West Digging for Britain

We may be a small island, but we have a rich and complex history

that's still full of mysteries.

So, every year, hundreds of archaeologists

go out hunting for lost pieces from our missing past.

Tiny, tiny coin.

Every element is there.

This is just unbelievable.

In 2017, their investigations continue to fill in the gaps...

Oh, man! Wow!

..bringing us closer to our ancestors than ever before.

What do you think of that, Roy?

In this programme, we showcase the best digs from the west of the UK.

Oh, wow.

That's rather lovely.

Each of the excavations has been filmed as it happened

by the archaeologists themselves.

Their dig diaries mean that we can be there

for each exciting moment of discovery.

-Excalibur.

-How does that feel, Rupert?

-Yeah, really good.

And now the archaeologists are bringing their finds, from pottery

to metalwork to human remains, into our lab so we can take a closer look

at them and find out what they tell us about our British ancestors.

Welcome to Digging for Britain.

In this programme, I'm joining archaeologists in the west

to share their biggest discoveries.

Near Stonehenge, a lost prehistoric monument

is transforming our understanding of Stone Age Britain.

-I mean, it looks like writing.

-It does.

-It's amazing.

In Staffordshire, an incredible hoard of 2,500-year-old gold...

It's a find of a lifetime, isn't it?

..reveals our Iron Age ancestors' surprisingly continental tastes

in jewellery.

That is absolutely beautiful.

In Repton, we come face-to-face with Vikings

and discover some surprising new information

about their bloodthirsty invasion of Britain.

-Are they female warriors?

-They could be.

I've come to Taunton, to the Museum of Somerset,

to find out how the artefacts in this collection can help us

broaden out those stories of our new discoveries from the west.

Our first dig takes us to Avebury,

deep in the heart of our most treasured prehistoric landscape.

Over 5,000 years old,

Avebury has the largest stone circle in the world,

measuring more than a kilometre in circumference.

It's part of a vast network of prehistoric burial mounds

and monuments, including the world-famous Stonehenge.

We used to think that this was just a landscape of sacred sites

but now we're challenging that.

For centuries, investigators have been exploring

the sacred landscape of Avebury, romancing the stones,

painting this picture of a landscape that was almost devoid of life,

but visited when people came to worship or to bury their dead there.

But archaeologists are now interested in looking at

that landscape not only as a sacred space but as a lived in place.

If they can prove that Avebury wasn't just a dead ritual landscape

but that prehistoric people actually lived in and around the stones,

they will transform our picture of Stone Age Britain.

So, teams from Leicester and Southampton universities

have joined forces with the National Trust

and are focusing on two spots,

exploring in the fields that surround the stones

and within the very centre of the circle itself.

Avebury Stone Circle is too precious to dig,

so they're using modern surveying equipment to investigate

without causing any damage.

But in the field overlooking the monument,

the team have been granted privileged permission to excavate.

OK, well, here we are, day one,

we're in the process of beginning the excavation.

It's a site that was first discovered in the 1920s

and at the time it produced a very rich collection

of both early and middle Neolithic flint work.

These ancient flints are an intriguing clue

that prehistoric people were actively present in the fields

surrounding the stones.

But are these tools that have simply been dropped

by people passing through,

or were those people more permanently settled here?

To find out, the team is examining every inch of ground

for evidence of Stone Age flint working.

One of the issue is the fact that it's not always easy,

especially when you're digging,

to recognise what's worked and what's not worked.

So the basic policy is for people to keep everything

that they think might be worked

and then afterwards we can just, sort of, go through the trays

and root out anything that isn't.

And with expert eagle eyes,

the careful scrutiny soon begins to pay off.

We've found a lovely piece of middle Neolithic Peterborough ware.

It's from the body of the pot and it's got markings on it

where people have used their fingernails to indent a pattern.

-It's very exciting.

-It's good.

Over 5,000 years old,

this pottery confirms that Stone Age people

were active in these fields during the lifetime of the monument.

And within the circle itself,

the team's survey has produced even more extraordinary results.

It's revealed a series of giant stones

that once made up a square in the middle of the circle.

And at its centre, what appears to be the remains of a house.

This incredible revelation suggests that people might have been living

inside the circle.

But were they also living in the surrounding fields?

-You've just found a nice scraper there, haven't you?

-Yeah.

This one's been retouched all the way around its circumference.

-So it's the first one we've found on the site.

-Yes.

The scraper on its own isn't evidence of occupation

but each tool that's discovered adds to the picture

that's emerging of a busy Stone Age landscape.

-It is one of the ugliest barbed and tanged heads I've found.

-Good grief.

-Sort of apprentice level.

-Yes.

-I mean, that could have been made by a kid, couldn't it?

-It could.

It suggests that whoever made this was basically still learning

how to knap flint properly.

And it's quite nice to find that kind of evidence

of different skill sets - just makes it a bit more human.

These tools give insight into day-to-day prehistoric life

but the team then makes an even bigger breakthrough,

finding evidence that this was much more than just a Stone Age workshop.

In front of me we have a small pit.

Within it, so far we've found pieces of cattle bone,

charcoal and hazelnut shells.

The sorts of things you could imagine people cracking open

and eating the nuts and then tossing the shells on to the fire.

The team has uncovered several of these pits across the site

and for Josh the evidence is mounting up

that our ancestors weren't just working, but living here.

And the final pit turns up one of the most exciting clues yet.

Is it a quern-stone? And the answer is yes.

CHEERING

In the Neolithic, our ancestors made the transition

from being hunter gatherers to settled farmers

and they used quern-stones to grind cereals.

For the archaeologists, it's further evidence that people were living

and working in the shadow of Avebury.

This dig has produced some incredible finds.

But how does it transform our picture of this iconic monument

and the surrounding prehistoric landscape?

I've invited site directors Mark Gillings and Josh Pollard

into the lab to find out.

And, first, I want to know more about that astonishing house.

The really exciting thing was the discovery

-in the middle of the circle here.

-Yeah.

-This is extraordinary.

-The house is that little beastie behind the obelisk.

-Oh, right.

So we've got the obelisk, seven metres long,

so would have stood to about six metres high.

So they're putting this whopping great stone in there.

Then we have a square of substantial standing stones,

30 metres in diameter, centred on the house.

So they're basically echoing the house on a colossal scale.

-Huge, monumental scale.

-So this is not a roof structure?

-No, no. This is a square circle.

-Ah.

-If that makes any sense whatsoever.

-Mark!

Suggestions on a postcard...

-Or on a sqircle...

-On a squircle.

Apparently you can get cream from Boots for that.

So you've got a square around the site of a former house

but elaborating it, enhancing it, you know,

monumentalising it, if you like.

Then we've got a huge stone circle surrounding the square

and the house.

The geometric centre of that circle

is slap bang in the middle of the house.

So does this building in the centre predate the actual stone circle?

-Yeah.

-Yeah?

-No, absolutely.

It gives us an insight into the origins of the henge itself.

The discovery of this early house is an important revelation.

But, incredibly, the dig has revealed that the surrounding area

was also densely populated.

There are a good number of tools that we came across,

including these nice early Bronze Age barbed and tanged arrowheads.

-They are lovely.

-Which is an amazing piece of flint work.

So when does that date, do you think?

Erm... somewhere between about 2400BC to 1800BC.

Yeah. I mean, I must say, looking at the film of you on-site,

you know, Josh, when you're standing there with that tray

and sorting through those flints, flinging one out,

but what painstaking work.

-It's not easy to throw them quite so...

-No.

-Boldly.

LAUGHTER

-It comes with years of practice.

-Yeah.

We were quite surprised, actually, by the results because we knew

that there was a flint scatter there from the 1920s work.

We'd done a little bit of field walking.

But what we found was that the scatter was continuing,

it's a much bigger scale than we imagined.

It's a place repeatedly visited probably from the late Mesolithic

right through into the early Bronze Age.

There's evidence of people living there for periods time as well.

It's a much busier kind of dynamic and alive landscape.

These could be places which were just as significant,

just as laden with history and associations,

as many of the big monuments.

The Avebury project is helping to transform the story

of one of our most famous prehistoric monuments

and perhaps it should make us think differently

about Stonehenge as well.

Archaeologists are now revealing that Britain's ancient monuments

weren't empty and hushed sanctuaries,

but bustling places full of people.

Our next dig takes us to Repton in Derbyshire.

Today, Repton is a small, sleepy village,

but 1,200 years ago it was the capital of Murcia,

a powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

Legendarily, Repton played a key role

in one of the most tumultuous events in our island's history,

the Viking invasion.

In the 8th and 9th centuries,

the Vikings gained a fearsome reputation as warriors

that made annual visits to British shores

to rape, pillage and plunder before returning home.

But in 873, so the legend goes,

they upped their game and this time they intended to stay.

They beat the opposition at Repton and camped there for the winter,

intent on continuing their attempted conquest the following year.

A good story but the only records we have of this invasion

were written down 300 years later

in the Icelandic Sagas -

less historical accounts, more like swashbuckling tales.

But now a team of archaeologists from Bristol University

has invaded Repton themselves.

In just three weeks, they're hoping to test the idea

that Repton really was the location of the legendary Viking winter camp.

And begin to discover how the bloodthirsty Viking army

prepared to conquer Britain.

We started this excavation last summer - we had a two-week season

when were just getting down to evidence of Viking activity,

in terms of the artefacts.

To explore the possibility that this really was

the legendary Viking camp,

this year, the team is using geophysical surveying kit

to narrow down the digging targets.

-There you go. So it goes up to 3,000.

-Oh, my God.

-It's minus...

-So come back a bit further.

There's obviously a lot buried beneath the ground here.

But only digging it will tell whether it's hidden Viking evidence.

The team has divided their most promising trench into sections

and it soon reveals the first clue

that someone here could have been setting out a camp.

This is the surface here and you can see it's just a completely compacted

pebbly surface in a kind of loamy deposit.

And you can see just thousands, millions of pebbles

all compacted together.

When it gets wet, this place becomes a quagmire.

-And what you really want to do...

-Yeah.

-.. is keep your feet dry.

Precisely. And if you perhaps have tents and things like that,

having those surfaces is really helpful.

The team needs to work out whether this pebbled surface

was indeed part of the Vikings' winter camp.

And that depends on finding characteristic datable artefacts.

For Mark, this is a particularly exciting dig

because in the 1980s he excavated nearby

and found a mausoleum with an almost identical pebbled surface.

And on this, one of the most intriguing archaeological finds

ever made in Britain.

Essentially, we found a gravel mound

and round the outside of that gravel mound were kerbstones

and then when we removed the mound, we had essentially a mausoleum.

And at the eastern end, there were just bones and bones.

It was about this thick of solid bones.

But dating this mausoleum has proved tricky.

Viking coins were found amongst the bones

but when the remains were radiocarbon dated

they appeared to be hundreds of years too early to be Viking.

But radiocarbon dating is now much more accurate,

so as well as digging the new site at Repton,

Cat is also resampling these bones

to see if they really could be Viking after all.

There are about 70 or so skulls in total.

We know that there were a lot more than 70 people there.

The minimum number of individuals is 249.

And the way that was worked out

was by counting the number of left femurs, so left thigh bones,

because we only have one of those.

We know that quite a few of them have injuries

that they could have received in battle,

so that could definitely be consistent with a Viking army.

But what Cat really needs is an accurate date on these bones

and she's hoping that new methods in radiocarbon dating

will settle the question once and for all.

Do these human remains date from the time of the Vikings?

While the team waits for the results,

back at the dig site Mark has been busy mapping the pebbled surface

and this has revealed a tantalising link

between the mausoleum and the potential Viking camp.

So this is our pebble spread and then this is actually

the remains of that pebble path coming down.

So they built a path to keep their feet dry

to go in to the end of the mausoleum.

As the archaeologists reach deeper levels,

they are starting to find clear evidence

that this camp was set up by the Vikings.

There you go. A nice really large but very delicate piece of bone.

Excellent. Could be something like pig.

Oh, well, it looks like a blade.

And it's very unusual to be sticking right up like that.

-Is it iron?

-It's definitely iron, yes.

-OK.

These discoveries are proving that the Vikings were camping down here

and they are beginning to build up a picture that the army

wasn't just waiting out the winter

but preparing for total war against our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

I'm just looking through some of the pieces of slag that we've got.

So this is metalworking waste.

So these camps aren't just a place where you wait for the next battle

to take place, you're actually doing a lot of active work and repairing,

making new objects and so on.

After three weeks of digging,

the team has, for the first time, found hard evidence

that Repton was the site of the legendary Viking camp

and, as a bone expert myself,

I want to find out if those skulls belong to the Vikings themselves,

so I've invited Cat into the lab to reveal all.

OK, Cat, what are the dates on these skulls?

OK, so they are all completely consistent with a date

-in the late 9th century.

-They are?

-They are, yeah. All of them.

And so they all fit with an 873AD greater army winter camp.

But do we know if these people are Vikings?

Just because they're 9th century, that doesn't mean they're Vikings.

Exactly, so we need a little bit more evidence than that.

They could still be the local population,

perhaps people who were killed when the Viking army attacked Repton,

so I've been trying to find some more evidence from the bones

to see where they grew up and I've been doing that

by looking at isotope evidence from their teeth.

So whatever chemicals you've incorporated into your diet

as a child will remain in your teeth for the rest of your life

and for 1,000 years afterwards.

-And?

-And some of them are completely beyond

-what you would expect from England at all.

-Right.

So one of these skulls here

has a value very consistent with inland Scandinavia.

It sounds as though it is certainly possible that all these individuals

-came over from Scandinavia.

-Absolutely.

And several of them we know couldn't have come from England at all.

And this skull is very definitely male.

It's got really chunky mastoid processors

and big ridges over the ear hole just there.

-But some of them are not male?

-That's right.

I don't know if you noticed, these two here actually both women.

So the question is, of course, were they a part of the army?

-Are they female warriors?

-They could be.

It's actually impossible to know whether these really were

female Viking warriors but there were definitely women at Repton.

A lot of them do have injuries, so they were clearly in battle.

We have evidence from elsewhere in the Viking world

that women are buried with weapons in typical, sort of, warrior graves.

It's certainly a possibility.

During the dig, the team didn't just find evidence about who was camped

at Repton, but about how the army was preparing for invasion.

We found some things that were definitely associated

with the Viking winter camp.

Most obvious are probably these two nails here.

-So they are ship nails.

-Oh, are they?

-Called clinker nails.

-Yeah.

So they're a very particular type.

This would have fastened together two bits of wood.

You put a nail in one end, a rove at the other side

and then you hit it with a hammer and it goes clink.

-And that's why it's called a clinker nail.

-Oh, really?

And this is very typical for ship constructions.

And because we've got these nails here,

this showing quite possibly that they are fixing their boats.

And because we're finding so much metalworking evidence,

-that's really backing that up as well.

-Mm.

That's part of an axe.

It's identical to illustrations of types found in Scandinavia.

So that's very exciting.

So, finding these weapons,

again, it's very consistent with that Viking army.

But not every object was to do with warfare.

So these are little gaming pieces.

-Are they?

-Yes.

-We can see some of them have a little hole underneath.

-Oh, yeah.

We think that's for putting them on a pegged gaming board.

I think small objects like this are just so intriguing, aren't they,

because we go from that, kind of, bigger picture of this Viking army

coming in to the details of day-to-day life in the camp.

Cat and her team have proved that the legend of a Viking camp

at Repton was true.

And now, for the first time, we have some detailed insight into

how the Vikings set about their fabled invasion.

It's an invaluable addition to the growing archaeological record,

helping us to unpick our island's very own Viking saga.

And there are finds from Somerset

which helped to illuminate how this next chapter

in English history played out.

After they'd camped at Repton,

the Vikings set their sights on conquering the rest of England.

But when they headed southwest,

they were to be stopped in their tracks

by one of Britain's most celebrated kings - Alfred the Great.

This is the most famous artefact, isn't it, associated with Alfred?

It is. We have to admit, sadly, that this is a replica.

The real thing is in Oxford in the Ashmolean Museum.

-But that means I can pick it up.

-You can pick it up, yes.

The Alfred jewel was found in Somerset,

in a Somerset field, in 1693.

Written around the frame are the words, Alfred ordered me to be made.

What is the object?

The likelihood is that it's in fact the head a pointer,

that a thin rod would have been attached to it there

and that pointer would have been used for following words in a book.

In a way, in this very small gleam of gold

is gathered up everything that Alfred represented.

He aimed to be three things.

A soldier, to keep his kingdom safe, a scholar,

and also a Christian king so that the...

erm, that the...

help of God would protect him and his people

from the threat that the Vikings posed.

Alfred dedicated his life to resisting the Vikings

and, without him, British history

would have played out very differently.

And eventually he was victorious against the Vikings.

-He beat them at Edington.

-He did.

Yes, the great year in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

is the year 878, around Easter time,

when, having hidden away in the fen fastnesses of Athelney...

-Burning the cakes.

-Burning the cakes.

He then went to Egbert's stone on the eastern borders of the county

and gathered the people of Somerset, Wiltshire

and part of Hampshire to him, and then went on to defeat Guthrum,

the King of the Danes, at the Battle of Edington.

-And there's his name on the side.

-It is.

-Aelfred.

-Alfred. Yes.

It's extraordinary.

Alfred's victory was a landmark moment in British history.

By defeating the Vikings, he bound the Anglo-Saxons together

and laid the foundations for a unified England.

Our next dig takes us forward 1,000 years in British history

to Burrow Island in Portsmouth Harbour

and from famous kings and Vikings to humble unmarked graves.

Burrow Island is a tiny tidal isle

overlooked by the famous historic naval dockyard.

Portsmouth was a thriving maritime hub

during Britain's Age of Empire

but this particular island has a much darker story to tell.

Burrow Island was nicknamed Rat Island in the 19th century,

where, as local legend has it,

the rodents fed on the dead bodies of people buried there.

Recently, that legend has been proved true

as the forces of nature has revealed the bodies buried here.

We came here in 2014 following one of the big storms

when the police said there were human remains on the foreshore.

Indeed, there was a human skull.

And we recovered five individuals from graves

cut into the rock surface of the cliff on the island.

Now, in the summer of 2017, Richard and his team have returned,

as three more graves have been exposed by the tides.

They believe that Rat Island's bodies belong to criminals

incarcerated on prison hulks moored in Portsmouth Harbour

during the 19th century.

These floating jail ships housed children as young as eight

and many onboard would have committed only minor crimes.

The people incarcerated in these floating prisons

would have lived in appalling conditions

and they've been practically written out of history.

While we will never discover their individual identities,

this dig hopes to bring their stories back to life

and to tell us what the Britain of Empire was really like

for those who fell foul of the law.

The team has just four days to investigate.

Each day that the bones lie exposed to the elements increases the risk

of them being washed away forever.

And they have to work extra fast,

with only a short window between tides to lift the skeletons.

But only hours into day one and they've made incredible progress.

We're starting to get some skeletal remains.

So, we've just been working on this arm,

which is starting to come out here. We've got a hand.

Do you want to show...

It looks like we've got some feet bones coming through here,

remains of the coffin side there, possibly a lid,

the top of the coffin's come down there.

As soon as they start lifting the skeletons, the bones immediately

provide a shocking insight into the terrible diets and poor health

of those who perished on board the prison hulks.

Let's have a... Yeah, so, a lot of dental decay on this one.

Well, you've got a few abscesses or cavities just there,

another abscess there. Another one there.

And the skeletons aren't the only evidence suggesting that disease

was rife on board these ships.

Really intriguing thing is this black layer.

Just a black line within the material.

Now, is that... It looks like pitch or burning or tar,

something like that. There are some documentary references to material

from the prison hulks being burnt on the island, especially if,

rather unpleasantly, there were infestations of cholera.

We know from documentary evidence that those on board the prison hulks

were beset with diseases such as typhoid, cholera and smallpox.

By the middle of day two, even more burials are coming to light.

Ryan, did you say there's something unusual about the one you're working

-on?

-We've just exposed some more bones that suggest perhaps it's a

double burial, perhaps two stacked on top of each other.

What makes you think that, then?

So what we've done is we've come down onto this other set

of radius and ulna here,

which in effect gives us three of each, so unless we looking at...

-OK, so you've got an extra arm.

-Extra arm. Yeah, in effect.

With bodies stacked up and piled high, the archaeologists are now

certain that Rat Island was an extensive cemetery.

And as the dig nears its end, a fourth skeleton gives the most

startling insight into the fate of one who perished

on board the prison ships.

Got a craniotomy here...

-What's a craniotomy?

-You can see this cut through the skull.

-OK.

-It's to access the brain, so they do this in autopsies.

So in postmortem examinations,

with a disease, they will cut open the head to access the brain.

The skull has clearly been sawn open.

This craniotomy could have been carried out as part of a postmortem

on this body. After just four days of rescue archaeology,

the team has recovered four skeletons of people who may have

spent their last months or years

in terrible conditions on board the prison ships,

ending up in unmarked graves on the island.

To find out what the team has learned from these burials,

I've invited Richard and Nick into the lab.

Sometimes I think when we look at human remains archaeologically

we can think that it's gruesome but actually we're just looking at

normal life and death, but in this case, I mean,

-this is a terribly gruesome story, isn't it?

-Exactly. Yes.

So we're actually dignifying the remains, avoiding their

destruction and they've actually become our teachers now.

Teaching us about the past.

So this is one of those skeletons from the film.

Quite clearly, this is the one that had the craniotomy.

Can we have a closer look at that?

If I bring that over. It's a fairly rough job, isn't it?

It is, yes, and there is a few attempts, I think,

-to open the skull.

-So it's been cut around here.

-You can actually see the lines of sawing on it.

-Exactly.

-And then

I presume what they've done is just stick something like

a chisel in here and then pop it off, because actually on this side

-it's broken.

-It's been snapped.

-Yeah. Yeah.

So do you think this was done as a form of autopsy to determine the

cause of death or do you think it was probably more about using it

as an example of anatomy, finding out more about anatomy?

The bodies on the prison hulks are bequeathed to

Oxford and Cambridge University, so they can be looked at by anatomists.

But there are cases before that of people doing autopsies just to see

what people are dying from cos there are large numbers of people dying.

But looking at this skeleton now,

it's impossible for us to determine the cause at death.

What we do know is that mortality rates were high on the prison ships.

It must've been an utterly horrendous existence for prisoners

-on board those hulks.

-When you think of the numbers involved, I mean,

300 is an average on one of these ships,

but it goes up to the best part of 1,000 people,

your bed spaces are sort of stacked in hammocks.

Now, the allotted bed space to start with was five foot ten

by a foot and a half,

so there are people living in absolute squalor and filth.

If you tried to escape, you were put into the black hole at the bottom

of the ship, so you were incarcerated with no light.

Rats running around. Disease was rife.

The death rate was up to about 30%

of people that went on to these hulks.

Just...mind-bending, it really is.

And do we know anything about where these people would have come from,

generally? I mean, are they likely to be local criminals?

There was an article in the Oxford Times which refers to

a Charles Maurice Jones, who is from Aberystwyth,

and he steals a certain amount of cloth from his employer and as a

result he's given 14 years and he dies on the prison hulks.

And the newspaper goes on to report

that the body of Charles Maurice Jones was removed from the ship

-and buried on the convicts burial ground of Rat Island.

-It is sad,

isn't it, I mean, it's horrendous to think that those prison hulks...

Very poignant thing, to see an individual like this,

who may have committed a very minor offence,

and for him just being on the ships was enough to basically sign him

-a death sentence.

-Mm.

Rat Island's graves give us a unique insight into the grim realities of

crime and punishment in the early 19th century.

It's a rare glimpse into a murky world that's often missing from the

official record that our Victorian ancestors left behind.

Our next investigation plunges us back more than 5,000 years to a time

when Britain was on the cusp of enormous change.

Our modern landscape is littered with iconic Stone Age structures we

know as barrows.

They've always been assumed to be ancient burial mounds.

Barrows are amongst some of the most obvious traces of our prehistoric

ancestors in the landscape and we thought we knew exactly what they

were about, they're burial mounds, surely?

But two digs are now challenging that interpretation and also

shedding light on this pivotal moment in prehistory when our

ancestors make the transition

from being hunter gatherers to being farmers.

The first dig in out prehistoric two-parter takes us

to the mysteriously and

rather gruesomely named Cat's Brain,

a recently discovered barrow

which sits in the heart of the world-famous

Stonehenge ritual landscape.

This summer, a team from Reading University

set out to investigate it,

the first time a long barrow has been dug near Stonehenge for over

50 years.

We are at the end of week two at Cat's Brain.

We have exposed all of the archaeology and every element

is there.

This is just unbelievable.

Jim has good reason to be excited.

Because centuries of ploughing have destroyed the mound itself,

the team had feared there would be nothing left to find.

But the preservation below ground level is much better than they had

expected. The foundations of the barrow are clearly visible and they

now feel they have every chance to find out how the people who used

Stonehenge buried their dead.

This is a section of the ditch which at the moment has produced some

really good quantities of early Neolithic pottery.

It's the sort of soil but just makes you want to jump in and start

digging. Extraordinary!

Spurred on by their finds,

the team sets to work trowelling the site and their efforts soon pay off.

As they reach the deeper levels,

Neolithic finds are coming thick and fast.

This has really sort of caught my attention.

I saw this when it came out of the ground.

It's absolutely beautiful leaf-shaped arrowhead,

classic early Neolithic flint work.

Fresh as anything.

It could have easily have been made just yesterday.

And exactly, exactly what we were hoping for.

Dating to around 3500 BC,

the arrowhead is precisely the right date for a Neolithic burial mound.

But as the dig progresses, the site becomes more and more baffling.

There are no burials here, no skeletons, not a single bone.

Instead, they discovered a load of post holes.

And its leading Jim to an extraordinary conclusion

about this monument.

Actually, it's quite complex.

We can see post holes showing up and beam slots.

It is looking very much like an actual building rather than just

a replica building for the long barrow.

Cat's Brain is such an odd site,

it's not at all what we expect from a Neolithic long barrow.

Well, 120 miles away there are more long barrows that are being

investigated, and once again these are looking unusual.

So the best thing to do, we thought, was to look at those two sites

together to compare and contrast and see what they teach us.

The second dig takes to Dorstone Hill near Peterchurch

in Herefordshire, where a team from Manchester University

has been investigating three ancient burial mounds.

So we are now two weeks into the excavation.

Most of what we've been doing to this point is cleaning down

onto the surface of the Neolithic mound.

Like Cat's Brain, the mound itself was destroyed long ago.

But the underground preservation is excellent, and yet again,

as the team go in search of burials,

they make a totally unexpected discovery.

Looks like the base of a circular post hole.

Just like at Cat's Brain, this team expected to find a burial mound,

but once again it's looking like a building.

And here the preservation of the wood is so incredible that Julian

can even glimpse how this building was put together.

Here, uniquely,

we have got part of the timber superstructure of the building.

So within this great mass of burnt daub and clay,

we've got timbers like these, where you can see the grain of the oak,

and in places you can even see the carpentry.

So this one here, you can see it's a forking piece of timber

with a peg that has gone straight through down into it.

It's telling us that carpentry that's been involved in putting this

building together is really very sophisticated.

You are seeing mortises, you are seeing pegs,

all of which means that you are dealing with quite sophisticated

timber architecture.

As Julian examines the evidence, he discovers something strange.

Before it was covered with the mound,

this building was burnt to the ground.

We know that certainly it burned.

Our geophysicists tell us that it burned at a temperature in excess

of 600 Centigrade, so very, very hot indeed.

Julian is starting to conclude that this monument started life as a

large timber building and when it fell out of use,

it was burnt to the ground and commemorated with a large mound.

In fact, the digs at Dorstone and Cat's Brain suggest that,

for decades, we've misunderstood

some of our most famous Stone Age monuments.

Far from being places of the dead,

they were in fact buildings for the living.

To find out more, I've invited Jim and Julian into the lab.

I honestly don't really know what to say.

Two absolutely amazing sites.

They are incredible!

Well, let's start with Cat's Brain first.

Did you have any idea that you were going to find this level of

preservation when you took the top layer of soil away?

Absolutely none at all.

And to find anything was absolutely extraordinary.

You know, it was one of those moments where you, you know,

the hairs on the back of your neck

stand up and you sort of start shaking.

It's there, it's actually there, you know,

and right slap bang in the middle of our trench.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is a building.

A large, early Neolithic timber hall.

That is fantastic. And these bits of stone, where are they from?

Well, those two chalk blocks came from one of the post holes.

Interestingly, one of the deep post holes.

These are utterly extraordinary.

There are grooves here and these grooves end in little pits.

That's right.

It's, it's very, very deliberate and carefully constructed.

And this looks like a rune.

It looks like writing.

-It's amazing.

-Yes, and the surface of them has been smoothed.

And they have deliberately incised it with markings which clearly had

some kind of symbolic importance to the community.

And that was deposited within one of these post holes.

And of course the whole of that building then is imbued with that

-symbolism.

-OK, well, that's utterly mind-blowing.

And Dorstone looks exceptional as well, Julian.

So, again, we have this idea that long mounds are cemeteries,

that they are where people bury their dead.

Each one of ours is constructed over the remains of a building.

So it's not that you're dealing necessarily with just the tomb of a

group of people, it's the tomb of the house.

So you've got a transformation of something that is a building for the

living, to a house of the dead.

This is a time when people are becoming much more settled in the landscape, isn't it?

I think what is important is that they are forming more coherent

communities, and one of the ways in which the draw these communities

together is through a collective act of building something which serves

as a symbol of community. And that's what these huge halls are.

To throw in a Game Of Thrones reference, you know,

House Tyrell or House Lannister, for example.

Or the House of York, you know. The house symbolises something more.

It's more than just the household.

It's a wider community. These are the pioneers, these are our

country's first agriculturalists,

the first time we get domestic species.

Out of this landscape, they are hewing out their own society.

And all of that is represented within the building.

So you think there's something really important going on here which

is marking this transition, marking this change in lifestyle?

Yes. It's this moment of change I think that people remember for many,

many generations afterwards. So, first of all, you build the halls,

then you burn those halls down.

You transform them into long mounds.

Then those long mounds attract further activity.

People come and dig pits into the mounds and place objects,

-like these very nice axes, into those.

-Those are lovely.

And there are more cremation burials in pits in the long mounds and

everything that happens on this hilltop is venerating, remembering,

thinking back to that moment of inception.

Two extraordinary sites.

-Thank you so much. They are amazing.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

The revelations from Cat's Brain and Dorstone are stunning.

They not only challenge our previous interpretations of long barrows,

they reveal how Britain's earliest farmers were beginning to forge

a communal identity.

Our next dig takes us to Leekfrith in the heart of rural Staffordshire

and the discovery of an incredible

2,500-year-old trove of buried treasure.

On a winter's day at the end of last year, local metal detectorists

Mark Hambleton and Joe Kania were in this field when they

made a remarkable discovery.

I looked at it, I knew it was gold straightaway.

I went down to Mark and said, "Mark, what is this?"

He said, "It's a torque." We was shocked, yeah.

It was the find of a lifetime, ain't it? You know. Brilliant.

But then they found three more.

And knowing that these torques are something rare and special,

they reported them immediately to local finds liaison officer

Theresa Gilmore. She was equally stunned.

It was just after lunch when Mark, one of the finders, turned up,

sat down in front of me, reached into his bag and said,

"I've got something you need to see."

Pulled out an old duster,

opened it up and there were four gold torques put in front of me.

Which put me into a state of shock!

Absolutely amazing. A fantastic find.

Those gold torques are stunning,

they are beautiful works of art in their own right,

but the archaeologists have key questions about them.

Where did they come from? When were they made?

And how did they end up in that field?

Initial examination revealed that they were Iron Age in date.

But to hear what else has been discovered, I have invited

finds liaison officer Theresa Gilmore into the lab.

What wonderful, wonderful objects just to appear out of this field.

Is there any context around them?

Do we know of any Iron Age activity in the area?

No. We don't know of any actual settlement in that area.

So it has come out of the blue.

So it is a complete surprise?

They are found individually, or they were discovered individually.

Do you think they were quite separate burials, then?

They were discovered individually because they had been dislodged by

the plough. But looking at the damage and the distortion on them,

we actually believe that they were originally buried as part of a

-nested arrangement.

-And no idea at all as to why they have been buried

-in a field?

-It's a very damp area,

so we think probably as an offering to the gods.

-This is beautiful.

-It is.

It is the most decorative piece out of them.

What's really notable is the decoration, which is an early style

Celtic artwork. You can see what looks like a little leaf.

I can see that

in that diamond there.

There is what looks like a little leaf there.

That is absolutely beautiful.

So what is the date of these, do you know?

Current dating is about 4th century BC.

So very early, actually.

Yes. The earliest Iron Age gold we've found so far.

-Anywhere in Britain?

-In Britain, yeah.

-That's fantastic.

The date of these torques reveals that Iron Age people were skilled

metalworkers, much earlier than we had ever thought.

But even more intriguingly,

the initial examination of them has suggested that the design influence

came from abroad.

And do you think that the fact that these designs bear some similarity

with torques found on the Continent, do you think that that means that

people in Britain are picking up those ideas? Or do you think these

-torques themselves have come from the Continent?

-We've done analysis

on all four of these and the composition we've

got is very similar to European gold alloys.

It's reasonable to assume that, yes,

they've come over from the Continent.

It is intriguing, isn't it,

to think that these objects may not have just simply been traded across

-from the Continent, but actually they could have come across WITH people.

-Yeah.

They could have been high status women coming over,

perhaps even as brides.

-Possibly.

-I think these are absolutely gorgeous objects,

I'm blown away by them. They are beautiful.

But I'm so frustrated by not knowing who they belong to or why they were

put in the ground. I mean, these could have been somebody's treasure

that they were burying quickly and then running away,

or it could have been a votive offering. We really don't know,

-do we?

-We don't know but what we do know is that Staffordshire now has

links to the Continent.

So we've got Continental styles of torques and their metallic

composition is that of Continental gold work.

And you just didn't expect to find that?

We didn't expect to find that in Staffordshire.

There are still many mysteries

around this Iron Age buried treasure,

but we now have a fantastic new insight into the sophistication of

our ancestors at this time

and we know that international links penetrated

deeper into Britain than we'd thought before.

The Iron Age marks the final chapter in British pre-history,

the time before written records began.

But as our next dig shows,

even when our ancestors began to document their lives

2,000 years ago,

archaeology still holds the key to understanding their world.

In AD 43, the Romans arrived.

But it wasn't enough for them to come, see and conquer.

They wrote about it as well.

And so they recorded their battles and their building projects for

posterity. But it seems that when it came to the British countryside,

they ran out of ink.

And so there's always been a question over how far Roman culture

and influence spread into rural Britain.

But our final dig in Hampshire's Meonstoke valley is shedding new

light on this mystery.

In the 1980s, archaeologists digging here discovered a Roman building

of such importance that it's now housed in the British Museum.

With little to go on except its quality and its rural location,

it was labelled a villa.

But a new investigation of the site

is leading archaeologists to a radical rethink.

We have an interesting discovery. In the middle of the geophysics plot

we have this hexagonal building.

Now, this hexagonal building has put a whole new

idea to us that in fact this might not be a villa,

it might be a religious site.

We think that this might be an interesting Roman temple.

As the team clears away the topsoil,

the foundations of the hexagon

become astonishingly clear to the eye.

If this turns out to be a temple, it would be hugely significant.

In an isolated location like this,

it would suggest that Roman culture was far more ingrained in the

countryside than we had ever imagined before.

So the team hunts for evidence that the Romans were worshipping here.

..quite deep.

-BEEPING

-There it is.

-Oh!

-Is it a minim?

-Oh.

-Looks like it might be a minim.

-What's a minim?

A tiny, tiny coin.

This is, I would say a House of Constantine, type of coin.

Early 4th century, almost certainly.

Buried in situ, the coins prove this is definitely a Roman building.

And Tony believes that they are the first clues that this could have

been a temple site.

It looks as though there is a reasonable number of coins,

which could be votive offerings, on the site.

Other Roman temples have often thrown up thousands of coins,

given as votive offerings to the gods.

And another find seems to back up

the idea that this was a sacred site.

There was a vertebrae from a cow and

we've had some very young sheep bone as well.

And what looks like deliberately placed very small, round pebbles.

So it looks like

we're getting a round pit here that was probably used for some ritual

purpose and it looks like it

predates the rest of the site that we've got here.

The finds suggest that this could have been a religious site

even before the Romans arrived, because in the preceding Iron Age,

people may have buried rounded pebbles and animal bones as ritual deposits.

And as the team begin to extend their trenches,

they find a fascinating clue

suggesting that this became an extensive

temple complex under the Romans.

They think they have found a bathhouse.

We have just found our first piece of painted wall plaster.

It has a trace of opus signinum,

which is the waterproof mortar that the Romans used in bathhouses.

So this is very exciting.

The discovery of a bathhouse next to the temple makes the villa

interpretation look increasingly shaky.

Tony now believes it's much more likely that this was a sprawling

complex of religious buildings.

And this as temple site could have

acted as a regional religious centre,

with people coming here for processions and festivals.

In the final weeks,

the discovery of what could be more votive offerings supports Tony's

theory, but it is on the penultimate day that they make the most

incredible and intriguing find.

This very small fragment,

very interesting fragment,

is part of a pipe clay

or terracotta figurine.

It is a type of figurine called a Dea Nutrix, or a mother goddess.

What we've got is just a small part

of it, which is the back of her head.

The goddess figure is the icing on the cake for a fantastic dig that

seems to have revealed a complex of sacred buildings.

But is there enough evidence here to prove that Roman religion was taking

root in the heart of rural Britain?

Tony is joining me in the lab to discuss his finds.

Well, Tony, this is utterly extraordinary.

What we thought was a villa looks like something much more special.

Yes, it is a very interesting site. Effectively three buildings.

We have a large so-called aisle building.

We have the bathhouse and we have the hexagonal,

what we are pretty sure is a shrine.

-Yeah.

-There are only four hexagonal buildings in the whole of Roman

-Britain.

-It is really unusual, isn't it?

And very, you know, very obvious and very striking.

Where is this beautiful painted plaster from, then?

The plaster all comes from the bathhouse.

And you are sure it's a bathhouse, are you?

Yes. We are in the changing room.

And the wall plaster all comes from the changing room.

And it has got what we think is a naked female figure.

-Have a look at that then!

-Yes.

Yes, which is very obvious.

I think you might be right.

That is a pair of breasts, I believe.

-It certainly is.

-And it is quite usual, isn't it,

to have bathhouses associated with temples?

Yes. Temple sites sometimes have quite a lot of other buildings next

to them. Which could be a hostel for pilgrims or visitors or whatever.

So do you think matters what we originally thought was a villa,

do you think that's what it actually is, then?

We originally found the building in the 1980s

and thought, "Right, we have villa."

It had a of elaboration to the architecture.

Now, maybe we can account for that now by saying it's a building that

-is associated with a temple site.

-So, Tony, say I lived somewhere

nearby and I wanted to come and visit the shrine and perhaps worship

the goddess here. What would I do when I arrive at this place?

That's a very interesting question. We get the notion that the building

itself is the house for the god or the goddess. And would have some

sort of image like a statue or something like that in it.

But it is not a place for a congregational worship,

you don't get everybody cramming inside and trying to worship.

So most of the activity probably went on outside. And that is why

we find things like the pit with the pottery and the bones and so on

-in it.

-And are these the balls that came out of that odd pit?

-Yes. These actually come from within the hexagon itself.

-Right.

They're flints. Probably fossil sponges or something like that.

So this idea that people are bringing small offerings, small

coins, it is low denominations,

isn't it, and then also interesting shaped rocks.

Yes. This is rather more special.

-That is lovely. Isn't that lovely?

-Yes.

And that is the back of the head

and the headdress of the Dea Nutrix figurine.

So these figurines are well-known, are they?

Yes. They are made in central France and they are imported.

People probably bought in Britain and then dedicated at temple sites.

Perhaps deliberately breaking them. Nearly all of them are broken.

-Often with the heads broken off.

-Yeah. And Dea Nutrix

that's the nourishing mother goddess.

She is often shown with babies at the breast.

-That's right, yes.

-Do you think this gives as an idea that actually Roman

culture and Roman ideas about religion are permeating further into

the British countryside than perhaps we had imagined?

Hexagons are not a thing you find in the Iron Age in Britain.

So this is a new idea. But deities, gods or goddesses,

that are being worshipped on the site,

probably go back right back to the Iron Age.

And I think the people who come to this site are probably local people.

I rather like that about the Romans, that, you know,

they don't clear the original gods and goddesses

out of the landscape. The work with them, don't they?

-They go along with them?

-Yes, they integrated with locals.

But it is a form of imperialism, isn't it?

We are taking over the local gods and calling them our own.

It's a wonderful site. This wonderful little temple site

-and a very unusual hexagonal building.

-Yeah.

The dig at Meonstoke demonstrates

that even a time period as well documented as

Roman Britain can still be rewritten by new archaeological discoveries.

And this programme has shown

how every dig has the power to illuminate and

alter the story of Britain.

From discovering how the fearsome Vikings prepared for their invasion,

to revealing the living and lived in landscapes around some of our most

famous ancient monuments.

And showing the brutal reality of life and death for criminals in the

Golden Age of Empire.

Our ancestors made the country we live in today

and through archaeology we have been able to reach back

through the centuries and touch their lives.

Next week's episode of Digging For Britain

celebrates the best archaeology

from the east and is packed with new revelations,

from sunken treasure laying bare

the murky story of empire building...

We find loads, loads of coins.

..to the first clear evidence of Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain.

So there are two skulls. Gosh, that's remarkable.

And intriguing traces of some of Britain's first inhabitants.

You have got evidence of the earliest Neanderthals in Britain

at a time when lions were roaming the Suffolk landscape!