Episode 2 The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver

2,000 years ago, this small plateau in a rural corner of France

was the front line between two very different cultures.

The ordered, civilising presence of the Roman Empire...

..facing off against an ancient Iron Age tribal people...

..the Celts.

In Britain, we're never far from our Celtic past.

The Celts seem to belong to a shadowy, wilder, more primal time

than anything in more recent history.

But much about their origins, beliefs, and ultimate fate

remains a mystery.

But a story etched in vivid colour

is how these powerful, tribal people battled for survival

against their arch-enemy, the Roman Empire.

From the first Celtic raiding parties

that rampaged through ancient Italy

to Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul

and the Celts' last stand under the warrior queen Boudicca.

One of the greatest cultural conflicts

that still defines our world today...

and reveals Europe's most enigmatic ancient people.

By the 4th century BC,

the Celts were at the peak of their military and cultural powers.

They were establishing themselves far beyond their homeland,

aggressive in their pursuit of new territory.

In 387 BC,

they burned the city of Rome to the ground.

This marked a new era for the Celts,

when conflict and war became a means of gaining social status.

An era when the warrior was king.

But the Celts weren't alone as a military force.

After the destruction of Rome, the city had been rebuilt

and the Romans were flexing their muscle

right across the Mediterranean world...

..forging a new empire

that would become the model for all empires to come.

But the Roman Army had yet to conquer

the Celtic heartlands of Central and Western Europe.

And the Celts presented a formidable obstacle

to Rome's expansionist plans.

What was at stake was the future of Europe

and the civilisation that would shape it.

On the one hand, centralised, modern Rome -

on the other, an Iron Age culture

that had its roots deep in prehistory.

Two vast armies, and a brutal conflict

fought between two of the age's greatest generals.

The Celts' new era will forever be associated with a tiny village

that lies on the shores of Lake Neuchatel, in Switzerland.

It's now perhaps the most famous name in Celtic history.

"La Tene".

Those are words writ large in every book about the Celts.

For many archaeologists, they're a kind of shorthand

for that period when the Celts were at the peak of their power

and of their artistic achievement.

There are objects, artefacts of La Tene culture

scattered across Europe, from Britain to the Balkans.

It was their golden hour.

This golden age is epitomised

by intricate Celtic art and craftsmanship.

It's this art that has come to be seen as quintessentially Celtic.

But beneath that romance and beauty,

there appears to be a much darker underbelly to Celtic culture -

savage customs and bloody brutality.

In 1857, archaeologists excavating an ancient riverbed

on the shores of Lake Neuchatel

discovered the remains of an Iron Age wooden bridge.

Surrounding the structure,

they found an enormous hoard of Celtic artefacts,

including swords, scabbards and spearheads.

In total, over 3,000 objects,

all beautifully preserved in the mud.

What they'd stumbled upon is believed by some archaeologists

to have been a wooden platform

used by Celtic warriors as a sacrificial altar to their gods,

one where the victims of bloody conflict

might have been ritually displayed.

The finds from the lake are now held in the Latenium museum,

under the watchful eye of Marc-Antoine Kaeser.

What do you think happened here at La Tene?

Why do we have this huge collection of material here?

I think first, La Tene is an important place -

a passage place, with these bridges on the water, on the river.

And probably, after a big battle,

the people put all those weapons

and other kinds of objects on display,

as a show commemorating the battle.

These were obviously kinds of offerings to the gods,

and it was discovered 2,000 years later.

In addition to all the weaponry,

we have this human skull,

and you see the marks on the forehead?

Slices... Is that from a sword?

Yes, but the main interesting thing is that these are not

marks of wounds which you would have received in battle.

So, we think these are marks of sacrifice.

-Ah, so it's a trophy?

-Exactly.

We have many skulls of horses, like this one.

If you look at the inside here,

you see the palate has been smashed through.

You see here?

The small hole.

From the point of something, a spear or something?

No, not a spear - a pike.

So, the horse's head was on display like that, on a pike.

So, you've got, possibly, the whole bodies of dead men, or their heads,

accompanied by horses' heads as well. Gosh.

It's a very grisly tableau.

It's not just a spectacular display of beautiful weapons,

it's also the bloodied and ultimately rotting corpses.

It's almost... Well, it is theatrical.

La Tene exposed a culture where war was a way of life,

and where the tools of battle -

beautifully crafted weapons -

became a means of displaying a warrior's status.

When you handle and look at these objects, what are the details

that leap out at you and say, "This is something special.

"This is not just a tool"?

If you take a look at the objects, and especially here,

when you see the surface here,

the treatment of the surface, which is quite particular.

And then, you have the decor...

..the figures, which you see here.

Every object, every sword, is unique.

And this was different, then, to see weapons,

but weapons that were also works of art?

Yes - since it's a way of life, you have to show all the art,

all the beauty which you invest into your warlike occupation.

So, as well as being a tool of his trade, it shows his status -

and the fact that the way in which he makes his living

is almost an art.

The finds at La Tene revealed a very different Celtic world -

one that was aggressive and warlike.

It was also a world of stark contrasts,

in which beauty and creativity

were entwined with cruelty and extreme violence.

This double edge of beauty and beast

is epitomised by one extraordinary and apparently sacred object -

the Gundestrup Cauldron.

Beaten into the silver are images of Celtic gods,

strange beasts and rituals.

But even this exquisite object points to a preoccupation with war.

Warriors are depicted being dipped into

what some believe to be sacred liquid,

to improve their military rank in the afterlife.

It's thought the cauldron was used ceremonially at feasts,

where soldiers would drink from it before battle,

in the belief that it bestowed immortality.

Although the silverwork is rich in their imagery,

it was not the work of Celts,

but probably crafted by a people known as the Thracians,

and believed to be a gift of friendship

to their neighbours, the Celts.

The cauldron was made, not in the Celtic heartland of central Europe,

but over 1,000 miles further east, in the Balkans.

So, as well as embodying the beauty and violence of La Tene culture,

the cauldron shows a civilisation seeking power and land

more forcefully than ever before.

Where they had previously negotiated through trade,

Celtic warriors and their raiding parties

now seized slaves and luxury goods with the blade of a sword.

And by the early 3rd century BC,

Celts could be found as far south as Delphi in Greece.

Their skill and bravery on the battlefield were legendary.

As a result, they became hired guns,

willing to kill for whoever was willing to pay.

BATTLE CRIES

This was the La Tene Celt in full flow.

We think of the Celts as European people,

traditionally originating in Central Europe during the Iron Age,

but with new theories suggesting that they might have originated

much earlier, in Western Europe.

But by the 3rd century BC,

we know that they were here

in what is now Turkey.

Alexander the Great once ruled these lands,

but when he died in 323 BC,

his empire started to crumble, leaving a power vacuum.

Celtic raiding parties crossed from Europe into this part of Asia...

..and they came to the heart of Turkey,

just south of modern-day Ankara.

This was once Galatia,

and its capital was Gordion.

This is what I'm interested in.

That flat-topped hill over there.

That is the remains of ancient Gordion -

the city that's famous for Alexander the Great

having come and cut the Gordian knot there.

But that's not why I'm here.

I'm here because the Celts also settled in Gordion.

And we know this from the Roman historian Livy.

Gareth Darbyshire is an archaeologist

who has been working at Gordion since 1998.

So, Gareth, when did the Celts arrive here in Gordion?

Well, we don't know precisely when,

but it would have been some time in the mid to late 3rd century BC.

And what were they doing here?

We know from written sources that they were serving as mercenaries

in various Hellenistic-period armies.

They were probably also looking for land for settlement,

either taken by force,

or the same kind of thing through diplomatic negotiations.

So, they were given free rein to come here and settle

-and then to raid around Asia Minor?

-That's the picture we get.

What kind of evidence are you finding of their material culture?

We're finding items that are new to this region,

and which are comparable in various ways

with areas further west in Celtic Europe.

For example, in the lower town, very dramatically,

we're finding human and animal remains mixed together

with signs of violence - broken necks, beheadings, et cetera, which

again, you know, they're attested in various forms in areas to the west,

areas that are known to have been Celtic-speaking.

Classical historians associated the Celts with violent death rituals.

And at Gordion, archaeologists think they've found evidence

of gruesome, possibly Celtic practices.

The skeletons here are some of the human remains

from the site at Gordion.

But they're a bit odd.

This woman is about 30-45 years old.

If we look at the back of the skull here, the side of the skull,

you can see this depression.

So that is a blunt injury.

She's been struck on the head.

And we can imagine that this probably was the cause of death.

So, somebody who died a violent death.

And her body was placed on top of that of a younger woman.

She was laid out like this.

I've got the actual photograph of the excavation back in the '90s,

but rather strangely,

she's got these two quern stones buried just on top of her.

Now, the Roman authors tell us about all sorts of what seem to us

very bizarre and even gruesome rituals that the Celts indulged in -

human sacrifice, decapitation -

and some experts have suggested

that we've got something like this happening at Gordion.

There's certainly evidence of strange rituals.

I mean, just look at this.

And there's evidence of violent death.

But when it comes to decapitation and human sacrifice,

I'm not sure.

Some of the bones at Gordion were found alongside animal bones -

possibly as part of the burial ritual.

Archaeologists have come across similar practices

as far afield as Yorkshire and Northern France.

Celtic graves have been discovered

containing disarticulated bones of pigs and horses

mixed with human remains,

and sometimes entire chariots,

perhaps providing the deceased with transport into the afterlife.

Death rituals played a central part in Celtic civilisation...

..but these ancient people were now being confronted

by a very different power.

A structured, ordered culture,

with a conflicting idea of what civilisation meant.

Galatia represents the easternmost extent of the Celtic world,

but by the 2nd century BC,

the Celts here were coming under pressure

from the expanding Roman Empire.

And we learn from Livy that in 189 BC,

a Roman army came to attack Gordion,

and ended up fighting the Galatians in the mountains.

And within a century, Galatia would be subsumed into the Roman Empire.

Since their defeat at the hands of the Celts in 387 BC...

..Rome had been rebuilt

and was now the fastest developing power in Europe.

By the middle of the 1st century BC,

the Roman Empire dominated the Mediterranean region,

from Syria to Spain.

But standing in the way of further expansion to the north and west

was the Celtic heartland of Gaul.

Southern Gaul had long been under the influence

of the Classical world.

As long ago as 600 BC,

a port had developed on the south coast of France called Masallia,

now Marseilles.

It became a trading hub for ships

importing exotic luxuries from Italy and Greece.

Celtic tribes were only too happy

to barter with their Mediterranean neighbours...

..offering grain, leather and slaves

in exchange for Roman wine.

But these two very different worlds of the Celts and Romans

were now about to collide.

In 58 BC, the job of subjugating Gaul

was assumed by the most famous Roman of all time,

the seasoned general Gaius Julius Caesar.

Hail Caesar!

Caesar was an inspirational leader.

He was a fighting man.

His cunning and daring had earned him the respect of his men.

He was confident of his own decisions,

while at the same time able to take advice from his centurions.

But he had plenty of enemies back in Rome,

where he faced allegations of political corruption.

A stunning victory here in Gaul

would enable him to go home a war hero.

But Gaul was a treacherous land,

populated with warring and infighting Celtic tribes.

Caesar set about crushing those hostile to him,

whilst cementing alliances

with others more accepting of Roman control.

The Roman Empire had forged trading connections

with Celtic tribes for some time.

One tribe in Gaul in particular had

had a lucrative formal arrangement with them for almost 100 years.

This is Bibracte in Burgundy,

nearly 200 miles southeast of Paris.

It was once the territorial capital

of one of the most powerful Celtic tribes in Gaul -

the Aedui.

Bibracte's chief archaeologist is Vincent Guichard.

What was the relationship between the Aedui and the Romans

before the conquest?

We've got trace of a military treaty between the Aedui and Rome.

And why would the Romans take that step?

Why would they sign a document with a neighbour?

The territory of the Aedui - modern-day Burgundy -

is just midway between the Mediterranean and the North Sea,

so it's a really key location along two main rivers,

which are the Saone River and the Loire River.

And, of course, the Romans wanted to have this route free for trading,

and especially for metal ores of any sort, like tin, for example.

But on the reverse side,

what was brought from Italy to Gaul was Italian wine.

It's that traditional model of alcohol, of all things,

greasing the wheels of commerce and bringing people together.

The Gauls were trapped by their taste for Roman wine.

And I suppose it's easier, from the Roman point of view -

rather than go in and fight and conquer,

if you can just softly get involved with the people

who have the things that you want,

-then it's less effort and less expense.

-Yes. Make business.

Business can make a lot, and that's what they did, actually.

And yet, with his invasion of Gaul,

Caesar effectively tore up the treaty.

His aim was to bring the more troublesome Gallic tribes,

with their barbaric rituals, under control,

to assimilate them into the civilised Roman Empire.

By 53 BC,

five years into his campaign,

he believed the job was almost done.

The savage Celt, he boasted, had been tamed.

But Caesar couldn't have been more wrong.

In the early months of 52 BC,

when he returned to complete his Gallic campaign,

he found his progress challenged

by a young Celtic warrior named Vercingetorix,

son of Celtillus, leader of the Arverni tribe,

a man Caesar himself described as having

boundless energy and iron discipline.

The legendary challenge of Vercingetorix

has meant that he's been elevated to French national hero,

and he's celebrated with a 19th-century romantic statue.

At only 30 years of age,

this warrior king was a brilliant military tactician.

For months, his band of rebels had used guerrilla tactics

to provoke and harry Caesar at every turn.

Vercingetorix persuaded his fellow chiefs

that victory depended upon disrupting the supply lines

that Caesar needed to keep his men fed and watered.

So they adopted a scorched-earth policy.

Every main settlement on Caesar's path of advance

was burned to the ground.

Every field of standing crops was cleared,

not a stalk was left standing.

Vercingetorix reminded his people that if they didn't do as he said,

their fate was inevitable -

slavery or death.

Two great armies,

led by two charismatic leaders,

would soon go head-to-head

in a battle that would shape the future of Europe.

Vercingetorix was a warrior from the Celtic golden age of La Tene.

Yet almost everything we know about him

comes from the campaign diaries of his arch-enemy, Caesar.

But there's one place, 25 miles north-east of Frankfurt,

that gives us a sense of how the Celts themselves

depicted their leaders.

We have plenty of images of Julius Caesar,

but we don't know what Vercingetorix looked like.

The most famous image of him is a 19th-century statue,

but it's more romantic than accurate, I think.

But in 1996,

an incredible discovery was made in a field

just here in Glauberg in Germany.

And here it is - or perhaps I should say "he".

The Glauberg warrior.

Isn't that wonderful?

I'm going to get up here...

..and get a better look.

I'm looking right into his face.

He's got this astonishing headgear.

Some people have suggested that this is a mistletoe leaf.

I'm not sure. It's just an odd-looking helmet.

And round his neck, he's wearing something very Celtic indeed.

He's got this fantastic neck ring.

So, this is a torc.

These are the neck rings which we know were worn

by rich and powerful people.

And we've also got Celtic imagery showing gods wearing torcs as well,

so they're symbols of power,

and perhaps even offered some kind of protection to their wearers.

This statue dates to about 400 BC,

so he is 2,500 years old.

He's a little bit early for Vercingetorix.

This statue was carved

a few centuries before Vercingetorix was born.

But what we're seeing here is this fantastic representation,

made by Celts, of what a Celtic warrior looked like.

The person who carved this knew these warriors.

This statue is one of four that surrounded a burial mound

close to the Glauberg hillfort.

Inside it lay the body of a real Celtic warrior.

And these are the remains of the person buried underneath that mound.

We can tell quite a bit about this individual,

from analysis carried out on the bones and the teeth.

And in particular, looking at his teeth,

we can see that there's some wear on those.

You can tell that this is quite a young individual,

perhaps in his twenties when he died.

But really, it's what was buried with him

that is absolutely astonishing.

This is quite clearly the grave of somebody who was very high-status,

essentially Glauberg royalty.

This beautiful piece of jewellery, which is a brooch or a fibula.

There's a fantastical horse-like creature here, perhaps with wings,

and then, a little human head, with a face looking back at the horse.

This is classic - this playfulness,

this combination of animals and humans.

And here is the incredible gold torc

that was lying around the neck of this individual in the grave.

And you can see that you've got this plain band

around the back of his neck and then here, a lot of detail.

And here is the sword of the warrior that lay at his right side.

And then the scabbard is absolutely beautiful.

It's made of bronze, but it has iron overlaying it as well.

And then even a piece of textile. Can you see that, there?

And you can see the weave of that material, where it's been lying close

to this sword and it's been preserved because it's close to the metal.

And there's something else, as well, that provides a connection

with that statue outside the grave.

There was the wire frame and even the remnants of some leather

of his headgear. And it was the same helmet,

with those strange projections on each side.

The lavish grave goods buried with this young man,

his stunning jewellery and that beautifully decorated sword,

tell us that he was a person of extremely high social standing.

And being a warrior was inextricably bound up with that status.

He lived and died at a time when the Celtic world was evolving,

and amongst those changes

was the emergence of a new type of leader, the warrior king.

The ritual burial of the Glauberg warrior, complete with lavish

grave goods, was part of a rich and ancient culture.

Hundreds of years later, it would fall to Vercingetorix

to defend that shared heritage.

In the spring of 52 BC, leaders of the Celtic tribes convened

to agree a strategy for the survival of Gaul.

Their tactics now required a much larger offensive

if they were to defeat the forces of Rome.

WARRIORS JEER

The only option was to overcome tribal rivalries, combine forces,

and elect Vercingetorix the supreme commander

of the allied army of Gaul.

WARRIORS CHEER

An arc of resistance formed from the River Seine in the northeast

to the Garonne in the southwest.

United, Gaul's Celts were now a more formidable force than ever.

52 BC was shaping up to be a decisive year

for Rome, for the Celts, and the entire future of Europe.

By the summer of 52 BC, Vercingetorix and his army

of 80,000 men and 15,000 cavalry

were in position on top of a huge Celtic hillfort, or oppidum,

called Alesia, in the heart of Gaul.

After a bloody skirmish with the Roman army, Vercingetorix

commandeered the heartland fortress, home of the Mandubii tribe.

Caesar had pursued him and was now positioned on the plain below.

But Alesia provided Vercingetorix with an ideal vantage point.

Vercingetorix had every confidence in his decision.

The plateau at the top is fully 400 feet above the plain below.

There are sheer cliffs at one end.

By the standards of the day, Alesia was all but impregnable.

While the Celts were here, they would have kept this place

clear of trees, so anyone on the high ground would have had

a perfect panorama of the surrounding low ground.

The hill is further cut off from its surroundings by two gorges,

two valleys running either side, cut by rivers.

Across the gentler slope of Alesia, Vercingetorix ordered his men

to dig a deep ditch and build a six-foot-high stone wall.

Now safely inside this apparently impregnable fortress,

Vercingetorix must have believed he held the upper hand.

But Caesar saw it as the perfect opportunity for siege warfare,

a favoured tactic of the Roman general, who had many more years

of battle experience than his younger opponent.

By surrounding Alesia, he could trap the Celtic rebel army

and their Mandubii inside the stronghold,

cutting them off from vital communication and provisions.

He now had Vercingetorix exactly where he wanted him.

The area was cleared.

The trees logged.

3.5m-high palisade walls were erected,

and studded with observation watchtowers.

Caesar's plan was for the fortifications

to eventually run 11 miles around the entire plateau.

To protect his army from attack,

he also included a deadly system of defences.

Mike Loades, an expert in ancient military strategy,

has been researching the battle tactics.

How did the Romans prepare the ground, Mike?

Well, what we're doing here is we're digging a minefield.

That's what they did. In front of these great earthworks,

they dug a really elaborate minefield with spikes and stakes

and ditches and moats and mounds and palisades.

It's a good reminder of what an old word "minefield" is, isn't it?

We think of the explosive,

but it's a field that has been mined,

that people have dug traps in.

Exactly that.

So what we're digging here is a hole for a stimuli, one of these.

It's set in a bit of wood to hold it in place,

but you've got this iron shank coming up with that barb.

You step on... And if it's hidden,

you just do not see that in the ground.

So whether you're a horse or a human foot stamping down on there,

it shoots right through your foot!

And see that barb, it will not pull out easily.

So they're a terrible, terrible ugly thing.

It would stimulate you, wouldn't it?

If you stood on that, you'd be squealing like a stuck pig.

Inside this defensive line were moats and ditches

that the Celts would first have to cross.

And after the water-filled ditches,

the booby traps, you run onto this forest of sharpened stakes.

Yeah, they're very simple. They're called cippi,

and they're kind of groin-height for a man and chest-height for a horse.

So the men would come with shields, protecting men,

while they cleared a path through here. So they'd be slowed.

But slowed is important, because up there you've got archers,

you've got slingers, you've got javelin men.

Up there you've got ballista, catapulta, scorpion,

all these great throwing engines.

And these guys would be bombarded with missiles.

Another problem, I suppose, for the Celts,

up there far away on their hilltop,

is to even begin to conceive of the connected scale

-of what Caesar's got in mind down here.

-Absolutely.

And that's one of the interesting things about coming to the place,

is you see the scale of it.

In the hillfort of Alesia,

Vercingetorix witnessed Roman progress.

It was clear he needed more troops.

Under cover of night,

he released a group of riders to summon help from across Gaul

before Caesar's defences were finished.

On their arrival, the Celtic relief force

would attack the Roman army from behind.

Only days later, the Roman fortifications were completed.

The siege had begun.

And Caesar had already predicted Vercingetorix's next move.

It's all very well digging that to keep Vercingetorix and his men in,

but how do you protect your rear?

Cos you are, after all, outside something, in open space.

That's exactly right. And Caesar knew that

and he knew that there were reinforcements. By his account,

hundreds of thousands of reinforcements on their way.

So what he did, having sealed him in, having contained Vercingetorix,

is he says to his men, "Build another wall. Another wall.

"A bigger, longer wall

"all around that first wall to protect my flank."

Such a feat of ambition

to even think that you could. And you put them both together

and you've got something like 35km of wall,

done in about five weeks.

To throw up these fortifications so quickly

involved almost superhuman effort.

Caesar had contained Vercingetorix's troops within his inner line,

and had now defended his rear against attack

from the approaching Celtic relief army.

But even Caesar's plan had a flaw.

By sealing himself inside that double line of walls and ditches,

Caesar had effectively caught himself in his own trap.

The would-be besieger was now besieged.

Vercingetorix, also trapped in his hillfort,

had to wait for the arrival of the relief force before he could attack.

The question was, would his food and water last?

After weeks of siege, with still no sign of the relief force,

rations inside Alesia were running dangerously low,

and the morale of Vercingetorix's men was waning.

He was left with no choice

but to expel all non-combatants from the hillfort,

in the hope that Caesar would let the Mandubii women and children

cross the lines to safety.

But Caesar showed no mercy.

The refugees, pushed out by Vercingetorix and ignored by Caesar,

were trapped in no-man's-land.

Imagine Vercingetorix up on the ramparts of Alesia,

looking out and down onto his own people

starving to death in the valley below him.

He was becoming increasingly determined.

He wasn't just defending a hillfort, but something much more important.

This was a fight between centralised, modern Rome

and an ancient Iron Age culture

that had roots stretching deep into pre-history.

What was at stake was an entire way of life

that the Celtic tribes had carried with them into the Classical age.

For centuries, the Celts had developed and prospered.

They were technologically advanced and respected as warriors.

They had migrated, and their ideas had spread

right across Europe and beyond.

They'd established trading links with the Mediterranean world of the south

and with the temperate lands of the north.

Now this great world was under threat.

By October 52 BC, after months of stand-off,

a vast Celtic army was seen

massing on that string of hills rising in the west.

A quarter of a million men had gathered from every corner of Gaul.

Surely just the thought of them, far less the sight of them,

would have been enough to make the Romans turn and run.

Vercingetorix had a numbers advantage over Caesar,

but he also had a psychological weapon.

Roman garrison camps were rife with rumours

of the grisly fate awaiting them if they lost.

To understand what Caesar was up against in Gaul,

I've come to Northern France,

to an area just a few miles outside of Amiens,

which is famous for the Battle of the Somme,

and the spectre of that terrible period in history

still haunts these woods.

But 2,000 years before the First World War,

another mass slaughter took place here.

One that shows us some evidence

of particularly gruesome Celtic practices.

In the 1960s,

archaeologists excavating near the village of Ribemont-sur-Ancre

unearthed the dismembered bones of 200 people.

They believed that the bodies were the result

of an intertribal conflict,

and their treatment bore the signs of Celtic ritual.

These are just a few of the thousands of bones

discovered at this Celtic sanctuary site at Ribemont.

And many of these bones bear evidence of violent injuries.

Here's a pelvis. And you can see here that...something,

probably the point of a spear, has made several holes in this bone.

There are other cut marks.

This is a humerus, an arm bone, and here's another blade injury

right at the top, just under the shoulder.

And here's a collarbone.

And you can see quite clearly along that

where a blade has come down on that surface leaving marks on it.

But what is conspicuously missing

is ANY evidence of heads, of skulls.

And we see the reason for that in the bones themselves.

This is the skeleton of a young man who died in his twenties.

And if we come up his spine here,

we get to a point where it stops abruptly.

And if we then look at that vertebra,

we can see that it has been cleanly sliced.

A blade has come through the front of his neck,

and his head was removed.

He was decapitated.

So then we wonder what happened to those heads.

And we might get a clue if we turn to the classical writers.

The Greek writer Strabo,

who lived from the 1st century BC into the 1st century AD, writes,

"There is among the Celts

"the barbaric and highly unusual custom of hanging the heads

"of their enemies from the necks of their horses

"when departing from battle.

"The heads of those enemies that were held in high esteem,

"they would embalm in cedar oil and display them to their guests."

Now, we'll never know exactly what happened to the heads

of all these decapitated and possibly beheaded people,

but I think to us it seems very bizarre.

And to the Romans coming into Gaul,

it must have seemed very strange and very barbaric.

At Alesia, Caesar knew he would need

a combination of tactics and luck if he was to avoid ending up

with his own head hanging from a Celtic horse.

250,000 Celtic warriors were gathered overlooking the Roman army,

waiting to launch their attack.

In spite of sacrificing the women and children,

Vercingetorix's troops were at breaking point

and close to starvation.

But even with reinforcements on the hills opposite him,

Vercingetorix still had a problem.

Besieged up there on his hilltop, Vercingetorix had no way

of communicating directly with the Celtic relief army.

So he was dependent upon tribal leaders,

who didn't necessarily have his military skill.

But the relief army had seen

that there was a vulnerable spot in the Roman fortifications.

And on October 2nd, 52 BC,

they decided to strike.

MEN ROAR

Around noon, 60,000 Celtic warriors launched an attack.

Their target was a Roman garrison up here on Mount Rea,

the northwest corner of Caesar's defences.

The steep slopes here had prevented the Romans

from digging proper ramparts and ditches.

It was a weak point in their defences.

The Celts knew that and closed in for the kill.

MEN ROAR

In an attempt to coordinate the attack,

Vercingetorix led his troops downslope

to try punch a hole through the inner Roman fortifications.

MEN ROAR

His thinking was that such a move would leave the Roman troops

no alternative but to fight in both the front and in the rear.

So wave after wave of Celtic warriors

smashed against the Roman defences.

The stakes could not have been higher.

For Caesar, this was his chance to secure the title "Conqueror of Gaul."

Whereas Vercingetorix was fighting for his homeland.

And there are new ideas about how the Celtic warriors

might have fought this decisive battle.

The Roman writers make a big deal

about the Celts being an undisciplined, unruly, wild mob.

-Is that right?

-The Celts did go into battle with great cries and shouts,

but once they're fighting, I think it would look more like this.

Cos you wouldn't survive for two minutes on a battlefield

unless you had some military discipline.

So although it's not hundreds of men

all working together to the beat of a drum in maybe the Roman fashion,

it's, nonetheless, small tight units

who are paying attention to one another and are working as a group.

Exactly. That whole thing you said,

that they're wild, slashing barbarians.

Everyone talks about the Celtic sword being a slashing weapon -

already you're playing into the hands of the Roman writers.

Slashing is a pejorative term.

It implies he just slashes like a clown in...in a wild sort of way.

No. What the Celtic weapon is, it's a cutting weapon.

It will do very precise cuts. It's a thrusting weapon.

It will do both those jobs.

And they're both deeply unpleasant, but it's not a wild slashing weapon.

The spear, for instance. This was really the primary weapon.

So rather than the sword?

Yeah. I mean, swords were a relative rarity.

They were high-status, but they were relatively rare.

More people would have this, cos it's so versatile.

It gives you reach in battle.

It gives you an ability, look at that edge,

it gives you the ability to cut and scythe at hamstrings and legs

-and the backs of horses.

-So, it's a martial art?

It's a martial art. And the Celts were professional martial men.

MEN ROAR

As the fighting continued,

the Romans desperately shored up their defences.

But the Celtic relief army, attacking from the rear,

was breaking through.

Sensing victory, Vercingetorix's warriors on the other side

pounded the Romans' inner defensive line.

Caesar was on the brink of defeat.

He had one last card to play,

and it relied on his power as a charismatic leader.

Draped in his distinctive red cloak,

Caesar led 6,000 men, every last soldier he had,

into a desperate do-or-die counteroffensive.

MEN ROAR

The sight of Caesar entering the fray re-energised the men,

and a cheer erupted from the legionaries

as they gave everything to one final push.

With Caesar leading from the front,

and with his men believing in victory,

the battle began to turn in their favour.

Caesar boasts in his memoirs

how his troops forced the Celts to flee across the battlefield.

Vercingetorix watched the final defeat from the hillfort.

Still besieged, he was left with two options - to surrender, or die.

He left the decision to his war council.

The following day, together with his men and in full regalia,

he rode down the slope.

Legend has it that he leapt from his horse, threw down his arms,

and said, "Here I am, a strong man defeated by an even stronger man."

The freedom fighter had finally been outwitted

by the wily old strategist.

The Golden Age of the Celts was over.

The Romans celebrated their victories in monumental architecture.

This is the Triumphal Arch in Orange in the South of France.

This archway tells a story all about the Roman conquest of Gaul.

On the top, you can see Celtic warriors,

naked warriors being trampled under the hooves of Roman cavalry.

And on either side there are piles of the spoils of war.

The archway straddles a road leading south towards Rome

and heading north to the land of the dead. And that's just about right.

Julius Caesar reckoned there were about three million Gauls.

By the time he'd finished with them, one million lay dead.

A second million had been sold into slavery.

If that happened today, they'd call it genocide.

As for Vercingetorix himself,

Caesar showed no mercy.

He had him taken to Rome, imprisoned for six years,

and then killed in a public garrotting.

Centuries later, he would re-emerge as a national hero

who gave his life for the dream of a free Gaul.

Caesar's victory at Alesia was a defining moment in European history.

The Celts, an ancient and deep-rooted culture, lay crushed,

not in some foreign field, but in their heartland.

It was a defeat that would consign generations of Celts

to Romanisation and servitude.

This statue is known as the Vacheres warrior.

It dates to around 28 BC, 24 years after the battle of Alesia.

You take a passing glance at him and you see...Roman soldier.

That's largely down to the clothes and the weapon.

He's wearing a tunic, it's long, it comes down to his thighs.

A shirt of chainmail.

On his side here, on a belt is a gladius,

that's the classic short sword of the Roman legionnaire.

Everything about it seems to say Roman soldier.

But appearances are deceptive.

Take a closer look and you see around his neck he's wearing a torc.

Now, that's the status symbol of the elite warrior of the Celts.

He is Celtic. He's a typical Gallo-Roman soldier,

that's to say a Celt employed by Rome as an auxiliary soldier.

Vercingetorix would be turning in his grave.

The infamous wild, long-haired barbarian is gone.

He's been smartened up.

He's been Romanised and tamed.

It looked like the end for a great culture

that had once stretched from Turkey to France,

but the Celts weren't quite finished yet.

By 51 BC, not long after the Battle of Alesia,

Bibracte was sufficiently Romanised

that Julius Caesar himself came to stay

while he was writing The Conquest of Gaul -

it's one of the great histories of the Roman Empire.

He may even have written some of it in one of these rooms.

In that book, as well as writing about the campaign,

he also described two exploratory expeditions

that he made in 55 and 54 BC

to a mysterious island across the sea he called Britannia.

It's the first detailed eyewitness account we have of Britain

and the people who lived there.

Next time: the Romans turn their attention further north,

to one of the last bastions of Celtic culture - Britain.

An island of rich resources...

..powerful tribes...

..advanced military equipment...

and another great leader.

A woman...

the warrior queen Boudicca.