East Digging for Britain

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

that is still full of mysteries.

So, every year, hundreds of archaeologists go out hunting

for lost pieces from our missing past.

A tiny, tiny coin.

Every element is there.

This is just unbelievable.

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

Wow!

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

What do you think of that, Roy?

In this programme, Digging For Britain showcases the best digs

from the east 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 we can be there for each exciting moment

of discovery.

-It's Excalibur.

-How does that feel, Rupert?

-Pretty good.

And now the archaeologists are bringing their finds, from pottery

to metalwork to human remains, into our lab so that 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 east to share

in their biggest discoveries.

We're diving deep in the English Channel,

rescuing the precious cargo of a lost East India ship.

We found loads and loads of coins.

And we travel to Suffolk to unearth traces

of Britain's earliest occupants.

We found this incredible hand axe, a fantastic find.

It's also a big year in the east for Roman archaeology,

and this episode includes hunting down evidence of Britain's first

clash with the might of Rome.

This could be a very important clue to confirming this is a base

of Julius Caesar.

And to find out how these discoveries fit into the story of Britain,

I've come to Colchester to explore the castle museum and find out how

the objects inside helped tell the story of the east.

But our first dig takes us out of Colchester and into the buzzing

financial centre of London and one of the biggest excavations in our

capital's history.

During the Blitz, the German Luftwaffe destroyed a third of the City of London.

But amongst the devastation,

glimpses of its ancient Roman past began to emerge from the rubble...

..including a remarkable Roman Temple of Mithras,

found just off Cannon Street.

For archaeologists of the time, this was amongst the first evidence

that parts of Roman London were still well preserved

under the modern city, waiting to be rediscovered.

In the post-war years, the site of the temple was built over,

but it has long been believed that there was much more to be found

in the layers beneath the Mithraeum.

In 2012, archaeologists finally got the chance to revisit the site

when the global information company Bloomberg

started to redevelop the area.

Now in the year that the new building has been opened,

the team are sharing their dig diary with us.

This was an incredible opportunity for archaeologists to delve down

into the deepest layers of London's history,

right back to its origin.

The excavation gave them the chance to find out more about the original

appearance of the town,

about who lived there and about the lives of those first Londoners.

The Bloomberg site was once at the heart of Roman London,

straddling the Walbrook, a lost tributary of the River Thames.

Because the site remains waterlogged,

many organic remains have survived.

This exceptional preservation gave archaeologists the unique opportunity

to explore the realities of life in the very first London.

Sadie Watson is heading up the dig.

To be honest, we have been itching to get our hands back on this site

since 1954 really, when Grimes found the temple of Mithras.

We knew that there was a breadth of archaeology here that was unsurpassed in the general area.

If you went 50 metres either side of this exact spot,

you wouldn't get the same depth of material.

The Romans built London from scratch in the mid 1st century AD.

But until now, the original appearance of the town

has been a bit of a mystery.

However, because the preservation is so good here,

the team can effectively reconstruct the layout

of an entire Roman neighbourhood.

What we have got here is a wattle structure,

perhaps delineating some private land with some animals on the inside.

Or it could be part of a building.

It is absolutely amazing - obviously we are the first people to see this

for nearly 2,000 years.

So it feels a bit special.

And it just makes you wonder what's

underneath this, what's the next thing we're going to find?

When the team began the dig,

they were unsure of how much of the Roman town had been crushed by

millennia of rebuilding over it.

But what they're discovering is not just the traces of the original layout

of this part of early London, but the very fabric of the streets.

Many of the wooden buildings are preserved up to shoulder height,

unheard-of in Roman Britain.

So, as well as the street, we have the houses alongside the street,

and the alleyways behind the houses, and the open areas where they were

dumping their rubbish and things like that.

So we have the whole streetscape laid out in front of us.

This incredible dig is revealing that beneath the modern streets of

London lies a Roman timber town

with wooden buildings lining the streets,

and a layout that wouldn't have been out of place in the Wild West.

This astonishing discovery reminds us that London has always been

evolving, adapting to the needs of its time,

from its humble wooden beginnings

into the modern city that we know today.

Halfway through the dig,

the team start to excavate down into the wooden buildings hoping to

discover new details about the lives of the first Londoners.

And they are not disappointed.

So this is a penannular brooch made of copper alloy, and the pin has gone,

but it would have been pinned into your tunic.

And a really heavy steel yard weight.

We've had lots of weights and measures from this site,

so the assumption is that they are doing industrial weighing

and measuring here.

As the dig continues, the team unearth a wealth of personal finds

from 2,000 years ago.

The finds looks so fresh -

the waterlogged conditions have seemingly frozen them in time.

But it's one particular group of leather finds that allows the team

the most intimate insight into London's fledgling population.

We've got coming up for about 500 shoes.

You can see very clearly that these are child-sized shoes.

And at the other end of the spectrum you have large men's boots.

So we have evidence for families living here,

it's not just all about economic life.

It is quite a tangible connection

to the individual people who lived here.

These items belonged to the earliest occupants of our capital city.

They allow us to populate the ancient Roman streets with men,

women, soldiers, traders and children -

the first people to call London home.

This excavation is producing more Roman discoveries than any other

site in London.

But then, towards the end of the dig,

the team find something truly remarkable...

Small, rectangular pieces of wood.

More valuable to the archaeologists than silver or gold,

these are ancient writing tablets.

There are two pieces of writing tablet here.

You've got the little indentation for the wax to go there.

They are essentially just letters, really nice,

it gets you close to the people, it is lovely.

Incredibly, this writing tablet was not alone.

In the end the team would find more than 400 of them,

the largest collection of their kind ever found.

But the big question was, would they discover any writing on them?

These would have been wax tablets.

The wax itself has long gone,

but are there any traces of the writing on the wood itself?

The team is in luck.

They can see the impressions of letters.

But in order to read them, they need to bring in a specialist.

Professor Roger Tomlin is one of the world leaders in translating

Latin shorthand.

Working from photographs and hand drawings,

he has the daunting task of deciphering the writing.

Now, I'm inviting Roger and Sadie into the lab with these amazing tablets,

so that I can finally hear the voices of the first Londoners.

What an amazing sight, and how fantastic to have writing preserved.

So, Roger, what do these letters actually say? What do they tell us?

Well, they tell us all sorts of tantalising extracts of what Roman

businessmen were writing to each other about.

This is a particularly well-preserved tablet,

and when I saw this in the conservation lab when it was still wet,

I was very excited because I could read the first word at the top

left-hand corner which was "nerone",

clearly a reference to Nero, the Emperor Nero.

-And then the date, the 8th of January, 57.

-Amazing.

And then the beginning of the text is written by a man called Tibalus

and he acknowledges he owes the sum of 105 denarii in respect of goods

sold and delivered.

So an incredibly early financial document?

Yes, it seems to be the earliest dated financial document,

only about ten years after the Romans got to London.

And here they are setting up business enterprises,

importing and exporting.

Not much has changed.

Not much has changed.

And what about the names?

Do they give us an insight into who these people were,

where they'd come from?

Ideally they tell us who the person is, and this is a nice example here.

It's an address of a letter which reads,

"Dabis" - "You will give this letter..." Understood? "..to Junius the cuparius."

The cooper, the barrel maker, a brewery somewhere in the area.

And presumably Junius is making barrels for it.

It's just astonishing. You know, this is the kind of detail that we

expect from the Second World War, and to be able to reconstruct that

level of detail going back 2,000 years ago, that's amazing.

What about the other objects, Sadie?

What about these beautiful brooches?

Do they give us clues as well as to where people were coming from?

Certainly they do. And brooches tell you a lot because people tend to

bring them with them from wherever they've come from to London.

So we have lots and lots of examples from the Western Roman Empire,

Gaul and the Rhineland particularly.

But this superbly decorated, wonderful example is actually

from what we now call Norfolk. So it is from the Iceni tribe.

-Boudicca's tribe.

-Boudicca's tribe, exactly.

And who would've moved in to London and worked and lived amongst the

Londoners as well.

So, not only do we have people coming from outside Britain

to come to London and found this town in open fields,

we also have people coming from elsewhere across the country to live and work here as well.

It seems that, just like today, the first London drew

its inhabitants from across Britain and Europe.

So we are really looking at the very beginning of London.

What would it have been like?

We have evidence of course there is commercial activity going on

with the writing tablets from the very beginning.

We also have a huge assemblage of militaria,

so we know the army were here in great number.

There would have been industry such as metalworking,

slightly more noxious ones - leather working,

all the things that you would expect really, but living cheek by jowl

with everything else as well. We also have...

One of the tablets has an alphabet on it.

-This one here?

-Yeah, this one here. Possible evidence of education.

Somebody learning or practising their alphabet.

A, B, C, D and so on.

That's just extraordinary.

That's wonderful.

A Roman child learning to read and write.

It's a real mix of activity.

So the very, very earliest beginnings of something,

but a lot of things that remain very familiar to us today -

banking, beer and this melting pot of cultures.

Absolutely.

The Bloomberg dig has revealed the forgotten voices of the people

that first built London.

And as the Mola team finishes the analysis of the finds

over the coming year, they'll be able to give us a uniquely detailed

picture of an entire neighbourhood in a Roman British town.

By the middle of the 2nd century AD,

London had become one of the most important trading centres

in northern Europe, as well as the capital of Roman Britain.

But it could have turned out very differently.

London wasn't the first capital of Roman Britain, Colchester was.

That is, up until the middle of the 1st century, when it met a grisly fate.

And I'm told the best place to understand this story is underneath

the castle.

In AD 60, within 20 years of London being founded,

the British warrior queen Boudicca revolted against Roman rule...

..and eventually led an army of enraged natives

right into Colchester.

At the heart of the town was the Temple of Claudius,

and it was situated right here.

Amazingly, its foundations still survive,

and curator Glynn Davis is taking me down into the basement to see them.

This is incredible, Glynn!

Yes, this is a very special space.

We're actually standing in a false space.

We're standing in a chamber that would have originally been filled

with sand. And this construct made up a huge platform, or podium,

upon which the Temple of Claudius -

the largest of its kind in Roman Britain at the time -

-would have been built.

-So, what happened to the temple, then?

Cos obviously Colchester was attacked during the Boudiccan rebellion.

It was. Now, you have to remember,

the Temple of Claudius was also where the Imperial cult was worshipped.

In a way, it was a symbol of Rome.

And to the Roman Brits, a symbol of their oppression.

And this would have been a target.

And after burning a lot of the town,

Boudicca and the tribes who united with her would have bee-lined to

this temple, where the townsfolk had basically sought refuge.

And we know from Tacitus, our Ancient Roman writer,

that they besieged the temple for two days.

It must have been absolutely terrifying for the people of Colchester,

who'd sealed themselves up in this temple,

when Boudicca arrived with her army.

It must have been. I mean, you're talking about hundreds of men,

women, children hearing the shouting and the rampage outside.

And of course, they start to set fire to the temple,

so it starts to heat up.

Maybe even elements of it start to fall after two days.

And it's after those two days that Tacitus tells us that they

eventually broke down those front doors.

And then, a bloodbath.

Above our heads, 2,000 years ago, it would have been absolute carnage.

And what about after the rebellion?

Cos that rebellion eventually failed.

It eventually failed, with a huge loss of life on both sides,

and Colchester was rebuilt. Indeed, the temple was rebuilt,

but Colchester never retains that capital -

that moves on to London, Londinium,

and it never quite reaches the heights that Londinium does after that.

So, it never quite recovers from that...

The onslaught of Boudicca.

-That devastation, no.

-Yeah.

-They left a mark.

Archaeological discoveries from both London and Colchester have added

flesh to the bare bones of history,

revealing the lives of the people that lived through

the bloody beginnings of Roman Britain.

Our next story takes us into the English Channel,

to one of the richest shipwrecks off our shores.

The Goodwin Sands are notorious as swallowers of ships.

Today, the remains of over 2,000 wrecks litter the area.

One of them is the Rooswijk -

a Dutch East India Company ship that sank in 1740,

on its way out to Indonesia.

In the 17th and 18th century,

Britain and the Netherlands were two of Europe's leading powers.

Both were great seafaring nations,

locked in a battle for control of the lucrative trade with Asia.

For the winner, the prize was enormous wealth.

The race for the East was a dangerous business,

and it wasn't just about the wealth of individuals and corporations,

but of entire nations.

As archaeologists get to work on the largest underwater excavation since

the Mary Rose,

they're hoping to gain insights into just how high the stakes and the

risks really were.

The East India ships were stuffed with incredible riches to trade

with the Far East.

What makes the Rooswijk so special is that it sank with all of its

cargo and nothing was ever salvaged.

Now a team from Historic England and the Dutch Government

is investigating.

They hope to understand more about these trade routes and the level

of financial risk taken by the traders on each voyage.

Underwater archaeologist Martijn Manders is leading the team.

We're now on board the Terschelling, which is our research ship,

and we're just right above the shipwreck.

Within three months, we have to excavate a very large ship.

Well, luckily, we only do the stern part of the ship.

I think people will be amazed at what, er, what we bring up.

The team have decided to excavate the back half of the ship because it

is the best-preserved section.

Part of the cargo hold is located here,

so they're confident they'll be able to find evidence of what

the Rooswijk was taking to the East Indies.

But excavating a shipwreck on the perilous Goodwin Sands

is a complex operation.

The unpredictable weather and strong currents mean that time,

and tides, are always against them.

In late August, after months of preparation,

they finally begin the diving operation.

Just to confirm, the plumb weight's a couple of metres off the sea bed.

Copy that.

Slowly, the ghostly timbers of the Rooswijk become visible amongst

the gloom.

The team gets to work using giant suction tubes - known as airlifts -

to help them clear away centuries of sand in the wreck.

Then their hard work pays off.

They get their first glimpse of the Rooswijk's lost cargo.

Over here, we've got a few of the artefacts that we excavated so far.

These very nice jugs.

Actually, we found quite a few down there, close together,

so this could be that it was cargo, meant for trading.

These tankers provide the first insights into the kinds of goods

that were being traded in the Far East.

But the team needs more evidence to find out about the true scale of

wealth that was stowed on board.

They need to explore further into the wreck.

However, what they begin to retrieve is...

..copper sheeting.

There wasn't much that the people needed in the Dutch Indies,

but what they did need was building material.

So, a lot of raw material, copper.

Also, a lot of just normal bricks.

They were weight, so they were ballast, but in a way,

they were also goods to be sold.

These discoveries are important evidence of how the British

and the Dutch built their settlements in the East.

But they weren't just out to build colonies -

the real reason for taking such risks,

with an eight-month voyage across pirate and storm-ridden waters,

was trade.

The key mission of these ships was to take out wealth from the

Netherlands and Britain and bring back riches from the Orient -

exotic goods like spices and textiles,

items that were worth a fortune back in Europe.

Historical records suggest that this ship should have been laden with

silver currency.

But the team hopes to discover the true scale of the investment

involved in a single voyage.

After weeks spent living on the research ship,

and diving day and night,

they've finally hit the jackpot.

We found loads and loads of coins.

We have silver from Mexico,

but we also have silver from the Potosi mines in Bolivia.

A piece of eight, so it's worth eight reales.

Most of the ones that we've got so far have been from Mexico.

The Dutch East India Company - also known as the VOC -

traded using Spanish silver.

As the archaeologists continue diving,

they retrieve hundreds more coins.

But towards the end of the project, they make an unusual discovery.

-They're coming in clusters, yeah.

-They're coming in clusters.

Not all of the coins appear to be official Spanish currency.

We've only just started uncovering these ones.

A lot of the money that's been recovered has been the Spanish money

so far. I believe these are rijders, these are Dutch coins.

This leads Martijn to a surprising conclusion.

He believes that the Dutch money belonged to the crew themselves.

I think we're getting to the personal stuff, because of the coins

that are so different from the cargo coins of the VOC.

So, we're getting to personal belongings.

Really interesting.

So why were the men on board the Rooswijk transporting

such large quantities of personal wealth to Indonesia?

I've asked Martijn to come into the lab with this extraordinary haul

of silver coins.

I'm just amazed at what a huge amount of wealth went down with this ship.

I mean, this is like a floating bank!

Yes, well, in a way, it was.

We know that it had 36,000 coins from Mexico, the Pillar dollars,

on board of the ship.

The VOC would take a lot of coins with them from the

same kind of dates

very shortly before the VOC would go out.

So we think that looking at the dates - 1737,

just before the ship went out -

we think this is the money they took along with them.

So that's kind of official business. That's official VOC money.

-Exactly.

-Yep.

-And it is eight reales.

So, a piece of eight, as they say.

These coins we find here have a much older date, and these are ducatons

from the southern Netherlands.

And these are from 1619.

So, 120 years before the ship sank.

So where are these early coins from?

Exactly. Well, they were smuggling, they were smuggled onboard.

Why would they smuggle money and who would smuggle money?

Well, it is actually everybody,

from the captain until the most simple seaman.

They would bring silver from the Netherlands to the Dutch Indies,

because silver was worth more in the Indies than in the Netherlands.

It's extraordinary, so there's the official business of the VOC,

and then everyone on board from the captain down to the humblest sailor

also stood to make a personal gain from this voyage.

Exactly.

But Martijn also believes that smuggling played a significant part

in the final demise of the East India companies.

The funny thing about the smuggling money is that,

although it was illegal,

people would even borrow from official banks,

money to bring to the East Indies as well,

and when they lost the money they had to go to court,

or the widows had to go to court.

-Yes.

-And there was so much corruption that in 1795,

the VOC was so much up to its debt

that it went bankrupt and all the assets of the VOC

-came to the Dutch Government.

-So that was, what,

50-odd years after the shipwreck, the company went bust?

-Exactly.

-And I think what the shipwreck shows us is based

on the one hand what there was to gain from this international trade,

but also the immense risks that were taken.

That is exactly the truth, yes.

The East India companies

were the world's first multinational corporations.

They accumulated vast fortunes,

but were prone to corruption and mismanagement.

It was the Dutch that folded first.

The British soon followed,

but not before they'd expanded their influence in Asia.

When the government took over the business, the foundations

had already been laid for Britain's Empire in the East.

Archaeology provides us with another way of looking at history,

adding to, and sometimes challenging the written records.

But when it comes to prehistory,

we rely solely on evidence unearthed from the ground.

And that's exactly the case with our next dig,

as we head to Barnham in East Anglia,

where archaeologists are searching for the answer to an old

Stone Age mystery.

400,000 years ago, Britain was a very different place indeed.

There was savanna here, where elephants, rhino and lions roamed,

alongside some of our early ancestors,

and any evidence that we can get of these people and the way they

behaved is incredibly precious.

That is exactly what our next excavation is revealing.

Around 400,000 years ago,

there is evidence of an expanding human population,

right across northern Europe, including Britain.

But who were these people?

And why were they here?

Part of the answer may lie in a disused clay pit near the village

of Barnham, an incredibly well-preserved Stone Age site

first discovered by the Victorians.

Nick Ashton from the British Museum is one of the leaders of the team.

We're just here for three weeks, so day two, we have another 20 to go.

So a lot of work to be done.

The team starts the dig by trying to discover what the environment

was like for some of Britain's earliest occupants,

investigating an area that was once on the edge of an ancient lake.

It's not long before the team's animal bone expert, Simon Parfitt,

is called in to identify the first find.

It's a pond terrapin.

This is one of the really important elements in the animal assemblage

that tells us about the climate.

So today, these animals are living in more continental Europe,

in parts of France,

where the summers are much warmer.

So this provides a really good indication of what the climate was like.

400,000 years ago, Britain was a very different place...

..much warmer than today, with animals that seem exotic to us now.

We found the edge of a piece of bone.

If we take it out, we can see that it's a spongy bone in the middle

and very thick cortical bone.

It's actually the rib of an elephant,

so this is obviously a tiny fragment of a very large rib.

And living right next to the elephants were humans.

In this area we found artefacts through this part of the sequence,

and these are hard hammer flakes, part of the Clactonian industry.

So, yeah, this is part of the contemporary vertebrate life that

was living with humans at that time.

Clactonian is the name given to a particular stone tool kit,

including simple flakes of flint, used for butchery.

These tools may look unremarkable,

but to the archaeologist's eye they have the telltale signs of being

worked by a human hand.

They're evidence that people were living and hunting here

in early Britain.

But then, towards the end of week one,

the team finds a more advanced Stone Age technology.

We're at the end of day six, and a fantastic find found in area three,

just as we were packing up.

This incredible hand axe,

and it's only the third we've found from the site in, I think,

about ten years of digging.

As you can see it's in incredibly fresh condition.

It's this black flint, very fresh edges.

This exquisite hand axe is much more advanced compared with the basic

flint tools that the team has been finding so far.

So the question is,

did the people living here make a sudden technological leap forward,

or is this hand axe evidence of a different group

coming into the area?

It's not clear yet, so the team continue their hunt for more clues.

And in week two, they find something surprising and exciting.

Is that some burnt flint?

Yes. Multiple pieces here.

This evidence is found in the same band of soil as the more advanced

tools, and from the burning pattern Nick believes that this could be

intentional use of fire by humans.

The interesting thing is the quantity of burnt flint that is coming up.

It's associated with a group of people who are making hand axes.

A really interesting conclusion is the use of fire and the manufacture

of hand axes - are they two parts of the technological package

that they bring into the area at this time?

I must confess, I still keep an open mind,

but I'm inclining more and more towards the conclusion that,

you know, people were actually using fire in this area,

it is not just a natural fire.

This potential evidence for humans using fire could be among the

earliest ever found in Britain.

Combined with the more advanced stone tools,

it suggests that a new group of people was arriving here.

But who were they and where did they come from?

Nick has brought some of the artefacts into the lab,

to help us answer some of these questions.

Nick, this is a really exciting site.

Thank you for bringing in the finds.

You have these two different types of stone technology on the same site.

Yes, so over here on the right you have very simple flakes and core.

They'll do the job, but they are very simple.

Here we have a clear change in the technology,

and you have this beautiful hand axe.

That's beautiful. Very individual thing.

So who do you think was making the Clactonian and who do you think was

-making that?

-If I was to hazard a guess, and it is only a guess...

..maybe you have Homo heidelbergensis making these more

primitive-looking tools and perhaps the hand axe makers

are very early Neanderthals.

So this could be evidence of the first Neanderthals in Britain.

Yes, some of the first evidence.

Oh, that is really exciting.

Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals are thought to be the

two main species of humans living in northern Europe around this time.

An ancient land bridge with the continent would have allowed them

easy access into what is now Britain.

Here's a tricky question, why are they coming over?

Is this just a population expanding and people are just milling about

and starting to spill further north-west?

One of the ideas we are looking at is there's more or less around this

time a big deforestation event - not just in Britain,

not just East Anglia, but right across Europe.

So the questions we are asking is,

does it relate to some big natural disaster,

is it volcanic activity creating a big nuclear winter,

or something more exciting like a big meteor strike?

That in itself would have a big impact on what humans were doing.

If suddenly there is a loss of the sort of local habitat,

loss of vegetation, that will affect the wildlife.

This will trigger population movement.

Maybe this is linked to a different group of people coming in just over

400,000 years ago.

This new evidence from Barnham is helping us to understand more about

the early inhabitants of Britain and the environment they lived in,

at an important moment in prehistory when the very first Neanderthals

arrived in Britain.

But our next dig deals with newcomers of a very different kind.

We're heading to the tip of Kent,

and possibly evidence of the first Roman invasion of Britain.

I came here back in 2010

for Digging For Britain,

to see the excavations

in advance of the construction of the Kent

access road.

I witnessed the unearthing of Bronze Age burial mounds,

Iron Age treasure...

Here we have a tiny gold coin.

..and multiple Roman graves.

But this was just the tip of the archaeological iceberg,

because after I left, the team made their most amazing discovery -

the ditches of a vast fort that was potentially Roman.

We know that this area of Kent was where the Romans invaded in AD 43.

But, incredibly, the team dated this fort to almost a century earlier.

At this time only one Roman general was known

to have visited our shores - the mighty Julius Caesar.

So was this fort the first tangible evidence of his time in Britain?

Now, no archaeological evidence of Caesar's actual arrival in Britain

has ever been found, so the discovery of an early Roman fort

is providing archaeologists with a precious opportunity

to get closer to the truth.

In the 50s BC, Julius Caesar is recorded as making two

fleeting visits to our island.

Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick believes this fort could have been built during

one of those trips.

Now he just needs to prove it.

What he hopes to find is Roman military equipment that he can date

to the time of Caesar.

We know that Caesar in the second invasion brought at least

24,000, 25,000 soldiers and 800 ships.

That must have left a lot of evidence.

If Andrew succeeds, he will not only have found Julius Caesar's fort,

but put us on the path to understanding why he made this

early exploration of Britain.

Andrew's first task is to get to grips with the full layout of the fort.

His team uses geophysics to map the line of the ditches that once

ringed the encampment.

As the results come in, they reveal a tantalising clue.

Our geophysical survey showed that the fort runs in a rather unusual

irregular pattern here,

so I think this is a specific style of defence to encircle large areas,

and the reason it is a large area is because what this is defending isn't

so much the soldiers, as the fleet,

and so the key to the story really is the sea.

Andrew believes that the fort's huge ditches formed a circuit of defences

that protected nearby Pegwell Bay.

This large open area is not only the perfect place to land

a sizeable navy, but also matches the description

of Caesar's second visit to Britain in 54 BC.

It looks like Andrew is on the right track,

but he now needs to find dateable Roman artefacts

left behind by Caesar's army.

He believes the ditches are the best place to find them.

As his team starts digging, they discover something intriguing.

We believe it to be a Roman arrow head.

-Where was it found?

-About 30cm off the bottom of that ditch there.

So it is from really near the bottom of the ditch,

so that could be a really important find for us in trying to establish

if these ditches were dug by the armies of Julius Cesar.

Although rusty and broken,

this piece of iron could represent a major breakthrough in Andrew's

search for Caesar.

Because, to a specialist's eye,

Roman weaponry is just as diagnostic as a World War I rifle

for a modern historian.

To make a positive identification, it still needs a good clean,

so Andrew takes the find to conservator Graham Morgan

for initial analysis.

After a couple of hours of work,

the weapon turns out not to be an arrow head, but the tip of a spear.

Right. There we are. There's the object so far.

It's very corroded.

But that might be like the illustration you showed me before.

-This one here.

-You can see there is a centre rib on that as well.

-Very similar.

-I know that this weapon here was found

in the Roman camp at the siege works of Alesia.

That is a site that Julius Cesar attacked in 52 BC.

So the question is, is this from Ebbsfleet similar enough to the one

from Alesia to suggest we really do have firm evidence

for Roman soldiers at Ebbsfleet in the 50s BC?

-And it looks quite close.

-It does, yes.

This possible Roman spearhead is an exciting clue.

But to be sure that the fort belonged to Julius Caesar,

Andrew needs more evidence.

In September 2017, he returns to the site for the final time,

hoping this time to unearth conclusive proof.

The team begins by trying to find one of the entranceways to the fort,

where they believe they are likely to find more artefacts.

But their first discovery is totally unexpected.

So, there are two skulls there, or are there more?

There are more - there's these two, one over there,

and one you may just about see being uncovered there.

Gosh, that's remarkable.

The team believes that these skulls may have once lined the approach

to the fort as a chilling deterrent to the locals.

If they are right,

then perhaps they are close to one of the fort's entrances.

They expand their trench and make a breakthrough.

We have a road here,

which you can see in the cobbling visible behind me.

It runs into the entrance of the defended enclosure.

Andrew believes the fort would have been similar to Caesar's other camps

in France, with earthen banks, defensive ditches and a rough,

cobbled road leading into the entrance.

But more important is what the team find on the road.

Strewn across the site is more human bone...

..heavily corroded weapons...

..and one tiny find that could be the key in linking this fort

to Julius Caesar.

This small bit of iron...

..could be the first hobnail that we've found on this site.

You can see...

..there's a shank here, then it comes down to a slightly pointed,

domed head. If that turns out to be a hobnail,

the surface in which it's been found dates to the 1st century BC.

The only people who came to Britain wearing boots with hobnails in them

were the soldiers of Julius Caesar's army.

There can be no doubt about the significance of hobnails.

It would be, in many ways,

the smallest of details that give us the clinching fact of the biggest of

stories of the first chapter of Britain's history.

So, could this humble piece of rusty iron solve one of the biggest

questions in Roman archaeology in Britain?

To hear the latest news from the site, I've asked Andrew to come into

our lab with some of the most important finds.

How exciting. Andrew, what is all the evidence you're using to come to

your conclusion that this probably is Caesar's fort?

We have a very large defended enclosure,

that dates to the 1st century BC.

The shape of the defences is very similar to known Roman sites in France,

of 52 BC, of Caesar.

It's the right place, the geography fits.

We have weaponry that could well fit.

In terms of where would you land your army, I think it's here.

It all points to that conclusion.

If that is a hobnail, is that going to clinch it?

It would be very strongly suggestive and there are other pieces -

we have possible Roman weapons.

-These things here?

-Yes.

So, the possibility is that this, in your hand, is the tip of a pilum,

which is a Roman type of weapon.

And this is the diagram over here?

This is the one. It's the same size, it's the same shape.

We know this particular one was found in a Roman fort of 52 BC.

And there are other examples found in Italy.

And the interesting thing about that is that's where Julius Caesar raised

his legions, in north Italy.

It's all starting to stack up, isn't it?

With the fort looking likely to have belonged to Julius Caesar,

Andrew has started to think about the reasons that motivated his visits.

Why do you think Julius Caesar came?

My personal view is he comes for the glory,

because he's going beyond the known world.

For the Romans, the world stops at France.

Britain is almost a mythical land.

They're still not sure that people really live there,

and he brings it under the control of the Roman world.

So, he achieves great glory because of that.

There must have been some political benefit as well?

Well, one of the key things is what happens afterwards.

This isn't an army of occupation.

It's not going to be there with boots on the ground.

The way the Romans worked for many centuries is they worked through the

local rulers, and they get the local elite to work with them.

When Julius Caesar leaves in 54, he does two things -

he agrees the amount of tribute that will be paid to Rome,

but he also takes hostages.

And those hostages are very often the family

and the youngsters of the rulers.

And it means that Britain is tied into the Roman world,

and the kings of Britain become client kings of Rome.

Effectively, they are part of the Roman Empire.

Caesar's campaign diary provides us with some of the earliest

written descriptions of Britain, as well as our first recorded dates.

Andrew has made a compelling case for this having been Caesar's fort.

And, rather than a simple story of conquest,

Rome appears to have spent a full century softening up British rulers

before finally taking over.

I'm dying to meet one of these client kings,

so I'm going behind the scenes

at the castle museum to examine a contender

in the form of the Lexden Burial,

a selection of objects interred with a very important man in Colchester.

Crucially, it dates between Caesar's visits to Britain and the final

Roman invasion in AD 43.

What grave goods. I mean, they're just gorgeous.

Look at this little boar. He is lovely.

The detail is just wonderful, isn't it?

-It's fantastic, isn't it?

-Really, really beautiful.

-You wouldn't

believe, in some ways, that is 2,000 years old, or just over.

-Fantastic.

-There's a real Roman flavour to this because

the boar - incredibly important to Iron Age people in Britain.

They hunted them, they ate them, they even revered them.

But this little figurine has a real Roman, classical look to him.

It could well have been made in Gaul and imported over here to Britain.

What about this little foot, that's very sweet?

This tiny little foot. You can just about make out the toes.

-He's wearing a little sandal.

-He's wearing Birkis -

Birkenstock sandals.

-Very definitely.

-A lot of detail there.

So, what do you think this was? Was it part of a statue?

No, it's unlike our figurines.

I think this is part of a piece of furniture.

-Really?

-Yeah, which may seem odd.

But it's a footing for something like a folding chair or stool.

So, who had chairs like that?

It would have been some of the most powerful men in Rome,

all the way up to the Emperor.

Indeed, it may even have been gifted,

if this person was of high enough rank, maybe,

maybe even a client king, who in Britain...

Somebody who was sponsored by the Roman Empire?

Exactly that.

A connection with the Roman Empire gave this individual great wealth

and power. But the last object suggests that this was more than

just political expediency.

A relationship with Rome seems to have been personally meaningful to

-this British ruler.

-This is a medallion.

-It's based on a coin of the emperor, Augustus.

-Is it?

And what's amazing about this is this gives us a brilliant date for

this burial. This burial can't be earlier than about 15 BC,

which is when the coin would have been cast.

And it's tempting to think that this is a very personal object,

and maybe there's some individual relationship here.

Maybe not with the emperor, but certainly with the elite in Rome.

So, when Claudius arrives, in 43 AD,

do you imagine that some powerful people in Britain are effectively

welcoming him in?

Yes. I think there will be people siding with the Romans, yes, indeed.

Especially in the southern part of Britain.

The belongings of this possible client king in Essex provide a rare

glimpse of the forgotten relationships that facilitated

the final Roman invasion.

And, as Andrew's post-excavation research on Caesar's fort continues,

it will undoubtedly enrich our understanding of the very beginnings

of Roman Britain.

Rather than rewriting big history,

our final story is revealing the forgotten lives of ordinary Britons.

Throughout the 18th century,

maritime trade was the mainstay of the British economy.

But 1706 saw one of the most catastrophic disasters in all of

British seafaring history

when a fleet of 182 ships sailed straight into a winter storm.

They were returning from Virginia in America as part of the so-called

trade triangle.

European goods were sent to West Africa to buy slaves.

The slaves were sold to plantations in the Americas and, in return,

tobacco, rum, cotton and sugar flowed back into Europe.

It was a wretched, but lucrative trade.

The Hazardous Prize was one of the fleet's escort vessels.

It sank on the 19th of November, 1706,

when bad weather forced it to run aground off Bracklesham Bay.

During the early 1700s,

thousands of ships were crisscrossing the globe.

The lives of the men on board are a vital,

but forgotten part of our history.

Without them, Britain would never have become a maritime power

or built its empire.

In 2016,

a team of local divers and archaeologists launched into a new

two-year excavation of the wreck, funded by Historic England.

Their mission was to recover new details about the crew

and the realities of 18th-century life at sea.

They start by constructing a metal grid,

positioned over the ship's hold,

so that they can record and locate any new discoveries.

Site licensee Iain Grant and archaeologist Dan Pascoe are leading

the investigation.

So, we've put down the frames.

These are going to be the grid that we are going to be working off,

doing the excavation.

We've gone from one side going over what looks like

a barrel store.

There must be at least

five half barrels

and at least one complete one, by the look of it.

These barrels were used to store provisions

for the Hazardous's 280-strong crew.

The fact they are still intact is a promising find and suggests that the

wreck may contain many more artefacts.

A few weeks into the project, the team make an important discovery,

related to the men's most crucial job on board.

A really exciting find from today's diving.

What it looks like is a powder chamber.

The hollow area is where the charge would have been.

There would have been a lid on top and this would have been transported

from the powder room, up to the guns on the gun deck.

Keeping the many guns of the Hazardous at the ready

was a key task for the crew.

The warship was responsible for protecting the fleet from

the pirates and privateers that terrorised the waves.

These weapons are a powerful reminder that the men of

the Hazardous must have been constantly wary of attack.

Halfway through the project,

the divers begin to discover something else -

the personal belongings of the crew.

I think the best two finds are these.

Buttons.

That one has got a pattern on it.

-That is...

-A horse's head?

Yes, could be a horse's head.

A knight, yes.

Well done, people. Never cease to be amazed, eh?

Along with the buttons,

the team begins to discover many more personal items on the seabed -

a shoe buckle, a pair of brass dividers used for navigation,

and a pewter plate.

As Iain and Dan sort through the finds,

they begin to build up a vivid picture

of the different kinds of lives on board.

So, do you think the pewterware was probably officers'?

-Yes.

-Rather than crew?

Yeah. I think the crew probably ate off of wooden platters.

Wooden bowls, at best.

But what's the old story about the square meal?

Three square meals a day.

Yeah. They would have been wooden platters.

I don't think ordinary crew would have...

-Had the pewterware?

-No.

So, even at sea, Britain was a society divided by class.

But in the end, class meant little when the men's lives were

put under threat.

On the 19th of November, 1706, after a 3,600 mile journey,

the Hazardous Prize was within touching distance of home

when bad weather closed in.

You get the feeling that the sea's pretty rough just here.

It's a beautiful day today, but really, really rough.

So they come in, they have missed their safe anchorage.

They've bumped around all through the night.

They finished up very close to here.

And the shore, although it looks no distance to us on a nice day,

on a stormy day I should think it probably looks a long way.

And all they want to do is get on dry land.

So, they're not interested in personal effects.

They're all left on the site.

The Hazardous was wrecked in Bracklesham Bay,

the ferocious waves ripping apart its mighty timbers,

condemning the ship to a watery grave.

But fortunately the majority of its men made it to land.

It must have been devastating, though,

for them to leave all of their precious belongings on board,

including one very unusual object that is now providing a valuable

insight into the mind-set of some of the crew.

So, this is the elephant tusk that's come up from the Hazardous Prize.

Now, this is a ship that's sailing back from Virginia, and, forgive me

if I'm wrong here, but I don't think they had elephants in Virginia.

No, and it seems most likely that it's come from Africa to America.

It may have come on a slave ship

and somebody's bought it and is going to take it home.

And this is something that was probably picked up by the officers

on board. They might have been bringing it back

to make a profit back home.

And this tusk really reminds us of that triangular trade, doesn't it?

The fact that the Hazardous Prize herself may not have travelled to

Africa, but there are ships going from Africa to the New World,

and other ships coming from the New World back to Britain.

And an opportunity to make a few shillings here and there...

-Yeah.

-..however they could.

But the crew of the Hazardous Prize never got a chance to cash in

their exotic acquisitions.

And, in fact, this wreck was just the last of a string of casualties

that year.

So, tell me more about the Hazardous Prize.

This shipwreck is part of a much bigger tragedy, isn't it?

It was escorting a merchant fleet that was over in Virginia,

in the Americas.

Its job was to bring that fleet back safely to England.

Unfortunately, it was kind of doomed from the beginning.

Very much so. A catalogue of hold-ups early on in the year,

which meant they didn't actually get to America until July.

And the last escort ship, I think, didn't arrive until August.

It meant they were crossing the Atlantic in really poor conditions.

September is the worst time to leave,

as we know from the hurricanes that have just been.

When they got back to England,

there was 35 of the original 200-ish merchant ships left.

-That's a huge loss.

-Massive, massive loss.

Not only did they lose one of their warships,

they also lost a large amount of tax revenue.

Then, on top of that,

there was all the personal losses for all the traders.

So, yeah, it was a major, major tragedy.

I think it's really interesting,

contrasting this shipwreck of the Hazardous Prize with the Rooswijk,

which went down a few decades later.

I think both show you just how risky this was.

Exactly.

The excavation of the Hazardous Prize

is bringing us closer to the forgotten seamen who once plied

the Atlantic trading routes...

..providing new details about their daily lives

on board 18th-century ships.

It's just one discovery in a year that has been jam-packed with new

archaeological revelations.

From sunken treasure that lays bare the extensive corruption

of the East India companies...

..and writing tablets with the words of the first Londoners...

..to new evidence of Julius Caesar in Britain...

..archaeology is helping us rewrite the story of our island.

Next week, we're joining archaeologists

in the north of Britain, unearthing evidence

of a forgotten British rebellion on Hadrian's Wall...

-Oh, my God. How does that feel, Rupert?

-Yeah, pretty good!

..finding a 3,000-year-old cache of weapons...

Oh, wow!

..linking us back to the warrior chiefs of Bronze Age Britain.

And we discover that the Scottish island of Iona was home

to a forgotten Jerusalem of the North.

It's quite an extraordinary thing to do -

-it's like early medieval virtual reality.

-Yeah, maybe.