Warrior Meet the Ancestors

On a Suffolk air force base, where fighter planes scream overhead,

an ancient warrior has been found, but he wasn't alone.

For some weeks, a group of archaeologists

have been digging behind the fences. They've found something spectacular,

and decided to let us in on the secret.

The excavation is happening at the US air force base at Lakenheath.

Security here is very tight.

I've never been given a military escort to a dig before,

but eventually, I was handed over to archaeologist Jo Carruth.

-Hi, Jo!

-Hi!

-Jo, I want you to meet Julian Richards.

-Hello!

-Hello!

-Jo Carruth is the archaeologist in charge of the site. She'll show you everything.

-Let's go!

Under a field where new dormitories will be built,

the Suffolk archaeological unit have discovered over 160 graves.

Jo wanted to show me one of them.

As you can see, we've got a warrior and his horse.

The man's on this side,

and he's buried in a coffin with a spear

and a shield - the shield boss is the lump of metal on his chest.

The shield would have been wooden, but it's rotted away.

-Down here, you can see his sword.

-Enormous!

-It has an iron blade.

That's a warrior, isn't it?

Someone who has a sword, a spear, a shield and a horse - there's no question!

That's it, yeah.

The man and horse were buried in Saxon times over 1,300 years ago -

the horse sacrificed to accompany him to the afterlife.

Green stains on the horse's skull mark where bronze bridle fittings were.

They were removed for conservation. Jo hopes that more lie beneath it.

In other horse burials we've seen, the harness wasn't in position.

We knew they wore harnesses but didn't know how they fitted them -

with the leather gone, only metal pieces remained.

Now we'll know how those pieces fit in relation to each other, so it's exciting!

-It couldn't be better!

-It's the best thing!

The air base is like a small American town where over 10,000 people live and work.

The discovery of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery caused quite a stir.

-This is very exciting!

-It's gripped everyone on the base, hasn't it?

Yes. Who'd have thought that in our own back yard, this site of warriors

was also the site of ancient warriors? Incredible.

Archaeologists need to assess the state of the bones and artefacts

to decide how best to remove them.

A closer look at the corroded sword, placed at the warrior's side,

shows it's fused to his arm bone.

The finds are so important that the British Museum has sent specialists.

To ensure that vital evidence is not lost when the sword is lifted,

it's first wrapped in foil and then encased in sheets of flexible resin,

which hardens in daylight, giving off toxic fumes in the process.

The same method is used to lift the horse's skull and soil underneath.

Only back in the British Museum laboratory,

will they find if there are more of the delicate harness fittings.

All the bones in the grave are in remarkable condition.

Even the warrior's ribs

and the fragile bones of his spine could be removed intact.

Finally, with great care, the skull is lifted

and we see the first clues to the face of our ancestor.

You can tell he's done it before!

The warrior's grave was the largest in the cemetery and would have been marked by a low earth mound.

But around it, are smaller graves.

We've got a cluster of child graves all around the horse burial.

'The graves cut into chalk contained well-preserved skeletons.

'But in the more acidic sand, often only faint outlines of the bones could be made out.'

..the ribs coming across.

And a bit of upper leg here...

'But some contained unusual finds.'

-Isn't that a spear?

-It is.

And that's a knife, as well.

This is the third child grave we've had with weapons.

It's a bit bizarre really. I don't know what it means.

That child can't be more than three, maybe four.

-Yes.

-It seems so incongruous -

a little grave and these great big grown-up weapons in it.

Until today, my impression of the man in the grave with the horse and weapons

was of somebody who was a warrior.

But finding his grave surrounded by graves of little children has softened the way I think about him.

He might have looked after the children in death, as presumably he did in life.

He was their protector.

The pathologist's report told us

that the warrior was a robust man of 5' 10" and in his early 30s.

But there are no clues, no signs of illness or injury,

to suggest how or why he died.

His death remains a mystery, but I wanted to know what he looked like.

-A small box.

-It's a small box

but it's a fairly large skull...

'I took the skull to University College, London,

'where Robin Richards will reconstruct the warrior's face.

'A laser beam scans the skull, providing data for a computer to produce an accurate 3D image.

'Robin plots points to show where skin and tissue depths are known

'and wraps an average face around the skull.'

-Can we see what the average face looks like?

-Where I'm starting from, it looks like that.

-Same sort of age, same sex.

-Yes.

So what happens when you put that face over a Saxon skull?

We get a face that looks like...this.

The jaw has squared up.

One thing puzzles me. Can you go back to the skull?

I had the impression that the skull had quite a point to the chin.

Let's go back to the face now.

Is it that square across the front?

No, it's not. You're right, that point to the chin is there.

In her studio, archaeological illustrator Jane Brayne

works on the warrior's portrait.

The warrior didn't reveal much, but the horse was a different story.

In Bury St Edmunds, I met animal bone specialist Terry O'Connor.

'The horse's head was still being excavated at the British Museum,

'but there was still plenty to find out.'

For a Saxon horse, this is large

but compared with modern horses, it's a big pony. About 14 hands.

Looking at the state of maturity of the skeleton, it's just reached skeletal maturity.

It appears to be a male horse, so that puts it about five years old

give or take a year.

-It's not some old nag that was killed put in the grave?

-No, it's a fine animal, in its prime.

Though there is some evidence of injury and some bone pathology.

There's one bit on this radius.

If we rather delicately lift it off.

Down here at the wrist end of the bone

there's a raised area of roughened, rather spongy-looking bone.

Extra bone where there shouldn't be any is a bit of an enigma

because a lot of things can cause the skeleton to sprout extra bone.

The most likely bet, given the condition of that new bone, and given its position,

is that this horse has had a deep bruise, up on the forefoot - a vulnerable area.

If bruising like that causes bleeding between the surface of the bone and the thin layer of tissue,

the blood clot can ossify.

The skeleton reacts to having the blood clot and turns to bone. I think that's what we've got.

It doesn't seem to have affected the joint itself.

-It wouldn't make the horse lame?

-Probably not.

But the pathology on the back feet may have.

Let's look at the first and second bones of the toe.

In this case, they're normal with a smooth, even joint surface.

There's no extra bone or lipping of the joint.

If we compare that with this foot, the difference is fairly startling.

It's in a dreadful state.

It's crumbly and there's new bone formation making something of a lip.

And the joint surface itself is rather sort of scooped out.

In places, it's breaking down altogether.

There's uneven pitting

which in fact matches nicely across the two sides of the joint.

That's very nice, but not for the horse.

We would loosely describe that as arthritis.

-Would this have made the horse lame?

-Yes, that joint

would not have been moving properly.

The abrasion shows it is still moving but the new bone formation shows it wasn't moving normally.

In the live animal, it would look expanded and uncomfortable

and it probably limped on that foot.

For Jane to do a really accurate reconstruction, we need two things.

The first is a horse.

Thank you.

Meet Jim - he's just the right type and height.

We also need the warrior. And guess who's the same height as he is?

Hello. Do you want to be a Saxon horse?

OK, here we go.

-Meet Jim.

-He's lovely!

He's exactly the right size and type of horse.

-So about 14,3?

-Yes. And he's got a nice shaggy mane.

-Plenty of tail.

-It looks to have been trimmed a bit.

-Perhaps slightly hairier fetlocks.

-Do you mean me or the horse?!

I wouldn't like to say, really!

So I think this should be a good basis for you to start.

To get on with her reconstruction, Jane went to the British Museum

to see the artefacts from the warrior's grave.

Conservator Fleur Sheerman showed her what was on the other side of the horse's head -

more bridal fittings and traces of the strap that linked them.

..the vertebrae of the neck here.

Here are the main fittings, with the leather strap down here

and perhaps joining on to this one behind the bit.

And then the bit area is here.

It's very useful for me to do this.

You never look at anything so intensely as when you're drawing.

You look very closely at things.

And you also begin to understand the structure.

That should feed into my finished reconstruction.

It's better than photographs or other people's drawings.

You get a three-dimensional sense of the thing, which is important.

And here it comes.

The next job for Fleur is to remove the delicate fittings

for cleaning and restoration.

Here's the cruciform.

There we are.

The weapons buried with the warrior

are also in Fleur's care.

The iron shield boss was held in place with silver-plated rivets.

Gently cleaning with formic acid

restores the silver to its original splendour.

The restored rivets give a real sense of how the shield looked.

The central piece reveals scratch marks.

Could these be battle scars?

The warrior's sword is barely recognisable as a weapon,

but this mass of rust holds a clue as to how it was made.

X-rays of the sword reveal faint diagonal lines in a chevron pattern.

The chevrons show the sword is pattern-welded,

forged by a master swordsmith

whose skills were lost 900 years ago. Or were they?

'I went to Malmesbury to visit Hector Cole.

'Hector is an modern iron worker who will reconstruct our sword.

'He'll attempt it using traditional methods,

'something never done before.

'There's always a place for a swordsmith's apprentice.'

-< That was a nice gentle one.

-Yes. It's hard work.

-Yes.

A good striker's worth his weight in gold.

You can see by the way the metal's moving that it's quite plastic.

-I'm surprised it moved so much.

-This is wrought iron.

You can't get anything better.

The sword has a very complex structure.

At its centre is a soft iron core.

Bars of twisted iron give it the distinctive chevron design.

And welded to the outside are cutting edges of carbon steel.

'When heated to a red glow, the bars that make the chevron pattern

'are twisted into a spiral.'

'Each bar contains 16 separate strips of iron.'

-How many bars will you make?

-Six.

That is for both sides of the blade.

'Hector now fire-welds the bars together,

'three for each side, and hopes to flatten the pattern

'without distorting it. It's a highly skilled process.'

I just see the chevron pattern.

See them coming up?

'The final bits to be added to the sword

'are the carbon steel cutting edges

'Steel has to be extremely hot to weld, but if the fire is too hot,

'the steel burns away.

'The difference is a few degrees,

'but it takes years to gauge it by the colour and feel of the metal.

'This looks more like a sword,

'but the hammering has dulled the surface and the pattern has gone.

'Hector was surprised how much iron was lost.

'It took six kilos of iron to make a 1.5 kilo sword.

'After 334 separate heatings,

'the shape of the blade is ready.'

Has it turned out OK?

There are a few flaws, but I'd have been surprised to have none. They are, to me, acceptable.

We'll see when it's cleaned up. That's the test.

The work that went into making this sword is an amazing process.

It's no wonder there are legends about blacksmiths.

There are no less than 79 strips of metal in this one blade

and I can't wait to see it when it's polished.

'And now the moment of truth.

'Organic acid is used to reveal the pattern. It emerges as if by magic.'

You can see the hard cutting edges down there, coming along as well.

-As we come further, we start to get this pattern.

-That came up quickly.

It's gorgeous. All sinuous and swirling.

-It's a lovely pattern.

-You're pleased with it?

I'm very pleased with it. It's a beautiful pattern.

-Is it what you expected?

-It is not what I expected.

We should have a chevron pattern, but who wouldn't want this one,

which is more beautiful?

The handle would have been made of white cow horn,

but because of a shortage due to BSE, we've had to use buffalo horn.

I think we're getting there.

What's it feel like?

-Cor, that's a...

-It's a hefty blade.

-It's a weighty blade.

If you bought that down on someone, the momentum behind it...

But holding it out like that. You'd have to have a strong sword arm.

It's fantastic, but I didn't expect this colour.

I thought it would be shinier.

It's debatable as to what colour they were finished.

I think they were finished like this, because this colour

brings out the pattern more, which is what they were looking for.

That's what made the sword what it was.

The horse's head is back in Bury St Edmunds.

I hope Terry O'Connor knows

how the horse was sacrificed.

It's great it's out of plaster.

Especially from this side, which was hidden at the museum.

-Now we can get a good look at this depressed fracture here.

-So is that what killed the horse?

I doubt that would have been lethal.

Even though it's done damage, it's too far forward.

If you wanted to kill a horse with a blunt instrument,

you'd aim for the brain.

Most of that damage is to the air sinuses. It's caused a little brain damage.

In that case, how was it killed?

One of the things I've looked for is any sign of other violence,

because there are several examples of horse burials of this period,

some of which show an injury to the skull, but also show knife cuts

across the ventral surface. So those horses had their throats cut

with such force that the knife cut through tissue and nicked the bone.

-Have you found any marks on this?

-No.

I looked carefully at the places along the neck

and in fact under the jaw for any trace of cuts, and there's none.

It doesn't mean this horse's throat wasn't cut,

but there was not enough force to touch the bone.

The probability has to be that something else was done to finish it off.

The most obvious thing is opening up an artery to kill the animal.

Nasty but effective.

Seeing the beauty of the bridle fittings,

decorated with gold and silver,

it's hard to believe they were buried for 1,400 years.

Saxon specialist Angela Care Evans

reveals how the decorative pieces were arranged.

We have one of these beautiful quatrefoil fittings.

It sits over the junction of the cheek strap and nose band.

-I thought there were four of these.

-There are. There's one here.

There's another one up here and two on the other side.

Where do those go?

Well, this one actually fits

on a separate strap, loose. It dangles. It's a decorative dangler.

It hangs down the side of the horse's head.

It's got this extraordinary face, with what looks like ears

-or horns or something.

-It looks like an owl to me.

I don't think it is. It has been suggested it is a long-eared owl.

It's... I think it is a face with some kind of decorative headgear on.

-Then we have this, again very beautiful...

-Lovely.

..gilt bronze, with three panels.

At the centre, you can see the double cross, placed obliquely.

To either side, there are gilded fields with an animal on it.

-This simply sits in the middle. Just here.

-Right...

And I mean, it seems to be just decorative.

On the horse's brow,

we have...

another...gilt bronze fitting,

exactly the same as the one on the cheek piece,

except it has these lugs, from which some pendant would've hung.

-That's the one with the dent in it.

-This is the bent one.

If you look very closely, you can see what looks like a glancing blow.

It looks like it caught the full blow when the horse was stunned.

Then it's possible that the pendant fitting flew off, but um...

we're not sure about that yet.

I wanted to show Jane's paintings to Jo Carruth,

one of the first archaeologists to see the find.

Oh. That's him, is it?

-Yes.

-He's handsome, isn't he?

He's got a square, solid face, hasn't he?

-His skull was chunky, masculine.

-He looks like a nice person.

Yeah. Very confident and strong.

So that's the warrior.

That's the portrait.

But then of course, we've got here...

This is him and the harness.

-The harness is fantastic.

-We've got the whole lot.

Is this how you imagined them?

Although you think, looking at skeletons

that you can see them as human beings,

it's only when you see this, you realise how hard it is to imagine it,

when you see it in the ground.

This has really brought it to life.

I feel I can give what we saw in the ground some form. I thought I'd DONE that.

Seeing this, I realise I hadn't seen him.

1,400 years ago, this man was the ultimate warrior.

It was a time when your position in society was earned.

He was buried with symbols of that power -

his shield, spear, sword and his horse, sacrificed to lie beside its master.

He wasn't just a warrior. He lay surrounded by graves of children.

He'd been their guardian and leader in life

and he led them into the next world.

Subtitles by BBC Subtitling - 1999