Britain's Lost Colosseum Timewatch

The Colosseum. The most notorious building in the Roman Empire.

From 80AD, it was home to the bloodiest spectacles ever devised

as entertainment for the masses...

displays of warlike courage as men fought to the death

and executions with criminals burned, crucified or exposed to ferocious beasts.

This was what the Roman people demanded of their emperors in return for their loyalty.

But not just in Rome.

Wherever the Romans conquered, they built amphitheatres.

From North Africa's searing deserts

to the freezing hills of Wales.

One of the key locations in Roman Britain was Chester.

Here, buried in the modern city lie the remains of the most elaborate amphitheatre in the country.

Did Emperor Vespasian, the man who built the Colosseum, leave us this legacy?

This is the story of a massive archaeological project to bring the Chester amphitheatre to life.

The two men in charge face hard graft...

..and painstaking analysis.

We've sieved every bloody atom!

There will be highs...

Who's gonna pay for his burial?

..and there will be lows.

-It's raining!

-..George, bring it in!

Over a long season of urban archaeology, they're determined to discover what happened here,

when the amphitheatre was built and what exactly it looked like.

The secrets of Britain's lost colosseum.

The excavation begins in mid-June.

There are 20 skilled archaeologists.

Surveying the site grid...

There are surveyors...

..Two south!

..builders...

geophysicists and archivists...

Romanists...and medievalists.

The first rota I'll call "white"...

They're led by two experts on Roman archaeology - Tony Wilmott from English Heritage

and Dan Garner from Chester City Council.

The team Tony and Dan have gathered together will be working 7 days a week for 15 weeks

in the middle of the city centre.

And it's all on view to the public.

It's going to be hard manual labour,

digging down until they reach Roman level

to reveal the buried amphitheatre.

The layers and structures that we've got on site, we peel off in reverse chronological order.

Obviously, uppermost is the latest.

So 19th-century pottery in the top layer, that's a 19th-century layer.

As we go down, we'll get early material in the deeper layers,

that will give us the dating levels for those layers, and the relationships

between the layers gives us a nice dated sequence through the layer cake

that we have on the site.

Chester prides itself on its Roman heritage.

Its amphitheatre is a showpiece.

In Roman Britain, it must have been an awesome sight.

It was the largest amphitheatre in the country,

a grand stone structure built to serve the largest fortress in Britain.

It seems that Chester was destined for great things.

EQUIPMENT CLANKS AND RATTLES

In 43 AD, the vast Roman Empire was still expanding

and Britain was an irresistible prize at the edge of the known world.

Julius Caesar had failed to capture Britain a century before,

and now Emperor Claudius wanted its gold and its grain.

He landed four legions, 20,000 men, at Richborough

on the south east coast.

They marched and fought their way west and north,

capturing territory from British warrior kings and queens.

For three decades, many of the British resisted the Romans,

and for Roman soldiers, it was a notorious posting.

Britain's seen as the armpit of the Roman Empire.

It's wet, it's cold, it's barbaric,

it has one of the largest...

it NEEDS one of the largest standing garrisons

because it's full of trouble and rebellion.

It's the tough place where you go to wear trousers,

and not have bare legs,

where the wine would be awful cos it's travelled a long way,

and where the natives are pretty appalling.

The Roman frontier advanced regardless,

and by the 70s, most of present-day England was settled and peaceful.

To guard the north and west frontiers,

legionary fortresses were built at Chester, York and Caerleon.

But there were plans afoot to go further,

and Chester lay at the heart of them.

Chester's fortress was built on the river Dee.

It was a perfect sea-port, with deep-river access to the north-west coast.

It could be the launch-pad for expansion not only into Scotland

but also Ireland.

There's evidence from manuscripts which say that perhaps one legion

would be enough to conquer Ireland,

and the Romans were in touch with Irish chieftains.

And there's plenty of evidence of trade.

Vespasian was emperor in the 70s AD.

He'd been with Claudius at the invasion of Britain,

and now he wanted fresh conquests.

Vespasian is not aristocratic,

he's a bluff, good soldier,

and he's wanting to make victories and make waves.

He builds the Colosseum to restore Roman values,

he wants conquest to show he likes Caesar,

and Claudius IS an emperor,

however lowly, who can actually deliver glory to Rome.

We know that at some stage, there was talk

in the Roman world, of invading Ireland.

And it makes sense -

you'd have a nice province consisting of Great Britain and Ireland.

"The British Isles".

Chester is the obvious base from which to launch the invasion.

For reasons that are no longer particularly clear,

that invasion never happens.

The theory runs that Chester was not only a perfect invasion base,

but the perfect capital of the new, expanded Britannia.

It would be ideally placed, it's more or less central

to that imagined province.

And it would explain some of the peculiarities about the fortress.

There are buildings inside the fortress

that have no parallels anywhere else in Roman military archaeology.

The magnificent buildings are now hidden under streets

that follow the original Roman plan.

Chester's fortress was 20% bigger than any other in Britain.

Some of its monumental walls still stand,

as grand as those of any Roman capital.

Londinium, London, doesn't really exist at this stage.

It's just a rather muddy place by the Thames,

and Chester could well have been intended as the capital

of the new provinces.

A capital of the new provinces would deserves a fine amphitheatre.

Emperor Vespasian built the Colosseum in Rome,

did he build an amphitheatre here in Chester?

Or was it built much later, under a different emperor altogether?

Tony and Dan have to work that out during their excavation.

The amphitheatre was discovered in 1929.

But it was excavated partially in the 1960s by the late Hugh Thompson,

then curator of Chester's museum.

The Thompson Report revealed a magnificent stone building

with 72 buttresses.

It would have held 7,000 - 8,000 spectators.

It had 12 entrances,

and its arena wall was painted bright red.

He also found that before the stone amphitheatre existed,

there was a smaller amphitheatre on the same site,

built entirely of timber.

In the last few years, the Thompson theory has been severely questioned,

that's why the new excavation is taking place.

It's up to Tony and Dan to uncover the truth.

I think we approach the existing report with an open mind.

We're digging for the story.

We're digging for the story, and when we've got it,

we wanna tell people the story. It's what archaeology REALLY is all about.

Tony and Dan have decided to dig two areas of the site -

a curved section of seating bank, trench A,

which Thompson dug in the 1960s...

The second area is a wedge of seating bank and arena, trench B,

which is virgin ground.

The diggers have their work cut out if they're to find answers

in the next 15 weeks.

It's only day 2 of the dig,

but already, they're onto something exciting in trench A.

-< WOMAN:

-They picked it up on the metal detectors

and put a metal tag in for it.

We normally don't find one coin in a whole excavation site.

it's great.

You can tell a little about it from its size.

It's likely to be earlier rather than later.

It's going to be 1st or 2nd century rather than 3rd or 4th.

But we'll see.

But it's not so great to realise

Thompson's team must've put the Roman coin back by mistake when they refilled the site in the 1960s.

In those days, archaeology was less professional than today.

Unskilled labourers did much of the digging, and even...

schoolboys.

One of them was Dai Morgan Evans.

I think I was a bit blase about it, I'm afraid!

A ghastly 16-year-old, rather cocky and full of himself.

The problem wasn't only untrained diggers.

In the 1960s, bulldozers were used to save time.

Today, small hand-tools are used to sift through every inch of earth.

It's slow, painstaking work. It's vital that every metre is methodically recorded

for the archive.

Archaeology is "an unrepeatable experiment".

When you've removed it, it's GONE. You know, it's archaeological stratigraphy NOW...

It'll be hauled off in skips in due course, or some of it will.

The objects they find in the debris are taken to the finds room in a nearby visitor centre.

Here, they are cleaned, catalogued and studied by a team of experts.

-We were staggered when these started coming out, actually.

-Yeah!

Because they came out of one of the pits which Thompson excavated then back-filled.

Samian-ware with scenes of wild-beast hunts or gladiatorial scenes were sold as souvenirs

around amphitheatres.

Though important finds were missed in the 1960s,

Tony and Dan's team have retrieved them because Thompson refilled the site with the earth he'd taken out.

There's surprise on the quantity and the quality of what we've recovered.

We knew Thompson had removed a lot of the top of the excavation area with a bulldozer in the '60s.

Then, presumably, all that stuff got shoved back in as backfill. We suspected he would've missed things.

That certainly seems to be the case.

We've got some really good quality Roman artefacts

including this really great southern Gaulish Samian-ware pottery.

It's highly decorated. There's a recurring scene of a lion, probably part of a wild-beast hunt here,

which we know was popularly re-enacted in amphitheatres. So that might be relevant.

Glass beads off a necklace.

They've come up from various parts of the site,

so I don't think they're off the same necklace. We've presumably got several represented.

Then, moving forward in time, we've got Medieval pottery,

a 17th-century clay tobacco pipe,

18th-century drinking glass...

18th or 19th-century paint pot...

um, then going almost to the ridiculous, we've got...

1960s' artefacts,

including a milk-bottle,

possibly one of Thompson's men's shovels,

and a KP Nut packet.

This is obviously stuff that was being consumed or used by the excavators in the 1960s.

We know where they got their milk,

we know somebody have a penchant for peanuts

and this was the sort of shovel they were using!

It's early July, and the excavation is going well.

The team has emptied the area close to the arena

where Thompson dug in the 1960s.

Further out towards the road lie the stone foundations

of two great amphitheatre walls.

But they're not easy to get at

because they lie beneath a sewage system from recent housing.

There's just pipes going EVERYWHERE, actually.

Obviously the houses on the site needed their services, but...

Well, this is a main sewer, then you've got offshoots to individual properties going in all directions...

There's been a lot of destruction to the fabric of the amphitheatre.

That's urban archaeology, though. That's the way it goes.

The order is, destroy it. I've seen enough of them.

I don't want to see them any more! HE LAUGHS

There's little hope of digging down methodically, layer by layer.

Apart from the sewer pipes,

there are also vast pits to be dug out -

Medieval cesspits which filled up with rubbish over the centuries.

I don't think... I think it MAY be the continuation of the buttress foundation...

Interpreting this pockmarked site

is like playing three-dimensional chess.

And it's increasingly difficult to work on.

A month into the dig, there are some significant finds.

This is really good, actually.

Fantastic. It's bone...

It's got these little ridges on it.

And what it is, it's part of the actual grip of a Roman gladius,

a sword handle.

Nothing else in the Roman world, made of bone, looks like that.

The grip, the ridges are specially made so you can get your fingers into it. I can just about get mine in...

to the exact places.

I have a replica here.

It's based on an archaeological find from another site.

-That's gladius the handle...

-And there's the fragment.

Almost identical.

This is based on COMPLETE examples which have been found, not just fragmentary ones like this.

So we do know that that is exactly what this is.

It tells us there's still good stuff to be found here, in finds terms.

And stuff that relates directly to the use of the amphitheatre.

The next job is to open up trench B.

It seems to have been a garden, perhaps belonging to the neighbouring church.

Before long, a small skeleton emerges from the mud.

Too small to be anything like a sheep. Um...

It's a bit big for a rabbit. I suppose it COULD be rabbit, but...

Analysis proves it to be a Victorian cat.

Over in trench A, They're still not at Roman level.

It's not what Dan and Tony expected.

It's full of slate...

brick, rubbish, scrap-iron.

The first five weeks have been tough... HE SIGHS

..just because there's been so much 20th-century archaeology to get rid of. All the excavation trenches

and the sewer-trench fills and things like that. But now we're getting into the real thing, it's gonna cheer up.

Today, there's a buzz at the arena.

It's National Archaeology Day,

with public events all over Britain

and gladiators here for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.

METAL RINGS OUT

CROWD: Oh...!

There's still bloodlust at Chester.

-Think he should kill him?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Iugula! IUGULA!

-IUGULA!

CHANT CONTINUES

-Oh, blood everywhere!

-CHEERS AND JEERS

Who's gonna pay for his burial(?)

'In the Roman world,'

the watching of these spectacles is meant to instil good Roman virtues

in the spectator.

The gladiators who fight in the afternoons are dressed as barbarians.

These are the "other",

the people we don't like... the people we've conquered!

And they're dangerous

and they're nasty,

and we CONTAIN them.

In Britain, there are 25 amphitheatre sites

built from the 60s AD onwards.

Most British amphitheatres are very different from the monumental Colosseum.

They're simple earthworks like this one at Dorchester,

a dugout arena surrounded by turf-covered banks.

Only two have stone outer walls, Caerleon in south Wales

and Chester itself.

With no historical records to tell us what went on in British amphitheatres,

the archaeological evidence is all the more precious.

The amphitheatre in London has produced evidence to suggest there might've been wild-beast hunts,

certainly involving wolves and probably wild boar.

Um...and in Chester, we have a plaque

that was found very close to the amphitheatre site,

depicting two gladiators.

So people knew what gladiators were

and had, presumably, seen them fighting in the amphitheatre at Chester.

Back at the dig on National Archaeology day,

the team has unearthed something useful to wounded Gladiators.

-A miniature spear...?

-No, it's a medical probe.

-A medical probe?!

-Yeah. To pull out the broken bits

When you've got a bit of metal lodged in you...

-That's amazing!

-..pull it out.

This just came out the ground ten minutes ago.

The evidence is now starting to BEGIN to stack up, you know...

We know it's an amphitheatre, so we know there's gonna be gladiatorial combat. But we've got Samian-ware

with images of gladiators and lions - more than perhaps we might expect. We've got the bone sword handle

and now we've medical instruments.

Evidence for the sort of thing going on in the arena. I didn't expect to find stuff like this at all!

If you come back this afternoon, we'll probably put it to good use.

Don't damage yourself. I need you tomorrow, to work.

Temperatures have been over 70 degrees for a week.

Digging is much harder and slower.

We've got a sandwich today. This site is really baked solid. We could do with a really good downpour.

A good overnight downpour, wet it down,

lay the dust and just bring up the colour so we can see what we're doing.

This is just completely baked out.

It's now late July.

But answers to Tony and Dan's major questions are not emerging.

In fact, the dig is getting more confusing.

Bizarre features turn up,

like a 1920s car-inspection pit.

Who knows if the early motorist realised he was digging through a Roman Amphitheatre?

The excavation is enormously complex.

And one of the biggest questions is whether Hugh Thompson was right

in thinking there were two amphitheatres.

He envisaged his magnificent stone building as the second amphitheatre on the site.

He found evidence for a small timber amphitheatre built 30 years earlier.

-..I just can't see them.

-Cos on this side, they're all pretty regular.

-Yeah, they are.

Thompson's excavation plan shows the foundation of the timber amphitheatre like a red train-track

running around the arena.

That same foundation is now emerging on the ground.

In Roman times, the long, narrow slots held timber beams.

The first person to find these slots in 1960 was Dai Morgan Evans.

The trowel he used is still a prized possession.

This is the trowel, yes. Yes...

I mean, it WAS larger. You can't actually say that was the edge

that found the timber amphitheatre. Cos the edge was out about there

at the time. So it has shrunk through hard troweling.

Like Thompson, Dai believes the timber foundation was laid down in the 70s AD,

under Emperor Vespasian,

as a framework for a wholly timber amphitheatre.

Keith Matthews disagrees.

The former Chester archaeologist has doubts about the timber beam-slots, or "grillage".

The difficulty, really with the timber grillage is understanding

whether it's a separate structure in its own right

or whether it's simply part of the stone structure.

And there are various ways

in which archaeologists could go out and test this idea

that WEREN'T tested in the 1960s.

Keith believes there was no timber amphitheatre.

He thinks the timber foundation supported a seating bank

for the large stone amphitheatre built in 100AD,

20 years AFTER Vespasian.

There's only one way to sort it out -

a gladiatorial debate.

-Right...!

-OK.

44 years ago, I found the first timber amphitheatre at Chester.

And it's one of the things I've really kept with me for the whole of my archaeological career.

-You're trying to take it from me.

-You DID discover a timber framework. I have no argument with that.

It is an argument about the relationship between the timber...

-Yes.

-..and the stone.

I think the timbers have to go in AFTER these walls.

Hmm...

The arguments are complicated, going for an hour around the intricacies of amphitheatre construction.

-..I don't agree.

-It does seem to be a cack-handed way of doing it, build your arena wall up to that height,

put your timber structure in, then throw the stuff over. Why don't they start off by throwing the stuff over

-THEN build a wall, THEN put...?

-Well, it seems even MORE cack-handed to me to leave an earlier structure

-in place...

-Ah.

-..while you build the stone structure.

-OK, so...

The clincher, for Dai, is historical common sense.

In the 70s AD, amphitheatres were being built all over the empire

by Vespasian, the man who built the Colosseum.

-Vespasian's really into amphitheatres, isn't he?

-Absolutely.

I'm disputing his influence on the amphitheatre at Chester...

An amphitheatre-building dynasty,

the odds are that when they come to build this extra-special fortress at Chester

that's 20% larger than anything else in the country, they're gonna put an amphitheatre in. The probability.

-Possibly, yes.

-No, not "possible"- probable. Come on!

Both are bloodied but unbowed.

They'll have to wait for this year's excavation results for the answer.

..Not so much an argument in its favour, but it is an argument about the relationship...

It's still going slowly.

The much-needed rain has arrived, but that brings its own problems.

Keep all the spoil, yeah.

It's raining!

GEORGE - BRING IT IN!

They would like to give an answer to Dai and Keith about the timber amphitheatre,

but it's difficult.

We can't go either way yet, because the information that we need to look at, the evidence we need to look at,

is still...buried.

-And where not going to uncover it until the last week.

-Mmm. Absolutely.

Um, but there is also the potential

that NEITHER of them are actually fully right, and that the truth lies somewhere in between their ideas.

Now, I think the idea that there are two phases of amphitheatre...

is looking good. The idea that one of them is wholly timber and the other is wholly stone is...

-is NOT going to be the case.

-Mmm.

Rain has stopped play altogether.

It's the wettest August on record.

The weather in the last couple of days has been LOUSY.

And at this point in the excavation, it's the last thing we need,

because the site's resolving itself into a lot of deep holes.

If it rains HARD - like the thunderstorms we've just been having - if it really rains hard,

it wrecks the site!

They had imagined they would find a lot of amphitheatre walls and foundations.

But there is very little stonework left.

That's because over the years, it has been removed by stone-robbers

for use in other buildings.

Hundreds of tons of stone have been removed from this shattered monument.

In its place, hundreds of tons of earth to dig out.

And thousands of finds.

Back in week 5, Tony was thrilled with a Roman medical probe.

I was checking through some books

to check a reference on another find that we had,

and there was a picture exactly - almost exactly -

looking like this.

And they called it a Medieval pen really than a Roman surgical instrument.

So it was really exciting to come across something that was a PEN...

but I had to go and tell people that it actually wasn't Roman and...

wasn't a surgical instrument!

You know, in the heat of the moment, you get a bit excited and...

a bit carried away.

Um...it was a reasonable hypothesis at the time!

But it just happened to be wrong(!)

And the weather doesn't improve.

We really, really, really don't need this.

It makes life very difficult.

And the problem is that walking on this means people are going to be bringing half the archaeology back

on their boots.

And I don't want to have to lose another day.

And here it comes again.

I suggest we go in.

They need a break.

LIVELY TUNE

Arles in the south of France,

a chance for Tony and Dan to get some sun and entertainment in a standing Roman amphitheatre.

I think it's the closest thing you're going to get to experiencing entertainment in an amphitheatre

as a citizen of Rome no matter where you were in the empire, be it Rome or Chester.

The amphitheatre at Arles is larger than Chester's but its architectural layout is very similar.

TRUMPET FANFARE

In Roman times, the spectacles were free to the public, funded by emperor or leading citizens.

Seats were allocated by wealthy patrons -

well-connected toffs at the ringside,

slaves and women up at the top.

Everybody would know exactly where they were going in the arena,

everyone knows just where to got to find their seats, the correct gateway to go in, the correct passage to use.

I think it's very interesting, the way everybody came up the one flight of stairs

and then dispersed around the circuit of the amphitheatre and went up their individual, designated entrances.

Great design. It acts as crowd-control, it disperses people so you don't get a huge crush.

It's only single-entrance.

Well, I think the spectators came for a number of things. To see and be seen. And to meet friends...

Family there...

FANFARES

APPLAUSE

I'm SURE that's what it would've been like in Roman times. People applauding...swordsmanship

or whatever facility with weapons that the gladiators had.

There must've been moments of drama, moments of hush,

people wondering what's gonna happen.

That whole mix of sort of... entertainment,

people really getting into it, cheering on the bullfighters...

and that whole aspect of the fact that what you're actually seeing is something being put to death.

I... It's very powerful images.

APPLAUSE

Tony and Dan find it too hard to stomach, and leave.

I-It's really not for me. I couldn't... I couldn't...

I couldn't watch that poor beast being done to death out there.

I mean, I'm obviously not the material of an ancient Roman, am I?

But no, that was... too rich for me, I'm afraid.

It's an echo of a past age.

To a British audience, it may be considered to be a somewhat bizarre blend.

That's what this building was built for, essentially, and exactly what people have been coming to watch

-for 2,000 years. So...

-< APPLAUSE INCREASES

if you want to see what Chester's amphitheatre was used for 2,000 years ago, this is it. Pretty good.

Back in Chester, things are looking up.

We've got four weeks left, including this week.

The weather has improved considerably, so we may get our Indian summer, which is very good.

Site's drying out very quickly. People down in holes...

We're doing well. We're doing well, I think.

After weeks of hard slog,

the Chester amphitheatre is beginning to yield up its secrets.

The two stone walls of Thompson's "second" amphitheatre have emerged as curves of rubble.

What exactly it looked like,

and whether there was an earlier timber amphitheatre is not yet clear.

Tony and Dan are very close to a new interpretation.

And it starts with some exciting finds.

We've got a very high proportion... of these. These are ribs.

They're beef ribs. And they look like the remains of any barbecue

that I might have in my back garden.

Um...you can't help but wonder

whether these aren't the residue

of fast food that spectators at arena events are eating,

whether, um...

the people watching the amphitheatre spectacles are licking the barbecue sauce of the ribs they've just bought

from the concession stalls just outside!

The concessions may be selling...

..souvenirs. This bowl I found yesterday...

Unfortunately, I hit it with a mattock, but you can still fit it together and see that it shows...

scenes of gladiatorial combat.

You can see the heavy helmet with a bit of a plume going out behind it.

A square shield in front of the gladiator.

The arm-guard, the segmented arm-guard down here

wit a sword running off

against the side of the shield.

The legs, including the armoured front leg.

So It's a reasonable bet that that's the kind of thing that's going on.

The spare ribs and gladiator pottery came from the space

between the two stone walls.

THAT suggests that the inner wall once stood alone,

with the debris piling up around it.

If the two stone walls were built at different times,

that would be highly significant.

Peter Hill, an expert on ancient masonry, has been called in to examine the site,

starting on the inner wall.

The stones are less well squared. I mean, you get tapering, almost,

down there.

That one there tapers from oh, 100mm that end to 150 at the other end.

-Yeah.

-It's a different design.

-Right.

It... It looks like a quicker job.

-It look as though they wanted to get this up.

-So there's not the same concern for appearance?

-No.

-Well, I really WANTED there to be a difference!

-You've certainly got one.

You've got a difference here, very definitely.

The difference in quality between the inner and outer walls

confirms Tony and Dan's growing belief that there were TWO stone amphitheatres on the site,

built at different times and by different people.

They now have their own interpretation of Chester's Roman amphitheatre,

different from Hugh Thompson's.

In the last week, we've become...

absolutely convinced now that we can forget all the stories of a timber amphitheatre followed by a stone one.

What we've actually got are two amphitheatres basically of stone construction.

That is pretty unexpected. Pretty unexpected.

Tony and Dan's radical interpretation shows

that there was an early stone amphitheatre with timber seating banks.

Many years later, a larger amphitheatre was built

by adding another stone wall.

It may upset certain people looking at other amphitheatres in Britain at the moment,

who've used Chester, with its timber amphitheatre, as a model if you like.

Um, but that's what archaeology's all about, challenging accepted theories.

But how do they know this is true?

It's all about the first stone amphitheatre and its outer wall.

The evidence lies in the deposits either side of that outer wall.

On site, that outer wall of the first amphitheatre is no longer there,

because the stone has been robbed away. But it would've looked like this.

Where we are standing, you must imagine a wall

with this material piled up against this side of it.

And all of this is clean sand and clay...

which is material thrown up from the arena...

So the wall's constructed, this material's excavated from the arena

and dumped up against it.

and then the timber seating's installed over there.

But the important thing is that this material inside the wall

is totally different from the material OUTSIDE the wall-dam.

Yeah. I mean, essentially, you can see that that's all a dump of material that's probably occurred

over a fairly short period of time. On the outside, at the bottom of our section of soil,

we've got the original Roman ground surface, where Roman grass-level would've been.

Above that, a band of red material

which probably represents a fairly nice, paved surface outside amphitheatre number one.

And then we've got these deposits of soil and sand...

which represent occupation on the back wall of the amphitheatre

in its first phase of use.

Um, so this chunk of archaeology is really exciting, cos it might actually give us answers

as to what the amphitheatre, in its first phase, is actually being used for,

and the sorts of activities that are going on immediately outside it,

sort of market stalls, maybe, selling Roman fast-food or souvenirs

and that sort of thing.

..I wonder if...

So what will Dai and Keith the gladiatorial archaeologists make of it?

-In a sense, neither of them are right, so...!

-And both are right as well.

-Yeah.

-It depends, really.

Yes, Dai and Keith will be VERY excited about this, very excited, cos they're both people with open minds.

On a site demonstration, Dai has to face up to losing his timber amphitheatre.

In my heart of hearts, I don't WANT to believe it. It's terrible to confess!

I'd have liked to have survived with a completely timber amphitheatre,

and I'm not giving up without a BIT of a fight.

Keith has to accept there were TWO amphitheatres,

though he was right about the timber seating bank.

In the end, he never QUITE convinced me.

And it's very gratifying to discover that I was right to stick to my guns.

Do you think it's all of one build? No. Right.

He's been vindicated. Just wish he wouldn't look so bloody smug!

But I don't blame him.

Dan and Tony are delighted with their new interpretation.

the SMALL stone amphitheatre is a revelation, with evidence for external staircases.

These may well have been double staircases for increased access to the highest seats,

as on the amphitheatre at Pompeii.

The later, larger amphitheatre also differed from Thompson's vision.

Tony and Dan think the vast foundations supported decorative arches at the entrances.

And they found only half as many buttresses as Thompson.

It's the last week of the dig and there's still one burning question.

Was the first amphitheatre built with the fortress in the 70s AD

under Emperor Vespasian?

-CAMERA CLICKS Got it?

-Yup. Thank you.

-You're welcome.

..It's really fantastic that we've been able to prove that there are TWO stone amphitheatres at Chester.

What's very frustrating is the lack of dating evidence we've got.

We're just gonna have to keep plugging away and hoping something comes up in the last couple of days.

The dating evidence must lie in the space between the two outer walls,

where Roman builders would've dropped things.

It's a race against time to find anything that might help them.

At last, something comes to light.

-Is it a sieving?

-Yeah.

ALL TALK AT ONCE

It would've been nice to have got a silver one(!)

-It's quite light for a stone, though. I dunno whether you'd have...

-I don't know, I think...

-Not if you'd been running through the amount of sieving that we've been doing. I dunno.

-What's going on?

-<

-Something exciting?

-Well...

We've just got...a coin come up from this sand outside amphitheatre one.

It's the first one we've got. Potentially, it's dating evidence for...

amphitheatre two. It's the only solid piece of dating evidence we've had.

Unfortunately, it's in bad condition. You can barely see it's a coin, apart from that little bit of green.

Anyway, it's absolutely crucial - absolutely CRUCIAL.

We've sieved every bloody atom of this stuff

and we've come up, finally, with one piece of dating evidence.

Thank God!

The coin is taken to the English Heritage Conservation lab

to be cleaned and X-rayed. It's the moment of truth.

Right...

V-E-S-P-A... And before that, possibly,

a V and an E. "Vespa..."

So it's either off the front of a scooter...(!)

or it's Vespasian,

the real thing.

So let's have a look at the real thing then, shall we?

Yep, "Vespasian..."

and I'd recognise that ugly mug anywhere.

So the face of the man who built the Colosseum has turned up

as dating evidence at Chester.

But it's not the definitely proof it might seem,

because coins from Vespasian's time remained in circulation for over 100 years.

The amphitheatres could've been built any time between the 70s and the 170s AD.

What's really frustrating is that we know

that both amphitheatres must be... you know, AD70-plus.

But we haven't got...we haven't got the dating that'll give us...

an idea about how long they are apart - you know, the lifetime of the first amphitheatre

and the construction date of the second - as yet.

It's really frustrating. It's the one most frustrating thing. We've come away from this first season with.

Right, that's it, clear the diggers!

After 15 weeks

and 900 tonnes of earth, the dig's over until next summer.

It's been tiring, but it's been huge fun.

You know, great team, REALLY hard-working bunch of people who have produced fantastic results.

They may not have construction dates,

but they have proved that Thompson's 1960s excavation was flawed.

They've got their own new vision of Chester's two amphitheatres

and resolved at least one fierce debate.

You never answer all the questions.

And the problem is that to a certain extent, as we go along this summer,

we're posing new questions that we might want to answer in future years' excavation.

That's more or less the attraction of archaeology, if you like.

The lure is the fact that, for every question you answer,

you create a new question.

So...!

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast - 2005