North Digging for Britain

Britain has an epic history.

But within it there's a wealth of untold secrets still to uncover.

It's a really key find. Find of the week.

So, every year, hundreds of archaeologists set out hunting for

clues to solve the mystery of who we are and where we have come from.

I've just found this amazing pendant.

Over the past year,

their discoveries have been more exciting than ever.

This series will explore the best of them...

-I just found a coin.

-Oh, marvellous.

..brought to you from the field in a very special way.

Each excavation has been filmed for us as it happened

by the archaeologists themselves.

It looks absolutely fantastic.

I bet he had a bad day when he never brought these back.

Their dig diaries mean that we can be there

for every crucial moment of discovery.

Oh, wow!

Do we have a winner here?

-I think it's stunning.

-Incredible.

Our archaeologists will be joining us here in our special lab to

take a closer look at their finds

and to figure out what they really mean.

This is so exciting.

Welcome to Digging For Britain.

In this episode we are exploring the discoveries from the north

of Britain that change what we know about this island's story.

We scramble to uncover the earliest origins

of Scotland's first kingdoms.

We are there for the find of a lifetime

that reveals the true extent of Viking power.

And we have a winner here!

And a new housing development reveals the mass graveyard

of warriors whose people may have marched from Europe

to settle in Yorkshire.

It looks absolutely fantastic.

'These discoveries are rewriting our history.

'To find out how, archaeologist Matt Williams and I

'have been given special access to Yorkshire Museum.

'Its collection tells the story of the north

'and the people who settled here.'

The Gilling Sword.

'And we're going behind-the-scenes to the back rooms that ordinary

'visitors just don't get to see.'

You could get lost in here for days.

Star Carr is an archaeological site of world importance.

Excavations began here in 1948

and have revealed a Stone Age settlement 11,000 years old.

The whole site covers five acres.

Discoveries at Star Carr include the remains of Britain's oldest house,

ancient tools and the earliest carpentry in Europe.

Finds like these have shown how our Stone Age ancestors lived.

'Digging For Britain first visited the site in 2011,

'when I discovered that the team's work had become a race against time.

'The soil at Star Carr was becoming acidic and destroying the evidence.'

So that's antler from the original excavation site,

so when would that been excavated?

-1950.

-1950.

'This antler has been preserved in almost perfect condition

'but the items being pulled from the ground 60 years later

'have deteriorated drastically.'

It's like a piece of rubber.

It's basically because the water table has fallen dramatically.

That's let oxygen into the deposits

and that's created a chemical reaction.

We've been told by our specialist it's a bit like car battery acid.

It is shocking to see how the acid is attacking Star Carr

and it shows just how urgent the work carried out

by Nicky and her team really is.

But now they are finally running out of time

as six decades of research at Star Carr come to an end.

They are hoping to solve one last mystery

and reveal the true significance of this site

to our Stone Age ancestors.

Was Star Carr just a settlement

or do the clues show that it was something much more?

This is their dig diary.

From day one, it was clear that the soil had become even more acidic.

It's actually very fragile. This is one of the problems that we have,

and this bit is actually turning to jelly.

The chances of finding any well-preserved artefacts seem slim.

Then, a couple of weeks in, the archaeologists dug another

trench where, remarkably, the soil conditions were very different

and the preservation outstanding.

Just cleaning off this area behind me and it's incredibly exciting.

Here we've got an absolutely jam-packed area of bone and flint

and wood that we've not seen anywhere else on the site.

In the rest of the trenches, we've had a real problem.

We've had very acid conditions

which has meant that the bone and antlers have disappeared.

So this is a really amazing insight into what people were

doing on the edge of the lake here.

People are placing bone and antler and wood in this area.

But why would people have been deliberately placing these materials

here 11,000 years ago?

A few days later, another remarkable discovery could be a clue.

-It's a deer.

-It is a deer, yeah.

It's a cluster of deer skulls.

It's a really amazing example.

There are lots from this site, but this one is very robust.

You can see the antlers here coming off the main skull

and it's also in association with a couple of roe deer skulls,

one here,

and one here, so we're just cleaning it up some more and then we'll be

lifting it very carefully and taking it to the conservation labs.

This discovery is new evidence to support a growing theory that

explains the wealth of deer skulls at Star Carr.

These have been made into headdresses from red deer skulls

and we think that they were possibly used by Shamans

wearing them on their heads as part of ritual practices.

It's just amazing to think 11,000 years ago someone might have

had one of these on their heads.

In the final few days,

even more of these partial deer skulls are uncovered.

But can they really be ritual headdresses?

I'm in the vaults of York Museum to see the evidence for myself.

-Can we open it up...

-We can.

-..and have a look?

It's like Christmas.

So this is the latest one?

So it is just the top of the skull essentially.

-We've lost all of the nose and the upper jaw down here.

-We have.

So it is just this uppermost part with the antlers attached.

And that's one of the first clues that tells us that this probably

isn't just a piece of deer skull that's been found in the ground.

It's been worked by human hands for a particular purpose.

If this is a deer in its prime, a large deer, it would

have very big antlers and they've been trimmed back

and what that does is effectively makes this a lot lighter.

An almost cap-type shape if you think of a hollowed out skull.

It's almost a cap-type shape going on there.

So one of the other features that we see and we certainly

see on other frontlets that have been found are these piercings,

these circular piercings that you see through the skull.

Now these piercings could be for sinew or for cord to pass through.

It suggests that this might be something

that's been worked by human hands to be worn on the head.

And it's really important, as well, that this isn't a unique object,

that it's one of many that have been found at Star Carr.

Just over 20 similar objects have been found at Star Carr,

so this is not a one-off and they all seem to be treated

in the same way, so perhaps it's a group of objects that are being

used for very specific purpose and made in a very specific way.

The archaeologists think it's likely that these skulls really

were worn as ritual headdresses.

Together with the wealth of votive offerings of antler and bone,

the finds suggest that Star Carr was more than just a settlement.

Back at the dig on day 40, the team makes another remarkable

and exceptionally rare discovery

which also hints at the ritual significance of Star Carr.

We have actually just found this amazing pendant which

actually has artwork on it.

It's so rare to find something like this.

There's only a few pieces of artwork from this country

and very few from the whole of Europe.

It's very classic Mesolithic.

It has geometric lines on it.

An 11,000-year-old pendant, piles of bone and antler.

Nicky believes this could be evidence that Star Carr

held sacred significance.

And we are really beginning to think that these things weren't just lost.

They were perhaps some kind of votive offerings

that were placed in this particular spot.

A piece of Mesolithic artwork is an extraordinary find

anywhere in Europe.

I can't wait to hear what this one can tell us about Star Carr.

This is so exciting. When I heard that you had found this,

I didn't quite believe it, Nicky, I must say.

You must have been thrilled to find that on your site?

The more we've looked at it and the more we've analysed it,

the more excited we're getting about it because

Mesolithic art is incredibly rare, particularly for this country,

and so to find something like this is really spectacular.

I can certainly see quite a bit of detail here but also you've

got this enlarged image of it, which really brings it out, doesn't it?

You've got these longer incised grooves on it

but lots of little tiny grooves as well. An awful lot of detail here.

One interpretation I quite like at the moment

is that we might have a tree on here,

so that's the trunk and these are the branches coming off it

and I think I'm interested in that because again, for shamans,

sometimes trees can be holy,

they link different parts of the spirit world

and so possibly there's something like that to it.

The interpretation of pendants in Denmark,

where they are usually made of amber, is they might be amulets

and so they are protecting the person who wears them.

So, over the six decade or so

that excavations have been going on at Star Carr,

what has that added to our knowledge of the Mesolithic in Britain?

Because we've opened up such a large area,

we have a much better understanding of how people were living there.

We have houses, huts on the dry land.

We have great big platforms made out of timber on the lake edge

with all these bones and headdresses and so on around them.

We think that this actually might be a special place in the landscape.

The mouth of the lake.

When people were coming upriver,

it's the first place they come to as they reach the lake,

so perhaps it's kind of like an entranceway

where certain interesting ritual and activities are happening.

The modified deer skulls votive offerings

and now this exceptionally rare piece of Stone Age art provide us

with extraordinary insights into life in Britain 11,000 years ago.

The clues from Star Carr tell us

not only about survival on a day-to-day basis,

but allow us a precious glimpse

into the spiritual and artistic aspects of Mesolithic life.

Archaeology can be just as fascinating on a much smaller scale.

Our next dig diary is from the Black Loch of Myrton

in southwest Scotland

where excavations are taking us fireside for a glimpse

into the domestic lives of our ancient ancestors.

When archaeologists working in Dumfries & Galloway

discovered the remains of an Iron Age lakeside village,

it was a first for Scotland.

Even better, the wetland environment had preserved

the archaeology beautifully, giving the archaeologists

insight into how ancient Britons lived 2,000 years ago.

This year, they returned to the site looking for clues as to how

Iron Age people designed and built their houses

and they recorded their big discovery in their dig diary.

When the village was first discovered,

the team found evidence of seven houses.

At least one of which was 2,500 years old.

Now, Anne Crone is leading a full excavation of the site.

She's hoping to discover how our Iron Age ancestors

designed their homes inside and out.

This is day two of our excavations at the Black Loch of Myrton.

We are excavating what we think is a loch village

of the mid-first millennium BC.

We've excavated one structure a few years ago

and this year we're exposing the second structure.

The team have just three weeks to excavate this roundhouse and they

begin by uncovering a vast fireplace right at the centre of the house.

In the background, you can see the trench.

We've completely de-turfed now

and over here you can see the half mound at the centre of the house.

Behind me we have big spreads of stone,

which we think may be a wall circling the hearth.

This huge hearth would have provided heat, light

and somewhere to cook on a large scale.

A real heart of the home.

And, amazingly, the Iron Age people who lived here

went in for another creature comfort,

one still found in homes today.

A type of carpet.

In this area, we've not uncovered the wicker screens yet

because lying over it,

we've got very well-preserved compressed plant litter flooring.

This is the sort of knobbly shiny surface

that you can see all over this area here.

And the family who lived here also liked their space.

After a week and a half of digging,

the team has only just reached the outside wall of the house.

This looks like it's a very large piece of oak

which has been dressed at the end.

It's obviously been carefully shaped.

The house was a full 13 metres in diameter.

It's a huge structure to build on sodden marshland

without it sinking into the mud.

But, on the last day of the dig, and with the site flooding,

Anne finds out how the Iron Age builders managed to do it.

By building a giant raft.

Morning. Tell me all about it.

In the last few hours of the excavation

we find this stupendous structure.

It seems to be the substructure on which part of the house is based.

And, as far as we can see, they are laying down very large

non-oak logs in parallel

and then putting large logs at right angles to those on top.

This assembly of logs provided a sort of floating foundation

to allow these Iron Age builders to construct their huge home

in the middle of a marsh.

2,500 years later,

it's remarkable to see how well their craftsmanship survives.

They certainly put a huge amount of labour and effort

and skill into building the foundations and the houses.

What evidence do you have for the construction?

We've been scanning and recording the tool marks

because we very rarely find iron axes and so we are beginning

to get a nice body of evidence as to size of axe that they're using.

Here's the replica. Let's see.

-So they fit just about in there, don't they?

-Yeah.

So this has been made specifically to fit those marks?

Yeah, I mean, most of the tool marks that we are recording

are between four and five centimetres wide.

'It may seem a small tool for cutting down a large tree,

'but the curved design of the shaft and a very sharp blade

'made it highly effective,

'offering an insight into Iron Age engineering know-how.

'But other finds reveal more than just HOW this house was constructed.

'They begin to hint at WHY it was built here.'

So they are building, essentially, on a promontory

going into marshland or a lake?

A very strange place to choose your settlement.

Why do you think they lived there?

In the Iron Age, water was venerated.

It seemed to have a very special significance for them.

As you know, you get the deposition of metalwork and bodies

and things like that.

We think that maybe the houses are some way of bringing

the sacred and profane together within a sort of domestic setting.

And you've got some other artefacts as well here, Anne,

so tell us about these.

Well, the quartz pebbles, we found them scattered all over the house

underneath the wickerwork floors.

Sometimes in a little caches.

What I've brought here is one of those little caches

and they look as though they were little foundation deposits,

little offerings before the subfloor was laid down.

-So they are not just natural?

-Oh, no, nothing on the site is natural.

Everything has been brought on to the site.

When we started finding these,

you can imagine white shiny pebbles popping out of the dark peat,

they are very, very obvious, yeah.

Anne believes that these offerings may be tied up with why the Iron Age

people chose to build this house in such a challenging location.

There doesn't seem to be any pragmatic reason why you

would live out of these little lochs.

To exploit them you could easily do that from the shore.

They are very small water bodies.

You could walk around them,

so why live out there unless there is some other intangible reason?

It was a challenge to build on the wet marsh at Black Loch.

But, for the Iron Age builders, it must've been worth it.

The water of the lake may even have connected this tribe

to their deities.

2,500 years later,

this new archaeology connects us back to them...

..and reveals that their domestic world

was actually very like our own.

Amazing discoveries like these are the work of dedicated professionals.

But sometimes, we have to thank the devotion, enthusiasm

and luck of a band of amateurs.

Metal detectorists are a special breed, spending hours

scouring the countryside and beaches looking for treasure.

And, very, very occasionally they find some.

Now, a hoard of treasure buried in the ground

away from human settlement or other signs of human activity

on its own can only offer us limited information.

But sometimes the objects themselves tell a story,

as with this Viking hoard.

Dumfries in the west of Scotland,

where a keen metal detectorist invested months of his own time

researching one particular field.

What Derek McLennan found was the discovery of his lifetime

that reveals the wide connections of the Vikings.

It's harvest time so there were bales of hay in the field

and I began going up and down towards one particular bale

and then I decided to change tack and moved to another bale.

METAL DETECTOR BEEPS

I got a signal which was very faint,

but it sounded like iron and I thought,

"Well, I've already dug 30 nails so one more nail won't harm me"

and I put the spade into the ground and dug out the clod

and noticed something glinting in the hole. Put my hand into it.

It was quite deep, and when I pulled it out, I saw it was silver.

I rubbed my thumb across it and instantly seen the saltire

design which I knew from my research was a Viking symbol.

Derek realised the importance of his find

so he immediately called the local authorities.

They sent an archaeologist to help with the excavation.

What they uncovered together was truly astounding.

A hoard of Viking arm rings and gold ingots.

But there was more.

Oh, wow!

A large Christian cross.

We have a winner here!

Its stunning decorations revealed for the first time in 1,000 years.

At that moment, my senses erupted

and the excitement

and joy of what I discovered really hit me.

But there was even more treasure to come,

including this beautiful pot still wrapped in protective fabric.

The Viking hoard of the decade, I think.

The Vikings were pagan invaders who came from Scandinavia

to raid Britain and to set up their own kingdoms here in 793 AD.

This find could reveal new insights into this turbulent

chapter in British history.

So it's been handed to a team from Historic Scotland for analysis.

When they lifted the lid of the pot,

even more treasure was packed inside.

To find out what, the team turns to modern scanning technology.

That's got quite a density.

Yeah, and then there's a layer of dense material

right down at the bottom here.

-You can see it's got a lattice on it.

-Yeah.

Let's see if we can look at some of the other objects.

The scans reveal rings,

brooches and other pieces of fine jewellery packed inside the pot.

Excavating and conserving them has taken months.

Now, almost a year after making his remarkable discovery,

Derek has come to view the treasures for himself.

It's hard to put into words.

I'm absolutely stunned by the amount of artefacts

that came out of the pot and textiles and everything

being so carefully wrapped and packed.

It shows that, even 1,200 years ago,

these objects were very coveted

and cared for.

'This hoard is full of riches and mystery.

'It brings the Viking world alive and shows that there was more

'to these legendary warriors than just raiding.'

Richard, I think the appropriate response is "Wow!"

This is astonishing. What a beautiful collection.

-It's pretty remarkable stuff, isn't it?

-It is.

It's wonderful to see it all laid out like this.

'One particular treasure has been fashioned from a silver coin

'which gives a clue to the date and origins of the hoard.'

-There's the word Rex...

-Yes.

..and, if you come back around here, you can see start with

C-O-E-N...

..W-U-L F.

-Coenwulf.

-Coenwulf.

-Rex.

Coenwulf was the Viking king of Murcia in the Midlands.

He ruled from 796-821 AD,

leading experts to believe that this is when the hoard dates from.

A period when Viking raids on Britain were intensifying.

So do you think this is Viking plunder that's been gathered

together and buried in the ground?

You can't help but start to speculate that this is some

form of Viking raiding booty.

Why would someone who was a devout Christian bury

things like that wonderful cross?

-This cross is...

-Well, yes.

-..gorgeous.

-This is exceptional.

The beautiful, wonderful simple form of the Celtic cross with what

we think are the four apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

-Isn't that wonderful?

-Can you see the Saint's head?

Yes, I can see the halo.

That's straight out of The New Book of Kells Manuscript, isn't it?

-It is. It's wonderful.

-And the cross is straight out of the wonderful

St John's Cross on Iona, for example. It's quite something.

'This cross is typical of the treasures plundered by Vikings

'from Christian monasteries across Britain and Europe.

'But further clues in the hoard

'show that the Vikings weren't only interested in raiding.

'They were motivated by commerce as well.'

This is beautiful, this pot.

At the top are eight glass beads of various shapes and forms.

Some of them held in clasps with metal or silver fixings.

There seems to be a variety of objects

and of different styles coming from different places,

-coming from France, Anglo-Saxon styles and Viking styles.

-Yes.

What's this object in here, then, Richard?

We think that what you see between the gold

is a glass vessel of some description.

Sitting within a very fine leather pouch,

with this extraordinary sumptuous silk,

Semite silk from the Far East, or Middle East, something very precious

and special wrapped in something which was very, very exotic.

Eastern treasures like this remind us that there was more to

the Vikings than simple raiding.

By the 11th century,

the Vikings' vast trading network stretched across Europe,

beyond Constantinople, all the way to Baghdad.

They were a trading superpower

which engaged with cultures right across the known world.

But the Vikings weren't the first foreign power to colonise Britain.

The Romans began their conquest centuries earlier in 43 AD.

The story of Rome's 400-year rule is well known.

But what happened here after the Roman Empire fell is still

a mystery.

The end of Roman rule in Britain saw us plunged into the Dark Ages -

several obscure centuries for which there is little written record

and, actually, finding archaeological evidence

from this period of time is relatively rare.

But a team of archaeologists is hoping to strike it lucky

with a new dig at an abandoned Roman military fort near Lancaster.

This is the famous Roman fort of Ribchester,

where a team is digging for evidence to explain what

happened in Britain after the Roman Empire fell,

and to reveal if we really did slip into centuries of chaos,

often thought of as the Dark Ages.

They start by excavating the Roman road running through the fort

and get their first intriguing clue.

We've just cleaned off this Roman road surface

and we've just discovered that it's been robbed.

Really interesting.

The road appears to have been dismantled after the Roman

occupation, with the heaviest stones taken away.

There's a really nice insight into the operations of the fort,

pretty much after the Romans have left

because they are destroying the infrastructure of it to build

buildings and taking that material away somewhere else.

So what were these Dark Age Britons building with this stone, and where?

The team thinks they've found the first clues

at the other end of the fort.

The beginning of week three and we have large bits of tile

and that more intense orange is the hearth

and that orange burning element there suggests workshop activities

taking place within that building.

The burnt orange earth suggests that this was the site of a fire

built after the Roman administration had collapsed.

But this fire does seem to be on an industrial scale,

making it possible evidence of manufacturing.

And further excavation reveals what they may have been making.

That's fantastic.

That's a fantastic piece of evidence, a really nice thing there.

That is really good evidence that manufacturing here involved glass.

There's a little bit of a run off of glass,

probably from recycling old vessels and stuff like that.

It's a really key find. Finder of the week. Thank you very much.

We sometimes think of Dark Age Britain as extremely backward,

but with this glass and the signs of an industrial fire,

this dig could be revealing something very different.

Britons converting an old Roman fort into workshops.

It's new evidence for an area of enterprise

and further finds offer more clues to this new

British post-Roman economy.

-I've just found a coin.

-Oh, marvellous.

It's a tiny third or fourth century Roman coin.

Marvellous. There we go.

The team finds over 20 more coins,

all from around the same workshop building.

Now Duncan has brought these and his other finds into our lab.

We're hoping that they can tell us

how this fort was used after Roman rule collapsed

and shine a light on the truth about Britain in the Dark Ages.

OK, so we found 22 coins when we excavated there

in those very, very top surfaces.

So I think this is the very, very end of the Roman use of the fort.

Can we look at some of these coins?

I'll bring this over so that we can see them a bit more clearly.

The head on that side is hardly visible, isn't it?

-It's almost smooth.

-Hardly visible, exactly.

We are looking at a lot of wear and use that's going on as well.

But this is a Roman coin. Who is the Emperor on that, then?

Valentinian is the Emperor on that one.

It's minted between 364 and 378.

'But Duncan believes that these coins were deposited

'perhaps two centuries later.

'They are very heavily worn, suggesting that they may have

'been used long after Roman rule in Britain ended in 410.'

I think, given that we've got all that wear,

these coins were probably in circulation for quite a long time.

Certainly after you see the collapse of Roman administration, really.

Coins and pottery are no longer created in the same volumes

or at all as they were previously

but the people who live in these forts, these Roman landscape places,

would certainly remain there

so they continue to use quite a lot of this material and culture.

Certainly, I think we shouldn't be seeing this as

an absolute cut-off point.

We shouldn't be saying, "410 AD, the Romans left."

What is happening is one continuous decline, or chance formation is

a better way of thinking about it, into something completely different.

Without military rule, post-Roman society in Britain would

undoubtedly have been more dangerous.

But this new evidence suggests that it may have been more

sophisticated than we thought.

So the person who dropped this coin here, for example -

what was he doing in the fort?

What we are seeing there is a whole series of different

manufacturing activities, so we've got the glass that you can

see there, the weights, the coins for trade and exchange.

We think we've got tanning pits

and think we've got evidence of iron-making as well.

But wouldn't you expect those things to be present in a Roman fort

-as well?

-Not necessarily, no.

By the time you get into the fourth century,

it becomes quite a dangerous place to be.

If you're moving large numbers of goods and valuable things across

the north of Britain, you're probably going to be attacked.

There's probably a lot of brigands around so I suspect,

as we start to see the breakdown of that administration

of the safety networks that exist, then you see that manufacturing to

support the fort is starting to take place within it itself.

These finds show that we are wrong to think of the Dark Ages

as a period of utter chaos and decline in Britain.

Archaeology suggests that this was, in fact,

a new age of resourcefulness.

When Britons began their own trades and industries,

and built a new society.

While England was being rebuilt after the Romans,

in Scotland it was a different story.

Here, the earliest line of Scottish kings was reaching

the height of their power.

But today the full story of these northern rulers remains

shrouded in mystery.

The Picts were the ancient people of Scotland, depicted by history

as fearsome, painted warriors feared even by the Romans.

While southern Britain fell to the armies from Rome,

here in the North, the Picts were largely unconquered.

They continued to rule across Scotland and into northern England

right up until the 10th century but their story is little-known.

Hard evidence of the Picts and their kingdom has been hard to find.

Now, though, a team of archaeologists thinks

they might just pinpointed the seat of Pictish power.

Here is their dig diary.

Some of the very few clues the Picts left behind

are giant symbol stones.

The most famous is the six-foot-tall terrifying-looking Rhynie Man.

These stones seem to be linked with Pictish royalty.

Archaeologist Gordon Noble has spent his entire career

searching for evidence of the Picts

and he's now digging at a site in the east of Scotland where

some of their mysterious symbol stones have been found.

He's hoping to unearth the seat of forgotten Pictish kings.

Right, here we are at Dunnicaer.

This is the site where, in the 19th century,

six Pictish symbol stones were found on top of the sea stack here.

Only a few people have visited the site in the 20th century

and didn't really note much on top

but already, yesterday was our first ascent,

which was quite precarious and slightly scary.

We found remains on top.

It's a promising find.

But to fully investigate it,

they will have to make the dangerous climb all over again.

The stack is 60 feet tall,

surrounded by jagged rocks

and the chilly north Atlantic.

A strong defensive position for a Pictish warrior tribe

but not the easiest commute for a team of archaeologists.

However, if they have found a Pictish fort,

it will all have been worth it.

Right, so we're on top of the sea stack now,

where the symbol stones were found.

We are at the lower portion of what we think is the fortified site.

Following the trail of the symbol stones pays off immediately.

The very first trial trench reveals an area of flat stones,

possibly a hearth.

It looks like evidence of actual occupation activities

actually on top of the promontory here, so that's quite exciting.

Lots of charcoal with fragments of animal bone, so hopefully it's

good evidence of how people were using the promontory in the past.

It's a promising start

and another trench provides evidence that this site may, in fact,

have been a dwelling or even a fortress.

OK, so we're in test pit five at the moment.

We've just opened this up and we've found a series of post-holes.

We've got one that's been fully excavated out

and we've uncovered another four over here in a row.

There's another possible one, half of one, sitting in the corner here,

so this might be part of the building - we don't quite know yet -

but we're taking samples from that one

so we'll wait and see what we've got for the rest.

A line of post-holes suggests a wooden wall.

And, by day four,

the team has uncovered hard evidence of a substantial fortification.

So we've got some quite exciting results here.

We've got remains of big slots here used for timber beams

and this one here projects all the way from the edge of the cliff

up to this feature here, which is a giant, very large post-hole,

so it looks like we've got both upright timber elements

and horizontal timber elements creating this big wall,

enclosing the sea stack here.

So that's quite exciting and great detail, really,

on the construction methods for this rampart here.

'The team have found compelling evidence that this was once

'a fortified site but, to be sure that it belonged to the Picts,

'they'll have to radiocarbon date their finds.'

That rock stack looked really difficult to access.

Presumably it would have been connected to the mainland by a more

-significant causeway, perhaps?

-We think so.

We think it was probably a promontory in the Pictish period,

which makes a lot of sense. You wouldn't want to build

a fort on top of the stack today, certainly.

The dating came back with some staggering results.

This sea fort does date to the time of the Picts,

but, incredibly, it's 200 years older than anyone expected.

What's quite interesting, the dates for most Pictish forts

fall into the fifth and sixth centuries AD,

when they really seem to reach their height of construction and use,

but this example here, we just got the radiocarbon dates back

and it's actually third and fourth centuries AD,

which is really interesting, so it's the earliest example we have so far.

What's more, they think that this fort was just one of a string

of coastal defences built by the Picts to defend their territory.

We know that these defending closures were deeply

implicated in kingship,

so we perhaps have the first glimmers, really, of that process

where we get the emergence of these early kingdoms in northern Britain.

So if this is the emergence of early Pictish kingdoms,

what's that growing out of?

Smaller scale societies in the Iron Age, certainly,

or certainly a shift towards more lineage-based models

where we are getting certain individuals styling themselves as

kings and really underlining their power by building these forts.

So they are growing into bigger political units, effectively?

Really, this period is the birth, or the first evidence for these,

essentially what become the early Medieval states of northern Europe

emerging, so it's a really, really important time period.

The discovery of Britain's earliest Pictish fort is huge

but it is not the seat of royal power Gordon was hoping for,

so he's starting a new dig at Rhynie itself,

whose place name comes from the Celtic word for "king".

This was where Rhynie Man once stood

and the site is still marked by other mysterious symbol stones.

These symbol stones date to the fifth and sixth centuries AD

and we have this contemporary complex of monuments

enclosures around about the standing stone here.

The standing stone here, the cross theme, which hopefully you can see,

there's a salmon here and a Pictish beast, as well.

Big, long legs here and the snout here

and this little mane on the top here.

The symbol stone marks the entrance to a huge circular enclosure.

His hunch now is that the scale of this site shows it was far

more significant than the fort at Dunnicaer.

So I'm trying to uncover a bit more of this settlement this year,

so we've dug this very large trench, about 40 metres by 35 metres,

to uncover more elements of the enclosure complex.

This new trench reveals the circular enclosure was defined by

a deep outer ditch and a defensive timber wall or palisade.

Day 12 at Rhynie.

A lovely summer's day.

So we're down here looking at the palisade

and post setting, which defines the outer boundary of the fort here.

So we're getting some really quite exciting architectural

details out here, beginning to find evidence of actual planks

and post settings here and then, just over to my right over here,

there's a whole line of post-holes

and these seem to respect this outer enclosure here,

so we've got big, wooden plank-based wall on the outside

and then big posts on the inside, perhaps creating a raised platform,

a raised walkway around the edge of the fort around here.

Gordon's team has found evidence of a huge fort.

It would have been 60 metres in diameter...

..and its defensive wall was complex.

The team has found the remains of a second wall outside the first.

It begins to look like Gordon's hunch has paid off.

His team may have discovered a royal stronghold worthy of the first

kings of Scotland.

The reason this big wooden wall is important is

because we know that in this period Pictish kings are closely

tied to these fortified sites and that seems to be

one of the underpinnings of their rulership and we have had

very few excavations of this scale to actually reveal this

important architectural detail and, really,

the scale of the outer enclosure is really quite staggering at this

relatively early phase in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.

The Pictish kings are Britain's most mysterious rulers

and now, Gordon's team has pushed back

the date of the rise of their power and discovered what may have been

one of their primary strongholds-

but, incredibly, that's not all.

Gordon has also discovered evidence here to show how the Pictish kings

lived and he's brought it back to our lab.

So who actually lived at a palace like this? A king?

What kind of area would he have covered? Was his family there?

Would there have been army there?

First of all, I'm not sure I'd call it a palace.

-I would call it a kind of royal complex, really.

-OK.

It's clearly, perhaps,

at certain times of the year, people lived there.

We have buildings inside.

But, at the same time, we don't have any evidence for any actual

grinding of grain or some of the more everyday tasks.

I think this is more likely a place where kings are coming

at certain times of year and entertaining his followers.

Some of the finds revealed that this entertaining was

done in a lavish style using imported luxuries.

So these things don't look like much.

They look like bits of toffee or something.

But this is incredibly rare pottery in Britain

and Ireland in this time period.

Where's it actually from?

We don't know exactly, but somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean

and these would have been big storage amphora

of the sixth century AD or late fifth century.

They're probably for storing wine or some other exotic foodstuff.

Do you think by the time they got to Scotland they still had wine in?

I hope so. I can't imagine why else they would come so far.

These are the northernmost examples found in Britain and Ireland so far

and they are coming really far inland.

So the Pictish kings of Rhynie are getting

a bit of a taste for the luxuries of the Mediterranean?

That's right, yes.

It's amazing to think, really,

that Pictish high-status people were sitting in Rhynie drinking

Mediterranean wine in the sixth century.

It's quite a fantastic image, really, isn't it?

There was more going on at Rhynie than just fine dining.

The team also found signs of a ritual offering of cattle bones

and teeth buried in a pit right underneath the spot where

Gordon believes Rhynie Man himself once stood.

It's another clue to the ritual significance of the fort.

It's not the most defensible location.

Most forts in this time period are on promontories or on hills,

so this is a more lowland location and what we think we've got here

is... It's using the language of defence, but, actually,

there's perhaps more going on here,

so the Rhynie Man, for example, carries this axe

and it's thought to be a sacrificial axe for poleaxing cattle,

so we think there's probably cult dimensions to the site

as well as being perhaps a residence at certain times of the year.

The team is delving into the mysteries of the Picts and they've

revealed what appears to have been a very early royal site,

two centuries older than anyone expected to find.

Here, perhaps, was the seat of Pictish power,

a royal court with luxuries from the Mediterranean.

For Gordon, it is a satisfying conclusion to his year-long search

for the Picts.

In archaeology,

some fantastic discoveries come only after years of painstaking research.

Others are made by chance and often against the clock.

Before any major construction project gets under way,

the developers must first call in the archaeologists to survey

the site and to save any archaeology it might contain.

Commercial digs like this often turn up surprising

and exciting finds as our next dig diary shows,

when archaeologists uncovered evidence of one of the most

intriguing Iron Age cultures in Britain.

November 2014, in a small Yorkshire village,

and a team is beginning a dig to rescue

the archaeology from a site where a housing estate is planned.

Time is tight.

The excavation needs to be completed so construction can get under way.

But, within days,

it's clear there's more to this site than anyone had predicted...

..when the archaeologists begin to unearth an array

of 2,000-year-old burial mounds, known as barrows.

Right, it's John's.

Very exciting. Three barrows now.

John, would you mind coming to describe your burial, please?

We've got a crouch burial lying on its left side, facing east,

with the head to the north.

So you've still got quite a lot to do?

Well, that's six burials in this one barrow alone.

There's two that are just north.

There's one definite grave in there

and then some black patches that are still to be explored.

-Tons to do.

-Brilliant.

More and more graves are unearthed,

until it's clear that the site for the new housing estate is

actually a large Iron Age cemetery.

And it's such an incredibly rare find,

the developers agree to give the archaeologists more time.

We're going to start stripping this area this afternoon,

which we hope to see an extension to the square barrow cemetery.

Obviously, there's great anticipation

because we still have no idea what's under here.

As burial after burial is revealed, the team realise that, until now,

their excavations only scratch the surface of this extraordinary site.

Oh, looking good.

Extremely good.

For months, the team works against the clock until, by day 149,

they have revealed a staggering 38 square barrows.

Within the cemetery, we have all shapes and sizes of square barrows.

This one's a classic representation,

eight metres by six metres with a central grave.

We've got a much smaller one here but still with a central grave.

Barrow graves like these are usually associated with high status

individuals like this man,

who has been carefully laid out with his shield.

It looks absolutely fantastic.

If we are right in saying that this is a shield,

-then that's pretty special.

-Yep.

It's one for Pete to tick off his list.

THEY LAUGH

We came here eight months ago anticipating a couple of square

barrows but, in fact, we've got an Iron Age square barrow cemetery.

We've excavated over 60 barrows

and 101 skeletons to date.

This vast cemetery was a chance find,

made because of a housing development.

But who were the mysterious Iron Age tribe buried here?

Only now can the analysis begin,

with the skeleton of a 25-year-old man buried with an array of weapons.

He dates to the Iron Age.

He's obviously significant within his community.

It's highly likely that he was a warrior.

That he was afforded more ritual than the other

burials that we are seeing.

He is a significant member of his community.

-And is this the only sword you've got on site?

-Yes.

This is the only example.

We've got other objects that have been found within the barrows,

but that's the only sword that we've got.

We've got an iron blade with a scabbard still adhering to it,

made of timber, and then the horn handle.

-Are these little bits of bronze as well?

-Yes.

-Here and here?

So quite decorative at the top, then?

It would have been really decorative, yes.

'The fine craftsmanship hints at a sword that once belonged to someone

'of high status and the spearheads found beside the body offer

'further insight into the burial afforded to this high-ranking man.'

Along with the sword, the person had been buried with several spears

that you can see around his body and they haven't been placed.

They are just randomly positioned within the grave.

Do you imagine people throwing them into the grave, then?

That's what we thought, as part of his ritual -

that they stood at the top of the grave

and they were placing these spears within the grave.

This cemetery is in Yorkshire but the style of the burials,

the contents of the graves

and the design of this sword are distinctly continental.

It's a mysterious phenomenon known as Arras culture

and unique in Britain to East Yorkshire.

York Museum holds an extraordinary collection of Arras treasures,

showing cultural connections with France.

And they reveal that these Iron Age people venerated

not just their warrior men but, more remarkably, their women.

These beads are utterly astonishing. They're beautiful.

They're one of my favourites objects in these cemeteries

and the wonderful thing about this necklace,

which was found in a fairly elderly woman's barrow, we think,

is that it's composed of lots of different types of beads.

These are eye beads and, cross-culturally,

we know that's quite a powerful symbol to ward off evil.

But these beads come from a different necklace.

These are wave beads, again from another necklace.

These eye beads have been made in a different way to these ones.

Do these perhaps suggest that they weren't all made at the same time

specifically to make this necklace?

No, I think they've come from a range of different necklaces

and perhaps, as a woman, as you enter your more senior

years of life, you inherit these beads through mothers

and grandmothers, perhaps as you come through the major

rites of passage like childbirth and survive it, which not all women did.

And this is something that you wear as a senior female figure

in that community that speaks of those connections

with your maternal forebears,

so I think that's an extraordinary object which speaks of a biography

of your connections and the families of which you are a part.

And how does the Arras culture specifically fit within

what's going on around it?

Does it fit within the rest of the Iron Age culture in the area?

It's peculiar because there are very few other people who formally

bury their dead this time, so the phenomenon of

the square barrow cemeteries is really quite unique.

It has connections with the continent.

That's where you might expect to see that kind of barrow

and so it's possible that that idea has been brought

over by somebody important or powerful

so, for all intents and purposes,

our locals are at least first or second generation incomers.

The discovery of the Arras cemetery was unexpected and extraordinary.

It offers us tantalising evidence of our links to

the continent in the Iron Age.

And to a possible mysterious tribe of ancient immigrants who

came from Europe to settle in the heart of Yorkshire 2,000 years ago.

From Black Loch to Star Carr,

archaeology can reveal how our ancestors lived

and what they thought

while, from Scottish kings who built a new kingdom

to Dark Age Britons who built a new way of life,

it can illuminate worlds we never thought we could know

to reveal the ancient people with new ideas

who laid the foundations for our modern Britain.