Remarkable Dark Age Treasure Found Beneath An Iron Age Village | Digging for Britain

We may be a small island, but we have an epic history and there are still plenty of untold secrets to be discovered, which is why every year hundreds of archaeologists dig, dive and examine to find clues. They had never seen anything like this before. Their discoveries were amazing in 2018. It's been more exciting than ever to see it, so it's from a tank, so it's brilliant, it's a good find. Not bad for the second day. Nothing bad. Each excavation has been filmed as it happened by the archaeologists themselves. Your dig journals mean we can be there. for every exciting Discovery moment and you imagine him looking at every shoulder trying to get away from the enemy.

I'll be in the lab where teams will bring their finds, from ceramics and metal to human remains, and take a closer look to find out what these new excavations can tell us about our ancestors. Look at that, be very careful. I'll be careful, my goodness, as archaeologist Rature Dave investigates the analysis that continues long after a dig is finished. Someone stabbed her. in the back of my head, what a horrible way to go, welcome to

digging

for Britain on this show. I will join archaeologists in the north of the country to share their greatest discoveries. Yes, we're going to look for a lost Spitfire from the second. world war instrument panel, yes your new star is

found

and we follow the excavation of a newly identified Anglo-Saxon cemetery with some very unusual grave goods that are quite ostentatious.

I have come to the National Museum of Scotland to see how these discoveries are being rewritten. British history and I have been given behind-the-scenes access to explore parts of the collections that the public rarely sees. I get to get up close and personal with some of Britain's most intriguing

treasure

s. Our first dig takes us to Dumre and Galloway in South West Scotland and the black tuft of Meron, where a perfectly preserved 2,000 pron 500y ancient

village

emerges from the mud and dates back to prehistory, it is very rare to find real evidence of the houses in which our ancestors lived.

Wood rots and, very often, everything we know. They have left footprints in the ground, but the incredible preservation of the wetlands at Blacklock means we have the chance to see what life was really like in a

village

in Britain 2,500 years ago, back in 2016, when excavations for Britain got a privileged access when a team of archaeologists unearthed a

remarkable

Lost Village from the mud they revealed intriguing sections of wood that had been skillfully crafted into boards and were in incredible condition. Wow, that's awesome, so this is the notch that was cut to fit around the bottom frame.

Well, the finds were so spectacular. that we will join them again when they return to this prehistoric Pompeii for their fifth season. Archaeologists Anne Crone and cavers Graham have been directors of the site from the beginning. We have many inh sites across Scotland, but to have this level of preservation. at a site of this date is very rare and I would say it is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to excavate in these conditions using the remains of the round houses unearthed over the last four seasons that archaeologists have built. They took a detailed picture of the town and discovered that these houses once stood on the Petey edge of a lock that had been drained in the 19th century.

It is an extraordinary window into Iron Age life, but so far they have not

found

any personal possessions nor this year are they going to dig where they believe they are most likely to be found inside the houses they saw make a

remarkable

discovery an intact floor made of woven reeds and reeds this is an ancient mat it looks like chipboard it's so fresh it's just layer upon layer of reeds and things like this that have just been compacted the discovery of the mat gives us an incredible opportunity to glimpse the skills of our ancient ancestors and their efforts to insulate their homes and make them cozy in these inhospitable conditions and now they have a floor surface there is a tantalizing prospect that they may find personal items eventually make a breakthrough and what is it I have no idea it looks like it is a piece of turned wood with spindle Anne has found an intriguing piece of Clearly Worked Wood Wow, it's got a hole, it's got a hole, I've never seen anything like it before.

It's amazing, we're just removing kind of a very thick layer of laminate flooring materials Ed. I was just about to start chipping and, uh, this is just a lie. on one of the surfaces inside this house, finding out what this artifact is could give the team valuable information about daily life in Blackl and then there is another extraordinary find in a garbage pit located next to one of the houses. Oh wow, I can see the extremely rare pumpkin. Yes, yes, my heart really skipped a beat when I saw it. This exquisitely decorated wooden object was found deep in the hole that is the room here, so you have two pieces and then one piece that goes this way and then here is the edge of the On the other side, although crushed and in several pieces , the team knows what it is.

It is a beautiful and rare turned wooden bowl. Well this has to be the star find of the 5 years of excavation so far, the team's discoveries have given us an unprecedented experience. a new insight into the lives of the people who lived here in Blackl. It has been an extraordinary excavation. I asked a witch to come into the lab to discuss her findings and this is simply amazing. I mean the preservation that you are getting and being able to. to see not only how the mists were built, but also to start finding some of the artifacts of everyday life, most of the time it has been the preservation of the structural remains, but that really changed this year, when we started to find wooden artifacts for the first time, so yeah, I know, I know, I mean, it looks so modern.

I still find it hard to believe that this is a prehistoric artifact, but you're pretty sure about the facts. Oh, absolutely, it came out of um very closely Stratocaster. ifed deposits and we have radiocarbon dat the deposit it came from and it's 2,500 years old it's crazy yeah it's made from U um which is a beautiful wood for carving it's a spindle made object so it's been It's as mounted with mandrels at each end, it is very clearly designed for something, but I can only speculate as to what it is, so these objects were found on the floor.

I mean, do you think that happened by accident? I don't think so. These objects um have been deliberately placed on the floor surfaces of this structure um, possibly reflecting the function that the house has during its current phase, so perhaps if this has to do with weaving, then it was a weaving workshop during that phase and that is beautiful. Bowl uh so this is a turned Bowl which has then been decorated and yes it is a turned lathe it is probably complete but flattened so what you are seeing is a reconstruction it is an absolutely beautiful object it appears to be one of a kind in the United Kingdom.

At the moment, I haven't heard of any other turned bowls. Its shape and decoration, which is impressive, are truly unusual. I had never seen anything like this before. Until we found this, we didn't have very clear evidence of turning in the Iron. Age, but in this bowl it is very clear that not only were they doing it but they have been doing it for a long time because this is very accomplished, yes, they are very good at it and similarly with the cane as well. How extraordinary to appear in search of those two objects that, as you say, are completely unique to Bri in a season of excavation.

He wonders what he knows what else is out there. We will be able to observe much more carefully what is happening. inside the houses, what kind of activities are going on and get closer to people and how wonderfully close you became this year with that bowl, this object, although strange but very useful, on a postcard, please , look for this very special

iron

. one site allows us to see that our prehistoric ancestors were perhaps more technologically advanced than we previously thought. Our next investigation takes us in the search for an RAF Spitfire lost on a Second World War reconnaissance mission and sheds light on a forgotten hero in The flight of 5 March 1942 left tenant Alistair Gun taking off from the base of the RAF Wick, north east Scotland.

He was on a highly dangerous top secret mission ordered by Winston Churchill and it was a mission from which he would not return alive. Monitoring activity around the German battleships Hitler was using to intercept the Allied Forces Merchant Fleet, but just hours later Alistair was shot down over the mountains near the Trondheim countryside in Norway, the Spitfire is possibly ours. most iconic and famous fighter plane. Of course, the role it played during the airborne conflict that was the Battle of Britain, but there is another side to the Spitfire story: reconnaissance Spitfires like the one that flew Flight Lieutenant Alistair's gun play a vital role in bringing key intelligence back to Britain, but these aircraft are now extremely rare.

So finding this one would be a real coup almost 80 years after its fall. Aeronautical engineer Tony Hoskins is driving from Britain to Norway to lead the surge. It's the first model of photographic reconnaissance machine that was designed to I know we're onto something really special here, so it's literally on the other side of that hill. I am very excited about a team of historians, engineers and aviation enthusiasts. Tony hopes to find the exact spot where the plane crashed. We get closer to the harsh realities faced by the RAF's brave reconnaissance pilots. It's a daunting task and the team has only 3 days to find and recover the plane.

Anxious, definitely anxious, it's 3 km and about 1,000 M of ascent and, of course, we will go down again. With a major Spitfire sortie, Tony knows that the gun plane was shot down somewhere over these mountains and has narrowed down the location using German accounts and local reports to find the crash site. I just stood on a piece, there's more here, there's steel down there. It's everywhere, fortunately for the team, there's more debris than they ever expected. This is the radiator door and that's really beautiful considering it's been here for 76 years and is in surprisingly good condition. Suddenly, one of the team members finds something that brings them back.

Even closer to the flight in the last moments of the lieutenant's gun before getting out of trouble, so this is, uh, a piece of the canopy, uh, perspective, so this was last seen by the gun on the 5th March 1942 and imagine him looking at each shoulder trying to get away from enemy aircraft. Through that, it's absolutely fantastic to find a bit of canopy, every piece they salvage will help reveal how this particular Spitfire was stripped down and streamlined as a reconnaissance machine. That's amazing, very good, yes, because it's almost the support for your headrest. You can't get more. in the cabin that star item because it is a brilliant piece.

Discover the past with exclusive ancient history documentaries and podcasts from Adree presented by world-renowned historians of history. Watch them on his smart TV or on the go with his mobile device. Download the app now. To explore everything from the wonders of Pompeii to the Budika rebellion and the mysteries of prehistoric Scotland, immerse yourself in the captivating stories of this extraordinary time by registering via the link in the description with almost 19 hours of daylight in the months of Norwegian summer Tony and his team could just keep

digging

, but they know they have to leave enough time to carry the recovered pieces down the mountain the next morning.

They returned. This looks like the O bottle again. 1940s 1940. These oxygen canisters allowed reconnaissance pilots to fly higher than their combat counterparts. The discovery of key reconnaissance items is a boost, but Tony soon realizes they need to widen the search area, so we expected much of it would have gone. Hit here where it looks like it exploded and Scattered over a wide area, although the team now has more ground to cover, the new search area pays dividends, look, here we go, well done, pediatric instrument panel, yes, this is what we call the blind flight panel from the middle of the cockpit, uh, this is the Artificial Horizon with its casing so that when you're flying in the cloud he can tell if it's going up or down, that's the new star.

Find Al, the gun's blind flight panel, very carefully, that's the part of the plane and, oh, artificial sight, artificial RIS. What do you want to find? Say something directly related to him. The instrument panel and is in one piece. I can not believe it. I really can't believe it. Is incredible. They are clearly delighted to have found such a recognizable fragment. The panelinstruments. and gun cabin. Thank you so much. We've had a fantastic day. We have managed to take out about 2 thirds of what we found today, but we believe that the new areas we found will continue to give.

It's the last day of A Dig and the team only has a few hours left, but what they want more than anything, what for them is the Holy Grail, is the reconnaissance camera. Wow, this is, maybe, some electric coil. Maybe there are interesting cameras. They could be here. The writing at the top says. front lens heater 14 and 20 inch camera lenses, this is the f24 camera, so it has a 14 inch lens. Could you find the movie? Please, I would like you to reveal it. There is no problem finding the camera mount. Take the team straight to the heart of the weapon's mission.

Photos taken for reconnaissance. The Spitfires played a key role in the Allies' success but, of course, photos from this weaponized camera never returned. I invited Tony Hoskins and his colleague Mark Hilia to the lab to take a closer look at this strategically important aircraft and discover the story of its brave pilot. Tony, I think the first question we should ask is how did you know where to start looking for this Spitfire? ? Well, it was a long process. We had the combat report from the German who shot it down so we knew difficult area to start searching and then luckily local knowledge turned out to be the way to go, although it's not a big plane when you compare it to a mountain.

It's going to be, it's all going to be in the same kind of area that it ends up in. being a larger area than we thought, but we are left with 70% of the plane, so what do we do? What are we looking at here? What part of the plane is this from? So this section is from the wing. So, this is a wing. skin on the top and the interesting thing about this part is that you can see the pr blue so all the photo reconnaissance aircraft at that time were painted in this for camouflage yeah and this is the round so the identity marks that he had on the plane. just so you don't get any friendly fire so obviously that's very important in terms of identifying it as British and the color is also correct for photographic recognition of the Spitfire and as they have been blue all over then the top surface and the bottom were the same color. all blue exactly that some of the photo reconnaissance planes were later painted pink where were they pink? uh, mostly desert, right?

Yes. The sun comes up in the morning and the dust in the sky turns pink and it was removed so we could do this, that's right, I mean they only built 220 of them, so it's a very rare item, yes, they were heroes anonymous if you think that they often flew 4 and a half hours, sometimes long sorties over the water on their own at 30,000 feet and unarmed, so obviously when they reach the target area, there is always the risk of an enemy plane being shot down, like discovered at his expense, yes, and you didn't find the camera itself, so this is a camera from another plane, presumably, so it carried three cameras, one that pointed to the side and two that pointed to the bottom and it was the first configuration to make 3D photographs and that would be mounted on a frame and we have the frame which is the frame on the front so that's part of the frame that the camera was mounted on yeah so that frame would have been wrapped around from the top up here and then Alist would have put it on a dial for the height at which he was clear of a cloud and could see. the lens and then the cameras would have moved to give two angles that would have focused on the ground at that point.

How important photographic recognition was at that time. I think people underestimate its importance if you think this was the intelligence gathering arm. of all the armed forces and even the RAF today, you know that photographic reconnaissance is really key and hugely important and then you have this incredible view of the cockpit that Alistair was sitting in and this is the casing of his instruments, a really important piece. the cockpit and also the engine instruments on the right, but just to think that it was in the cockpit, you know, in 1942, the last person who looked at those instruments, this is part of the big fuse, uh, and it's right from the section from the cabin, almost where Aler was sitting and the bullet from the machine gun went through the cabin and this is the exit point of the large fuse.

It tells a pretty grim story of the final moments of his struggle to escape the Germans, uh and then, obviously. Finally he lost that ticket he had to get off the plane, so he parachutes, he survives this, what happens to him? He eventually spent a night in a cabin on the hill on the night of the fifth and then, despite the help. of the locals made the decision that it was better to turn himself in and he was eventually sent to 3 deer, which was the camp that was made famous in the movie, the big SC, yeah, and he got involved with the tunnel committee and Doug was the first to discover a tunnel. him by the Germans and then he embarked on a second quite famous tunnel which was the Harry tunnel, but he made it.

He escaped in the tunnel, but they arrived 25 km from the port they were going to use to reach Sweden when they discovered that he was writing letters to his parents and unfortunately his last letter he wrote was on March 19, 1944, of course, he escaped. night of the 24th to the 25th and the letter arrived at his parents' house on May 15. uh, but unfortunately the next day, May 16, the telegram came from the war office saying that he had been executed, that's just horrendous, I mean, it's surprisingly brave, they're often forgotten, so this story is really important, not just ready. but all the drivers too, that's fantastic, that's the thing, right?

It's not just about going and recovering pieces of metal from the side of a mountain, it's about recovering this history and reminding him of Tony's discovery of this Spitfire. and his team has graphically highlighted how risky these vital reconnaissance missions were. The Alistar cannon plane fragments recovered from that Norwegian mountainside are a memorial to Just One of the forgotten heroes of World War II. Our next investigation takes us to Vinder Landa Fort. In North Umberland, Vindel Landa is close to Hadrian's Wall, the northernmost border of the Roman Empire for almost 300 years. Its numerous fortresses were key to the stability of the military government in this inhospitable and dangerous No Man's Land.

Roman sites are invariably rich in fines, but very few in Britain have delivered the wide variety of artefacts we have found at Vindel Landa, from swords to sandals and even handwritten notes from the soldiers themselves. Now people have been excavating at Vindolanda for decades revealing the rich and layered history of the Romans in Britain, but this year's excavation may uncover new insights into a particularly turbulent episode during those centuries of Roman rule. This summer, archaeologists have been digging in the trenches of Vindel Lander's frontline defenses, where the discoveries have been spectacular. Look at that beauty and it's all down to the anaerobic conditions in this The soil behind the scenes The post-excavation work is transforming our knowledge of one of the most turbulent times in Velanda's history.

Second-century Civil War archaeologist Rea Dave is getting an insider's look at the conservation work taking place during this year's excavation season. Every archaeologist dreams. From working at a site like Vinder Landa, each object discovered is so precious that it makes their post-excavation laboratories like archeology emergency rooms, each object needs conservation immediately or else its secrets could be lost forever. I'll be following the conservation process from start to finish, but while I wait for something to turn up in the trenches, I caught up with site director Andrew Burley to find out more about this year's Mission Andrew, what are you up to? really concentrating this year?

Well, we're focusing on the late 2nd century and early 3rd century, when we have a Roman army in Britain trying to suppress the rebels, but they're also fighting each other in the ditches, we're getting evidence of some things that were discarded during that time. very short but intense period of time and it's a kind of Landa Pompei vindel because it's only been occupied for a few years but everything is sealed, so it gives us a beautiful slice of life. Back in the trenches, the excavation team makes a discovery in the second. century antonine dig so Andrew and I headed off to see what they found oh actually I can see it now so I can see see the soul going around that's it it's another inera Roman shoe there was some shoe the other day but this It's the first fantastic feeling anyone wasted 1900 years ago.

It's great to find it now that the shoe is out of the ground. Every second counts, so I'm taking it to Barbara Burley at the Vindel Landa conservation lab where it's going. show me what happens next, shall we open it and take a look? Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited to check it out. Actually, it's probably a men's shoe based on initial inspection. Wow, look at that, and you even have the heel reinforcement. Here, shall we wash it and take a look? Yes, I `d love to. Barbara separates the very fragile shoe from its cocoon of mud using a soft brush and water so you can do this process almost immediately.

We try to do it as quickly as possible. we can do this because they will continue to degrade until we put them in some type of chemical bath, especially organic objects like leather. Barbara gave me a Char shoe to clean. I usually don't get a chance after digging so I'm looking forward to this. For this, am I using just cold water or can I use hot water too? We don't want it to be too hot because that could damage the leather. Well, here it goes. The next step is to put them in these mesh bags. We have to use these bags to keep any kind of bits that come off in the bucket.

Here it is then preserved using a cocktail of chemicals including acetone, which stabilizes the leather. The whole process takes more than 5 hours, but once. Once completed, the shoe will be preserved for posterity and displayed in the museum with some of the other notable finds from the excavations at the Fort. I meet up with Andrew to find out more about the recent shoe discoveries in the ditches. So what do shoes mean? tell us about this particular period of conflict if we look at them all together and there are almost a thousand of them now from this particular period, 45% are male non-adult shoes, in other words children, women, teenagers and that just changes the whole the nature and complexity of what was happening, what it was like to be part of this community, it's really hard to imagine that those women and children would have seen exactly the same horrors as the men who were stationed here, some of the things.

What they would have seen are horrendous, here we have evidence of people having their heads cut off, often mounted on posts on the walls and if you are a small child running around, that is the sort of thing you will see in the analysis. of the shoes has given us a new understanding of the people who lived here in Feranda during those turbulent years and has given us a new insight into the horrors endured by the inhabitants of this fort as our next excavation takes us to explore the tip of the Lincolnshire dales and a discovery that could fill in some gaps about what we know about Britain after the Romans left a period sometimes known as the Middle Ages around 1,500 years ago, from what history tells us that Britain was invaded by wave after wave of Germanic tribes.

The Angal, the Saxons, the Judas and they transformed our country by giving us the English language and the basis of our laws, but there are actually very few written records from that time, so if we want to understand Anglo-Saxon society and its culture. connections we have to turn to archeology and this upcoming dig gives us the opportunity to discover more Last year, local landowner and metal detectorist Jim Hoff was exploring Fields next to his house, where he found some rare and intriguing objects that a small A team of archaeologists from the University of Sheffield began investigating and it wasn't long before they discovered some tomb leaves dating back to the late 5th and early 6th centuries packed with jewels and other precious goods.

The discovery was so rich and intriguing that this year they will return for a full excavation led by Hugh Wilmot here we are at scrm B and we are going to see the site so one of the questions we have here is whether the people who are buried here were born here in Lincolnshire, they are second generation immigrants or perhaps their ancestors have always lived here and they have just adopted new styles and fashions from the incoming Anglo-Saxons and these are all questions we will hopefully be able to answer from the grave. The goods with which they wentburied, but also some of the science we can do.

In the laboratory, analysis of the skeletons and the objects buried with them should provide information about whether these people were native British or immigrants. The team has cleared a large area and has already identified several graves in the ground, possibly filling another grave. here after last year's excavation they are expecting big finds from the site and they are not disappointed, it is the second day and we have just started to excavate some of the gray and here we have a leg running down, a quite large FEMA there and lying . Right next to it is a huge spearhead dating from approximately 525 to 550 AD. and this type of larger spear you'll see in the Anglo-Saxon world when the team takes aim at some of the other tombs they are rewarded with.

Even more exotic finds we have this fairly well preserved skeleton of an adult woman on her hip, it has the remains of an ivory bag ring and this surrounded the mouth of a kind of cloth bag that would have hung from one hip and inside it . There were all kinds of artifacts. Ivory was a red commodity in Anglo-Saxon Britain, but this is not the first ring to be discovered here. Last year we found an elephant ivory bag ring and a little over a week after the excavation we found two more, so what? stage we are at with this Megan we are going to lift up the copper rooch and this other tube and then the sash hanger oh wow I think it is the prettiest one we have so far after 1500 years in the ground the ring is Extremely delicious, beautiful, good work, team and now we lift it, we will send it to the laboratory for analysis, so one of the things we can do, which is quite simple, is to radiocarbon date the Ivory elephant to see how old it is now , if it is a species from the 6th century.

The date probably tells us it comes from Africa, but if it ends up being 10,000 BC, they must be reusing mammoth ivory, so it's pretty easy to prove and pieces of exquisite jewelry are turning up. More female tombs now James has a bead here, a very, very fine little amber bead. Sources of amber are rare in Britain, but a surprising amount of the material is being found here. We're almost done excavating this burial here, um, and it has a The young girl in it and on her forearm is the skeleton of a baby placed over the mother and the baby.

There were a large number of accounts. So far we have almost 500 of them. It's really extraordinary, many of these female skeletons are buried. with elaborate bead necklaces that are quite brilliant, it has been a successful excavation and with so many intriguing discoveries, what can archaeologists tell us about these people and their brilliance? I asked Hugh Wilmot to come into the lab to give me some answers, Hugh, this is amazing. It's completely known, no one knew it was there, oh absolutely, no cemetery has been recorded in this place before. At first we thought it would be some sort of standard sex-and-graveyard graveyard, but it actually turned out to be quite a bit more.

Interesting and simply extraordinary finds. Incredible. You brought some of them here along with one of the skeletons. These finds were actually found associated with this skeleton. Yes, these are some, not all of the finds that were found with this skeleton, but here they are. some of the most diagnostic and some of the largest appear to be very richly furnished tombs. They are extremely richly furnished. Of the 24 tombs we excavated, only one had no artifacts at all which is a very unusual proportion, so she would have been placed in the tomb fully dressed in all of her oh yes, absolutely all of her accessories, what is it? that?

It looks like a small Buckle, well this is where the finds start to get a little more special, yes it is a very unusual design not normally found in Lincolnshire where they are normally found, so well not many buckles have been found like this, but where they were, they were found in Kent or on the south coast of England, oh, really, yes, quite far away. is that one of the amber beads is a small bead, they are quite simple, quite simple, but this is just an example of which we had hundreds, I mean, there seem to be extraordinary numbers in each tomb or at least some of the tombs were just filled with these beads, it's clearly one of the biggest fashion statements of these necklaces and certainly the most visible and we know Amber comes from CU, obviously that's not local, we did that 20 years ago. techniques for the provenance of amber by looking at the type of ivory, you know, we couldn't do that so you had to speculate, but now we can give some concrete answers to some of these questions and this comes from the Baltic, which may not be amazing. because we know that the Baltic is an important supplier of amber and now, what about ivory?

It is likely that it came by a similar path from northern Europe to northern Asia. Well, that's an interesting question because in the past people have speculated that maybe because you have a trade in amber coming from the Baltic and maybe the ivory came in the form of mammoth ivory from Siberia, where it's preserved in the permafrost and such. Maybe the same trade routes are bringing that ivory but we have done radiocarbon dating on this ivory and it is clearly contemporary with the Anglo-Saxon cemetery so it must be an elephant yes because mammoths weren't there at this time extinct for 10,000 years , so you know that this comes from Africa or maybe even from India, and what about the individuals themselves because you can Provence, the amber and the ivory, there is a possibility that it came from these individuals, so do you have any results of that?

We still have it and that's what's so exciting. We have previously speculated where these people may have come from, if you may know locals who have adopted new fashions or have actually emigrated from northern Germany from Denmark. We did an intellectual property analysis on this individual and came up with a pretty surprising result. They are not from Lincoln, but. They're also not from further afield in terms of the other side of the North Sea, this guy grew up on the south coast of Kent, maybe as far as Brighton, that kind of region really does, so isn't it extraordinary? you have that level of biography of someone absolutely you know as a child she lived in the south east and then she moved up north and ended up in Lincolnshire, yeah for me this is where she came from she carries things still goes back to her childhood in Kent absolutely absolutely, so there is a memory that lingers.

Yes, this new discovery in Scramby is revealing some wonderful details of life in the Middle Ages and allowing us to delve deeper into the cultural connections of our Anglo-Saxons. ancestors throughout the British Isles and beyond, our next dig journal takes us to the farthest reaches of northern Scotland, SC and to the remote Isle of Rousey in Orne. The Orne Islands are home to a wealth of well-preserved archeology and Rousey is no exception, having been nicknamed the Egypt of the North, but its sites are often hit by more than their share of bad weather, with aggressive tides that They cause erosion along the coast, but sometimes with destruction comes discovery In 2010, winter storms revealed a line of stones on a beach and an archaeologist realized they might be seeing the first signs of an ancient monument dating back to Britain's oldest civilisation, perhaps even a new jewel in Ory's crown this summer the team are back on site for their eighth season and are led by Steve Doel and Julie Bond of the University Bradford is packed with incredible prehistoric sites and the team already believed they had found something very special here at Ry, a Neolithic tomb dating back more than 4,000 years.

Photographs taken just a few years ago show the circular walls of the monument. The way they built these tombs was to build concentric stone walls, so you end up with a kind of large mound and over the years you end up with something like a green hill, but these rings have now been greatly reduced to rubble. of the monument has already been destroyed by the sea. It's heartbreaking that we're watching this disappear, but it gives us a chance to dig down and pick it apart and really understand how they were built. This golden opportunity should provide invaluable clues about the construction and use of the monument over time before it is lost forever in the waves.

Well, this is the second day the chambered tomb has been discovered. We're a little worried about how much is still left. Why this passage is still here. It is seen from the angle as If some of the lower parts might have disappeared once they have removed the protective stones placed over the site, the team has reached the well-built walls of the Tomb, the wall descends towards the beach, curves forming a huge Ark and it comes. Again this appears to be the entrance and as they dig down the passage the archaeologists uncover some tantalizing clues about the internal construction of the tomb, my Lord look at that, that is huge, as they have returned to this area, here, huge big stones. from a well and they are absolutely huge, we are talking about something before they broke that would be this wide, so it has to be the roof of something lenal of something that is really interesting, these enormous slabs would have spanned the width of the hallway and They remind us that our Neolithic ancestors were expert engineers.

The team wants to locate the central area of ​​the Tomb, so this year they were given the opportunity to move further into the earth, but it has already thrown them a monumental curveball while the team was digging. Through the upper central layers of Main they come across evidence that just doesn't add up, someone seems to have turned this tomb into a home, but this is this year's surprise, this is what we didn't expect, it seems we have done it. We have an Iron Age house right at the top of the Tomb. You can see that there are a series of Shining Stones circling an ark and then there is another fairly large wall coming this way.

This new evidence suggests that the Neolithic tomb housed the dead more than 4,000 years ago and then became a home for the living 2,000 years later. The new circular feature indicates that this is an Iron Age roundhouse built deep into the central parts of the monument. The insertion of this younger building into the original structure is a revelation to archaeologists who now believe that this was not the only new construction in the area in another trench just a few meters from the tomb entrance, the tomb has uncovered another structure built of stone and has a surprising variety of features.

Yes, this is architecturally very characteristic of a Pictish building that is approximately between 500 and 900 AD. We have a staircase leading down and into the building. We have a central hearth, but more importantly, around it we also have really black layers. filled with charcoal and other materials and two anvil stones placed next to the middle. Surprisingly, what archaeologists have discovered is an Iron Age or Pictish Scottish blacksmith's workshop more than a thousand years old and, as they excavate the final layers, they discover evidence of extremely rare early antiquity. industrial activity, including copper working, we would expect all settlement sites to have evidence of blacksmithing, but finding a building that is a workshop dedicated to copper working is exceptional, we would normally only expect to find such a site in sites of very , very high status and in larger areas.

Urban Settlements As the team searches the final sections of the Blacksmith Shop, they receive one more surprise: there are greasy finger stains on one of the Anvil's stains, an incredible link that takes us directly to the blacksmith who worked on this building over a thousand years ago. . Julie Bond and Steve Dockrell enter the lab to tell me more about this extraordinary place. This is an incredibly complicated site. We have excavated sites in the northern ises before so we knew they were complex, but this is an older order. I think it's amazing. The best thing about this place is that it was a real hub of activity.

I think it must have been a very busy place and the archeology there is quite remarkable. We got settlements over these long periods of time and what about the reuse of it? Neolithic tomb, it seems very strange that people from the Iron Age come and I just want to build their houses on one side, it may be because it is a ready source of carved stone, it may also have something to do with the identity and ownership of that part of the landscape maybe they have an interest in what happened before that it's not just about using the stone that they are close to the ancestors maybe close to the ancestors and then you have evidence of metal work, this is probably part of the tower, which It is usually basically a piece of stone or a block of clay with the bellows attached to protect it from fire, so that it can pump air into your house to raise the air.temperature, yes.

In fact, we know where Smith was sitting and where the person working the bellows was sitting in that little building, yes, yes, I see how they have lived their lives in those places and I see where people have knelt. I, that's true, I was surprised by that. In fact, it must be a very rare find. I mean you can see those fingerprints there and you can see these charcoal stains where we think Smith would have kneeled against them, yes this is a beach cobble that has been used as Hammerstone and they are incredibly strong so they are anvils ideal, yes, and we only found these finger marks when we cleaned it, it was totally invisible when we were digging it.

How would they have survived? It would have been a

dark

metal, it would have shined. It has been hot, smoky, a lot of charcoal, a lot of sweat, a little grease and together staining the stone. I don't think I've ever had such a vivid understanding of how someone used to build. We can actually reconstruct exactly how people operated. so it's quite unusual for archeology to be able to place people in the kind of place that people who come to Walky would have heard about, would have known that it was a road, that there is a gateway to the Atlantic. go in that direction and that's all you have in front of you, yes it's the Atlantic, turn left and you're heading towards the rest of Scotland and across the islands towards Ireland, turn right, right, you'll you head to Scandinavia and of course that was it.

Important in the Viking period, this gate works both ways because the Vikings we know certainly settled nearby, possibly on this site because the first generation Vikings were buried near this site, so it's a bit tempting, isn't it? So? Sailing around this wonderful place with your you know, with your own copper Smith and all these signs of wealth and you're a Viking on a long ship. Are you going to leave that alone? These new discoveries in Rousey show that they are far from a remote group. of orne islands was a vibrant and busy center that was occupied by wave after wave of people for thousands of years through prehistory at the national museum of scotland have more evidence of this activity The Collection Center houses some 12 million objects and Among them is an artifact that speaks to the importance of Ory in Dur during the center of a maritime network that continues into the Viking period.

The westernmost brooch was found in 1963 in a Viking burial not far from the Neolithic tomb at Rousy that I met. Dr. Adrien Malardo, an expert on the Early Middle Ages, will tell me more about this exquisite object, so Adrian, all of these objects come from the same tomb and normally I would be fascinated by these beautiful brooches, but they are slightly overshadowed by Not only is this amazing object the finest example of a brooch of its type, but the entire tomb is the richest female Viking burial in Scotland. Filigree technology, that sort of gold dots on beaded wire, something we're getting from Anglo-Saxon metalworking at the moment and which was later adopted into Irish and Scottish metalworking.

Here you can see the head of some kind of creature with a beak. and then you have this amazing kind of wolf head or some kind of ferocious creature, yeah, do we know anything else about it? Do we know where it came from? I mean, did he live in Orne or was he from somewhere else? Now, this is interesting. One of the things they have been able to do is test the teeth of the females in the West Nest Cemetery to see if they were local or not and what came out of this is that they are not from orne, but they are from somewhere in the British Isles , either from Eastern Britain, Loland Britain or Loland Ireland, so they are not local to them.

People from outside are settling in orne at that time, they are creating new settlements and sometimes continuing with older ones, says orne. It was a great place to be, it was right in the center of this Viking world, absolutely if you are involved in long distance maritime trade, the ory is where you want to be. Discoveries like this from the Viking Age show how archeology can change the history of Britain and revise our understanding of life in the past. Our final dig takes us to the town of Sufed, where archaeologists are delving into the heart of the British industrial revolution to discover the largest prison in Georgian England.

The site of the new Bailey Prison lies on the edge of the River Irwell in an area linked to the heavy industrialization of Suf which began over 200 years ago when Salford's industry flourished its population expanded and crime increased throughout its Zenith The new Bailey prison was the largest in the country and could hold 750 prisoners now an excavation offers an unprecedented opportunity to discover what the lives of those prisoners were like during the Industrial Revolution as part of a major regeneration of the sulf. Archaeologists are having the opportunity to reach back through the centuries and reveal evidence of a radical new approach to Crime and Punishment at The site is a team from the University of Sford led by Rachel Rer and Mike Nel.

They are currently in their fifth and final year and Digging for Britain has been following them all the way. The Excavation focuses on the expansion of the prison in the late 1820s and the preservation looks good what we are seeing is how these buildings were built in reality the foundations are surviving two even 3m deep in some places which is brilliant and Even better is that these new discoveries aren't even documented on the plans. This is all underground, so we certainly had no idea this was here, we're finding those little extras that help tell the story of this site.

Further exploration of the foundations has uncovered hints that the prisoners may have been allowed some surprising Creative Amenities. Oh blind, there it is, so we find what looks like remains of a heating system, which is very unusual, completely unexpected, not on the maps and Andy thinks he's discovered where the main boiler was located. You have a staircase, so the stairs went down here. your access to your boiler room this is probably part of the fire pit under the boiler itself the heat would have increased which would have been flu getting into the other cells and there is Coca Cola it is a great indication of what are really doing there. just further proof that we definitely have a heating system here and the heating is not what one would expect to find in a prison of this age.

We know that the poorer working classes were actually better fed and better cared for in this prison. than they would have been in the industrialized slums in the 1840s, but despite being heated some of the cells became increasingly cramped, probably no more than two by two MERS, here they would have had to sleep more than one person, possibly up to three people. At one point, as the local population expanded and crime increased, the number of prisoners eventually became overwhelming. Ultimately the prison holds many more people than it was originally designed for, so this was recognized in the 1860s as unviable due to urban developments.

The prison could not expand and finally closed in 1868, giving way to the larger prisons of an even more brutal Victorian era. I invited Rachel Rita and Mike Neville to the laboratory to discuss their discoveries and discover more about prison life at New Bailey during the Industrial Revolution, this is an incredible opportunity to excavate a prison starting in the Geano period and continuing through to the Victorian period. The prison was built in a time of improvement and Enlightenment. This is a new type of prison building. It is one of the first of its kind in the UK and you discovered many things that were not in the plans.

What was the most surprising thing for you? I think the discovery of a heating system in the cells, which was completely unexpected, was not in the plans and that's part of the flu, it's absolutely yes, yes, so there were several of these built into a wall and basically they would have directed the hot air from this boiler to the cells. How effective it was, we don't really know. but we got it, we got it, which was fantastic and in terms of what life was like for the prisoners, it can't have all been a bed of roses, surely living in a prison like that isn't designed to be a Bed of Roses no? , not at all, I mean, we know from the records that some of those who were sentenced to hard labor had to work on the treadmill and we know that they climbed about 20,000 feet a day, which is 2/3 the height of Everest and now initially it was actually connected to a mill that ground lumber for D, which was then blacked out and sold to local mills, but it was eventually disconnected, so we know they were escalating that. with absolutely no purpose and what happens to the population in the prison?

Who would have been there? What kind of representative sector of society would we have had men and women? We would have even had children here. I think the records show that the youngest children who would have been around 9 10 years old, well, you have to remember that these are petty criminals, they are not mass murderers, which they are not, they are not people who have committed a serious crime, It's petty theft, it's petty theft. on the streets it is laziness now, that means they are from the poorest part of the working population of Sford and Manchester and we have some comments from women who burst into tears when they are about to be released from prison and face returning. to those kinds of slum conditions, yes, and their excavations have shown that at least they were in a place that, as you know, was heated during the winter.

This fascinating excavation has allowed us to go beyond the written record, discovering a revolutionary and more human form. insight into the criminal system in the 18th century that is often hidden from view, from discovering a lost World War II plane and the tragic story of its brave pilot to glimpses of an incredibly well-preserved Iron Age village long occupied More than 2,500 years, we have been able to go back through the centuries and touch the lives of our ancestors