➤ Time Team's Top 3 FUNNIEST Digs!

Abroad, this huge mansion is being carefully restored because it is believed there is a medieval hospital underneath, but that could be just the beginning. The owners called our own Mick Aston, who stumbled upon something quite surprising in the garden, so the fact. Whether we're here is up to you, yes, I'm afraid it's actually up to me. They asked me to come here and look at this building and then I walked away and looked at the grounds around it, I thought it was really interesting and we should come. Come back and work more. I bet you're great to employ.

You asked to see this fantastic place and you're snooping around the back. Yes, listen, there is a medieval hospital on the side, but on the hill behind we found the tenth. Century Pottery, so that's Anglo-Saxon, yeah, when you say you found it, where was it? It was in the orchard at the top of the hill but pre-dates the town of Burford when it was found in the 12th century. There is something here long before and discovering it was exciting enough for you to come to us and say: I really want to excavate it so that a medieval hospital or an Anglo-Saxon settlement looks like a mix made us look for both in this huge garden that is located over a thousand years of history to solve at least our search for the hospital should be pretty simple fingers crossed John's radar has detected part under the front lawn means we can put it in our mouths immediately this should be a Dodge Barry look how desperate oh dear The first cut is the hardest thanks typical I want to make Aston come here he is at Saxon Pottery where do I find Chinese wood?

Oh well, stop complaining Phil, you have an easy job, our second objective is the garden and he leaves. To make matters even more difficult, this is where Mick found his mysterious Anglo-Saxon pottery and wants us to search it for more. It's not exactly small, so we've asked for some extra help, but organizing his class is proving a bit difficult for archaeologist Professor Dumbledore. so each group of three go to a tray just give it back oh that's the best way hug each other don't start digging yet don't start digging yet okay that's right come on Phil that's another one in the same lineup look like that which is three, that date is around the

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of William the Conqueror, so it's very, very, very old, so it's cool, I mean, it's fantastic, I mean, you've been doing this for like 10 minutes, right? do you have something like that?

You have other? one four in line

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so young 47 professional archaeologists four Phil in danger of being overtaken by a group of nine year olds our young diggers have now found so much late Saxon pottery that we can plot it all on a map that Let's lay a trench where there's a hot spot, so we wave to a

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and wave, set alarm bells ringing in my mind, if we were looking for the Medieval Hospital, well, if we were looking for a Saxon Burr, fingers crossed. maybe we'll find it, but this seems much more scattered to me.

Surely what we should do in archeology is prove something or disprove it. Yes, you can look at it that way, but it's really more of an evaluation of what it is. a very large garden, you see the part, the problem, I think, is that with a lot of archaeological work that we excavate because we know that we think there is something there from a certain date, in reality there are things everywhere, yes, but when we have a history , believe. It's worth seeing how many periods of occupation we have represented here, so you know, I'd like to try this with what is, after all, a large garden.

I mean, it's almost a bigger version of thousands of gardens. They are expanding it a little. bite and make this spot huge in the front yard. Phil's row of stones has become the corner of a large wall that lines up perfectly with the fleas. Well, could this be our medieval hospital? Well, some 13th century hospitals might be very large, but most had two main buildings, a long infirmary for the sick, and a chapel at the end or side, so which one Phil has, you can't tell if you're outside or Inside, can you, oh, surely I must be inside?

I mean it has to be an outside wall or at least part of a war ounce and then turn around and surround there. I'm sure it must be outside and I'm inside and just to show that Phil doesn't do these things look at this beautiful flat it must mean we're inside a building this is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a very elegant 19th century building 13th 14th century like a chapel yes yes so this could be one of our hospital buildings, the chapel and the second one, the hall, they could be closer than we think, come here and take a look at these things here , Richard, are these the kind of things I should find in my trench?

You should be these genuine medieval ones from the late 13th century. Century, you see, what happens is that what we think is the outside wall of the building in my trench lines up over there, it doesn't line up over here, does that mean they're not in the original position they were in? They have moved yes and they have been reduced in height because during the restoration in 1908 by Colonel Sal de la Terrier he discovered this part of an archway in that wall and I can show you where it is, so if you look, you can imagine those two arches. where they have a reduced size came out of this section of the wall, so we would have a row of arches like that, literally, coming back through here, yeah, all the way to the end, so it feels right, then we could have a hallway . with a gallery under the house that would fit quite well with the idea of ​​a chapel at the end of an infirmary.

Such an impressive job from Phil, but then Mick just has to improve, you get something high, oh yeah, we are, um. It's quite funny that there was very little on the ground as we were going down, yes, as we were going down through it and once we got near the bottom and our destination was traveling, there is what looks like a linear feature and that came out from there. That was the Cotswolds, but those are the first things that predate the conquest, dating back to the late 10th or 11th century, and it actually stands out as a feature that we have in this trench with talking buildings or settlements or something like that.

I think it's a building. I mean, as a bonus, we've also put out this, which is a big chunk of dub that's been burned, so we'll possibly make a building or something and also a pig's tooth, so it's starting to look like a domestic reference , it really is. Very good, right? Yes, there are possibly a couple of post holes down there. They are still being cleaned. The face will hopefully be fixed in the near future. This is fantastic news. Whisper it carefully, but this could be the first hint of. an Anglo-Saxon house and I can count on one hand the number of us who have found in time equipment yes, yes, yes, yes, oh, what, oh, look at that, oh, that's a big piece of metal working slag, like that that we have possible Wood construction I'm working flag possible piece of a kiln Dome yes Wood construction Wood construction Ceramics Domestic food waste with the pork bone is only going to get better, isn't it?

So we are only going to get better, our hospital could start soon. 50 years after Saxon Village was finished and instead of the two buildings we could have just one, an old Norman Chapel with a later archway added, so cool theory guys, we just need to find an archway, so 67 meters from there to a few minutes ago. I thought this archeology here was part of the 13th century Hospital that we know exists from the history books, but now that they've started looking closer, some of the archaeologists are starting to think this is older than anything they Let's know here, maybe.

It's part of an earlier phase of the hospital that went back in this direction and the only way to know if that hypothesis is true or not is to make a big hole here, so Phil and John are doing this measurement, which is nice. that's their job as archaeologists, except look at this place, never mind the tulips, it's a listed building, it's a top-notch listed building that can't just be plugged into any old hole five feet from the foundation, although they seem perfectly happy with it. I think someone, hey, wait a minute, I'm talking to the camera, well, yeah, I know, but we're laying a ditch.

You're putting it in a ditch right next to a grade one listed building. Yes, do you have permission? Yes, we have since filming this show. Phil asked me to tell you that yes, he was in the orchard, which I hasten to add, is not on the grade one list. Bay has a rare foundation trench for the Timber Saxon house, it was definitely gone. 1100, but when it was built could be as early as 450 AD. and we're also getting roman stuff, you and me, a little weed is a little weed, for expert Paul Blinkhorn, these things are key to dating our site now.

I know it's suddenly work because you told me it's true what period it is, well it's the typical type of early late Saxon pottery that we have in this part of the world. I mean, it starts around the year 900, possibly even as early as 850. and again. This is a bowl but it is different as the Cotswolds were so we are talking about this type of size, yes sometimes you find them with sockets on the sides like spouts but we think they were actually to put wooden handles on so they could use them as a frying pan, it's not as sophisticated as the material that preceded the word Roman, yes I mean Roman pottery production was generally much more organized and sophisticated than that of the Saxons, they had full time potters throwing things.

The wheels shoot it in great slaughters, really, really, produce the things, the communist form of the early Saxon pot, it has animal dung mixed with the animal chest, why should I use that mixture with the clay, it cooks the pot, all organic material? If it burns, you're left with a pretty corky pot, which means that even though it's made quite crudely, we put it on the fire and it will expand and contract without cracking, so it's kind of workable unless you like animal manure. in their ceramics, well, a little more information. From what I wanted, how the hell did they first discover that luckily for us someone did because now we're starting to find this so-called Anglo-Saxon pottery in the front and it also comes from this dark layer of the Earth that Matt is digging under the hospital? floor, it's really quite tight as far as dates, we've got a lot of the Cotswolds were the Norman Saxon sort of things that we're getting in the garden, but you've got a couple of other Kenneth Valley things where that doesn't.

I won't get there until about 10 50. So I mean look at this feature, whatever it is, with dates of about 10 50 1100, very tight, so it has to be before this, all these stone walls that are cut through it, so it appears that We have one of the first Norman hospitals located just above the Saxon demolition material. Phil can now see two phases of the Norman building quite clearly. He has not yet found the gallery or any of its arches, but he has now found the edge of the 13th-century extension. We have that war, yes, passing through there and then turning around and coming back on itself.

Everything we're finding points to something significant taking place around the year 1100. I've been wandering the gardens and walls here looking for Steward. The city has taken him back to the garden and believes that he has identified the heart of our Saxon settlement, the original road along which he grew up. He believes this side street once ran into the river, today there is a 17th century chapel on the road, but there is a clue in the south wall. What's interesting is the radar geophysics that was done here. There is a chapel there and you see that line that goes under the floor.

If you look at the outside of the building, look at what's sticking out. there, ah, of course for an ignorant person like me, look, the chapel is on top of that masonry, what do you think when you look at it? I mean, obviously a little bit of movement like that doesn't match the rest of the wall, so it's pretty shoddy, isn't it? It's pretty shoddy, but if it was there originally and they were building a chapel on top of it, it wouldn't matter because it would be below ground level, right? Stewart noted that this stone block continues the line. of the ancient road, he does not believe it is actually the Saxon road itself, but he does believe it could be the boundary wall of the medieval hospital that was built on top of it.

The only way to prove it is to dig inside the chapel, but that's We'll have to wait until tomorrow because the rest of us need a well-deserved drink. Something really strange started happening this afternoon. All of our archaeologists were very excited about what they discovered. Oh, we have two phases of the Middle Ages. archeology around here there is this huge Anglo-Saxon site, we even have this vast Roman wall and yet in the last five minutes or so and it probably has something to do with the fact that everyonebut about this place you were going oh man, there's something here, I think it was all kind of high risk, actually, you know, we had a bunch of tickets and some other tickets that may or may not have been, you know, shingles Romans, etc., and it seemed a lot to base the work on it, it seems to have paid off, yes, it works.

What's going on there, guys, I don't know why you're fighting. We are going to dig a trench on a point at Henry's Point or John's Point. What matters is. we will find something in it we will know tomorrow at the beginning of the second day yesterday we found this beautiful Bronze Age ditch that, according to archaeologists, should be part of a burial mound, so yesterday afternoon we projected where the rest of the curve of the ditch. It should be so we can excavate the center and hopefully find the burial, but this time, team, there's a fly in the ointment.

Mick, come here, what's the problem? Well, last night I was at the tow truck when everyone else had gone home looking. It looked to me on site that this curve of the ditch we got here was actually wider than what we projected in the next field, but we had three guys working on it last night, so they were all wrong. but they may not have been wrong, it just looked different from above and I was worried that we might be basing it on where the ditch was and therefore basing it on where the middle was, you know, it just didn't look well even though everyone was holding back their efforts. feelings, it's been a tense and frustrating day for the archaeologists, nerves are starting to fray, especially when one of the teams enters the trench just cleared by Phil.

David crosses your beautiful ditch, yes, that's right, Tony Mark, you have something for us, yes, just at the end of yesterday. have the clean back in this area scanned by one of the metal detector users and we have these three small shallow shovels and at the bottom of each one a Roman coin. Wow, it's from the 3rd and 4th century. So do you think they were actually put in those holes deliberately? Yes, so not only have we found a new Bronze Age Barrow, perhaps 4,000 years old, but also the first evidence of Roman veneration for a prehistoric monument in this part of Britain, two thousand years later, on the other side of the Hedge, more sections of the Ring ditch are now being searched.

Determining where the center of the Mound is is crucial because it is where you would find a burial in a classical Bronze Age monument. Get to the bottom of your story. Phil has been vertically cutting away the stuff that filled the original. ditch and he is very satisfied with his work. I think it is an absolutely flawless section that will be so excellent that people will write books about it even though the mound itself has had pieces of Bronze Age vessels removed, circumstantial evidence of cremation burials in a classical Barrow is one of the practices that came to Britain in the Bronze Age at the bottom of Phil's beautiful little trench there are some mysterious features that are exciting miles.

You see, we have these almost like post holes. Oh, of course, and poles in each section. look, they look pretty clearly like postholes, we were debating whether that's the sort of thing you'd expect to do on quite a few later Bronze Age and indeed early Bronze Age barrows, the ditch acts as a stockade trench, so I have effectively secured the timbers right at the base of the trench and then the soils have been piled up around it. This is intriguing. A palisade around a tumulus is definitely not a common feature of Bronze Age monuments. We've revealed most of the Ring ditch on the other side of the hedge now we can try to figure out where the center is and whatever it may contain.

We are also looking at a possible Roman reuse of the Tumulus. Remember that the Romans who brought us here must have arrived late, close to the kinky little Bronze Age, surprisingly. For an expert like Phil, a stone tool can be evidence of dating, the cutting of this scraper suggests specialized craftsmanship from the Neolithic or Stone Age, these skills were largely lost in the Bronze Age when metal replaced to stone tools, can add another thousand years to our Monument. and that would definitely explain the strange features. Is it true that he wasn't that interested in archeology until we arrived?

That is absolutely true. You can't keep them away there. So is it part of a gateway complex? Definitely no, no, no. Looking at it, I'm starting to worry if it's actually some kind of quarry because its sides are extremely irregular and there isn't much material in it either, so they used it to make the mound it would be. It's a good guess, actually, that's how Oddity explained it, but there's another one at Barrow Bridge and Ian is investigating an intriguing area of ​​the Ring Ditch that's clearly been filled with burnt material. This room is surprising, there are the discoveries that are yet to come.

They're coming out left, right and center and it's Ian who's really finding them and I'm just looking at him jealous like anything, what have you got? Well, he's just biting all these idiotic tools here, cool, look at them all, I mean, us. he has he has this here wonderful thing it's a scraper that he used to scrape skins and things like that there's this here there's another scraper Edge found this one here there's all kinds of stuff they've also put some ceramic here absolutely Brilliant things, this one here may have a decoration on the thumb there or a lug that has fallen off.

What kind of era are you using? This is good. I opt for the Bronze Age, but the very early Bronze Age may be transitional. I think that gives it a touch. Cool decor, what do you mean by that well? You can see? It looks like a piece of rope was pressed into the wet clay before it dried. The rope decoration would have been applied before this huge colorful urn was fired around 4,000 years ago. Absolutely wonderful years ago, it's the most exciting trench I've ever worked in. I don't know how long we've known a lot about these Neolithic people.

Well, we are really dealing with the first farmers, the first farmers, the first monument builders. uh, in the Neolithic, uh, before vanilla, we had kind of hunter-gatherers that didn't really have much of an impact, but Neolithic farmers are the first people to start building things, big monuments in the landscape, cutting down trees , playing fields, what kind of date? Well, it dates back to around 4000 BC. C., so our monuments in the end are around 3000 BC. C.. Can we find out something about them? As people, we're actually finding skeletal evidence which is often quite rare, we find fragments of bodies, but no.

I don't find complete individuals and that could be our Monument, it could be a place where the bodies are left to decompose and then the selected pieces are taken to be buried somewhere else. Are there many monuments like this around here, not here? No, no, so this is it. It's actually quite rare, sitting in a nice gap on our Neolithic map. It seems that we have gone back more than 3,000 years in time since we arrived at the site. Poor Victor has been struggling to keep up with this mysterious archaeological tour. It's not that long. since he wiped out the Romans, right, oh wow, hi Victor, well that's the beautiful drawing of a round mound from the Bronze Age.

I have some bad news, although I'm afraid that yes, the material that is emerging now looks Neolithic, so I think. I've added about a thousand years to the date of the redesign of the mound, is it necessary, eh, yes, I'm afraid there is a redesign, but as far as activity is concerned, what would they be? Well, that's the six million dollar question, really, what's going on? Within our evidence from several of these sites is that fragments of human remains are found in the ditch and one suggestion is that this is an exposed burial site where bodies decompose, probably not the prettiest type of photographs that can be made. do, but possibly a body decomposing in the center and pieces rolling into the ditches, viewers find other evidence supporting Miles' theory that this may be a Neolithic site.

It all has to do with the visibility of the site from the surrounding countryside. This landscape just threw something up. Real surprises here, this model here shows the green shows The High Ground and the other colors show the low ground where the monument can't be seen so it's there so you can essentially see it when you're somewhere far away but when you are close it is invisible, but that is a very neolithic thing to achieve isolation. You don't want to show the landscape, you actually want some privacy around it and our site has that quality if you look at where the rivers are.

The rivers in this 3D view of the site are like in the middle of the circle of all those rivers and they're actually sitting right in that triangle of them again. Something typical of the Neolithic placed on monuments near watersheds and river sources. produced one of the greatest varieties of finds we have ever seen in time. The equipment, from 5,000-year-old Neolithic church tools to 500-year-old medieval coins, there is something from every era. Together they have revealed the secrets of this place that we came to look for. a Roman temple and in its place we found what we thought was a classical Bronze Age tumulus, but it is now clear that our object began its life in the Neolithic about 5,000 years ago as an enclosure surrounded by a ditch and very possibly by a stockade that was later burned.

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