5000 Tons of Stone (Hamsterley, County Durham) | S15E11 | Time Team

Welcome to the castles, a huge

stone

enclosure the size of a football field and for once,

team

, there is a lot of archeology on the surface, so what is the big mystery with

5000

tons

of

stone

right in front of us? This should be easy, in fact, for For hundreds of years this site has baffled everyone who has seen it, it has been called everything from an Iron Age farm to a Roman prison to an Iron Age fortress. dark ages, so what was it really, when was it built and who was the king of the castles we only have?

Three days is enough

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to discover that the remains of the castles are located near Hamsterly, 20 miles south-west of Durham, in the Weir Valley, located on the side of a hill, on a sheep farm. The site is a huge dry stone enclosure measuring approximately 70 by 90 metres. now covered in trees, its collapsed walls still form a monumental structure, but still no one knows what it is or when it was built. We know something about this place. The first mention of the site is the 1760 map of the property where the castles are called. It has held that name since about 100 years ago, a local antiquary excavated the site and I did a study a few years ago, neither the antiquary's excavations nor my own study could provide a good date for the site, so something like It's a mystery, but this is a sheep farm, why couldn't it just be a sheep pen?

It's a bit elaborate for some cheap structures and a bit massive to house some sheep, so what do we do, phil? Well, I mean, basically we have to try to figure out what the function is and what the date is and there are three real places that we can attack. First of all, there is a ditch surrounding it. Now that ditch might have environmental evidence that will give us an idea. Secondly, we want to attack. the wall itself and if possible the old ground surface is sealed under the wall, thirdly we have the interior, if geophysics is going to give us any objective, the

team

broke into the castles and our environmental archaeologist emma He began to drill the ditch of the compound. the best place to find organic remains that could give us crucial dating evidence as Emma gets her first taste of the site managers who walk the perimeter of the compound to see how the stones stack up in the landscape and Henry and Phil begin to inspect the wall to Find a location for a trench because if we dig down to the foundation and uncover the soil it was built on, it could reveal some fines to give us a date.

I'm just waiting a bit for the satellites and then I'll get them. Come out for yourself Phil, it's a bit tricky with the trees, I'm sure you're holding me back, I'm sorry, I know what everyone is sure, you better get out of the way and then I'll get a tape measure, although this The huge site has always attracted strange speculation. It has only been investigated once in the 1920s by a local antiquarian named Hodgkin, but is his work a help or a hindrance? We know a lot about Santa Clarita. His name was Hodgkin. He lived locally.

In fact, he lived. Just on the other side of the hill, when he was on site, he put up some trenches. He was looking for internal structures, but unfortunately he didn't find any. What about the fines? No, there were no fines either, but there is a list of local reports. Of the things found in the area, things like the arm bones of a younger woman or fossilized tusks or some flints, what about the outside walls? Did he do any work there? Yes, as he can see, he cleared away a lot of the rubble to expose the front and he also exposed this fantastic big door here, it's very well preserved, isn't it?

But presumably we don't know which part of the structure is original and which part has just been returned, but the most important thing is that around the back of that wall I discovered the most incredible guardhouse, let's take a look, oh Mick, have you seen this? Yes, it's fantastic, isn't it? It's very hard to believe that all of this is original, although what we have are photos, right? and the photos. I show these openings in this guard chamber to make it look original, yes I think it has to be, but I think the only way to test it for sure would be to dig a hole on the other side, because when you get a guard chamber, you get a which matches on the other side, that's what I want to do next, where this gorse bush is, yeah, well I think we need to base it on this bit of wall here, yeah, so go back there and say.

What can we tell people where to put the trenches? There will be a lot of stone movement, we will just mark it and tilt it, so we are going to place a trench on the east side next to the entrance to the compound to see if there is another guard house, if we find one it will tell us if the existing camera It is original and will give us an architectural clue as to the date and function of the castle. Now that we are moving, besieging the entrance, the archaeologists flex their muscles and begin to move the mountains of fallen stone. were they building?

We are also placing another trench along the north wall in hopes of learning more about its construction and locating the initial ground. superficial and datable artefacts when excavating on this side we have less stone to move as the less built walls here are surrounded by trees and gorse. The geofizz is trapped between rock and a hard place, so John connected with Frank, the farmer, to take advantage of it. local knowledge of him and see if he can reduce a target, but there is evidence of a rigid enemy plowing here from the past. Well, I would say the ridge and groove would have been made in the 19th century.

They have left this area in the middle, he would say. The reason they abandoned it was because they obviously hit an obstruction. In Hodgkin's report, he stated that the rocks were thrown into the central area here when they cleared it because it was so wet, but if you're clearing dirt, you wouldn't do that. Put your stones right in the middle, you'd go to the side, you'd go to the periphery, especially when you have this whole area to throw your stones in, so this might be a good target for us to look at first. For example, I would say that it is definitely necessary to watch it.

Yes, John begins to geophysically explore the interior to find evidence of internal structures, as working without dates is one thing, but understanding its function is an even greater challenge in the entry we are trying to discover if there is a second guard chamber, but since the castle is basically a huge dry stone wall, it's difficult to distinguish the fallen rubble from the standing remains. I have had some type of binding material, some

time

s with these dry stone structures they used to put clay almost like a putty between the stones, but it washes away in the rain. I think you're still in the rubble.

Actually, Matt. The longer we are here, the more mysterious this place seems to be. It is one of the least understood places in County Durham. The stories are about it. In the 1st century this area was occupied by the Bugantes tribe and their relations with the Romans were quite turbulent at times and the theory says that the castles could have been a refuge when they were defeated in an important battle. near their main base near Stanwick, what else is another? It was a Roman penal colony where slaves who worked in the neighboring lead mines were kept.

Now both suggestions are theoretically possible. We are not that far from Stanwick and there are lead deposits in the area. but there's no real evidence for either, so it's one of those things where people tell a story about a place and after a while everyone just believes it. Yes, it is a kind of fiction that becomes reality or speculation that becomes reality. Castles are full of legends, but this only increases. Our challenge is to separate fiction from fact. So what's up with the idea that he's Roman? So I don't actually think I'd buy it because although we have a very good Roman military context 30 miles south of Hadrian's Wall, right next to the main Roman penetration. deer street route the fact is it's off the highway system what about anything post romantic?

We know that sites like Bird Oswald and Binchester continued to be occupied as fortified places in the Sub-Roman period but of course excavations in this part of the world have tended to focus on the Roman fort so that's where we found it, so yes If there were sub-Roman sites that weren't Roman military sites to begin with and ours was one of them, we wouldn't really know, we wouldn't have excavated them. Now what about the previous period? One thing is quite clear: there are prehistoric sites that are rectangular in shape with a ditch and a bank around them with only one entrance, just like the ones here in castles, there is no reason. this could not start life in the prehistoric period, there could be later occupation within it during the Roman period etc., but these enclosures could easily be of a type that would have been occupied from the mid-Iron Age onwards, from what it sounds like if it were.

Actually, it would be quite helpful if you compared our site to so many sites like that in the region that would probably help us, right? Because one of the things that we've discovered when looking at these sites is that they have a similar location where they are located. they occur in relation to high and low river courses etc., so the more information that can be accumulated and how our sites compare to those we know, the more we can give it their date and context. Put your hat on with the GPS on to know where you are on the north side.

Things are progressing well. Phil and Faye have revealed one face of the wall and are investigating whether they have reached the foundations on the original ground surface as we lift. the stones at the entrance to the east the archeology is getting more and more complicated ian when we placed this trench this morning we put it around this bit of wall because it lines up with that and we thought it had to be genuine, but now you have I've been looking at the photographs and they have worried me a little. The interesting thing is this large stone that we have at the bottom of the trench and that is currently flat.

I think what's been happening is I think maybe this edge here is an edge. to receive that stone, it projects slightly into the entry hall so that you could lean a wooden door of some kind against it, so you would have had a door against that stone, but then what would you have had? I mean, if you had attackers, what would they have had to have to stop them from kicking the door back in? One possibility is here where we have this and this looks a lot like some sort of bar hole that has been deliberately built into the wall to receive a fairly substantial type of piece of wood that you would know is used to secure a wooden door.

Well, the problem is that it doesn't quite line up. It's not in the right place. Untangling the front door isn't our only challenge. The site has produced no. fines yet and that's why Emma's environmental study is going to be crucial Emma Hi Tony Why is it so important to do environmental archeology right at this site? This type of potentially ceramic environmental archeology will probably provide us with the best dating evidence that we are going to find through radial carbon dating that will hopefully be obtained from seeds or you know other organic remains that have been preserved in these deposits.

What do you have here? Unfortunately, I found three meters and there is no leak. I have this kind of um okay, almost alluvial, what we would expect to fly in a floodplain well above the river itself. It's an enigma, actually, it's very unusual when you get this out of the way. you eat it don't you, yes I do, why by finding out which component is salmonella and which component of finer ground sediment such as silts and clays, we can get an idea of ​​the proportions of sand and silt type. and the clay when you eat it, how does it taste, it's not very nice actually, that allows you to say how it might have been deposited because of the proportions of yes, it basically does that if it was a relatively fast flowing kind of water that we would expect to find . a Stanley sand feature, but it is very, very fine grained, perhaps suggesting that it was stationary or moving very, very slowly.

It's very, very unusual, so what do you do next? Well, what I'm going to do is unfortunately because this is not providing the evidence we need, I'm going to move to other areas of the site and see what we can find there while Emma goes in to find organic evidence. We have also begun to besiege the south wall with a third trench. Since there is more construction here, this will increase our chances of revealing a well-preserved section of wall. One thing is for sure, it will be a huge job. We hope this trench gives us an indication of the original dimensions of the walls and how. was built but on the north wall with less stone to move Phil and Faye are way ahead of the game.

Are we going to get anywhere with this trench? I think we actually just started hitting adifferent surface or a different layer, so it's much more compact, so I think it's actually starting to get quite exciting is that the old soil surface is hard to call, you see what's surprising is that we only have one, two, three , four, five rows of wall yes I would push my trowel there, there doesn't seem to be another field there, so down there, where you have these huge meters high walls that don't seem to have been depicted here, they look like maybe they've been stolen, but what the big problem, of course, is trying to establish whether the wall is on an old ground surface or whether it has been cut into an old ground surface?

We just don't know, so what are you going to do with this now that we're at it? Let's go ahead and see if we can define our surface. I'll keep my fingers crossed because it's almost the end of the first day and while work continues on the walls we are also cleaning the interior to allow GFIZ to inspect the interior to see if they can find evidence of settlement, do we have? a guard house francis no we don't Tony and we can be reasonably sure of that and it took us all afternoon to figure it out and the answer is in these old photos that ian has yeah I mean it basically comes down to this big stone here we can see in this photo that was taken in the 1920s that the stone would have been vertical and if it were vertical it would have rested against this edge that just emerged in the ditch down here, that means that this edge that previously We are pretty sure that it is completely false, it has been reconstructed, but this is a huge stone, isn't it?

There is nothing like it on the site. If you say it is like this, that implies something more than a domestic dwelling or something like that. Looks like a fender to me, I think so, and it wasn't just flush with the front door, it probably would have stuck out to support something like a wooden door, but if this isn't a guardhouse, what's up with that one? thence? it's real, yeah, we're very happy about it, we need to know more about it, but that's real, yeah, I think we've really figured out what this site is about, I mean, this is a massive defense, I mean, there's even a slot there for a door.

I know that this is an entrance that protects everything that happens there. Okay, I buy the fact that we're narrowing down our options, but what really excites me is what the hell this place was for and to find out tomorrow. We're going to come in here and start digging right in the middle of the start of the second day here at County Durham Castles and we're surrounded by this huge stone structure that is a real archaeological mystery. Yesterday we investigated the outer walls, but if we want to know what this place was and how old it is, then we're going to have to explore the middle, right?

How's Geoff doing? Now that we have cleaned all the gorings, it has been a little easier and look. I have hints of structures on the platform, you can see there may be a stone structure there, so I'd like to take a look at it, yes, but we should probably put a 3x2 or something like that just to see. Which is because it bypasses the site, doesn't it? But the point is that what he's not doing is getting us in the middle. When you got here, you slept in this ditch. What we're thinking about doing is maybe cleaning up one of the Hodgkin's. sections there and you'll see, we also have one of these little trenches here, wait, this is the original Hodgkin treasure.

Yes, I thought it was a natural struggle. They didn't believe in reestablishing it there. No, no, they did what we could. What we do is clean up some sections where we can learn first hand if he actually found something in the middle of the enclosure so we can look there and we can look there, there is actually another one in the back, this is an unrecorded change , as we also know, so we will use it as another section. It feels a bit like a WWI battlefield. Yes, I have to say it, but you'll also see that John has the lead on some places. riots is, aren't you worried that we're pushing ourselves too hard because we have people working around the perimeter?

I don't think we're okay with that, you're happy to carry on, yes of course I am. I was trying to look after their interests the first time, so John's results have given us a target for the interior, our first hint of a structure that could not only help us take the site but also tell us what it was used for yesterday, we concentrate. all our efforts on the outer walls so that we could understand when and how they were built on the north wall. Faye believes she may have located the original acreage and is still looking for dateable fines.

We are also beginning to learn how the exterior walls were built. The site was built while Naomi and her team cleared

tons

of fallen debris from the south wall, while at the entrance we moved mountains to expose the entrance, but how does it fit in with the original guardhouse? Yesterday Francis insisted that what we got here was a gateway and what it was guarding was this large gateway here and on the other side of the gateway there would have been some sort of gateway represented by this stone structure and in front of it there would have been that big slab with presumably some kind of door or gate swinging against it, so that's what we think the story is um no, oh surprise, surprise, I still think it's a gatehouse of some kind, yeah, but it doesn't go with the original construction of this fort, ah, below.

This slab, the wall actually comes out now, this is new, it came out and it would have held that stone vertically, so you have a stepped wall from the entrance to the fort and then ian found something similar on that side, these walls here. that we have had from the beginning what you will see is that the alignments do not match and in fact there is a very different step or a gap that matches the one we have on the other side, so why does that mean that? the guardhouse is not part of this setup, well basically what it would have had to have been another one of these big stones placed here, yeah, and it doesn't work with this gatehouse, so this gatehouse basically it has to be placed. after the original entrance arrangement has fallen out of use, but that would look really impressive, wouldn't it with two large stones and the large wooden doors behind it?

Absolutely yes, yes, so archeology suggests that the entrance was in front of two stone slabs flanking an impressive wooden door and what period do you think this entrance could be? There's really no reason to think that this original entry that we have is from the Iron Age, the use of these absolutely massive blocks integrated into some sort of unitary design, um, it's very It's very close to the kind of thing you see more at north, the same sort of stone masonry techniques used as you see in the north of Scotland, for example, in the Iron Age, but I think what's more intriguing is the date of this cell because you know , I can't imagine anyone saying that the late medieval or post-medieval period doing that Tony Wilmot doesn't think it has anything to do with Roman that only leaves us with the early medieval period and if it were an obscure age structure fitted into a structure of Iron Age, that would be very exciting, so we're still looking at the span of about a thousand years, yes, but if it's an Iron Age site modified in the post-Roman period, it would be completely cracking, so The iron old gatehouse may have been modified in the Middle Ages when a watch house was added.

There are many doubts, but it is our first clue about the date of the castle. Furthermore, both entry phases seem defensive, which helps us understand what it is for, but something is not the case. Suma Stuart, this place is called the castles and you have this huge stone wall here and you have this big ravine here that looks like it should be defensive, but if you look up you would imagine if it were a castle. It would be located right above it, but it is not. It's almost like we're downwind of the hill. They summarize this view very well because it is not defensive at all.

I mean, could you stand up? that slope, then I'll almost throw a lit torch straight into that enclosure, it's not a defensive feature at all, it was chosen for other reasons, it's a bit like an Iron Age stone facing, that's the best way to think about it , people begin to show off in the landscape. proving that this is their area, we probably won't understand until we start looking at their location in relation to the stream valleys, the hill sides around them are called castles rather than castle. Do you think there would have originally been many separate places?

No structures, I think that's a red herring to some extent, it's just the way farmers refer to things they didn't fully understand, it seems to them that it looks like a collapsed castle, so they call it castles, there's no point in it. meaning that name in Inside, archaeologists have opened two more trenches at the site of the ancient antiquarian excavations. Its central position is the most likely place for occupation. Hodgkin had found stones here and we want to see if they could be evidence of structures as the new trenches approach. On the way, our north wall trench has come to an end, so I see that Naomi is doing the recording here.

Does that mean we're done with this tree? Yes, we are closing this trench. So what did you decide in the end? Well, actually, it's really interesting what we did. Actually, what I have is they use the natural slope, so here the name that is sitting is actually the natural right and it is the original yellowish material, yes, so is that setback to the mound, so yes, yes, it es and the question of 64 thousand dollars, any fine. From that, no, you were right, nothing at all, so we really have no idea of ​​the date, except for the type of wall.

It's that kind of thing. Yes, we have the original warning. I don't think I can say anything other than that. Furthermore, although we have not discovered any fines, we are beginning to understand more about the construction of the site, rather than being built on a surface, the north wall was cut into the natural slope and after a day and a half, we are eager to learn how . The south wall was built, Naomi, why did you bring me to this dark, dirty hole? Well, there's a good reason for that, Mick yesterday, on the other side of this trench, we had a Facebook wall and we discovered the other side, oh right. this is the outside face, we had the interface yesterday, that's right, yeah, so is it original or is it a bit of Hodgkin's reconstruction?

No, I think this is the original wall because I think if it was rebuilt and rebuilt it would be a lot straighter, yeah, whereas this one. As you can see, everything is starting to lean and collapse slightly and that's just a process of time. So what are you going to do next with this well? The plan is to continue pouring this fill and following the course of this wall downwards. To see how many courses we have and that's the important thing, to see how the wall was built, I think to help us learn everything we can about the construction of the walls, we call in a stone expert to inspect them and stone wall builders stone to see if they can replicate a section this is an absolute work of art how do you compare your work to aerial work? they put stone that way what we call tracing wart we would put stone that way and we call that finishing in and out, so that actually gives a lot of tail to the wall and really strengthens the wall.

Yes, that's right, normally we would build what we call a batter that will be two feet wide at the bottom and one foot wide at the top under the coping stone. now for these walls and the walls we are replicating, they have built them as far as we can tell almost vertically, there may be a very slight slope, but today we would build a mass and say it was stronger at the entrance we finally discovered our first find, but unfortunately not ancient evidence of eating, evidence of dating, I think there is evidence of dating for quite a festive excavation, what would you say?

Madeira Portal, oh, something like that, isn't it? Yes, why did we put this trench? Well, this is a slap in the face. in the middle of that big geophysical anomaly that John detected and we actually positioned the trench so that we thought there was going to be a line of wall that would go through the middle. I can't see a wall, although no, it doesn't. There seems to be something here, what about the trench down there? Yeah, well, come here and take a look. There doesn't seem to be much more to this one. Well, you see, the idea of ​​putting this one works according to the assumption.

As Francisco said here, we are in an Iron Age enclosure, which is the most likely place for the building to be now. If you look back, we're right in line with the main entrance, and in fact, we're right in the middle of it. of the compound, which is the most likely location for the host state it is built in now, if we assume that anyone except Mr. and Mrs. Clean and Tidy lived here, we would expect to find some traces that they lived here, but we know that there wereplow. Couldn't it be plowed? Oh, this trench is placed on a ridge so that archeology is more likely to be preserved below and the grooves are on both sides in almost 6,000 square meters of enclosure, we have not found any dating yet. evidence, so things finally hit rock bottom, let me give you some figures: length of the perimeter of this wall 320 meters just with this wall five meters correct number of years it would have taken a man to carry all the stones to build this wall one hundred hundred years a very old and broken man weight of all the stones of this wall 5,000 tons yes number of archaeological finds we have zero yes turning zero we are dealing with people who get most of what they use in a day - today around them are using things that rot and that we cannot see, it must be wood leather, we can work the rest, but this is not getting all the things from everyone.

The age of the area is the Iron Age, yes, but there is not much iron in the Iron Age, that is when it is introduced, but it is not that common, it is actually not that common until the 17th century, but in earlier societies probably in 1995 what they used was made of perishable materials so is it a mistake to think about looking for fines if we just clean up all the debris from this place? find out what it really looked like and then just compare it to other sites and get a date that way . I think actually, in terms of dating, a more useful strategy is to try to find something in the environmental samples or in the areas where we are.

We are digging into the medium that is waterlogged or charred, which is charcoal or something that we can get a radiocarbon date from, it will be that date that will take us to the particular period that is occupied, but that again is a very difficult long shot. for us to understand, but that is the reality of the archeology of this site at that time of the afternoon of the second day and without internal structures or fines, the castles remain frustratingly mysterious, so we are employing all means of investigation in the place. Emma it's still raining and we're opening. another trench inside, but on the south wall archaeologists may have made some progress very happy with this mick, we actually have the bottom of the wall, look at that, oh well, it's actually sitting on that natural yellow, yeah , it is too. on an old piece of land down there, no it's not and that's really interesting because it means that they're going to have to have cut the slope and created some sort of linear terrace to build it and the reason why they're about to do it.

This is because we have now been able to measure face to face, which is another good thing: 5.1 meters wide. It's a tremendously interesting thing because when I was talking to Faye about the upper wall that is parallel to this one, they did it. Same thing there, oh really, it means they're interested in that cap. They tell us this. I know what they did with the sides because they run down the slopes, so they'll have to have some kind of ramp effect, yeah. cut or they would have to have done it in a series of steps, right?

There is no date yet, but at least the archeology is consistent. Both the north and south walls were built on terraces on the natural slope of the hills. It's so frustrating that we have no idea what the walls contained. Are you two seriously trying to tell me that that pile of rubble at the bottom of that trench could actually be the first archeology we have inside the structure? Well, I think so. It could be Tony, the problem is that those stones down there are actually inside Hodgkin's trench, so we don't know if there's something he left there or if it's the remains of a collapsed wall or something, but it's the most similar to what we have had.

I think archeology wouldn't like to risk a date, no, no, but tomorrow we'll know, but that's the only evidence so far that we have any kind of occupation, isn't it? Look at this ditch here because what we have here is starting to emerge features. Can you see the color difference in the floor? Yeah, it's kind of a border there, that's right, it could be part of a curve and then this central space. is where we might expect bigger hot circles, bigger houses in the center, the problem is we only have a small open area, we need to expand it to see if we can catch the edges of something, but if we don't go to get pottery what can we get me to date it right?

Big round houses, you know, in the middle of a monument facing the entrance, uh, they're as good as any dating evidence, it doesn't matter if there's no pottery, nothing just that. Postholes and those gullies will date the site, so does that mean we're going to put your gatehouse and guardhouse on hold for a while? Oh, dear, no, no, no, no, I mean, we're on the flag pedestals and when we lift those slabs, which we'll do tomorrow, any evidence of dating will be sealed under them, so I think we've got everything to do. dig there tomorrow. It's been a really frustrating day, but we finally have things inside. we have things outside, our story begins to unfold, we will find out tomorrow, welcome back to this mysterious stone structure called castles here in County Durham and after two really frustrating days, we finally managed to tidy up the walls of the guard house. and the interior, meanwhile, Emma has been eating dirt in a desperate attempt to solve the environmental archeology that Daytona has and you got through the end of the day last night not particularly well, but yesterday at the last minute I found a piece? of preserved wood probably at a depth where we would actually be very interested in melting just that little piece over there, what is it about this piece of wood?

So, that's so significant. That piece of wood lets me know that there may be seeds and insects that I can use. to establish what was happening when this site was busy, so what are you going to do with this now? I'll take it to the river and process the sample and see what we get. Starting on day 3 and we will finally be able to date the castles. While we are working with 6,000 tons of stone, it could be a few grams of organic material that will give us an answer. We are also starting to expose more stone inside. reveal its function, so a lot of archaeologists in a relatively small space, what's happening in this intermediate area suddenly became more exciting, so we brought in a lot of people to help with this, which is so exciting, well, The main thing is that great extension. of blue clay, yes we had what we thought was in the middle of the house, turned out to be a pre-pitch hole, that's not very exciting.

What about the post hole? Yes, it is a characteristic and it can be a hole for the post, this emotion. is almost defined by the lack of anything exciting, ah, but Tony here is a real thrill. Oh well, these stones, there's a lot more now, they're not there, yes, Tony, but the key is the stones over there, where they're well placed. and look they form a distinctive curve that looks like a semi circle, you have a curve of stones and that can only mean one thing, well a round house, a round house, what do we need to find to prove it's nearby?

We need to find that. there is occupation in the middle and that is why we are dismantling this area over here. What could we find with Francis? If this is the center of the roundhouse, then you'll get half of it, or with a bit of luck you might get some sort of extension. half ash but there will be something here I mean we'll keep our fingers crossed this is our last chance we have to try it's our last roll of the dice to see if we can really find this in the middle then we might have a round house in the center of the enclosure, but how does that fit with the idea of ​​the site being Iron Age?

It seems to me that from everything the archaeologists have been saying, you all have pretty good I've come to the conclusion that this structure is from the Iron Age or at least the early phases are that fair, yes I think that's pretty correct, I mean everything we are seeing from the architecture, the nature of the stone walls and the lack of fines. the interior, all of that points to an ironic place, what do you think it would have been like originally? I mean, we have this sort of huge, substantial square enclosure that we saw when we got here with a pretty elaborate wooden entrance door through that. and then on the inside it's hard to know that we might expect some form of central circular house, either right in the middle with its entrance aligned with the main entrance or perhaps slightly offset and then around it, it's harder to say that there could be smaller. buildings maybe no buildings maybe just areas where livestock were penned where you kept your animals close to you that kind of thing how many people do you think would have lived there? probably not that many, I mean, I really think we're talking about an extended family group rather than something beyond and I think one of the interesting things here is that when you look at the size of these stone walls, a lot more people would have been involved in the construction of this site than I would have actually lived within it. and if you want to find out more about Iron Age communities and the places they lived, you know what to do, log on to the time team's website while the excavation begins to discover more about the date and function of the castle.

Our study of the wall has revealed what it was like. built by Peter, this site has proven to be a big problem to date in places where we have the original construction and then in other places we have Hodgkin's reconstruction. Is there any difference? We know that Hodgkin says that the bottom few courses on this wall were original. with the smaller stones, thinner stones, this is Hodgkin's reconstruction, I can't notice these steps, are they to climb to the top of the wall? Well that was Hodgkin's belief but I'm not convinced there are steps, if you look at them there isn't a hint of Use them anywhere now, if they have been used as steps the edge will be quite rounded and worn and not There are signs of that.

I believe this is the result of this part of the wall falling down in ancient times, perhaps a couple of thousand years ago. leaving the jagged end here which they consolidated with large stones and then rebuilt this a little thinner while peter and phil removed the individual masonry. Stewart and Henry continue to inspect the standing remains so that Racehand can piece together the larger picture of the site. We are also widening the trenches in the middle of the interior where we hope to expose half of the post holes that will confirm if we have a rotunda.

Meanwhile, Emma finally found some organic remains that could provide us with dating evidence, but will the entrance slabs be equally rewarding? It's not underneath, yeah, so that's continuous with this pile of cobblestones. Yes, that creates a pretty big curvature in the road. We now know that the entrance was built with a finely paved surface covered with flagstones. This is a tremendously long ditch, what have you done to justify it? Well, now we have both sides of the original wall, from that flat flag until it is 5.1 meters. We have touched the bottom of the wall on each side and shown that it is set. a terrace is a deliberate terrace artificially cut overlooking this slope down if we have that edge there and that edge there but on top of it you have all this rubble, doesn't that imply that originally the wall would have been a lot? taller, oh yeah, five meters wide, wide, it just screams height to me, three meters wouldn't surprise me as an original height and that view of that valley would look amazing from that far side that's almost as tall as you, what we have on this side, well, Naomi is just Putting a little extension there, what's the extension for Naomi?

Well, Tony, as you can see, we have these stones here. I know there are stones everywhere, but these stones are much flatter and look much more useful compared to those fallen keystones over there. So what are you going to do with them? Well, we want to take this back and see if we have anything real. Don't they look more like the ones we found there? Well, that's the point, really the way they look. They are placed in the size of the stones, even in the material they are placed in, they are almost exactly like the things in the phase trench up there, do you think it could be something like the base of a round house?

Well, we are. Hoping to cross our fingers, yes, we can only check, right? We can only hope that yes, after two and a half days of fighting to find any evidence of occupation, we may have found not one but two roundhouses within the enclosure in which our possible circular houses fit. perfectly with our Iron Age model, but as the excavation continues inside, things start to take on a pear shape that now looks like a little curve at the end of a straight line of stones, doesn't it? It doesn't look very circular like most. asa boat, yes, and we also have more stones behind me, yes, so I think we have a lot more work to do, all very well, but the end of the third day is approaching and there is still a lot of work to do. to confirm if we have our other roundhouse next to the south wall earlier, our environmental archaeologist emma got really excited about a piece of soggy dirt down there, oh absolutely, this is the best water log deposit we have from the site that's going to I have the seeds and the beetles there.

I need to tell us what was happening in the compound. How did you know that there are seeds and beetles from long ago? Why couldn't they have fallen here in recent years? Well, They are sealed by the top layer of soil and are at the same level as all the floors on the site. Would you like to see something? Yes, yes, there you have it and are there any experienced beetles here? Surely there are. Would you like to see? look what I found, yes, yes, well we have seeds that suggest that there is a lot of activity and disturbance in the enclosure, which could be humans or animals, but we also have beetles and we have a specific type of beetle that is associated with accumulations of things like A pretty nasty type of waste associated with human habitation, dung and manure, so that's what this earth is made of, there's a good chance, thanks for sharing it with me, no problem, bring it back, so Francis, did we get this house?

So, well, no, no, we did it. No, um, we thought we would get half, we didn't get half, we thought we would have post holes, they are closed, but what we have are some plow marks, which suggests that this house has been I removed the center, what we have It's here, look, yeah, these are the stones, Mick, that we thought were part of the roundhouse lot cleaner, okay? It's much cleaner, but how it was cleaned. We have seen that these stones are straight and form part of a rectangular building, so it cannot be from the Iron Age, I don't think so, but at that end it is cut by those grooves, so what date are they from? 1780 was when this land was closed off so well, so building before the 18th century, but not Roman or medieval, presumably not, no, um, I think you're looking at something a little bit before that, before the medieval period, you have that cell thing there, yeah that could be the dark ages so we really are.

Thinking this is a building from the Dark Ages, well, because, well, it's speculation, but yeah, it could be, right? So it seems that any Iron Age roundhouse that might have been here has been knocked down and in its place we find a square. Potentially Dark Age structure that would have been contemporary with the Dark Age guardhouse at the entrance. Tony, you've been working all day trying to determine if this is just a pile of rocks or if it might have something to do with iron. Age of the people we believe lived here. Have you come to any conclusions?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's structural now Tony, why do you say that? Well, the stones are well placed, they are very flat, they have exactly the same relationship to the underlying soil surface. like the main wall of the enclosure, they are just covered with this hill wash, but these stones here are not really flat, no, that could be the wall that encloses these, these flat stones, so what do you think they could be? ? We have the geophysics, um, right in this area that we have, we have a nice square border on each side, just below the polyethylene, a little bit beyond, so it's not a round house.

It could be something like a corral, something like a rectangular corral under the shelter of the wall. It's great that we finally have some kind of structure inside our enclosure, isn't it? It's a real relief, it's absolutely brilliant although this round The house also turned out to be square, we still think it is from the Iron Age as it was built at the same time as the enclosure and was probably used as a corral for cattle sheltered from Wall. It's very frustrating, isn't that three days of digging? and nowhere have we obtained any finds or any type of dateable evidence from the site.

Yeah, I mean it's disappointing, but that's actually not the only way we work when you come to a place like this and work on a project like this. There are all sorts of other things you can use: the comparative size and shape of the site itself, you look at its position in the landscape and see if that tells you anything and we've done that and they've been a very productive update so I can say quite firmly that this is a late Iron Age enclosure. This is essentially a farmhouse, very elaborate, but it is probably a farmhouse from the late Iron Age period.

Can we say more than that? What we can say is that we have evidence of this. Site in Northumberland at South Hidden where there appears to have been a mainly pastoral economy towards the end of the Iron Age and that is quite important because we can then compare it with other sites where large enclosures are found but there are only a very small number of houses on them, What is that other space used for, it seems to be because you need space to bring in the animals, they are your investments, that is your power base, so to speak, in this piece of landscape that they live in, so our siege of three days has brought us closer to unraveling the ancient mystery of the castles.

The closed farmhouse was built in the Iron Age. Its five meter thick stone walls would have been three meters high and the eastern entrance faced two huge stones flanking an impressive wooden gate. It was probably a large circular stone house placed in front of the gate. Stone livestock enclosures were built under the shelter of the walls which would have protected livestock later in the Middle Ages. The door was modified and an important surveillance camera was added. The central circular house was replaced by a square building. This is our best bet for a building, but what catches my attention is the contrast between the massive presence of this monument in the landscape and the few fragments of evidence we have of the people. who lived here, even though I'm standing on the right.

Because of something they built, the only things we've found that have anything to do with people are these little pieces of beetle. This monumental structure has been an enigma for centuries, but by bringing together a team of experts, from archaeologists to stone wall builders, we were finally starting to see its identity clearly, even if the identity of the people who actually lived here remains tantalizingly out of reach.