Street of the Dead (Binchester, County Durham) | S15E02 | Time Team

in my hand is a piece of Roman brick, not very clever, we've probably seen hundreds of pieces of brick like this before, except when you turn it over you can see that almost two thousand years ago someone scribbled a list of names on it . vincente there mourinho there were probably some of the thousands of soldiers who were stationed here at Vinovia, one of the largest Roman forts in the north of England, for these ordinary soldiers life in the fort without food, warm clothing and entertainment would have been impossible , they had to We depend on the attached vehicle, a civilian settlement that depended on and provided for all the needs of the soldiers, but until very recently these settlements have been almost completely overlooked by archaeologists, so we will leave the imposing walls of the fort to discover the lost world of Vinovius Vikas, he blocks the shops and, beyond them, the cemeteries, which would have been such an essential part of the life and death of Vicente and company.

We have never had the opportunity to excavate a complete vehicle before, probably because it is a huge task and we only have Three days to do it Vinovia or Binchester, as it is known today, lies on Deer Street, the main Roman road that ran from York to through Hadrian's Wall to the northern tip of the empire. This strategic route was lined with forts, the backbone of the Roman military presence in Britain. and that of Vinovia is a fantastic excavated example, it is a classic design of barracks for up to a thousand men, kitchens and stables and a common dance house complete with a luxurious bathhouse, all surrounded by a huge stone wall and beyond That wall was the vehicle. the civil settlement on which the fort depended, but has until now been almost completely ignored by archaeologists.

There have been a lot of people digging inside the fort, but only one person has actually taken a look outside in the Las Vegas area. It's this guy, the Reverend Hoople in 1891. and he produced this very interesting plan of the buildings here and we have sketches of what he found now these are really important pieces of masonry, many different phases, they look like illustrations from a children's book from the late 19th century, isn't it? We've been scammed before by antique dealers who have come up with all these fantasies that you can't actually corroborate. Well, we have something that can help us decide because look at that, I mean, this is sensational here.

We have Deer Street and look what exactly looks like these buildings very clearly here, I mean you can even see it, it looks like the long building over there, I mean it looks wonderful, it looks like this is a really precise plan, yeah, but every

time

we are. on a site that has been excavated before, I know what always happens and it makes me very depressed. Instead of looking for new archaeology, we go where the other guy dug. Are we going to have to do that this

time

? And rightly so too. because when Hoople dug here, I mean, we don't actually know what he found, we have some sketches and a probably pretty inaccurate plan, so what we have to do is put a trench here, test the walls for accuracy, and in fact, we'll see. how much deposit he took out and, if he left any, how much he left, so let's go around the outside and then we will cross it with the Cala del León, so we will open our first trench over the area excavated by huppel in the 19th century and it should contain important buildings of stone belonging to the Vikas, but this entire area, including the fort, is a scheduled ancient monument and that means our excavation options here are very limited, which shouldn't be a big problem since we suspect Las Vegas extends far beyond the scheduled area and that means that Jiafiz has started on time one of the largest surveys they have ever attempted, starting in the large field to the east of the fort, the entire area on that side of this fence is scheduled, so that we can only put one trench there, but given how big the fault was, we think the vehicles could extend up here, which is not scheduled, where we can put as many trenches as we want if we get the evidence, which makes us very happy until now.

This field looks pretty interesting, Tony, because we have some aerial photographs. The fault is the fence you just walked over. Can you see that angle that looks like it could be an annex or a ditch or something? An nx towards the fort. either that or it's even a remnant of a previous fort, something like that and there's another aerial photo showing a path leading out of the fort entrance and heading towards it, so yeah there's a chance there are a lot of them here I want say, there is no doubt from my point of view that it is full of archaeology, there is a characteristic curve in the aerial photography and there it is in the geophysics and look at all these wells and all the other archeology in the interior, I mean a goal that we are definitely going to have.

What you have to look for is this ditch to see what its relationship is to the main fort, I mean in terms of area and as a whole, I mean, presumably as you get further away, it looks like it's getting thinner, you want it, oh yeah, definitely, ah, that's not what I mean. That looks like a fallen temple, did you say I don't see it with your eyes? Cavalo. I had never dug a temple before dawn on the first day, and it seems the geophysical groundwork has already paid off with two intriguing goals. We open our second trench. over what appears to be two parallel ditches to the north of the fort, where it should be, then following the line of the tape, you are walking on the bank, you are about to cross the first ditch and there is probably a second ditch behind me. and below above the tape, if they are ditches, we want to know if they were part of the because or an annex of the fort and almost immediately we have our first Roman discovery, our first piece of samio, oh, there it is.

Nice extra bright red fish, does it have a pattern? Can we say it? Uh, oh, no, no, it would have been decorated. Look why it passed through the middle. Look at that little raised area which is where the pattern would have been fantastic, but. It's a pattern, a pattern While Phil plows his way through the soil, our resident historian has been looking with his somewhat skeptical eyes at our geo fizz. I have never been in the experience before where we showed the archaeologists this geophysics and they all immediately said: it's a temple it's a temple normally they are very cautious now this is the radar that john has made look at that face do you see that face how long have you took looking at that cynical old bear with me that's the road on the other side? side of the fence we think this is our temple and that was the spot in the middle well I don't think it's a temple because a Celtic Roman temple wouldn't normally appear here what has that kind of shape I think it's much more It's probably a mausoleum, why do you say that?

Well, it reminds me of a mausoleum on the outskirts of Rome, on the Appian Way, which consists of a closed wall and then with the central tomb in the middle, so what is the difference between a temple and a mausoleum, a mausoleum is a place dedicated to the memory of a deceased person you could actually worship there religiously, you know you go, maybe offer sacrifices to the spirits of your deceased, but I guess it's more likely that that turns out to be the mausoleum of maybe a commanding officer this fall, finding the last resting place of a Roman commander doesn't happen every day and I have to admit that the geophysical results are some of the most surprising we have ever seen in time, so with a strong feeling of anticipation, we open our third trench over what looks like one of the walls of our possible mausoleum, which is almost exactly the line of the wall where that very old sheep trail is.

You know what I said, almost exactly, ah, almost exactly, yeah. I've never known a sheep to walk in a straight line like you, isn't it after a few sour beers? I mean, we're there, something else we have in the toy

team

, kind of false alarms, yeah, you know, it never ends. We've never burned our fingers as much as when re-excavating old trenches, and so far our first trench at the site of a 19th-century excavation hasn't turned up the stone buildings we'd hoped for, just a confusing scatter of rubble, but our second trench looks more promising. We put this pretty long trench here because today John did some geophysics here and came up with two things that looked suspiciously like trenches.

Naomi. Can I come to your trench? Can you give me the ditch we have? ditch we are in one of them, where is it okay? If we come here we can see this light spot and this dark spot this is the edge of one of our ditches this is the film of the ditch okay and if we come this way yes, where is it? lighter patch is this is our other edge, so it's a pretty wide ditch which is a pretty big ditch, right? Yeah, here's something we're just discovering, it looks like a nice piece of mortaria, which is that it's like a mortar for grinding food and this again is just another nice thick container, both Roman, it definitely looks that way, does that Does that mean we can date this ditch as Roman, should I say that, yes, and the other plate?

It's over here Tracy, do you have that ditch head? Okay, yeah, we have one end here, yeah, that I'm working on and then the other side until we get here. I'm sorry. I'm not really concentrating. I just noticed this down here. What's that? Oh, how nice, isn't it? Yes, it is a Roman ceramic vessel. Wow, could it be a burial site? Could be it. Yes, it could well be, although it will be very difficult to get out. It is not like this? We'll have to block it, lift it. I think it's just to keep it together.

It's fantastic. The fines are already starting to appear, so we can be sure that these ditches are Roman, but we are still not sure when or why. were excavated or if they are part of Las Vegas. We believe the fort was built to protect the point where Deer Street crosses the river, where Stuart believes the landscape can help us understand the relationship between Las Vegas and the fort. I built the basic topography of the landscape as it is now above it. I dropped what would have been the fort. The first thing I noticed is that half of the fort is hanging off the landscape.

I mean, there's a very good reason that because this side of the fort has run away, there's been a big landslide on this side here by the river and it literally disappeared, so it looks pretty good, but you're going to have to lose That side, okay? But what? What it illustrates very well is this high ground that the fort sits on because it actually sits effectively on a high island, doesn't the river on one side of the valley down here? It's a truly spectacular piece of topography to dominate this important river crossing here. very different, isn't it?

It is the Roman writer Ptolemy who wrote during the Roman period around the year 120 AD. He actually mentions Vinovia as a Bergantian city, as if there might actually have been an Iron Age fort or settlement here before the Roman fort we know as the Vikas. It extended along the path to the east of the fort, so there is a chance it continues on the other side as well, but the important stone buildings we expected to find along the path to the east are missing the more I clear them. , but it just looks like a pile, there really are peaks in and around them, yes, it's just pieces, it's rubble, nothing, really, is starting to look like what was found here in the 19th century, which disappeared the first day and there are still no signs of the shops and houses we would expect to find in a vehicle, so we extended our survey even further west of the fort in search of the lost settlement and continued to survey the area to the north to see what It happens to double ditches for everyone, especially geophysicists.

It's been a long day, but just as we're getting ready to head out for the night, there's a dramatic discovery in our potential mausoleum trench. Now it is a base. Does that mean it's inverted? We may have found evidence of a burial because this vessel looks like a cremation urn, yes it is, it's inverted, yes I can feel it turning the right way, incredibly thin walls, I mean I'm surprised how well it It's thrown, I mean, look. at the thinness of those walls, it's very thin, it's, it's, it's a beautiful piece of marijuana and it really is, I mean, do you think if we get this roadside mausoleum job, this will be a cremation pit to have an entire container placed face up?

In this type of position, the most obvious thing is that you would have a cremation burial, but you can't actually see anything at the moment. I think we'll have to trim the trench a little. Yes, we will have to box. If this is a cremation, it gives weight to the guys, but it is a long shot, we have never found a Roman mausoleum in time,

team

before it has been an extraordinary day and right at the end, geophysics has found another curve ball in Their continued study of the site shows that the double plates we have been excavating extend around the fort and that suggests that these ditches look less like an annex or part ofIt's the start of day three at our Vinovia Roman Fort in County Durham and we're starting early because this is proving to be one of our most productive digs.

So far we have discovered what could be a huge former Roman fort and not one, but an entire row of mausoleums, the first to be excavated in over 150 years, we are preparing for another busy day and with so much archaeological wealth that we have a lot work ahead if we are going to make sense of all this. Do you remember from geophysics that there was that circular response in the center? I'm just wondering if this is the building, so this maybe well, I'm just going to go. I'm just going by the evidence from the meows yesterday afternoon, the geophysicists came up with a strange circular feature next to our mausoleums, but understanding the designs proved tricky, I thought we had a big one with some dividing walls inside, well , maybe what you thought was wrong, maybe I can't believe that in trench two above what we hope is a former fort.

We're looking for evidence of military activity, like Barrett blocks. Excavating this is not an easy task instead of large stone blocks. We are looking for traces of wood and subtle changes in the soil that mark the bottom of the trenches. Look, I don't know. whether that is natural or a primary silt that is falling to the bottom of the trench, yes it is much cleaner down here, no it is absolutely and it is smooth as butter but the trench is producing some good finds guys we have plenty pottery that has been Leaving here, we have a nice amp for us, some interesting pieces of gray clothing, but this is a real star find, look at that and those three come together.

I can tell it's Samia and I hope you can tell me a lot more than that, well it's from southern Gorgeish, let's say man and I can tell from the decoration that we have so much that this will be around 70 to 90 AD. We know about individual potters, that's what you can tell from decorated semen. It's very closely associated with individuals, we also have these key historical events where Samia was found and the classic example is Pompeii, it's August 79 AD. Vesuvius erupts and one of the victims is a box of fresh saimin that has just arrived in town and that has been excavated, so we know exactly which potters were working in Southgall at the time, but the best thing about this is that we have so much decoration that we can definitely rebuild it late in the morning of the third day and finally an exhausted geophysics team.

As they pack up their magnetometers, they have surveyed an area the size of 18 football fields. It is one of the largest areas ever inspected in a time team, but it has been worth it. This has to be some of the most spectacular geophysics we've ever had. Time team, isn't it? It really is. I mean, we took Mark Knowles' previous survey, he did it for Geoquest, and combined them with our own, so we have this complete picture of the landscape now just in geophysics, I mean, it's. actually, the pattern within that is very important, you know, you can see different parts of the site, you can see that the vegas are on both sides of the fort, for example, and that is important because it tells us the main axis of the fort with the v and that's exactly what you would expect from Las Vegas on both sides of the exit, everything is fine, but you have to admit that when we got here we said we would look at the settlement of Las Vegas and when we found the first mausoleum, suddenly we were all converted. so enthralled by it that we put all our resources here, I mean, we have practically made no trenches in other places, if we had been digging this place and we had found las vegas and we had not found a mausoleum, we would have put all the trenches in the vehicles absolutely the fact that that showed up and that's actually relatively unusual is almost what happens in archaeology, you know, you started with one thing that we've actually answered the question about settlement from geophysics, I think it's quite revealing what you just said, although you basically wanted to dig it, not for me, I did it and it's increasingly looking like it was the right decision, with yet another surprise in our mausoleum, the trench, Jack has discovered a handful of iron nails, which means The person was probably buried in a wooden coffin with the bowls placed on top.

It appears that the tomb was excavated in the mausoleum some time after its construction, perhaps for a descendant of the mausoleum's original occupant. It is a window into the rituals and beliefs of the lost world of Innovia, a world we are beginning to rebuild. Just at a glance we have some huge things, like these huge chunks of tile, yes they were probably made locally because of course tiles are very fragile if you have to carry them around. at long range it's probably going to break, but there's a little piece of pottery over here, oh yeah, which I think is the most interesting of all, although it's almost the smallest piece we have right now that's on the side wall of an early form.

Samian bulb decorated and its profile is more like the edge, there's a little vertical wall here and then it curves down like this, okay, and there's enough decoration to say that it was probably made between 70 and 85 AD. and that takes us back to the rule of someone named Patilius Curiales in the early '70s, potentially right at the beginning of when the Romans were here, that's exactly now that, in my opinion, of all the pieces here, it's the more interesting because it shows us that very early this small piece of pot from trench two is powerful evidence of a previously unknown early fort at Vinovia dating from the very beginning of the Roman invasion of the north.

Yesterday we all got very excited about this area here with this. mausoleum and jackie's pot, then we found another mausoleum here, but towards the end of the day, John started to get really excited about an area around here where he found this mysterious circular thing, so Phil, we found our mysterious circular feature that we have, but It's not circular, it's square, that's right, why does it look circular on the bride? Well, I think the fact is that the inside looks circular, but actually when you look at the geophysics you also see that you have that rule there and there is another rule there, I think it could be interpreted as a square mausoleum, like a mausoleum for a very person. small or a pet, no, not at all, I mean it is perfectly feasible to have a cremation there and in fact you can get a burial there.

I mean, when you look at the size of Ian compared to the inside, you could actually fit a human body in there and stick it in there, no problem, so there could still be a burial there, there could well be a burial there, a nice bridge. piece of masonry there yes, I'm glad you noticed, in fact, it appears to be part of a column. You see this curved edge over here that would have been the front. Why is it flat on the other side? Well, it was actually placed for aesthetic rather than structural reasons, so of course, as it was there, this flat side would have been flush with the mausoleum wall and then you would have seen that curved column in the front, so There is no need to do so.

Build a round column, yes, but that's only half the story, right? You have something quite small there, but you have this huge building here, you have a wall there, a return there, a wall there, a return that is huge, ah, but you see, you are taking the obvious interpretation, which was exactly the interpretation to which that I came when I first came here and thinking that you did have this great building, but what we have in geophysics is this. which actually contradicts that there will be a wall that literally runs across there and we have no archaeological evidence of that, so we will continue digging for the wall that geophys says is here while we extend our trench to see if these two outer walls meet, The truth is that it is mid-afternoon of the third day and the design of the mausoleum is still a puzzle.

Ray san and the boy are looking at possible models. The boys suspect that each mausoleum was made up of a central chamber surrounded by a walled enclosure. but to confirm this we need to find the four walls, oh that's it, sit there, yeah, look, there it is, there's pork grits, what's this going to do? Look, it's close to that threshold, right there, so you have the threshold. Jam, they're blocking it and then here you have a shiny wall coming out back here, start again excellent, it was worth doing, we'll move on, ian, I'll hit it a couple of times and then I'll do it.

Start removing dirt from the side of the mausoleum next door. The excavation of the pots has reached a critical stage. What do you think are the chances of it coming out in one piece? I'm not really a gambling woman, you know, that's the idea. that both will be emptied in the lab, yeah, I mean, this one that actually looks like from this side doesn't have much content, which is pretty weak, this light one makes it a little bit more difficult because it has no support from the other side, it just give it a little wobble yeah, yeah, okay, we're going to move it to the side, oh, there we go, very good, well done, phew, extending the trench has produced not only the return wall as hopes, but also a beautifully preserved door support in mino, you have metal.

The toes move the machine over the door stopper and see if there's a metal stopper there, let it be a big metal stopper, then well I am, but it's also a piece of engineering, do you think with all these parts elevated around here, wash everything? I don't know how the hell they do that and then have to put a plug in there just for a mausoleum door, I mean it's an incredible amount of work and we're really ready to lift the second bowl it seems. almost perfect and we hope it stays that way when we pick it up, it is very hard against some stones, isn't it?

Well, I think what they've done is I think they've been on top of the coffin and they've slid down. off yeah, since it's rotten, yeah, to the side, that's why it's wedged against that edge, right, I'm just going to move it, yeah, it's tears, yeah, okay, here we go, look at that, oh, it's a crack on this side, but that's it. Otherwise, oh yeah, phew, the two parts date from the late 2nd or early 3rd century and were probably filled with offerings to the deceased, scented oils or wine inside the central mausoleum we found the wall we were looking for, it seems it was an internal wall and is not a separate mausoleum with beautifully crafted entrance columns and fine stone work.

It is becoming clear that it was built for a very important person, possibly for a general late on day three and trench three continues to surprise us, but our trench in search of the initial fort. It has been almost the opposite with ditches and pottery, the small signs so far of buildings or military activity. Yesterday we put this trench here because there was what appeared to be a large double ditch that we thought was the outer defenses of a Roman fort that no one had found before and, sure enough, we have the date on the pottery and it is Roman, so Mick decided that I wanted to expand it to see if I could find any evidence of that fort in the buildings, roads, paths and whatnot on the land.

We did it and it worked extremely well because you just walked over the site of the wall that ran in that direction, which would have been made of grass and wood and clay and so on, a big big wall on the other side and at the back of that you see. This area of ​​orange clay is probably a kiln or the base of a general burning associated with kilns because there were often kilns at the rear of the wall. Why would you put a furnace on the back of a wall? This is a failure of the wood. so your bunkhouse blocks are made of wood, the last thing you want them to do is burn them so you have your bread up and here safely behind the ramp.

They are on the other side of the road because we actually have the road. Look, see all these paving stones here, so the paths that go in this direction behind the wall and then on the other side of the path we are starting to lay the foundations for the wooden buildings, we have grooves for wood, we have rows of nails where at the beginning of the fronts, barracks or other military buildings, we headed towards the fort in that direction, but one of the reasons we wanted to dig this trench was because we wanted some quotes, yes, we have had some very useful pieces of pottery .

We leave here and one little piece in particular takes us back to the 70s AD. and that's great because historically we know that in the early '70s there was a governor named Patilius Kerialis who brought the Roman army from the North Midlands to this part of England to wipe out this troublesome northern tribe called the Brigantes. Now we may have one of the forts from that campaign which is brilliant and there are probably a number of ancient forts like that to hold the north of Britain. This has been a truly remarkable dig that we came to.

This hill in search of a vehicle, the civil settlement that supported the Roman fort and in the process we discovered an entire lost landscape, we located the vehiclealong the road on both sides of the fort, but we also discovered a huge previous fort that pushes the history. from venovia to the beginning of the roman occupation in the north and a row of three mausoleums the first group discovered in britain in 150 years we came here in search of the living but found a city of the

dead

a

street

lined with large tombs a little piece of the Roman world at the northern end of the empire and at its heart perhaps the grandest mausoleum of all. okay, antonio, my brother and fellow soldier in the powerful fort of vinovira, up there we have come along the

street

of the tombs.

To venerate the memory of our great ancestor, our great-great-grandfather, the mighty general who once acted as a soldier here and we went down to his grave, we now have to pass through the huge and powerful gate that would once have been here turning there. iron and we reached the mausoleum area and towering above us here is his tomb with an inscription that records his name, his mighty deeds and around here other tombs of his brother and his cousins, other members of the family and these are the men who make You and I are important people today in the fort and our great hope one day is that one day we will be buried here too as great guys and as part of that we brought a meal of chicken and wine so that our great ancestor could share that. eat with us after three incredible days, it's time for a celebration of your own.

We have created a Roman tavern of the type that no doubt flourished in Las Vegas, with an authentic Roman style. You have something for me and use the straw too, I mean, I was told that's what the upper class does, the lawyer hits it straight down, what's in this, well, I see the beautiful basic ingredients that are there, there's wheat, barley and oats, those are the grains that are there. water nothing could be simpler a little bread to make it give it the yeast and then to make it bitter and spicy now it has to be good for the summer and it really goes yes, lower it at least that's great, I'll tell you what a big digger encourages everyone to the fort or should I say the forts of vinovia