The Druids' Last Stand' (Anglesey) | S14E04 | Time Team

In early 2006 a small plane flew across the north coast of Anglesey on an aerial reconnaissance of the island, then the photographer saw something strange and took this photo which revealed a huge earthwork about the length of two football fields , until then no one knew there was anything here except a few lumps and bumps, but what makes it even more intriguing is its location in a landscape rich in archeology and on an island that was once home to one of the most mysterious of history, accused of magical rituals, human sacrifices and even cannibalism, the

druids

. What exactly is this strange earth movement?

As always, we have only three days to discover that we are in Wales, on the north coast of the island of Anglesey. This is going to be a difficult show. Windy. It has never been even properly excavated. identified so we can start the geophysics early, send Stuart to inspect the earthworks and take a close look at that intriguing photo. We have this huge site here clearly visible, yes, and yet no one has excavated it, that seems like a puzzle to me, not just them. They have never been done, but they have hardly been recognized, even the big angle study done in the 1930s only said that some fragmented earthworks were mostly destroyed, they were mostly destroyed, it doesn't look like, it just looks like, I want I mean there are big huge benches and it rules out any idea of ​​what period it is well they just suggested it could be Roman but I don't think we really know do you think it's Roman Francis no I don't think it is it has a very strange outline yes at least we know? two sites on Anglesey with that shape which are Middle to Late Iron Age and are also known from other parts of Britain.

Well, I think it's even more exciting, relax. It seems to me that maybe there is more than one period because you have this and then another rectangular part was added at the end, then you have this larger one around the outside for a quick look around and these survivors work on the land so it's a sign really exciting if it's multi-period and those later things are post-iron. age, then that will take us through the key period of Anglesey's history, it really is the

druids

and everything that is waiting for us. Dating this enormous land work will be essential if it is Roman, then it is the product of one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of Wales in the year 61 the entire force of the Roman army descended on this small island its mission to destroy the fortress of the resistance British an insurgency led by the Druids in an unprecedented ruthless attack on British soil massacred the Druids and their followers and burned their sacred oak groves, but if our earthwork was built before the Roman invasion, then it could be a remnant of the The same people the Romans set out to destroy a relic of a lost world dominated by the Druids, whoever built it.

The geophysics shows that this was a huge piece of engineering, we have surveyed the lower half of the field away from where the earthworks are well preserved, so you have the upper part of the enclosure in the earthworks, but look at answers really clear and a possible entrance at that point there with maybe something A kind of palisade outside and it's things from the settlement that make noise here, well, I guess it's also the black, the bank or the ditch, that's the ditch, like that We go around and form a complete circuit which gives us some obvious objectives, doesn't it? 4x5 in that driveway and probably a similar sized area in the middle, yes, so we placed three trenches over the large rectangular feature.

Phil digs a trench over what appears to be the entrance mat looking into the rectangle hoping to find evidence of settlement and bridging. He cuts a trench through what Mick thinks might be a stone wall. We'll have two cube wedges from there that show you that line. Come on, let's do it. The relentless elements have left the ground completely dry. The excavation will be difficult and now it will begin. Raining, look at that damn rain coming here and it's about to get even harder, we're ready in conditions like these, it takes a good eye to spot any archaeological sign of life and luckily for us there's one man who's always on the lookout : our expert excavator.

The driver just says you have the natural shape coming over the rise, yeah, and you have the natural shape there, right in the middle, that's not some kind of ditch where you have the natural shape there and then you go in that direction, yeah , right through. there it's a changing color and it's a softer material it's in it, you feel it, yeah, just order that, take the others, John, you don't have your print in your pocket, no, well, I have it in my head, although hey, i. I have it in my head. Is there a light?

Is there a linear coming this way? There shouldn't be any pits. That's all. So, look, he saw that he felt it in this job. Yes, Hi Phil, with more than a little help. Ian has discovered what appears to be the entrance to the enclosure, the ditch across the front would have made it impossible to approach the entrance directly, it appears defensive, but is it Roman or Iron Age, an imperial fort or the

last

refuge of the druids? I know we have evidence of Iron Age Celts in this part of the country, but do we really have tangible evidence of druids if you go to another corner of the island to see the Raf Valley angle scene back in the 1940s, workers, not archaeologists, discovered in the peat? where there was once a lake about 150 iron and bronze objects and we have some examples of replicas here and some images of this image of a decorative bronze plaque, think of this as the Mercedes-Benz sign on the front of your fancy car, but Put this on the front of your car or cart and the question is who was directing the dumping.

Now let's use a better word: Deposition, gift of these objects, including swords, that had been bent and broken before being thrown, like who was doing that. So this is what Francis would call a ritual deposition, such as the one he has at his own site at Fen Over in Cambridgeshire. Yes, absolutely, this is one of the classic ritual sites in Britain and Europe. It has deposition of offerings in swamps and humid places. it is a religious activity and only towards the end of that period in the

last

three centuries or so is it attributed to the druids (they were the guys who did that stuff);

However, it seems frustrating, doesn't it, given the richness of archaeology? around, we have not found any type of druidic temple or tangible representations of druidic practice, think of the oak groves that were felled by the Roman troops attacking Anglesey in 61, you know what would be left of them because the oak simply disappears. It rots, it's just ashes, you know, how would you make those links? We want to discover if the earthwork belongs to this complex Iron Age Druid culture or if it is a Roman fort built to suppress the local population. We have put a trench over some exposed stones.

That Mick thinks it could be a wall bridge, he has cleaned them and they look good. Well, Mick, this is fantastic. We usually don't find archeology like this on the first day. It looks very impressive, doesn't it? Yeah, that's not who we are. looking for something, what do you mean? Well, I thought it was probably part of some kind of Iron Age wall structure. Sure, well, of course, the problem is that it's outside the compound, it's on the wrong side and now it looks like it's the end of a barn or a building that goes in that direction and it turns out that it has a lot more to do with a post-medieval farm, a post-medieval roundabout, when do you think in the 1800s, something like that?

Probably what we have is this complex, all these earthworks are Over here we think the site could be multiplayer, yes, multi-period, its pattern suggests a farm quite late in the day and it's obvious when you look at it, I mean, I hate to say this, but you are absolutely right on earth. Stewart is right. you're giving Stewart the guy you always say "oh, him and his idea of ​​absolutely floating," but it actually occurred to him that Trump under

stand

s what it means we have to go in that direction, we have to look inside the enclosure. there and not worry about what's going on outside, especially if it's that kind of date, so the first day in our search for a prehistoric settlement, yes, and we have a very good, although very good, 18th century farmhouse, ago another 1700 years until now.

It's our only dateable evidence, in fact, despite some of our best geophysics, our trenches are starting to look worryingly empty, sure it's nice to feel like it's coal, let's see there's one, yes, quite mixed in this deposit, but yes, it doesn't seem like it. to dignify anything you really should have had if you had some pottery no charcoal chocolate a lot of charcoal some pretty thick lumps of charcoal actually in the subsoil my instinct is that if you have a blank area then you spread it out and find something that I agree with. I agree with you, but I think there is now what I call a different plan, a result of earthworks and geophysics, if you look at that enclosure on the map and look at this lower half very affected by the later plowing on that post-medieval farm. so our best option to get the outline of this enclosure will be at the top.

Yes, have you followed this side? I have followed it until now. Could you explain it to me so that our plans and our minds are in the relentless wind? taking a beating, but as the clouds gather once again, the archeology begins to shine through ah, francis, yes, I was saying there's not much hope for this trench, there's actually a coin down here, maybe Maybe this can help us date the earthworks, definitively, a copper alloy. of some kind and very, very fragile, I also see if I can get under here somehow it's right on top of the natural, right?

There we go, that looks a lot like a coin, yeah, I can turn it over so we can I know we have a coin, you know, made of copper, so I'm going to use a copper alloy and that's all I can say , I think the conservation, uh, yeah, it's great, Bridgette Corbett 999 and it looks like the bridge is going to be busy. Come and take a look at this look, oh coin, it's out of context, but it could be dated now, that came off that spoil tip over there and it looks to me like something from early Roman

time

s rather than something later, exactly, I mean any dating evidence for this site.

It's going to be important, that's true, but I mean, if we're trying to prove some link between the local Iron Age people and the arrival of the Romans, an early Roman coin is absolutely great, so we sent both coins to the bridge, but even if we can date them on their own and out of context, they cannot tell us whether this was a Roman fort or an Iron Age enclosure and in Matt's trench there are no signs of settlement, nothing that can help us tell us if the earthwork was built. before or after the bloody invasion so we put it to sleep and open a new one over the bank and the ditch for a second, if we can find the bottom of the ditch, it could contain fines that will help us find out when it was dug.

This edge is that the trench backfill is a suitable edge. I think the trench fill is very smooth and it's actually quite smooth, but I'm hitting a lot more stones, you can actually see them, yes, and hear them, actually, like the matte bridge does. I found the edges of the trench but not the bottom, in fact both trenches seem to be getting deeper: nine feet, yes, 2.7 meters, well, I mean, I am absolutely speechless, what a tree, but the surprising thing is the small space that fits in them. We never thought it would be so deep. Do you think it tells us something that gives shape to that incredible depth and narrowness?

Well, I mean, normally, if you see something as narrow and steep and V-shaped as that, you'd say Roman, but we. I don't know what its shape is and if I were Roman I would expect to see a lot of pottery going around. We haven't even had a search engine mustache. Nothing at all. There is no coal. No. We've really tried hard to find something. If this pit were Roman, we would expect to see ceramic coins or other finds and the enclosure would probably be laid out in a neat rectangle, but it is empty and irregular, meaning our enclosure looks less Roman and more and more Iron Age. when things are getting.

Really interesting, the weather we have been fighting all day wins, as you can see the weather has turned very gloomy for us and everyone has been sent home, but it has been a fantastic day. This is what we came to see. Sorry, the rain is falling. These huge earthworks, but look what Geophys has discovered, the whole countryside is packed with archaeology, here's our farm, which we think is from the 18th century, but look at this big curve that the archaeologists say they're pretty sure is It's prehistoric and Of course, there's a huge earthwork and Francis keeps saying it'sconvinced that it is the iron age.

I think it has something to do with the size of the plates, so tomorrow what we want to do is delve into its heart and see if we can discover something about the people who live there because if they were from the Iron Age, then they would have been the people who were here at that extraordinary moment when the Romans first arrived on Anglesey, start of the second day here on Anglesey and we're just getting started. To deal with this strange earthwork that covers this entire sloping field, yesterday we found a large ditch in which Francis swears his Iron Age and if he is right, that would be great because it would mean that the people who lived here would have practiced the Druidic religion . and he would have witnessed the horrible cataclysmic events that occurred when the romans invaded, except for francis saying all that, we don't have any proof that this ditch is from the iron age, right? and I don't expect to get much, but Tony, you.

Don't get Iron Age pottery in this part of the world. The depth of the trench is fine. I'm pretty relaxed about that, what about the shape helps you? Yes that's fine. I mean, there are a number of examples of that enclosure shaped around farms in this part of the world. In reality, it is not rectangular. Well, no, I mean I think that's the point, although it's not like it was carefully designed, it's a square rock, so what could that imply? I guess it's more native than Roman, no Roman army has come with textbooks and measurements. It isn't true?

I mean, would you expect the buildings in this to be on the edge or should we look for buildings in the middle wherever they've been excavated? These sites have produced buildings right in the center, so we should really be looking at that middle area there, so probably definitely the buildings and it's a bit complicated because it seems like we've had the modern plow there, right? The top half of the site hasn't. been the bottom half, I mean, my inclination is to do something as close to the middle as possible, but about those two different degrees of destruction, if you will, and see if we can't remove a house, I'm happy with different degrees of destruction. distraction if yesterday we opened a trench in the middle of the enclosure in search of settlement without success today we try again this

time

on an area that we hope has survived the plowing and while we look for signs of life from the Iron Age within the enclosure Stewart believes there could be tracks outside.

He's snooping around in the next field with the local farmers. You see limits to this field here. Can't you see that? Which suggests there were fields around and so on. Well, I've seen aerial photographs. of this field years ago in this as circular as an article circular shapes there, very good, but even with a field, this is a huge site, which makes it even more strange that our only finds so far are two small coins. Look, it's just breaking down that dirt really well. but yeah, that's fantastic. Can you see that on the monitor? Yes, I can because it feels like a Roman coin.

I have a lot of doubts about the whole thing right now. I have to admit I have doubts about it well, I just can't find any decorations or anything like that. there does not appear to be any dye or stamp on it, it is probably found on a coin and the microscope fails to shed any light on the archaeology. Stuart and Mick take the opposite approach to the one they boarded in the helicopter. look at the bigger picture, so look at that field over there, oh, this is absolutely. Just as you're flying, I can barely take my eyes off all these field systems I can see in the fields around, looks like the farmers got it right. the shapes in the field next door there are circular features that I can see in the field, they see a road or a vehicle path going there, which is what you would expect.

I mean, what it does show is that the enclosure that we have is at the heart of a very active prehistoric track landscape is not alone, right, but what is the connection between our Iron Age enclosure on the hill and the forms in the following field that we send to your effervescence to take a look and expand our search? For the people who built this earthwork even further away, which might not be such a bad idea because in our compound we are struggling to find any trace of them. We have widened Matt's trench over the deep trench so we can go down and dig. by hand and Phil is still working on the entrance, but so far both are empty, the only ditch with fines are the bridges, we have a lot of coal motes, a lot of weathered stone and we have a lot of animals. very large bones ribs sounds promising, right, that kind of size sounds like modern cattle to me, but it's not, you have a big 18th century barn, you have a ditch, you probably have cattle in the area you have. to drain it, that's why you dug this ditch.

It is just a reconstruction of the previous ditch probably made in the 18th century. My feeling is that we are going to waste our time if we spend too much effort here. Absolutely fine, let's just call it. today it's starting to look like any evidence of people who might have lived here has been destroyed by subsequent agriculture, any sign of any buildings, so raksha no, unfortunately no, it's all gone, nothing at all, no, this is all really natural and it's the same story. in the raksha trench in the middle of the compound, if you see here, there is a ridge and a furrow that runs through the entire road, so it must have been removed by plowing, there are no structures or anything, how about we join it together with the trench there?

Do you think we could? In fact, take a fringe that goes that far. I think it's always an advantage to put things together, right? Yes. It can be done, it gives us many more possibilities of finding. Yes. The almost total absence of fines is disconcerting. There is a lot of activity. the gfiz but nothing on the ground while in the next field we can see shapes on the ground but the gfiz results have come back and are empty not that Stuart is about to be defeated can you see these trees yes on the line of the hedge yes? once there, so they go one, two, three, four without the help of geophysicists.

We rely on the highly scientific method between the fourth and fifth tree to lay out our trenches, so what I would suggest is that we lay a trench across this trench through this one. earthworks and to the other side and you should, if it still survives, you should hit it in a trench that crosses there, okay, I wish you a little, I hope we find something in this field that will help us date our site because like this Until now , these are our only fines and dating them is proving difficult. We've called in fines specialist Kai Peyton to take a look initially, when those coins were unearthed, everyone was saying that Rome and Rome were possibly the first Romans, really exciting, but then these waves of doubt started. to hit us or maybe it's not a coin at all they are coins they are Roman the good news is that they are coins they are Roman one of them could be quite early and another could be a little later this one here looking at the size and what it is made of it looks like what they call a cistertium, which could be as old as the first century, maybe even a little bit earlier, but this one, I mean, it's in karate condition, but it looks like a coin called an ass, so it's a disgusting ass and it's made of some kind of very coppery alloy, that's why it's blue in the middle, it looks like a pretty old coin, so it could very well be a coin from the first century, you know, the time of the invasion here.

I think, as Kai says, they've been around for a long time and been around for a while, so you don't think a Roman warrior was holding the first coin in his hand while he murdered the druids. In this very place I think I may have to say that it is unlikely, in fact the coins are so worn that they could have been in circulation long after the Romans invaded several hundred years after they wiped out the Druids of the island, his brutal campaign was so successful. Nowadays it's easy to think that Druids are more myth than reality if someone mentions Druids nowadays we tend to think of hippies in white sheets on Salisbury Plain, right?

But do we have much tangible evidence that Did they really exist in ancient times? be careful because in what territory you are now you are in Wales and we have living druids, our own intelligentsia who gather for our great cultural festival, yes, but those kinds of druids are just an 18th century conceit, right? That's a fancy. Our druids today are our intelligence here in Wales, they are musicians, but we also think of those poets and those people who continue the oral traditions, so perhaps we have a route towards prehistory, towards the pre-Roman periods, in terms of how These people behaved and what. their special roles were why do we think they were an intelligentsia?

Well, there is a lot of documentary evidence. Caesar tells us that the druids in Gaul, France, today, that he was conquering at the time they came to Britain to study, that is the best teaching, the best source of learning, so what was the knowledge What were they teaching? I mean, there seemed to be three types of druids, basically a priesthood and then the diviners sometimes called them ovates or vartes from Latin and bards, and it's the bards that we see. many in Wales because they are poets, singers and artists, but we can expand their role. You know, were they the scientists?

You know what we use. It is a modern term. Scientists were forecasters of the future and they also tell us that. battles between the native peoples, the pre-Roman peoples, their own peoples, they had come as true peacemakers, so they knew they were playing many roles, but that was not how the Romans saw the druids, they saw them as blood-drinking cannibals, Tony. As you know, the natives did not write, it is the Romans who tell us the story. It is a story that includes grisly accounts of elaborate human sacrifices, but is it just Roman propaganda or could the druids really have carried out such ceremonies?

I'm traveling. across Anglesey to discover that there is certainly a powerful sense of pre-Roman history here, it is not difficult to imagine the Iron Age Celts living and worshiping on this enigmatic island, one thing above all others that the Romans seemed hating and fearing the druids was their practice of human sacrifice, the most terrifying manifestation of which was that of the wicker man. Roman historians claimed that the Druids built giant wicker effigies in the shape of a man who caged sacrificial victims inside and burned them to the ground. David Freeman and his

team

from the Talon archaeological group.

We're using traditional woodworking techniques to build our own wicker man to see if such a thing could really have existed. Do we really know that this really happened? We have two pieces of documentary evidence. There is no physical evidence, so unfortunately, please note that this is not the case. More like a wicker man, more like a pair of evil pants, so it seems at the moment. The top half of it will be a different color, so from the waist up, but of course, we're not going to fill it with humans. What are we going to do? we are going to put, actually we are going to fill it with straw so that we have a good style, a good effect, I am a little disappointed, is it difficult to achieve?

The main frame is going well, my big problem is so soon As we start bending into smaller circles, the willow should bend very easily, but right now we are missing water in the wood, it is just breaking. I hope you can arrive on time. What you may not have noticed is that victor is lurking behind us doodling and since it's victor, yes, here we have a wicker man, that's pretty amazing, victor, look, look at this little arm it's horrible, it's horrible, fact, I hope you can get close to it because I particularly like the head. made of leaves and things and there is also a little face here if it is going to look like that it will be really spectacular, right?

Yes, we are looking forward to seeing this. See you later. No sign of returning druids. our Iron Age earthwork, in fact, after two days of hard digging, the painful truth is that there are no houses, no household rubbish, and no signs of Iron Age people. We have this huge ditch that surrounds this entire field. We put a trench right in the middle because we thought there might be an Iron Age house somewhere out there, but we got to the natural, so we put the trench in the bed too I thought so, I also thought it was natural, but now he has a different idea. certainly attack him again with a big pick, what's going on, Francis?

Well, I think we have a little problem, we thought it was natural, but when we put a trench across the bank next to the big cut through the ditch there, yeah, I wanted to do it. that, but I wanted to set the bottom of the bench to the right, which would give us the top of the surface that people were walking on in the orange color. Okay, we haveestablished that if you go about six inches or a foot below you will remove the old top layer of soil that was there and below that is where you will find the pure natural, well that's what we did there and I followed it down and dug a hole here right in the corner and you can see that. the thing in the hole is much paler and firmer than this rather granular gray thing on top;

In other words, you thought we were going to put her in bed, but actually we've left a blanket for her so you can't see. what's under the blanket is that the difference in the yellow is the natural, yes, and we have the gray on the top here, which is worn, natural, yes, so the post holes for your houses, if they exist , and that's great if we'll still be below. this blanket, so if we're going to find evidence of the houses, does that mean we're going to have to take all of this off? Yeah, we're going to have to take this off, we're going to take it off up there and Maybe we even have to extend this and take more off so we have a better idea of ​​the plan, so we haven't really finished the job, that's basically why we haven't done it. we have found.

Keep in mind that the hardest job of all is to sit still. In this wind, isn't there? Yes, yesterday we had rain, today we have wind and you feel completely beaten at the end and some of us can't remember the plot as a result, it's the Armageddon we thought we had. We didn't have the bottom of our trenches, we need to dig deeper to reach the Iron Age ground level and when we do, if Francis is right, we could find 2000 year old houses, evidence of the people who built this huge enclosure that can You have practiced the druid faith, there is one day left and everything to play for.

Start of our third and final day here on Anglesey, where we knew we had this large group of huge earthworks that we thought were from the Iron Age , but when we started excavating them there was no sign of human activity, no sign of human occupation, nothing except this natural earth and stone and, frankly, we were all quite worried, but yesterday afternoon Francis came up with the theory that this It was not the natural, it was a mantle of earth and stone that covered the natural, so he began to dig underneath and found it. And look, you're not just a pretty face, are you, Francis?

I must admit I'm a little pleased, yes, yes, we removed it with the excavator and lo and behold we have discovered host holes underneath, show me the post holes down here. I've labeled them, they've been lost in the rain, yeah, but they're quite different compared to this really bright nature and then in the middle, this big hole and I don't know what it looks like, yeah. absolutely huge so what this means is that we have to reexamine all the other things that we were eliminating yesterday one day missing one day missing phil what do you think this could be?

Well, that's what I mean for all intents and purposes. It's a big fit whether it's a rubbish pit whether I dare say a grave I really don't know the only way to do it is to dig it up and suddenly discover that it's all quite exciting sealed under a blanket of earth with a Roman coin on top We can be sure that these features date from before the Roman invasion, even if we are not yet completely sure what they are, it means that we have finally discovered the remains of the lost Iron Age world of Angles, a world that the Romans tell us which was dominated by the Druids who claimed that the Druids burned sacrificial victims inside giant wicker effigies, but is this just Roman propaganda?

We're building our own wicker man to find out, but the dry willow and strong winds are complicating things. They have a lot of work ahead of them if it is going to be. ready to burn tonight and back inside our iron age compound the race is on to make sense of our hole francis what do you think this is? I mean, it looks like it has good edges, but this hill is so extraordinarily dry and rocky and loose, you know it's not what you would expect from a pit this size where you would expect all kinds of burials or whatever, well, exactly I mean, I half expect to find a sheep's head with a modern ear tag, well, yes, but on the other hand, the surface that was on top, yes, it didn't show any sign with silence, no, no, it was sealed , No?

Yes, it's the strangest thing in the next field, we're investigating a number of shapes that Stewart and Mick saw. the air we put in three trenches and discovered a network of ditches, so you think this is all probably fields and agriculture, so man, I think we have to go back to that agricultural idea and keep animals here and headaches and pins and needles that kind of of things and there is no evidence of any settlement, so it is a landscape around our main settlement that is what seems most fine with a vast network of fields and a huge compound on the top of a strategically located hill this was more than a simple farm, whoever controlled it must have been a powerful boss, so when we ran out of time we concentrated all our resources on the main compound, everyone except Henry, wandered to a swampy area in the valley to take an earth core, the gray matter at the bottom is 2000 years old. old mud is a sign that in the iron age this swamp was a lake this is so typical of you the first day you wandered around the side the second day you moved to the next field and now we are 200 meters in the middle of a swamp Yes, it's about the context of the landscape.

I keep harping on it, but knowing something about the site is not enough in itself unless you know something about the landscape in which the site lived and how it developed and where we are. I've walked here, I don't think it looks like that to you, maybe, but this was a big lake here in prehistoric times, so what do you think the relationship would have been between the lake and the people who lived there? Well, there are two. relationships one is very practical, one is the water supply and from the crop marks we have evidence now in the field where Bridget is digging a path that actually leads from the fields to this swamp where they are taking animals to the water, that is very practical but of course the other is ritual once you get into prehistory, that horrible word, but we do know that lakes and swamps become areas where in prehistory people deposit votive offerings, metal work, so they actually throw them into the lake, that's right.

These are specs, they really are a special place in prehistory, so there may still be Iron Age objects in this swamp that were smelted 2000 years ago. I think that's the case, we're not going to be able to excavate it, right? No, there isn't, I mean. It's actually very big, there's no way you're trying to dig something like this, we'll let it sit from his house on the top of a hill. The Iron Age chieftain who ruled this corner of Anglesey could see the source of his economic and spiritual power laid out before him and made sure that anyone looking back could see it too if you remember the boo fish showed another ditch in the outside of the big main trench, so we put this trench in and what we discovered was not what we thought was another trench. true, but we came across these big rocks, we found about five of these and they went in a line across the trench here, so I put an extension here, yeah, and I think that's the foot of a wall, so you've got a wall through here.

I have a wall, in other words, the bank that accompanied the big ditch, yes, it had a lining, right, stone lining to keep all this from tipping it over. Yes, we just reached the bottom, it may well have been higher, yes, in which. If a stone wall could have been seen there in the valley, it would have looked really spectacular and somewhat enhances the impression that this is an important site of very high status. It would look like a fort on the horizon, wouldn't it? In an imposing structure like this we would expect to find substantial houses, but so far the only sign of Iron Age occupation is a series of small postholes.

They don't look like much, but Mick and Francis are impressed. It's probably the best evidence we found. We're going to get a settlement on this side for real buildings and structures, aren't we? Yes, but dating them precisely is impossible, except for the absence of pottery, but they are right in the center of our enclosure, which is where we know they should be at the center of power, if you will, and if we could match them to all in a coherent pattern, I think we would find that there would be round houses about eight meters in diameter with thatched roofs, that sort of thing, but The poles can't have been very big, they are quite small, but I think the problem is that we see only the bottom part of the post hole, the rest, the actual foot or tie that has supposedly been eroded by the plow.

On this site we are right at the end of them so you are happy that there were actually Iron Age people building shelters here, not just putting up fences, yes I think it is more than shelters, yes they are houses, this would be a substantial house, you know? where people have rebuilt their quite substantial buildings and at nearby mellon clernon a

team

of experimental archaeologists and modern builders are demonstrating how substantial their reconstructions show that these were simple but brilliant designs, carefully placed posts supported the weight of the roof and defined the great community space. and a thatched roof would have protected the worst Welsh weather it was the perfect house for this hill a substantial weatherproof house fit for even the most powerful chieftain such is the mysterious well next door another part of this domestic picture that not even Francis Get excited about a garbage pit oh this looks good wait I see another one of these yellow snails right below yeah yeah right so what does it look like so Francis is a kiss so it'll be a little grave possibly covered in stone. and probably what early Bronze Age bronzer, well, it certainly has the appropriate size and shape for a crouching inhibition.

If you know so much about this, do you really want me to bother and dig it up? It seems completely unexpected to look for signs of settlement in the Iron Age. We have found a tomb from the Bronze Age that is not 2 but 4 thousand years old. The oval tomb was lined with large flat stones. The body would have been curled up inside. It appears that the acidic soil has destroyed the bones, but the discovery helps us rewrite history. On this hill we are saying that those postholes are about 2,000 years old and that burial is about 4,000 years old;

In other words, the people who were looking at that burial were as far away in time from there as we are from the Romans, but Think now, if there were a pile of stones over this burial pit, yes, it was there, the builders of these new houses respected him, it's strange, isn't it? Because for our special places like churches and synagogues, and whatever, they tend to be. very separate from our everyday life and yet it seems to be right in the middle of the everyday life of the Iron Age, but then, as we all know, the landscape has changed and the way we read the landscape has changed and I think we have lost a lot. a lot of meaning in terms of you know the special thing about the hill, the ancestors who have worked this land for millennia and that's the mentality that I think these people had and of course we were advised by those special people, those druids who They are helping us make sense. of history three days ago this earthwork was almost unknown one of the few clues to its existence was a photograph now we have discovered 4,000 years of history on this Welsh hillside begins with a person buried but not forgotten because 2000 years later this The hill it was still a special place, the power base of an important chieftain, it gave him a link to the past, shelter, food, even a sacred lake, it had it all and then the Romans came, life on Anglesey and on this hill changed forever, the curiously empty ditches suggest.

The wind and rain began to fill them with earth shortly after the invasion. The holes in the posts of the round houses were covered by a blanket of earth and a Roman coin fell on top. It seems that the chief and his people disappeared and the once powerful embankment It was abandoned the round houses fell into disrepair or were even demolished and the terrible events of the Roman invasion were hidden under soft grasses this exposed hill bears witness to the island's darkest hour Dave it really has arrived hasn't it ? Yes, it has grown very well, we are almost at the last stage despite the dry willow and strong winds, Dave and his team have shown that it would have been possible for the Iron Age Celts to build a wicker man.

Let me show you the head that reminds you of someone while Dave puts the finishing touches on our wicker man. It's easy to forget that 2000 years ago this would have been a frightening sight but filled with straw instead of humans it is far from terrifying, in fact it is strangelyfamiliar. Phil certainly seems to feel a connection. It is tempting to find faint echoes of this ancient custom. In our modern traditions, from corn dollies and the Green Man to Guy Fawkes, how much of the ancient British way of life did the Romans really destroy? How much do we owe to that elusive elite?

Druids, which is a bit like Philadelphia, generally fall into this stage. at night the foreigner remains unharmed