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Two years ago, a rambler stumbled over some fragments of flint sticking out of the cliff edge. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:30 | |
That discovery led a team of archaeologists | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
to unearth the remains of a wooden house. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
Painstaking work led them to believe they were the remains of a Stone Age settlement. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:43 | |
Now the same archaeologists, joined by Alice Roberts, are back to test their theory | 0:00:43 | 0:00:50 | |
and recreate what they believe is Britain's first house. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
This project is something really special to me - | 0:00:54 | 0:01:00 | |
the chance to recreate a Stone Age structure | 0:01:00 | 0:01:03 | |
on its original site from 10,000 years ago. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:07 | |
Discovering how to build the house should give us an insight into an ancient world, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:13 | |
which is otherwise hard to imagine. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
After more than two years of research, | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
Dr Clive Waddington believes that this house will change our understanding | 0:01:23 | 0:01:28 | |
of how Stone Age hunter-gatherers lived. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:30 | |
This is the earliest evidence we have | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
of a dwelling structure in this part of Britain. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
It's the earliest evidence of people here. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
Why are you recreating it? | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
It's giving us a chance to understand what we excavated | 0:01:42 | 0:01:47 | |
and put that into practice to see what it was like as a built structure and whether it works. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:53 | |
So we're testing our interpretation of the excavated evidence. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:57 | |
So how do you know the structure was like this? | 0:02:05 | 0:02:09 | |
When we were excavating, we found charred circles in the ground where the posts had stood. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:15 | |
And on the outside of the hut, just round the edge, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
we found these stake holes which were angled towards the apex of the roof. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:24 | |
We can measure from the angles of those stake holes what the pitch was. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
They were around 65 degrees, which made for a really steep roof. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
There's this idea of Stone Age people being pretty backward, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:40 | |
living in caves - Flintstones. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
They are people and no less intelligent than we are. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
It was just a different technology. They might have been more ingenious, living on the edge. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:53 | |
-There's all these skills we've lost. -Making the string. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
This is a really robust construction | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
and stands in stark contrast to the traditional idea | 0:03:02 | 0:03:06 | |
of Mesolithic people building only temporary and relatively flimsy shelters. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:11 | |
With the build complete, | 0:03:13 | 0:03:15 | |
Clive has one more piece of evidence that points to this | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
being a permanent dwelling for Stone Age hunter-gatherers. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
We found a series of hearths in the centre of the building | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
and there was a succession of them, the latest ones at the top and earliest ones at the bottom, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:32 | |
and we found hazelnuts inside each of these hearths. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
Hazelnuts only live for one year | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
so we did all our carbon dates on hazelnuts | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
and they've allowed us to date the different phases of occupation | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
-and how long the hut was occupied for. -So how long was it occupied? | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
The hut was occupied for somewhere in the region of 200 years. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
Several generations - many lifetimes, in fact. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
And it's that that makes this house so special. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
The proof that it was occupied | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
for over 200 years | 0:04:00 | 0:04:02 | |
has forced people to revise their theories | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
about our Stone Age ancestors 10,000 years ago. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
Rather than being nomadic, as was previously believed, | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
these people were building complex houses like this one | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
and calling them home. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
Subtitles by BBC Broadcast - 2005 | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:04:25 | 0:04:28 |