken all her precious jewellery

and buried it in this tiny little hole,

just big enough for her to stuff it all in and cover it.

In the hope, I suppose, that she was going to be able to go back

and recover it after the big emergency was over.

But, of course, that never happened.

Carefully unpicked in the lab, the jewellery,

now known as the Fenwick hoard, had lain hidden from the Iceni

and for almost 2,000 years after that.

Earrings...

Armlets...

Chains...

And rings.

One woman's treasures.

A poignant memento.

But history suggests a grim fate for the owner of this hoard.

Dio Cassius is the one that tells us

what happened in Colchester to the women.

"The noblest," for which we can read "the richest,"

and that would be this lady, surely,

were rounded up and taken to sacred groves.

Groves which were dedicated to the British goddess of victory

and there they were horribly sacrificed.

Tim, that sounds horrendous, but this could just be Roman propaganda.

But the archaeology is telling us something unequivocal.

That there was a revolt here.

The archaeology is certainly telling us that there's

a destruction layer that occurred at exactly the time that it's

documented the revolt took place.

So it's not unreasonable to assume that that destruction layer

is associated with the documented historical revolt, that's right.

Why have you brought these particular artefacts?

Well, this is exactly the reason.

If we look at these, they're two very interesting artefacts.

One of which is from the Castle Museum

and it's a fragment of a horse statue. And the head, here,

is on loan to us from Colchester and Ipswich Museums

and it's actually a copy of a head, the original of which

is now in the British Museum.

And it's the head of Claudius, the Emperor who undertook the invasion of

Britain and they seem to be from the same statue of the Emperor Claudius.

-An equestrian statue.

-Were they found in the same place?

-They weren't.

The head was found in the River Alde,

-Rendham in Suffolk in 1907 by a boy splashing around in the river.

-Right.

And the part of the horse was found by

a metal detectorist in Norfolk in 1979. So 37 miles apart.

So how can you tell they're from the same statue, then?

That's a good question. We can't be absolutely sure, but metal

analysis shows that there's a very low lead content in both

of the bronzes and it suggests that they are one and the same.

It should also be added that there are no

other fragments of statue like this in East Anglia.

So they're a rare bird to start with.

Do you think this statue had been deliberately destroyed?

-Smashed up after the Boudican revolt?

-Almost certainly.

The head has been wrenched off

and the leg also seems to have been torn up.

And I think it's interesting that they haven't been melted down and reused.

They've actually been deposited and with the head in the river

it could easily be something like a sacrificial offering to a river.

What happened after the revolt?

Well, unfortunately it doesn't have a very happy

ending for the Icenian people.

Because after burning Colchester and going on to London and Verulamium,

they're defeated in the West Midlands and Roman rule is imposed.

In particular it's probably imposed very severely in East Anglia

which were considered very dangerous and rebellious areas.

From the story of treasure hidden by one desperate woman

swept up in a bloody revolt,

we move to a dig in Oakington that gives us

amazing insight into the place of women in Anglo-Saxon society.

Even today, childbirth can be a risky and worrying time

but it was far riskier for our ancestors.

A team from the University Of Central Lancashire

has spent the last five years investigating life and death

in an Anglo-Saxon community.

They returned this year and made some truly remarkable discoveries.

Here's their dig diary.

So we are in Oakington

and this is the 2014 excavation,

this is our main trench.

We have a significant early Anglo-Saxon cemetery which

includes 124 graves.

They date to pretty much the sixth century AD.

But what's unusual about this cemetery

is the number of infant burials.

We appear to have little clusters of infants' graves

around the edges of the site and we found something

earlier on this week that I think demonstrates that very nicely.

These are fragments of an infant's...

legs and skull.

Out of our population of 124 individuals, about 30% are infants.

This is extraordinarily high so it's really interesting to have that.

And we had to start questioning why.

What's also unusual about this site is that the team has been

finding a large number of high-status female burials.

In this space, here in 2011, we excavated grave 57.

This is an adult woman and one of the first ones that we found that year.

She was a wealthy burial, buried with a large cruciform brooch at her neck,

two smaller ones at her shoulders and a full set of beads and purse.

What was really interesting about her is that in her pelvic area

we found a whole series of very, very small bones.

It turns out that these were an infant.

She was pregnant when she was buried.

And this is probably the cause of death.

A really tragic story, but a very interesting piece of the puzzle.

A surprising find.

But this was only the tip of the iceberg for Duncan and his team.

In 2012, we had a large trench just where I'm standing now.

And excavating just here, we found a woman buried with a complete cow.

Now, that's a completely unique find.

We haven't found anything like that in the whole of north-western Europe

for the sixth century AD.

It's really interesting, because the cow

has cut marks across its lower feet which suggests that it was skinned.

It also had no tail bones at all.

So this is not a romantic bovine burial with a furry, cosy

animal in there - a pet. But rather it's a sacrificial offering.

A meat gift placed in the grave

so that she could host parties in the next world.

Wow, what an incredible find. What did you make of that, Duncan?

Oh, it was incredible. We didn't expect it at all.

We got very excited, because you don't find large animals with women.

I don't know of another example in England, I don't

know of another example from the early Middle Ages in Europe at all.

So it's unique at this point.

So how does that burial there fit in with all the other

female burials that you have in the cemetery?

OK, so that one is mid-sixth century

and it's probably got a little mound over the top of it.

A whole load of burials all the way around it.

And it becomes a central focus point.

And we have a number of other similar burials like that,

without the cow, of quite important female burials which seem

to be focal points throughout the cemetery.

And so it's a succession of important women that were part of that

sixth-century community at Oakington.

So, what did you find this year? Let's take a look.

This is an adult female.

You can tell from the shape of the pelvis here.

But also from the skull shape as well.

What's sort of interesting about this one is this yellow pipe here

has been drilled through the grave from a different position

and the people that put it here never saw it.

This is part of the services for Oakington village

as we're right up against the road.

So this is often where lots and lots of services go through.

And it's amazingly lucky

that when they put this through, they missed all of the objects that she's

been buried with and did very little damage really to the skeleton.

They really couldn't have done that better, even if it was

completely accidental.

What's even more intriguing about this grave are the objects

buried with the woman.

She seems to be of high status.

We have here a small

long brooch that would have been worn on her shoulder and there's

another one on her shoulder, just here, to hold up her dress.

And then this large one would have been on a large cloak

and this is face down so it would have almost certainly have been

wrapped up in a cloak and then rolled over the top of the burial.

So it's really interesting that the positions of the objects

there can tell us how she was dressed.

And almost certainly, she was wrapped up in a cloak before

the soil was placed in the grave.

So what you've got is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery with a large proportion of women

and a large proportion of women who appear to be very high status

and a lot of infants as well, compared with other cemeteries.

-What's going on?

-That's right. Well, OK.

Proportionally, we have... Almost all of our female burials are furnished,

whereas only a small handful of our male burials are furnished.

So they are signifying, making a point of the female burials

much more than they are of the male burials.

Meaning that all the females were buried with combs, beads...

Exactly and the brooches on the shoulders and the neck there as well.

But there are all those infants buried in groups

around the female burials or on the edge of the cemetery.

The population is too high, and so what we're

thinking at the moment is that we have a female dominated

matriarchal group and their daughters are going out and marrying

other communities, but potentially, that's quite a scary thing.

You're going to a new place, a masculine place,

and it's a bit scary to give birth.

So they're maybe travelling back

and they are bringing their children back to their mother's hall

to their sister's hall and they're giving birth there.

Now, I don't know whether we can see that archaeologically.

But certainly what we can see is those connections,

those relationships. And that's why

this is a central place in the Cambridgeshire landscape.

So cemeteries like this are not just telling us about individuals,

they're giving us information about

-the structure of society at the time?

-Absolutely.

The structure of societies, organisation, the movement of people

across quite wide areas as well.

We're not talking about walking around the corner. We're talking

about travelling for some miles to come to this community

for this sort of activity.

And the first cow in an Anglo-Saxon grave.

And have you finished the cemetery now? Is that it?

We've excavated as much as we possibly can, yeah.

So that's the end, now, of the excavation.

All of it is now post-excavation and we hope to understand more

and really question some of these things in much more detail.

To get a sense of the wealth and high status of these

Anglo-Saxon women, there's no place better than Norwich Castle Museum.

It's a treasure trove of bronze, silver and gold.

Like this Anglo-Saxon bracteate, or pendant.

The particularly important thing about bracteates is that

when they've been found in Britain,

they've only been found in female graves or as single, stray finds.

But the particular focus of this is as a hoards.

It's the first time this has ever been seen in Britain,

whereas, normally, in Scandinavia,

where these bracteates are typically found, they're buried in hoards.

I mean, the workmanship on these is absolutely incredible.

But what do these show us?

Well, bracteates are ultimately derived from coin designs,

Roman coin designs.

Because coins would have been worn as pendants themselves.

And, ultimately, the design became copied and the copy became copied

and so on, until you end up with a very basic design.

And on this bracteate, you can see a warrior with a sword

raised behind his back, fighting off two animals.

So what kind of women would have worn these bracteates?

They're solid gold, they look pretty expensive to me.

They are expensive and therefore it's a sign that the person

wearing them is of high status themselves.

And from another point of view, it also says something about

the person or people that were able to bury an entire

hoard of these in the ground, to give them up and not come back for them.

This summer, archaeologists have been digging in Kent,

looking at what they suspect is a royal palace complex.

Just the sort of place where people would have been wearing

all of that Anglo-Saxon finery.

Lyminge in southern Kent is now a peaceful English village.

But in Anglo-Saxon times, this was a bustling Royal Centre.

For the last three years, right in the heart of the village green,

dig director Gabor Thomas and his team

have uncovered evidence of medieval life and Bronze-Age burials.

-But what they really want are signs of Anglo-Saxon royalty.

-Right.

A lovely rim fragment.

'And they're beginning to find clues

'to personal wealth and status.'

So this is a bit of metalwork that came up yesterday.

It's a small piece of copper alloy.

And it's in the shape of the bird.

It's decorated on both sides, which is quite interesting.

This is just a hint of what's likely to come,

once we start excavating into the features.

I thought it was modern, and then I was like, "No, wait. What?"

-Like the top of a Carlsberg bottle!

-Yeah!

I don't think we've ever had a bit so recognisable as that.

We don't get a lot of bases at all...of a vase.

It's a quite large fragment, anyway, for a piece of glass.

We usually get rims

and bits of the body.

But not the bases, really.

The team believes these glass fragments were once

part of elaborate drinking vessels.

Like these replicas.

But, more importantly, they were used by high status Anglo-Saxons.

Possibly even Kentish kings.

And what they're uncovering now could be the proof

they need that kings were here.

We've had a really good breakthrough today,

in this particular trench, where... We're looking

at an exposure of around about 20 metres, so this building is about...

Probably in excess of 20 metres in length.

We've also got a width for it.

Somewhere around 10 metres in width.

That's a super-sized hall for the Anglo-Saxon period.

You only get these scale halls on royal palace complexes.

So, Gabor, you really think you have found an Anglo-Saxon royal hall?

Without doubt. I mean, the structural evidence says that very clearly.

You only get buildings on this scale, on this type of site...

And it's worth saying that it's incredibly rare archaeology.

Only two other sites of this period and this importance have previously

been excavated, including the iconic sight of Yeavering in Northumbria.

It was the first place that open-area excavations were

undertaken in the 1950s.

But normally these sites are found through aerial photography.

They show up as crop marks.

But on this site, it didn't even show up on the geophysics.

It required open-area excavation from the start and, really,

some small clues that there might be something of this magnitude,

just under the village green.

So what were the clues that made you dig there?

Well, there was a documentary reference that's described

Lyminge as a royal "ville" or a royal complex.

But none of the archaeology relating to that earlier period have

ever been found before.

And that's what we hoped we would find under the village green

and we hit the jackpot. It was amazing.

And as well as this amazing royal hall,

you found an extraordinary rubbish dump.

Right next to the seventh-century royal hall, the team opened up

another area, after geophysics revealed a mysterious blob.

This turned out to be a midden, or rubbish dump,

with incredibly rare finds deep within it.

Archaeologist Alex Knox explains.

Today, we have begun excavating what we called the "dark blob"

in trench one. Which is full of Anglo-Saxon artefacts.

And we're also hoping to find out

if there's anything lying underneath this dump of rubbish.

As the team dig into the midden,

high-status finds start coming thick and fast.

They uncover decorative brooches.

-Yeah, it's in perfect, mint condition.

-Yeah, amazing.

-Well done.

Bronze hair pins...

It is an absolute monster. Is that the end? That is the point, yeah.

And a copper alloy mount...

Probably would have been attached to, perhaps, a leather belt,

around the second half of the sixth century.

These Anglo-Saxon fashion accessories predate

the royal hall by a full century.

A very early insight into the culture of this settlement.

But the next finds begin to reveal something quite different.

I've seen metalworking residues, iron tools and implements...

-It looks relatively modern, actually.

-It does.

It probably isn't that modern at all.

And as the metal finds grow, the team begins to suspect

there's more to this dump than meets the eye.

So they dig a trench right through the middle to investigate.

What's appeared at this level, very clearly for us,

is an area of burning. Or what archaeologists would call a hearth.

We've also got consolidated lumps of what's likely to be

the superstructure of a dome over a furnace or a kiln

showing up nicely on this side of the trench.

This evidence here fits very nicely with the materials that have

been dumped in above this level.

We've recovered a lot of smelting slag.

So we have an early Anglo-Saxon version, if you like, of a

metalworking installation, of which we've only got one other example,

really, from Anglo-Saxon England, which is two centuries later.

So this is hugely significant archaeology.

Now, we've got to try and refine our understanding of what's

going on in here a bit better, by the end of the season.

So, Gabor, this is some of the earliest evidence

-we have for metalworking in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

-That's right.

It's different types of metalworking as well.

So we've got iron working represented, but also, in front

of us here, is a selection of objects associated with bronze casting.

-We've got a fragment of a two-piece mould just here.

-What object do you

-think that would have been?

-Probably a piece of jewellery.

It may have been something like a bronze buckle,

or perhaps even a brooch.

So they're really churning out this really high-status, bling

-jewellery, if you like, here?

-That's right.

-But that's not all

you had from the midden, is it? Alex, what have you got over there?

We're just washing some of the animal bone that's come out

of the midden. Just endless amounts of feasting debris

- cattle, sheep, pig...

Enormous amounts of animal bone to go along with all this metalworking.

So we've got these myriad finds from the midden. What does it all mean?

Well, we have a really interesting association

here between feasting on the one hand,

as represented by our animal bone and all of our glass vessels.

I think what this represents is a period

when specialised manufacture of high-status objects is happening

within the sphere of elite residencies.

And we haven't previously seen that on other sites. This is very new.

So it's really adding, as well, to our knowledge of the whole

of Anglo-Saxon Britain, really?

Absolutely, it's telling us what elite culture was like in this

period and its intimate relationship with the production of luxury items.

So, once again, archaeology reveals an unexpected twist.

A beautiful royal residence and, right next door,

making their very own luxury goods, a very early Anglo-Saxon factory.

Next, we head to Basing House,

a place synonymous with battle and bloodshed.

Basing House in Hampshire was a key site in the Civil War.

It was a royalist stronghold

and the parliamentarians were keen to take it.

And this year, archaeologists have been digging up evidence

of the house's bloody history, bringing us face-to-face with

one of English history's most controversial characters.

In the 16th century, Basing House was one of the most impressive

Tudor complexes in the country.

It was built on a Norman fort, known as The Old House.

And right next to it used to sit a huge mansion,

known as The New House.

This is where the team have put in a large trench.

Such a fantastic archaeological site to work on.

We took off the topsoil and the walls started to emerge almost immediately.

Documents of the time tell of a final battle

that took place here in 1645.

And the team are looking for hard evidence as to just how this

mighty fortress fell.

Heading up the dig is Chris Elmer.

So we're midway through the dig

and we're finding quite a lot of evidence now of the Tudor

range that lies behind us.

What we're interested in is thinking

about what happened in the Civil War, with the destruction of the house.

And, in fact, recently we've found some pretty interesting evidence,

because we've got really nice sort of lead musket balls, showing us balls

that obviously were available as the ammunition of the day.

But, more intriguingly,

we're also finding the evidence for musket balls that have impacted.

They've obviously hit something or someone,

because they've splatted and they've gone into this very strange shape.

So we've got a theory that what we're looking at is

the evidence of the conflict that was occurring,

the battle that was occurring, and we're finding the real evidence

of that with these musket balls and with the end product you see here.

Two years before Basing House fell,

it was placed under siege by the parliamentarians, as they fought

the Royalists, led by John Paulet, the Marquess of Winchester.

Over two years of digging, Chris and his team have mapped out

the defensive lines of the now-vanished great house.

As we're walking round the site of Basing House,

we've just come to the gun platform.

And there were several gun platforms erected during the Civil War.

This one, we've got a replica of a civil war saker, a cannon,

which would be pointing out towards the parliamentary

lines on the other side.

There were several gun platforms all the way around the ring work area

and in a sense, this was the first line of defence

during the Civil War for Basing House.

By surveying the surviving buildings of the great Tudor complex,

the team has also identified battle damage.

We've now come inside the great barn,

I think the most amazing example of destruction, if you like,

that we can see, where there would have been cannonballs coming

through the roof and then actually hitting the inside of the walls.

So we can see there's a great big scar in the wall at the top there.

There is another one further along.

With Charles I supplying men and money

for the house's fortification, it seemed invincible.

And after two years of trying to batter Basing House into submission,

the parliamentarians were getting nowhere.

So, Alan, who did they turn to?

Well, the Lord General Fairfax sent down his second in command,

a man who you might be quite familiar with.

Here he is. Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell.

Ah, the man himself.

This is a life mask of Oliver that was done a few years after

the siege of Basing House.

As you can see, he is somewhat plumper than a serving soldier

would have been in those days.

But it does give you a really good impression of what he looked like.

So if this is a life mask, this is a mould of his actual face?

Indeed. That is Oliver.

See, the eyes are rather odd because they were applied afterwards

because obviously he would've had his eyes shut.

It's extraordinary and slightly weird.

I still don't think that Oliver Cromwell on his own could

have conquered Basing House, so what did he bring with him?

He had a bit of help.

He had three regiments of foot, several regiments of cavalry,

about 5,000 or 6,000 men in actual fact, and some really big guns,

including an incredibly big piece of artillery, a Cannon Royal.

That fires a 64lb ball and here is an illustration

which gives you some idea of the size of the thing.

Because of the condition of the roads, sometimes it would take

up to 60 horses to pull these down the roads or 60 oxen.

Once this was applied against a castle,

it doesn't really stand a chance.

So this is bigger than any of the cannon

-that were actually in Basing House.

-Oh, yes, much bigger, yes.

I would not like to have been a royalist,

facing up against that cannon. So how did they fare?

Well, I think that is what the archaeologists

are about to find out.

The new house guarded the entrance to the postern gate,

the way into the citadel of Basing House.

The team believed that this was the weak point for Cromwell to exploit

and he would have thrown everything he had at the Tudor range,

including the firing power of his massive Cannon Royal.

In the last week of the dig,

they find evidence to support their theory

when they uncover the remains of a bridge which connected

the new house to the old.

The postern gate that led into the old House

is directly behind us and this area that we are excavating

is part of the entry point for the old house.

What we are thinking is this is a point where, in the Civil War,

the parliamentarians broke through into the old house.

So, can we see anything there that tells us about that final battle?

Can we see anything that tells us about their entry

to the old house, as well?

Previously on this same site,

archaeologists uncovered several skeletons around Basing House

which they believe were defenders from the Civil War.

But the most significant discovery was the remains

of one particular soldier, found by the postern gate,

who seems to have died defending this weak spot in the final siege.

To our surprise, after we had finished excavating the gateway

and had a narrow passageway,

we saw there was a ditch which we sectioned.

In that ditch, we found a skull which had been decapitated,

some of the vertebrae were there in situ.

And there was also a great sword cut on top of the cranium.

And so that had to be, really, the head of one of the defenders

of Basing, and as such, really, must have got there

during that final assault on 14th of October, 1645.

And it's so rare for an archaeologist to be able

to find something and say, "This happened on this particular day."

But we feel confident that that was the case there.

Of the 400 loyalists defending Basing House,

100 were slain and the rest taken prisoner,

while the great Tudor mansion itself was set on fire.

People could hear the cries of those who had taken refuge

in the cellars, screaming to be let out.

But there was no-one to let them out, no way of reaching them,

so a good number must have perished in that way.

Finally, Cromwell's brutal attack had led to a decisive victory

and he quickly sent word back to London.

"I thank God I can give you a good account of Basing.

"We have had little loss, many of the enemy our men put to the sword.

"Most of the rest we have prisoners,

"amongst whom the Marquis of Winchester himself.

"Your most humble servant, Oliver Cromwell."

Not far from Basing House is Silchester,

famous for the longest running archaeological dig in the country.

18 years ago, a small team of archaeologists set out to spend

a few seasons excavating a Roman site near Reading in Berkshire.

What they found kept them coming back year on year

and made the name Silchester synonymous with Roman archaeology.

Silchester has revealed much of what we know

about Roman town life in Britain,

and it evolved from a large Iron Age settlement.

We've just found this amazing object.

We don't know what it is, but it's made of copper alloy.

I just went, "Oh, my God!"

I've been working here for 17 years

and I've never found anything as amazing as this.

Let's make bets. I say dagger. Nick says mirror.

I tend not to think dagger because that is too dainty,

-it's too fragile.

-Yeah.

-A mirror? Wow.

-Be gentle.

I wonder if it's a hinge or something like that.

It was certainly something pretty fancy, because that is lovely.

But once the finds specialist Elise Fraser cleans it up,

the archaeologists realise it is not quite what they thought.

THEY LAUGH

Quite a strange looking copper alloy object.

This has now turned into a folding skillet handle,

so basically like a modern-day mess tin.

The handle would be hinged onto the pan like that

and would essentially just fold in, so very much like a modern

soldier's mess tin, which is very exciting, because obviously

it's very early Roman, probably military in its origin.

But again, it shows that we have military presence here

in the artefacts that we're finding, in a very early context.

Some of the ideas that the students have been coming up with

are quite fun.

This is exactly the kind of find the team needs to give them

clues as to the birth of Roman Britain.

And the vexed question, was it an invasion or a friendly takeover

by wealthier European neighbours, offering new riches and luxuries?

And they're running out of time to find the answer,

as this is their last season on site.

Just 100 yards away, a new trench they opened up in 2013,

known as Insula III, is throwing up more clues.

Here, they are investigating a large Roman building.

This is one of six column bases that we have excavated

which run parallel to the north-south street.

This is quite interesting because it is basically,

these are made out of ceramic building material which

sort of suggests that the people who lived here are trying to

imitate cultural developments in Rome

by using a cheaper material than marble stone,

which still fits with our idea of Romanization.

They're trying to follow what is happening in Rome.

And it is not just with the buildings that the people

were trying to copy Roman fashion.

That is an absolutely beautiful...

-I couldn't find the rest of it.

-But a really beautiful...

-It is, isn't it?

-It is a cup, anyway. So very, very pretty.

-Wow, that's amazing.

-I know, it has made my day.

During the Roman occupation, Silchester was known

as Calleva Atrebatum and was ruled by client kings, answerable to Rome.

The most famous in this area was Cogidubnus.

But the team are discovering that one emperor in particular

was directly involved with the town.

Oh, lovely, oh, wow!

Great. Oh, fantastic.

Well, we all know what this is, don't we?

-I thought you'd like that.

-A Nero tile.

Gosh. Nero tile, yes.

Wow. Isn't that good?

-And that is presumably, I hope, from Insula III.

-It is indeed, yes.

-Hah!

That's a relief, good.

Nero was the Roman Emperor from 54 to 68AD.

These tiles are evidence that he was pumping some serious cash

into the redevelopment of this town.

The question is, why?

So these are the Nero tiles, are they?

These are two of the four fragments that we have found this season.

You can see the stamp that was impressed with

the abbreviations of Nero's name.

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

These tiles have only been found in Silchester

and it raises all sorts of questions.

This implies Nero owned...

He certainly owned the brickworks which produce them.

Had he already taken over some of the client kingdom

from Cogidubnus?

In fact, did he own Calleva at this point?

One possibility... There are several.

We know that British client kings were beginning to overspend

on the loans which they had taken from Rome to build up

their residences, build up their lifestyle.

And possibly, Cogidubnus had gone a bit bankrupt, I don't know,

and in return for taking some of his kingdom,

Nero invested in Calleva.

And one context for that, of course,

would be after the Boudiccan rebellion, because Calleva

was the gateway to the southwest.

To shore up, prop up, Calleva and that part of the kingdom,

putting in money, supporting the king,

securing the southwest of Britain at a time when some people

thought Britain would have been lost entirely from the Empire.

I think it is absolutely fascinating, because I think we tend

to imagine that we know everything there is to know

about Roman Britain, that there isn't really much more detail

to be discovered, but we still are really getting to grips

with how it worked, how it was managed, how it was ruled

and how it operated as part of the Roman empire.

Places like Silchester are instrumental in revealing that.

But it's finished.

This has been such an important site

-and this is your last year of major excavations there.

-I know, I know.

You must be a bit sad, Matt, because you've dug there, haven't you?

I did, yes.

I was there for four years as a supervisor from 2000 onwards

and I always say it was the best archaeological job I ever had.

It sort of, it's an end in the field

but there's a huge amount of work to do on writing up,

because what we are sketching out now is only the beginning

of the story which will be immensely enriched by studying the finds,

the environmental evidence.

There's a whole wealth of material and probably in five years' time

I can come back and say,

"Well, actually, in the light of studying this and that,

"actually, we think this rather than what we are saying now today."

Archaeology is a complex jigsaw puzzle.

Drawing together everything from skeletons to swords

and from riches to royalty.

Amazing stories which are helping to rewrite our history.

I think, for me, a couple of the really outstanding sites were

the fishing industry in the Fens.

I mean, the beautiful preservation there was just extraordinary.

-That was just absolutely huge, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

I can't wait to see what they're going to find next.

And of course, also it's got to be the cow burial.

-I mean, it is just bizarre.

-It is very strange indeed, isn't it?

Well, it's been a fantastic year for archaeology here in the east.

-It is goodbye from him...

-And it's goodnight from her.