Families of the Stone Age Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited


Families of the Stone Age

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Right across Britain,

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archaeologists are unearthing the relics of ancient lives.

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But so much of modern archaeology is what happens after excavation.

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Today, forensic analysis and cutting-edge science,

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as well as brand-new finds, are overturning what we once thought

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about entire eras of our ancient history.

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I'm Julian Richards and over the years, I've been lucky enough

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to have taken part in some of our most important digs.

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You've not?

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A lead coffin?!

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Now, I'm going back to some of my favourites to discover

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the very latest stories of our most ancient ancestors.

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The Neolithic, the new Stone Age, is an ancient and mysterious time.

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An era that in Britain began more than 6,000 years ago.

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It marked a change from hunting and gathering to farming.

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And gave rise to some of the greatest monuments of our ancient past.

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But for all these highly visible monuments,

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new discoveries from this time, especially burials, are rare.

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So when they do turn up, archaeologists like me get very excited

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because the tiniest of clues, the smallest bit of evidence,

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can change our understanding of an entire age.

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Two discoveries made over a decade ago

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were windows into this remarkable time.

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One dig in Dorset unearthed remains so well preserved

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that we were able to reveal the lives of an entire Stone Age family.

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Now, more than a decade after the dig,

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neuroscience is helping us to understand their world

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in unprecedented detail.

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They can start talking about who she would have known,

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what politics was going on in the area when she was alive.

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A second burial in the far north, on Orkney,

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presented a far greater challenge.

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Here, only decayed fragments of bone had survived.

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But now, a brand-new study of ancient human remains found right across Orkney

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has changed how we think people were treating their dead.

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These are just a couple of the more unusual things that we found.

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-So has that been drilled?

-Quite possibly.

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What's clear from both these burials is that archaeology doesn't end

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when we put away our travels.

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In fact, it's just the beginning.

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Over the last 10 years, how we view the position of these sites

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and the history of the Neolithic has changed quite radically.

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And the key has been new science.

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Put quite simply,

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there's been a revolution in our understanding of Neolithic Britain.

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The counties of Wiltshire and Dorset

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are fabulously rich in Neolithic monuments.

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This landscape is unique in the world.

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And this is where I both live and study.

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But having worked here for over 30 years,

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I know that any new burials from this time are rare.

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So when, in 1997, a new site came up in Dorset, I was pretty excited.

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But what I didn't know at the time was that this discovery

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was going to influence archaeology for the whole of the next decade.

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Let me take you back nearly 16 years to the burial of an ancient family.

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One of my most special digs.

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Back in 1997, I got to the excavations when they were well under way.

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The site was discovered by Martin Green,

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a local farmer turned archaeologist.

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I started trowelling away, removing small, loose chalk

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until I got down to this level and this is much larger, blocky chalk

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that you can see there now.

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And then I decided to lift this loose block here

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and it revealed a hole underneath and I looked in there

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and, "Wow! There's a skill in there."

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-Does it look pretty well preserved?

-It looks very well preserved.

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-Do you think this might be a family grave?

-It's possible.

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We've obviously got two individuals here but the question at this

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stage is, are these just skulls or are they parts of complete skeletons?

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We are yet to discover that.

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At the centre of the site was a huge circular hollow

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in which the burials were hidden.

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Surrounding it was an outer ring of large pits.

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And the wider setting made it even more fascinating.

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From the air, I could see that the burial site lay right on the edge

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of an important Neolithic monument, the Dorset Cursus,

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a strange, elongated earthwork that runs for six miles

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right across the landscape.

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Today, the Cursus can only just been made out, stretching into the

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distance, barely visible against the backdrop of ploughed fields.

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But in the Neolithic, it would have looked quite different.

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The chalk embankments that marked out its edges,

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cutting white lines across the landscape.

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A new discovery within sight of this enigmatic construction

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was a very significant find.

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And this one was wonderfully well preserved.

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As more chalk was removed,

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it became obvious that the pit contained more than just skulls.

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-Cripes!

-Well, here they are. I mean, this is...

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I've never seen anything like this before.

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-They are crammed in, aren't they?

-Yes.

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By the time bone specialist Jackie McKinlay arrived,

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Martin had uncovered four complete skeletons.

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One was an adult woman. But three were young children.

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They've still got some of their milk teeth.

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These are still deciduous teeth along here.

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This is one of the permanent teeth.

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The first one to erupt is the first permanent molar.

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That's just about starting to erupt there.

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So he's a bit younger than I thought at first. Yeah.

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It's very odd seeing graves emptied.

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This seems a bit stranger because we know so little

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of the circumstances in which the bodies were put in the pit.

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The fact that it's turned out to be three children,

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I find quite disturbing really.

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When you see the first milk teeth

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and things like that, it really brings it home how old they were.

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It makes you wonder how they died.

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Samples of bone were taken to the Oxford radiocarbon dating lab,

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where Paul Petitt was able to determine

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just when these people lived.

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What we have first is a range that is going to be the age Cranborne Woman

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and that age is roughly 3,500 to 3,100 BC.

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Within this range, what age is she most likely to be?

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I suppose if I was a gambling man, I would put my money on her real age

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being somewhere around 3,300 to 3,400 BC.

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-So she's something between 5,300 5,400 years old.

-She is.

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-So she's definitely Neolithic.

-Definitely Neolithic.

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Radiocarbon dating revealed that these people

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lived in the early Neolithic.

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An era that gave rise to some of the greatest monuments of our ancient past.

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Today, nearly 16 years after the discovery of Cranborne Woman and the three children,

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they still remain in the care of farmer Martin Green.

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Martin has his own private museum, housed in an old chicken shed

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just a couple of miles from the burial site.

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-Hello, Martin.

-Hi, Julian.

-Rubber gloves. How unpleasant!

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I know you found some amazing stuff on your farm but do you think

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this was one of the most exciting sites that you ever found?

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By far the most exciting.

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When I first saw the site from an aerial photograph, it was a Eureka moment, really.

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I thought, this is an extraordinary Neolithic site of some kind.

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-Have you got all of the burials here then?

-Yes, they are all here.

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-They're boxes just behind us on these shelves.

-Right.

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That was the thing that really got to me about this burial group

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was the fact that we had these tiny bones of children in the pit.

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That's right. It is a very poignant discovery.

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There is part of the skull

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and I think in here there are some of the teeth, the milk teeth in fact.

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We know that in a subsistence farming economy like in the Neolithic,

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there were going to be a lot of infants deaths,

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but to actually find them like this is very poignant.

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So you look after all these burials here.

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How do you feel about having them here, having them close to you?

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Obviously, it's quite a responsibility but I'm a farmer.

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I have farmed here all my life. My family did before me.

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These Neolithic people were farmers.

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So I think it is a way of understanding the landscape

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and how people I've used it over thousands of years.

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I think it's a continuation of telling that story.

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The excavation site has been returned to agriculture.

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But of course, without the human remains that our ancestors intended to rest here.

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Well, according to the GPS,

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I am right in the middle of the site now.

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Nothing to see.

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It's all rather featureless but then one field in Dorset

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can look very much like another field in Dorset.

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There is no trace of the drama of the dig

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and certainly nothing to suggest that this was once a family grave.

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I know some people really get quite uneasy about the whole idea of digging up human remains.

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I don't have a problem with it, personally,

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provided it's done with great care and respect.

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What I do feel very strongly about is that once we've excavated these remains,

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then we ought to be able to keep them.

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We ought to be able to look after them

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so that we can study them in the future

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because science is developing all the time and there are things we can do now

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that we couldn't do 10 years ago and it's always going to develop.

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If we rebury those remains,

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then we've actually denied ourselves the opportunity of doing that.

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We've actually denied the possibility of those ancestors telling their story.

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Back in 1997, with the remains conserved,

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bone expert Jackie McKinlay was able to assess them properly.

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And then we've got the other two juveniles.

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This is the youngest one, which was the one that was curled up on its back.

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The woman was about 30-years-old.

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And the children aged about 10, nine and five,

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all shared the same medical condition.

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There is a condition called cribra orbitalia.

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Now, this is something you get in the eye sockets.

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Can you see in there? It's not easy to see.

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-Just in the top of the orbit there, there is pitting.

-Oh, yes.

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Can you see the little pits that are in there?

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All three of the juveniles have that condition.

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That is believed to be due to iron deficiency, anaemia.

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But this was not something that would have killed them.

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So with no hint of how they died, attention turned to their identity.

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Christine Flaherty extracted ancient DNA to determine

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the sex of the children and to investigate if they were related.

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So here I've got the sexing results. Now, we knew the adult was a female.

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She was around 30 years of age.

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I found out that the oldest child was a girl.

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She was around 10-years-old.

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The middle child, the nine-year-old, turned out to be a boy.

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And the youngest child, the five-year-old, was another girl.

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So there were two girls and a boy.

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Now, having worked out what sex they are,

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what I want to know is are any of them hers? Is she the mother?

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OK, here we've got the DNA kinship results for the burials.

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Up here, we've got the adult, the woman.

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Next, we've got the oldest child, the girl.

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The middle child is the boy.

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And the youngest child, who is the little girl.

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This graph shows the DNA markers for each of them

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and if any of the markers match, there's a good chance of kinship.

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So here we see that the youngest child, the little girl,

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shares one of the markers with the adult.

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So this little girl could certainly be the child of the woman.

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Now, the other two children don't share any of the markers with the woman

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and certainly the boy could not be her son

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because neither of these match either of her markers.

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But it's interesting because the boy and the oldest girl

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share the same marker and they could possibly be siblings.

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That's incredible.

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What had emerged was completely unexpected.

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It appeared that only one of the children belonged to the woman.

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The other two might have been related to each other

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but not to our mother or her daughter.

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By scanning the skull of Cranborne Woman,

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facial reconstruction experts were able to show us

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what the leader of this unusual family might have looked like.

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Here at last, was our mysterious woman.

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But in 1997,

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all our discoveries had only lead to more intriguing questions.

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Just what was she doing with the three children?

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And how did they all come to be buried

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in one of Britain's most sacred places...

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..next, to the Dorset Cursus?

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Without carbon dating or DNA analysis,

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we would still have been making guesses about our group's identity.

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But there was one more scientific technique we wanted to use.

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A technique that was back then brand-new and largely untested,

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but that had the potential to uncover the story

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of how our group came together.

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As an archaeologist, I am staggered by what we can discover today

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that we wouldn't have thought was possible a generation ago.

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But to me, one particular analytical technique

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has got a very special place - isotope analysis.

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Because it's a technique that make the ancestors promoted

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and in some ways pioneered.

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It has since gone on to be hugely important in discovering

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the movement and migration of ancient peoples.

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Isotope analysis begins with thin slices of teeth.

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Within the enamel,

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there's an atomic signature that can be linked to specific parts

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of the country, allowing us to track a person's movements over time.

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So which tooth are you going to take?

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In 1997, the scientist we turned to was a PhD student called Janet Montgomery.

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There was nobody in Britain that had done this before.

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The lab where I did it had done it on rocks, for example, metals,

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which was what you would use strontium and lead to provenance.

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You could do with that but they had never done teeth,

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so we had to develop the method and get it to work.

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When you started though, did you know where you were going

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to get the samples from that you needed to carry out this analysis?

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It was actually difficult.

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I approached several places and requested samples

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and I was turned down because they said we don't believe this works.

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Prove it works and come back and show us some data and evidence

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and we might think again. So I was a bit stuck, really.

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I was having difficulty.

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But then you came along with Meet The Ancestors, with samples.

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At last, in 1997, Janet was able to test her new technique.

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This is a level you would expect from the chalk.

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-The signature you would expect from the chalk down here.

-Yes.

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Now, the adult female has a very different signature

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from the chalk geology.

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It's a signature which corresponds to what we would find in the Mendips,

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which is about 80 kilometres to the north.

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The isotope analysis revealed a surprising series of journeys.

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Our woman had not been born on the Dorset chalk, but in the Mendips.

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As an adult, she moved 80 kilometres south to Cranborne,

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where she picked up two children, neither hers,

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and returned to the Mendips.

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Here, she had a daughter of her own and later all four of them

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returned to Cranborne, where they died and were buried together.

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Janet's work had an immediate impact.

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As soon as it went out on the television, I had people

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e-mailing me, ringing up, saying,

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"Would you like to do this on my site or my cemetery?"

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So then it was fine.

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I had a choice of sites.

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-I feel quite proud.

-You should.

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Meet The Ancestors was an important part of this.

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Now, it has become a fairly routine application in a lot

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of archaeology case studies and on the television.

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But yes, Meet The Ancestors was instrumental in helping me

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get the technique established in Britain.

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At last, we had a clear picture.

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From their origin in the Mendips, our woman,

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the group's leader, travelled more than once to what would

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become her final resting place, next to the Dorset Cursus.

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But it wasn't only people who were drawn to this place.

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Back in 1997, Martin showed me a collection of objects

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from all over the country.

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This area here, close to the farm,

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we get exotic items, like these stone axes for instance.

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These are made of rocks which have been imported a considerable distance.

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That one, for instance, is from North Wales.

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-What about this one?

-That one is from Cornwall.

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The other one is from South Wales.

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These must have been prized possessions for somebody,

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-if the rocks have been brought all that distance.

-Very much so, yes.

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We often find them in pits in the ground where they have been very deposited with other objects.

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-Decorated pottery and fine flint tools.

-That's right.

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It's all close to this great monument which we know is the Dorset Cursus,

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which we can see on this plan.

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It crosses this area for a distance of six miles and all these exotic

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materials are found very close to it, either within it or just outside.

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-So that's the magnet, is it? That's what's drawn all of these objects?

-Yes, that is the focal point.

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Ever since that dig nearly 16 years ago, I've been intrigued.

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What sort of a world did this woman live in?

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And to what extent was her burial connected with that massive

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Neolithic earthwork that we call the Dorset Cursus?

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It's always been clear to me that to understand more about her,

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we need to get to grips with this place.

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And the challenge has always been that Cursus monuments are amongst

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the most enigmatic structures in the whole of prehistory.

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Environmental archaeologist, Mike Allen, has spent years taking

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hundreds of soil samples from sites around the Dorset Curses.

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The results of his analysis have shattered what we used to believe about the ancient landscape

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and perhaps the function of the Cursus itself.

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The key to all of this groundbreaking work is the humble snail.

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What we are trying to do is, amongst all this mess of small chalk pieces,

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is to tease out the hundreds of thousands of fragments of shell

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and amongst them there are elements that are identifiable and quantifiable.

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And by looking at them carefully, their shape and their morphology

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and the way they curl and twist,

0:22:370:22:39

we can actually identify them to species.

0:22:390:22:41

Then we can quantify them and count them.

0:22:410:22:43

Each individual snail lives in a different habitat.

0:22:450:22:48

Some of them like moist conditions.

0:22:480:22:50

Some like loose leaf litter where they can burrow into it and they might have food in there.

0:22:500:22:54

Some are more tolerant of open and very dry conditions

0:22:540:22:57

and their shell stops them from drying out.

0:22:570:22:59

So we can actually start teasing out what type of environment they might have lived in.

0:22:590:23:04

Hundreds of thousands of ancient snail shells later,

0:23:040:23:08

Mike is able to reach a remarkable conclusion about our burial site.

0:23:080:23:11

A decade ago, we thought the landscape in the Neolithic

0:23:130:23:16

was one of dense, heavy woodland.

0:23:160:23:18

Now, we understand that actually the woodland never really existed there.

0:23:180:23:22

It was always a natural open landscape.

0:23:220:23:24

Admittedly, there would have been trees in it but it wasn't a dense woodland.

0:23:240:23:28

Because it was an open landscape, it encouraged animals,

0:23:280:23:31

fresh fruits and berries, and that's why people came to it.

0:23:310:23:35

People found it as a magical landscape, a special place.

0:23:350:23:38

That's why Cranborne site is where it is.

0:23:380:23:41

The Neolithic landscape we had imagined almost 16 years ago has now changed.

0:23:430:23:47

And with it, the site of our burial, right next to the Dorset Cursus.

0:23:490:23:53

Previously, we'd assumed it was a monument crashing across the landscape,

0:23:530:23:59

crashing across an open landscape and was perhaps a processional way.

0:23:590:24:02

Looking at the snails from a number of different points on there,

0:24:020:24:06

it now looks like one side of it faced an open landscape

0:24:060:24:09

and the west side faced a more wooded landscape.

0:24:090:24:12

So perhaps it wasn't a processional way but more of a boundary

0:24:120:24:16

between a dark wooded landscape and an open, natural landscape.

0:24:160:24:20

An open, grazed and lived in landscape.

0:24:200:24:23

So we might almost be seeing it as a boundary between life and death.

0:24:230:24:26

Between a lived in landscape and a landscape of death

0:24:260:24:30

and a landscape of the ancestors.

0:24:300:24:32

This is the Dorset Cursus today.

0:24:360:24:38

Its old earthworks barely visible

0:24:380:24:40

after more than 5,000 years of erosion.

0:24:400:24:42

But it still staggers me the scale of this monument

0:24:420:24:46

because it extends way beyond the horizon up there to the north

0:24:460:24:49

and then stretches across this lovely rolling landscape

0:24:490:24:52

way beyond the horizon to the south.

0:24:520:24:54

But of course, it wouldn't have looked like this when it was first built

0:24:540:24:58

and the clue is down here in this chalk pit.

0:24:580:25:01

Chalk, it's white.

0:25:010:25:03

So when it was first built, these banks and ditches would have gleamed,

0:25:030:25:06

luminous streaks across the landscape,

0:25:060:25:09

and of course, highly visible from our burial site,

0:25:090:25:12

which is only a few hundred yards in that direction.

0:25:120:25:14

Way back, nearly 16 years ago, when we excavated Cranborne Woman,

0:25:200:25:24

we knew that there had to be some connection

0:25:240:25:26

to this great Neolithic monument.

0:25:260:25:28

But what the Cursus looked like, the landscape that it ran through,

0:25:280:25:32

the very environment that was inhabited by Cranborne Woman

0:25:320:25:35

and her rather unusual family, frustratingly,

0:25:350:25:39

all this remained almost a complete unknown.

0:25:390:25:42

But today, thanks to a meticulous study

0:25:420:25:44

of vast numbers of tiny snail shells like these,

0:25:440:25:47

we are beginning to paint a vivid picture of this landscape over 5,000 years ago.

0:25:470:25:52

On one side there was dark, forbidding woodland.

0:25:540:25:57

On the other, there was open space.

0:25:570:25:59

It had always been an open landscape.

0:26:000:26:03

So maybe the Cursus acted as a boundary

0:26:030:26:06

between a dark and dangerous world and one that was lighter and safer.

0:26:060:26:11

And as well as snails, the very latest scientific work

0:26:130:26:17

is tying our Cranborne group even more closely to this great monument.

0:26:170:26:21

Not just in distance but also in time.

0:26:210:26:25

This is Hambledon Hill,

0:26:390:26:41

just a few miles from the Dorset Cursus and our burial site.

0:26:410:26:45

During the Neolithic,

0:26:450:26:47

it was one of the most significant settlements in the area.

0:26:470:26:50

-Hi, Julian.

-Hello, Alex. How nice to see you.

-Nice to see you too.

0:26:500:26:54

For Alex Bayliss, from English Heritage,

0:26:540:26:57

new carbon dating techniques can now paint a detailed

0:26:570:27:00

picture of how our Cranborne group fitted in,

0:27:000:27:04

not just to a landscape, but to a society.

0:27:040:27:07

Now, look, when we looked at that burial,

0:27:070:27:11

the Neolithic chronology was reasonable, wasn't it? Or was it?

0:27:110:27:16

It was in the phase of the splodge.

0:27:160:27:19

It was really rather vague.

0:27:190:27:22

If you think of Cranborne Lady,

0:27:220:27:24

she's got a radiocarbon date of between 3,500 and 3,100 BC.

0:27:240:27:29

So that's an era of 400 years.

0:27:290:27:33

So it was very vague.

0:27:330:27:36

The whole of the chronology of the Neolithic was like that.

0:27:360:27:40

So what's changed now then? What's changed over the last 10 years?

0:27:400:27:43

Well, we have got much more precision.

0:27:430:27:47

We have got new mathematical techniques that allow us to

0:27:470:27:50

put the radiocarbon dating together with the archaeological information.

0:27:500:27:54

So if you have the radiocarbon on its own, it's really vague.

0:27:540:27:57

But if you can refine it with the archaeological information,

0:27:570:28:00

A is earlier than B, something like that,

0:28:000:28:02

then you can get much more precision and I can start

0:28:020:28:06

talking about what happened in Cranborne Lady's lifetime.

0:28:060:28:09

Hambledon Hill lies 12 miles west of our burial site.

0:28:120:28:15

Years of excavations have unearthed evidence that the people

0:28:170:28:20

who lived here in the Neolithic built huge defences,

0:28:200:28:24

seemingly, to protect themselves against the people from Cranborne.

0:28:240:28:28

That rampart, it's all facing this way,

0:28:290:28:33

it's all about dominating, keeping out the folks over there,

0:28:330:28:38

keeping out Cranbourne Lady.

0:28:380:28:42

Cranborne Lady has a 35% chance

0:28:430:28:46

of having witnessed this construction event.

0:28:460:28:50

But it's not very friendly towards the people from Cranborne, is it?

0:28:520:28:56

-No. She probably didn't build it.

-A barrier across here.

0:28:560:28:59

-Having closed off Hambledon, they now build the Dorset Cursus.

-Right.

0:28:590:29:05

So our woman from Cranborne, she knows about the Dorset Cursus.

0:29:050:29:09

Probably. She has a 45% chance of having witnessed

0:29:090:29:13

the construction of the Dorset Cursus.

0:29:130:29:16

-That's fascinating.

-This is her world.

0:29:160:29:19

That precision. I'm very impressed with all this.

0:29:190:29:23

This level of accuracy offers a completely new perspective

0:29:240:29:27

to an age before writing.

0:29:270:29:29

-The 'pre' might have to come out of prehistory.

-Oh, no.

0:29:300:29:33

-I still like being a pre-historian.

-Oh, well.

0:29:330:29:36

-You'll let me be one, will you?

-For a few more years.

-That's very kind of you!

0:29:360:29:40

Up until quite recently, our woman and the children

0:29:480:29:51

had actually lain buried in a chalk field in Dorset for thousands of years

0:29:510:29:55

and there are some who would argue they should still be there

0:29:550:29:58

or at least if they were excavated that they should have been reburied.

0:29:580:30:02

But just think what these rare remains have given us -

0:30:020:30:05

insights into the lives they lead, glimpses into their ancient world.

0:30:050:30:10

16 years ago, the stunning preservation of the Cranborne remains

0:30:120:30:15

allowed us to use cutting-edge science

0:30:150:30:18

to tell a story of a woman and three small children.

0:30:180:30:21

Their lives, their relationships and even details of their travels.

0:30:240:30:30

But in the time since the dig, science has discovered

0:30:330:30:37

far more about the environment of the Dorset Cursus.

0:30:370:30:39

And incredibly,

0:30:420:30:43

how Cranborne Woman might even have been involved in its construction.

0:30:430:30:47

But Wiltshire and Dorset don't contain

0:30:540:30:57

the only famous Neolithic landscapes in Britain.

0:30:570:31:00

In the far north,

0:31:040:31:06

Orkney is home to a dazzling array of Stone Age monuments.

0:31:060:31:10

And in 1998, I was called out to a site where a local dairy farmer

0:31:140:31:18

had stumbled across an untouched Neolithic tomb

0:31:180:31:21

just outside the main town of Kirkwall.

0:31:210:31:24

The discovery of a new sealed burial site was big news.

0:31:330:31:36

And the team of archaeologists were joined by experts from across the country.

0:31:380:31:43

Even two members of the Strathclyde Police forensic team.

0:31:440:31:47

What's the tent for?

0:31:570:31:59

We're used to using this type of tent at outdoor crime scenes.

0:31:590:32:03

It protects the body and the surroundings from the elements

0:32:030:32:06

and I think in this area it's going to be very important

0:32:060:32:10

to protect the tomb as soon as it's open.

0:32:100:32:12

With the tent in place, it was finally time to take the covers off the tomb.

0:32:140:32:18

Lean it up against that.

0:32:180:32:21

But unlike the Dorset dig,

0:32:210:32:23

this was one excavation that didn't go smoothly.

0:32:230:32:26

Oh, no!

0:32:270:32:29

An archaeologist's worst nightmare.

0:32:290:32:32

Modern soil and water contaminating the once sealed chamber.

0:32:320:32:36

It was going to take a bit of ingenuity to see past the blockage.

0:32:380:32:42

But fortunately, I'd come prepared.

0:32:420:32:45

As I manoeuvred the camera into the tomb,

0:32:470:32:49

Jennette and lead archaeologist, Beverly Ballin Smith,

0:32:490:32:53

watched for any signs of human remains.

0:32:530:32:55

The tomb had laid undisturbed

0:32:590:33:01

ever since it was sealed over 5,000 years ago.

0:33:010:33:05

There's a bone! There's a human bone!

0:33:050:33:07

In fact, there was more than one,

0:33:110:33:14

as we all found out that evening when Beverley showed us

0:33:140:33:17

what had excited her so much.

0:33:170:33:19

You can clearly see we've got one skull here.

0:33:190:33:22

It's got a little dent in the top, hasn't it? And the brow ridges.

0:33:220:33:27

We've got a second skull which seems to be lying on its side

0:33:280:33:32

because there is an eye socket. We've got a nose bone.

0:33:320:33:35

It looks to be in good condition but we can't tell really here

0:33:370:33:40

whether that's a male or female skeleton or skull.

0:33:400:33:43

No, not from here. It's not lying as a skeleton, is it?

0:33:430:33:47

-Or two skeletons. It's a collection of bones.

-Yes.

0:33:480:33:51

The camera had also revealed the structure of the tomb.

0:33:510:33:55

There were still some dark recesses we hadn't seen

0:33:560:33:59

but we knew that the tomb was circular

0:33:590:34:01

and divided into three compartments.

0:34:010:34:04

One had bone in, one was empty

0:34:040:34:07

and the third, full of soil from the collapse, was an unknown quantity.

0:34:070:34:11

Every time I return to Orkney, I get a real buzz of excitement.

0:34:170:34:21

Just like home in Dorset,

0:34:220:34:24

the Neolithic is written all over its landscape.

0:34:240:34:27

This is a World Heritage Site and the preservation of Neolithic

0:34:340:34:38

monuments in such an unspoiled setting is simply stunning.

0:34:380:34:42

The Stones of Stenness,

0:34:440:34:46

the Ring of Brodgar

0:34:460:34:49

and Maeshowe.

0:34:490:34:51

All breathtaking relics of our distant past.

0:34:530:34:56

This is though the first time in over 15 years

0:35:000:35:02

that I've been back to the dig site, to the Crantit tomb.

0:35:020:35:06

So there's a special air of anticipation.

0:35:060:35:09

Coming back here really does bring back the excitement of that original

0:35:150:35:19

discovery but actually, it still doesn't look like very much, does it?

0:35:190:35:22

This is the thing. When you compare it to all the other monuments in Orkney,

0:35:220:35:26

their are great standing stones and everything you can see, this is hidden.

0:35:260:35:30

But I think that is why it was so exciting

0:35:300:35:32

because of the promise of what might lie under the ground.

0:35:320:35:36

What we hoped for in here were remains that had been hidden away

0:35:360:35:39

and buried for thousands of years.

0:35:390:35:41

But actually, getting to those remains

0:35:420:35:44

proved a bit more difficult than we thought.

0:35:440:35:47

A few days into the dig,

0:35:500:35:53

and the archaeologists were still struggling.

0:35:530:35:56

Don't stand there.

0:35:560:35:58

If the slab fell in, it would crush any bones beneath it.

0:35:590:36:03

The tomb needed shoring up to prevent it collapsing completely.

0:36:110:36:15

Sometimes, stones are resin, that's all.

0:36:160:36:19

Fortunately, Joffy Hill, one of the diggers, was also a builder.

0:36:190:36:23

There is a wonderful structure of a wooden tape. What is it doing?

0:36:250:36:30

This is insurance.

0:36:300:36:31

If it decides to suddenly collapse,

0:36:310:36:34

we will catch it before it goes down on what is our primary deposit.

0:36:340:36:39

The skulls on the bottom.

0:36:390:36:41

Wooden supports in place,

0:36:430:36:45

it was time to get those precious bones out.

0:36:450:36:48

-Feet first.

-Feet first.

0:36:480:36:50

Overalls weren't just to keep clothes clean

0:36:560:36:58

but were intended to prevent any further contamination of the ancient bones.

0:36:580:37:03

With the rickety structure holding up the tomb, Beverly went in.

0:37:060:37:10

I suppose this is the moment we've all been waiting for.

0:37:200:37:23

We're getting our first glimpse of the bones as they come out of the tomb.

0:37:230:37:26

It has to be said, from what I've seen so far, they are not in very good condition.

0:37:260:37:31

Each fragment was examined and recorded.

0:37:310:37:33

The left lambdoid... Well, both lambdoid sutures.

0:37:330:37:37

Compared to the incredibly preserved Dorset remains,

0:37:380:37:42

these had suffered badly in the soil.

0:37:420:37:44

-Very close to each other.

-This is just like sponge cake.

0:37:450:37:50

In fact, it's worse. It's worse than sponge cake.

0:37:510:37:54

The remaining bones were literally falling to bits

0:37:550:37:58

as soon as they were touched.

0:37:580:38:00

The larger pieces, two skulls,

0:38:050:38:08

were so soft that Beverly had to make every move slowly and gently.

0:38:080:38:13

I think I would have the shovel back once Julie has processed.

0:38:310:38:34

-How do you feel now they're out?

-I want to find out a bit more now.

0:38:420:38:45

I'm keen.

0:38:450:38:46

It would seem that the skulls were placed on top of the pile of bones.

0:38:460:38:51

Or in this case, slightly to one side.

0:38:510:38:54

But why two skulls and only, what would appear to me

0:38:540:38:57

to be only one lot of bones, I don't know?

0:38:570:39:00

Today, more than 15 years after the dig,

0:39:040:39:06

the Crantit remains are kept in the Orkney Museum.

0:39:060:39:10

Sometimes, it can be quite an emotional moment

0:39:100:39:13

coming face-to-face with remains that you helped dig up years ago

0:39:130:39:17

and that awareness that it's people, your ancestors from the past.

0:39:170:39:21

But it's quite difficult to do it

0:39:210:39:24

when all that's left of an individual is this.

0:39:240:39:28

This is a person.

0:39:280:39:30

This is a person's life but it's just a few fragments of bone

0:39:300:39:33

that were squashed into the floor of the tomb.

0:39:330:39:36

Our sense of disappointment was increased by the fact that

0:39:370:39:41

the best preserved bone of all

0:39:410:39:46

was this skull.

0:39:460:39:48

The bones of the face,

0:39:510:39:53

which are really what gives somebody that sense of being human

0:39:530:39:56

and provide the clues to the person, they're all gone.

0:39:560:40:01

They are fragile bones and they've disappeared completely.

0:40:010:40:04

So that was the best that we can expect from the tomb.

0:40:050:40:08

That was the best that came out of it.

0:40:080:40:10

So, as I say, that just compounded

0:40:120:40:15

our sense of disappointment, I suppose.

0:40:150:40:18

Our two Neolithic burials could not have been more contrasting.

0:40:200:40:24

The perfectly preserved skeletons from Cranborne.

0:40:270:40:29

And the soft, unpromising fragments of bone from Orkney.

0:40:320:40:35

While science had revealed the lives of the Dorset burials,

0:40:390:40:42

and given us an entirely new picture of Neolithic life in the South,

0:40:420:40:48

on Orkney, it seemed that scientists would need to draw on every

0:40:480:40:52

ounce of ingenuity to be able to say anything at all about these remains.

0:40:520:40:56

But even in this case, with such terrible bone preservation,

0:40:580:41:01

science has been able to paint a detailed picture of the people

0:41:010:41:04

who were buried in that tomb.

0:41:040:41:06

Over the last decade, this study and others like it

0:41:060:41:09

have changed our thinking about the way the dead were treated,

0:41:090:41:13

not only at Crantit, but right the way across Neolithic Orkney.

0:41:130:41:17

In 1998, just a few weeks after the excavation, bone specialist

0:41:200:41:24

Julia Roberts took her first proper look at the Orkney remains.

0:41:240:41:28

That has been compressed by the wet soil.

0:41:280:41:31

The fragments of four separate skulls revealed,

0:41:310:41:33

like Cranborne, a mixed group of adults and children.

0:41:330:41:38

Fortunately, we have some teeth.

0:41:380:41:40

We've got these two developing first and second molars here.

0:41:400:41:45

We can tell they are developing crowns, not just teeth,

0:41:460:41:50

where the root has rotted away.

0:41:500:41:52

The actual surface of the crown hasn't developed properly yet.

0:41:520:41:55

This gives us an age of somewhere between four and six years.

0:41:550:41:59

-Four to six?

-Yes. So it's quite young.

0:41:590:42:03

We've also got here... This is actually a wisdom tooth.

0:42:030:42:07

This is likely to go with the other individual,

0:42:090:42:11

giving it an age of probably around 15.

0:42:110:42:16

This is the best preserved of all of them.

0:42:160:42:18

How much can you tell about that?

0:42:180:42:21

Judging from the bit of skull that we have here,

0:42:210:42:23

the top of the skull and forehead looks quite female in shape.

0:42:230:42:27

Many of the remains were missing, including most of the larger bones.

0:42:270:42:33

We've got the left hand and foot, left kneecap, right leg,

0:42:330:42:39

left pelvis and right arm.

0:42:390:42:42

So we've actually got bits from all over the body.

0:42:420:42:45

We also have part of the pelvis.

0:42:450:42:47

The fragment of pelvis confirmed we were dealing with a woman

0:42:470:42:51

and the teeth suggested her age.

0:42:510:42:53

We have got some of the teeth surviving,

0:42:530:42:56

although they are in very poor condition and also they've got wear on the bottom.

0:42:560:42:59

They've got quite heavy wear, so that suggests that she was probably aged over 30.

0:42:590:43:06

So in the one chamber, you've got an adult woman,

0:43:060:43:10

an adolescent child and a child of about four to six years old.

0:43:100:43:15

Yes. That seems to be the case.

0:43:150:43:18

-You wonder whether it's her children, don't you?

-It's a possibility.

0:43:180:43:22

As they were buried in the same chamber.

0:43:220:43:24

DNA analysis proved impossible on such decayed bone.

0:43:260:43:30

But science was able to tell

0:43:300:43:31

whether the two had ever contained more than these four bodies.

0:43:310:43:35

Chemist John Duncan analysed tiny samples of soil from the tomb floor

0:43:380:43:42

in order to determine how much bone had rotted away.

0:43:420:43:46

You've got a nice range of colours here, John, anyway!

0:43:480:43:50

-These are the samples from the tomb at Crantit, are they?

-Yes. They are from the floor, the soil.

0:43:500:43:56

-I've been looking at chemical composition.

-What does the dark blue and the lighter blue mean?

0:43:560:44:00

The darker the colour, the more phosphorus in the soil.

0:44:000:44:04

Bone contains a lot of phosphate so if there is highly phosphate

0:44:040:44:08

values in the soil, we can say that bone has been placed there.

0:44:080:44:11

As expected, the dark colour indicates a high amount of phosphate,

0:44:120:44:17

which this back row are from beneath where we found the bone during the excavation.

0:44:170:44:24

The light blue, not much bone.

0:44:240:44:26

-So would you expect that the high levels were going to be where the ball was?

-Yes.

0:44:280:44:32

We did expect that and that is what we found.

0:44:320:44:34

What about that chamber at the back where there weren't any bones at all? What has that shown up?

0:44:340:44:39

From the samples, there were no bones present.

0:44:390:44:42

-So you think that was a completely empty chamber?

-Yes.

0:44:420:44:45

That's really interesting, isn't it?

0:44:450:44:47

And what about the other chamber where the soil had collapsed in on it?

0:44:470:44:51

-The floor of the tomb still showed that there was no other bone present.

-Right.

0:44:510:44:57

-So they really are just restricted to those two side chambers.

-Yes.

0:44:570:45:02

Nothing in the passage, nothing in the middle and nothing at the back.

0:45:020:45:05

No.

0:45:050:45:07

Even more surprising, these results also showed that natural decay

0:45:070:45:12

couldn't account for all of the missing bone.

0:45:120:45:15

It still seems incredible that our bone expert was able to tell

0:45:160:45:19

so much about these bones, that this for example was

0:45:190:45:22

part of the pelvis of a woman and that these teeth were children's

0:45:220:45:28

and even down to the fact that we can tell what age the children were.

0:45:280:45:32

But John's phosphate analysis had provided us with even more information.

0:45:330:45:38

What it told us was that we couldn't explain away the missing bones

0:45:380:45:42

by suggesting they had all simply rotted away.

0:45:420:45:44

Of course, we knew that the skeletons were incomplete

0:45:440:45:48

but now we knew that either some bones had been taken out of the tomb

0:45:480:45:52

or that those people weren't whole when they were put in.

0:45:520:45:56

We had a real mystery on our hands.

0:45:560:45:58

5,000 years is a huge span of time.

0:46:020:46:05

The sophisticated planning of Neolithic tombs in Orkney

0:46:060:46:10

bears testament to the existence of a complex system of beliefs.

0:46:100:46:13

But at times, understanding those beliefs seems almost impossible.

0:46:160:46:21

When we find evidence of ancient people, it's very natural

0:46:250:46:29

to speculate about how they might have lived their lives,

0:46:290:46:32

and if we have their burials, on what they might have believed in.

0:46:320:46:35

But this is where it gets a little bit tricky for archaeologists

0:46:360:46:39

because given the nature of the scientific evidence that we are working with,

0:46:390:46:43

how much can we say with certainty and how much is speculation?

0:46:430:46:48

No more than informed guesswork.

0:46:480:46:50

How much could future archaeologists say about our lives today

0:46:550:46:58

by looking at our remains thousands of years in the future?

0:46:580:47:02

If you look at a Christian churchyard,

0:47:040:47:06

there are some things that are immediately obvious.

0:47:060:47:09

All the graves face in the same direction.

0:47:090:47:11

They are in nice, orderly rows. There's a neatness here.

0:47:110:47:15

All things that point to a unified system of belief

0:47:150:47:18

and the hope perhaps that the dead would be allowed to rest in peace.

0:47:180:47:22

But life and death in the Neolithic were very different.

0:47:230:47:27

Things changed quite radically,

0:47:270:47:28

not only from place to place, but also through time.

0:47:280:47:32

Ever since 1998, the missing skulls

0:47:340:47:37

and long bones from the Crantit tomb have intrigued me.

0:47:370:47:41

In the years since the dig, however, archaeologists Rebecca Crozier and Dave Lawrence

0:47:440:47:49

have carried out major re-examinations

0:47:490:47:51

of the remains found at two other important Orkney tombs -

0:47:510:47:55

Quanterness and the Tomb of the Eagles.

0:47:550:47:58

Between 2006 and 2008, they set out to determine

0:48:020:48:07

whether excarnation was taking place -

0:48:070:48:11

the practice of leaving the dead out to decay before burial.

0:48:110:48:14

Now, I've brought Rebecca and Dave to Crantit to see whether this

0:48:160:48:19

could explain why so many bones were missing from our tomb.

0:48:190:48:23

The remains in here, if you remember, were really fragmentary.

0:48:240:48:28

I think if I was back in Dorset one explanation for there being

0:48:280:48:31

so little in here would probably be something to do with excarnation.

0:48:310:48:36

You take a corpse and lay it out somewhere,

0:48:360:48:39

maybe on a platform, and the elements,

0:48:390:48:42

which you've got plenty of up here, and carrion birds and things come and carry bits off

0:48:420:48:46

and then eventually the body has turned into a nice clean skeleton

0:48:460:48:51

and you take the bones and place them into a tomb.

0:48:510:48:54

But I'm not sure you think that this is what's going on here. Is that right, Dave?

0:48:540:48:58

The Tomb of the Eagles is one of these iconic sites

0:48:580:49:01

because it produced such a huge quantity of human remains

0:49:010:49:04

and it was always said that excarnation had been

0:49:040:49:06

practised on that site because the bones exhibited

0:49:060:49:10

signs of weathering from exposure to the elements, just as you've said.

0:49:100:49:13

But it turns out that almost all these signs of weathering

0:49:130:49:16

are actually pathological legions from the diseases that these people had.

0:49:160:49:20

Variously - cancer, periodontal disease

0:49:200:49:23

or even trauma where they've had blows to the head.

0:49:230:49:28

All these things were misinterpreted when the first study was done as signs of weathering.

0:49:280:49:33

That was used to support this idea of excarnation.

0:49:330:49:35

-So there isn't any evidence for that at all?

-There is no evidence for it whatsoever.

0:49:350:49:39

That whole idea of excarnation for that site is totally undermined.

0:49:390:49:43

And Rebecca, you have looked at Quanterness, which is another big assemblage.

0:49:430:49:49

Is there any evidence for this right of excarnation?

0:49:490:49:52

Again, if something has been excarnated, you expect

0:49:520:49:56

just to find long bones and skulls because those are the easy ones.

0:49:560:50:00

-They are the big, recognisable bits.

-Yes.

0:50:000:50:02

They are the easy ones to recover and it's quite obvious

0:50:020:50:05

and we know of sites where that happens in the other parts of the world.

0:50:050:50:08

But at Quanterness, what you find is a huge number of very small bones like your fingertips

0:50:080:50:14

and that strongly suggests that bodies were complete inside the tomb.

0:50:140:50:21

I suppose if you left the body out and it rotted away, then those are

0:50:210:50:25

the tiny bones that would be missing if you collected the bigger bits.

0:50:250:50:29

That's really interesting

0:50:290:50:31

because I remember that even though the bones here were very badly preserved,

0:50:310:50:35

we did have one or two of those tiny bones.

0:50:350:50:37

The fact they are in the tomb would strongly suggest that's where they started.

0:50:370:50:41

So it now seems likely that the remains were complete

0:50:450:50:49

when they were placed in the tomb,

0:50:490:50:52

which left one last possibility -

0:50:520:50:55

that some of the bones had been taken away.

0:50:550:50:58

And Rebecca has found startling new evidence that the dead might

0:50:580:51:02

not have been left in peace.

0:51:020:51:04

These are just a couple of the more unusual things that we've found.

0:51:070:51:13

So, this is an ulna.

0:51:130:51:16

This is a left ulna bone, so it's your forearm.

0:51:160:51:19

That's not a natural hole.

0:51:190:51:20

That's not a natural hole, no.

0:51:200:51:23

So has that been drilled?

0:51:230:51:24

Quite possibly. I'll show you another one.

0:51:240:51:28

So you might think one in 10,500.

0:51:280:51:32

This is from your chest bone.

0:51:320:51:34

So your sternum.

0:51:340:51:38

And this is another drill hole.

0:51:380:51:40

So this one is actually the same size as the one I just showed you.

0:51:400:51:45

Right.

0:51:450:51:46

OK, so that's just it very close up.

0:51:460:51:48

So they're drilling holes in human bones.

0:51:480:51:51

Some people suggested, you know, this could be excavation damage,

0:51:510:51:54

so when we look at it under the microscope, you can

0:51:540:51:57

see the colouration in the bone is all the same,

0:51:570:51:59

which suggests it's all weathered down in the same way.

0:51:590:52:02

New damage would show up as white and be very obvious.

0:52:020:52:06

So I've also done some experimental work with pig bones,

0:52:060:52:10

which I rotted down, in my garden.

0:52:100:52:13

-As you do.

-As you do.

0:52:130:52:16

And I drilled it with a replica flint tool

0:52:160:52:19

and it produces the most amazing drill hole

0:52:190:52:23

very, very quickly and it's actually quite easy to do.

0:52:230:52:26

Why they were doing that or what that means, I don't know, but

0:52:260:52:31

it certainly suggests people have been in there and modified bone.

0:52:310:52:36

The way the Neolithic people treated their dead,

0:52:360:52:39

it's all a bit strange, isn't it?

0:52:390:52:41

It's a very far cry from the way we treat the dead today,

0:52:410:52:44

because it's all very sanitised today, isn't it?

0:52:440:52:47

Somebody dies and they're taken away and they're removed from us,

0:52:470:52:51

whereas these people seem to have had the dead in amongst them as part

0:52:510:52:55

of their community and to have been doing

0:52:550:52:57

some very strange things with them.

0:52:570:52:59

Not something that would be attractive to us now

0:52:590:53:01

and not something that we can even really relate to at the moment,

0:53:010:53:05

just because we're so distant from everything.

0:53:050:53:08

The new evidence suggests that people might have removed

0:53:100:53:13

bones for ritual use.

0:53:130:53:16

It's almost impossible to imagine what it must have been like

0:53:200:53:24

to climb into these cramped tombs

0:53:240:53:26

and commune with the ancestors in this way.

0:53:260:53:28

Especially since the dead remained a powerful

0:53:320:53:35

force in the world of the living.

0:53:350:53:38

The Orkney story is still developing.

0:53:510:53:54

In fact, despite the wealth of monuments here,

0:53:540:53:57

still more are being discovered.

0:53:570:54:00

Up here in Orkney, the Holy Grail is to find a tomb that is

0:54:020:54:06

so well preserved that it can provide us with all of the tiny,

0:54:060:54:09

little details about life and death in the Neolithic.

0:54:090:54:13

It looks as if that might finally have happened.

0:54:130:54:16

In 2010, Hamish Mowatt discovered a 5,000-year-old Neolithic

0:54:200:54:25

burial site in his car park.

0:54:250:54:29

It's come to be known as the Banks Tomb.

0:54:290:54:32

So I basically just dug a hole and found that there was a space,

0:54:330:54:37

six foot wide. Pushed the wire in and it was six foot wide, six foot long.

0:54:370:54:42

And then I pushed the wire down and it was three foot deep.

0:54:420:54:45

So when I pulled the stones and rocks out,

0:54:450:54:49

I could shine the torch in and I could see the rock face,

0:54:490:54:52

straight rock face, just like concrete, it was.

0:54:520:54:55

Cut straight as a die.

0:54:550:54:56

Then I got the camera shoved in this hole and then

0:54:560:54:59

when I panned the camera down into the water,

0:54:590:55:03

I could see that there was a white object with two little holes,

0:55:030:55:06

which I presumed was a human skull looking at me.

0:55:060:55:10

So, when I looked again - I briefly looked away from the monitor

0:55:100:55:14

at that point, because I was quite,

0:55:140:55:16

-"Am I seeing..."

-Not what you expected.

0:55:160:55:18

You know, "Is this what I think it is?" And I looked again,

0:55:180:55:21

it was in about ten, 12 inches of water and the water was murky,

0:55:210:55:25

so you couldn't really see the object, but it was white.

0:55:250:55:28

So I got a little pump that afternoon,

0:55:280:55:30

pumped the water out, got the camera in again.

0:55:300:55:33

And yes, there was a human skull.

0:55:330:55:36

What's the condition of the bone like?

0:55:360:55:38

They're not broken or nothing, they're black in colour,

0:55:380:55:41

but they're really pristine condition.

0:55:410:55:44

In 2011, the first chamber yielded human remains.

0:55:440:55:48

And with the damp conditions inside the tomb,

0:55:480:55:51

the hope was that soft tissue might have survived.

0:55:510:55:54

Unfortunately, only bones were discovered.

0:55:550:55:59

But there are still another five chambers to be explored.

0:56:000:56:04

So the Banks Tomb could be the one that ends debate on Neolithic

0:56:040:56:08

burial ritual once and for all.

0:56:080:56:11

Or, it might just present us with yet more mysteries.

0:56:110:56:15

One thing is certain -

0:56:150:56:17

science will play a major part in unlocking

0:56:170:56:21

whatever secrets it does hold.

0:56:210:56:24

It's tantalising to think what science will give us,

0:56:240:56:27

because, like all Neolithic sites,

0:56:270:56:30

the revelations will continue long after the dig is over.

0:56:300:56:33

Those remains that have been recovered

0:56:360:56:38

so far are just beginning to be analysed.

0:56:380:56:41

Each ounce of soil is sieved with painstaking care,

0:56:420:56:45

because the smallest fragments

0:56:450:56:47

can yield the most significant clues.

0:56:470:56:50

We've seen that the tiniest bones can unravel

0:56:530:56:57

the mysteries of burial practice,

0:56:570:57:00

that teeth can tell us the story of an individual's life

0:57:000:57:04

and that fragments of snail shell can

0:57:040:57:06

transform our understanding of entire landscapes.

0:57:060:57:10

Exploring the Neolithic can be incredibly challenging,

0:57:120:57:15

trying to understand the lives and beliefs of such a remote time,

0:57:150:57:18

but when the results do come, then the rewards can be fantastic.

0:57:180:57:23

We still excavate the same remains - the flints, the bones,

0:57:230:57:26

the pottery - that archaeologists have dug up for centuries.

0:57:260:57:30

But today, science has opened up

0:57:300:57:32

so many new windows into the Neolithic world.

0:57:320:57:35

So much has changed in the last ten years.

0:57:350:57:37

That's why it's been so fascinating to return to these two burial sites,

0:57:390:57:42

because, through them, we've been able to paint a far more

0:57:420:57:45

vivid picture of life and death in the Neolithic,

0:57:450:57:48

of a world where these two weren't as separate as they are today,

0:57:480:57:52

where the ancestors were a constant presence.

0:57:520:57:56

And just think how much will have changed

0:57:560:57:58

if I come back in another ten years.

0:57:580:58:00

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