Archaeologists Discover 101 Iron Age Remains In Mass Grave | Digging For Britain | Unearthed History

Britain has an epic

history

, but within it there are a wealth of untold secrets yet to be

discover

ed. It is a truly key find of the week, which is why every year hundreds of

archaeologists

set out to look for clues to solve the mystery of who we are and where we have arrived. I come from We just found this amazing pendant over the last year. His

discover

ies have been more exciting than ever. This series will explore the best of them. I just found a coin that oh Mar brought you from the field in a very special way.

I think I already have it. Each excavation has been filmed for us as it happened by the

archaeologists

themselves. It looks absolutely fantastic. I bet he had a bad day when he never bought them. Their excavation diaries mean we can be there at every crucial moment of the Discovery. Wow, we have! a winner here I think it's amazing that our archaeologists are joining us here in our special laboratory to take a closer look at their findings and find out what they really mean. It's very exciting, welcome to dig into Britain in this episode we're exploring. discoveries from northern Britain that change what we know about the

history

of this island We rush to discover the earliest origins of Scotland's early kingdoms.

I think I understood it. We are there for the find of a lifetime that reveals the true extent of Viking power. oh, we have a winner here and a new housing development reveals the

mass

ive

grave

yard of warriors whose people may have marched from Europe to settle in Yorkshire? It seems absolutely fantastic, these discoveries are rewriting our history to discover what archaeologist Matt Williams and I have been like. Given special access to Yorkshire Museum, his collection tells the story of the North and the people who settled here, the Gilling sword, and we go behind the scenes to the back rooms that ordinary visitors simply can't see.

You get lost here. Star Car days a globally significant archaeological site, excavations began here in 1948 and have revealed an 11,000-year-old stone AG settlement. The entire site covers 5 acres. Discoveries at Star Car include the

remains

of Britain's oldest house, ancient tools and early carpentry. In Europe, finds like these have shown how our Stone Age ancestors lived,

digging

for Britain. I first visited the site in 2011, when I discovered that the team's work had become a race against time. The ground in Star Car was turning acidic and destroying evidence, so that's something. antler of the original excavations on the S side, so when would it have been excavated? 1950 1950 This antler has been preserved in almost perfect condition, but the elements that were extracted from the ground 60 years later have deteriorated drastically, it is like a piece of rubber, it is basically because The water table has fallen drastically, allowing oxygen enters the tanks and that has created a chemical reaction that, as our specialist told us, is a bit like the acid in a car battery.

It's shocking to see how the acid attacks the Star Car and shows how urgent the work done by Nikki and her team really is, but now they are finally running out of time, as six decades of research on Star Car comes to an end and they wait. Solve one last mystery and reveal the true meaning of this site. For our Stone Age ancestors was Star Car just a settlement or the clues show it was something much more. This is his excavation diary. From the first day it was clear that the soil had become even more acidic.

It is actually very fragile. This is one of the problems we have and this part is actually turning to jelly, the chances of finding well preserved artifacts seem slim, after a couple of weeks the archaeologist dug another trench where noticeably the ground conditions were very different and exceptional preservation simply turns us around. I'm just clearing this area behind me and it's incredibly exciting. We have an area absolutely packed with bones, flint and wood that we haven't seen anywhere else on the site or in the rest of the trenches we've had. a real problem, we have had very acidic conditions, which has meant that the bone and the horn have disappeared, so this is a really amazing insight into what people were doing on the lake shore here, people are placing bones , antlers and wood in this area.

But why would people have deliberately placed these materials here 11,000 years ago? A few days later, another notable discovery could be a clue. It's a deer. It's a deer. Yes, it's a group of deer skulls. It's a really amazing example. There are many on this site. but this one is very robust, you can see the antlers here sticking out of the main skull and it's also associated with a couple of deer skulls, one here and one here, so we'll clean it up a little more and then we'll be. Lifting it very carefully and taking it to the conservation laboratories, this discovery is new evidence supporting a growing theory explaining the wealth of deer skulls in Star Car.

These have been made into headdresses from deer skulls and we believe that They were possibly used by Shamans wearing them on their heads as part of ritual practices. It's just amazing to think that 11,000 years ago someone could have had one of these on their head. Even more partial deer skulls have been discovered in recent days, but can they? They really are ritual headdresses. I'm in the vaults of York museum to see the evidence for myself. Can we open it? We can see it's like Christmas, so this is the last one, so it's just the top of the skull.

Basically, we have lost. We've got the entire nose and upper jaw down here, so it's just this upper M part with the atlas attached and that's one of the first clues that tells us that this is probably not just a piece of a deer skull that was found in the ground has been worked by human hands for a particular purpose. If it's a deer in its prime, a big deer, it would have very large antlers and they've been clipped back, and what that does is it effectively does this. much lighter, almost a cap-type shape, if you think about a hollowed-out skull, it's almost a cap-type shape, so one of the other features that we see and we certainly see in other frontals that have been found are these piercings, these circular ones. piercings that show through the skull um now these piercings could be for senu or for the cord to pass through, it suggests that this could be something that has been worked by human hands to be worn on the head and it is also very important that this is No is a unique item, it is one of many that have been found in Star Car or there have been just over 20 similar items found in Star Car, so this is not unique and they all seem to be treated the same, so Although perhaps a group of objects that are used for a very specific purpose and made in a very specific way, archaeologists believe that it is likely that these skulls were actually used as ritual headdresses along with the large number of antler votive offerings. and bone, the fins suggest that the star car was More than just a settlement at the Dig, on day 40, the team makes another notable and exceptionally rare discovery that also hints at the star car's ritual significance.

We actually just found this amazing pendant that actually has artwork on it, it's very rare to find. something like this there are only a few works of art from this country and very few from all of Europe it is a very classic mesolithic it has geometric lines an 11,000 year old pendant lots of bones and antlers Nikki thinks this could be evidence that the car star It had sacred meaning and we're really starting to think that these things were not only lost, but maybe they were some kind of votive offerings that were placed at this particular location.

A piece of mystical art is an extraordinary find anywhere in Europe. Can't. I can't wait to hear what this can tell us about Star Car. It was very exciting when I heard you would find this. I didn't quite believe it, Nikki. I must say you must have been excited to find that on your site. The more we look at it and analyze it, the more exciting it becomes because Mesolithic art is incredibly rare, especially in this country, and to find something like this is truly spectacular. I can certainly see it. a little bit of detail here, but you also have this enlarged image that really highlights it, don't you have these longer sized grooves, but a lot of little grooves and a lot of detail here a rendition that I quite like at the moment is that we could have a tree here, so that's the trunk and these are the branches that come out of it and I think I'm interested in that because, again, for shamans, sometimes trees can be holy, they unite different parts of the spiritual world and possibly there is something like that.

The interpretation of the pendants in Denmark, where they are usually made of amber, is that they could be amulets and therefore are protecting the person wearing them, during the six decades we will say that excavations have been carried out at Starov, which has contributed to our knowledge of the mystics in Britain because we have opened up such a large area that we have a much better understanding of how people lived there, we have houses, huts on the dry lands, we have large platforms made of wood on the edge of the lake with all these bones and headdresses and stuff around it and we think this could actually be something pretty special.

The place in the landscape is at the mouth of the lake and when people went up the river, it is the first place they come to when they reach the lake, so maybe it is like an entrance where certain interesting rituals and activities take place. . The modified deer point to votive offerings and now this exceptionally rare piece of Stone Age art gives us an extraordinary insight into life in Britain 11,000 years ago. The Star Car tracks not only tell us about everyday survival, but also allow us a precious glimpse into the spiritual and artistic aspects of the mystical life.

The amazing discoveries on the Star Card are the work of dedicated professionals, but sometimes we have to thank the devotion, enthusiasm and luck of a group of amateurs who uncover the past with exclusive ancient history documentaries and ad-free podcasts. Brought to you by world-renowned historians Watch on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device Download the app now To explore everything from the wonders of Pompeii to the Buddha Rebellion and the mysteries of prehistoric Scotland, immerse yourself in the captivating stories of this remarkable time by registering through the link in the description. Metal detectorists are a special breed who spend hours scaring the countryside and beaches in search of treasure and very, very occasionally they find some, now a horde of treasures buried in the ground far from humans.

Settlements or other signs of human activity alone can only give us limited information, but sometimes the objects themselves tell a story, as in the case of this Viking horde at Dumfree in western Scotland, where an enthusiastic metal detector He spent months of his time researching a particular object. field what derek mclennen found was the discovery of his life that reveals the extensive connections of the vikings. It was harvest time so there were bales of hay in the field and I was going up and down towards a particular bail and then I decided I changed course and moved to another bail.

I received a signal that was very weak and sounded like

iron

. But I thought, well, I've already dug 30 nails, so one more nail won't hurt me, and I put in. Then I put the shovel in the ground and pulled out the CLA and noticed something shining in the hole. I put my hand in it, it was pretty deep and when I pulled it out I saw it was silver. I rubbed it with my thumb and instantly saw the Sal. The tire design I knew from my research was a Viking symbol. Derek realized the importance of his find, so he immediately called the local authorities and they sent an archaeologist to help with the excavation.

What they discovered together was truly astonishing: a horde of Viking arm rings and gold ingots but there was more oh wow a large Christian cross do we have a winner here its impressive decorations were revealed for the first time in a thousand years at that moment my senses burst out and the excitement and joy of what I discovered really hit me? For me, but there were even more treasures to come, including this beautiful vessel still wrapped in protective cloth, the Viking h of the decade. I believe the Vikings were pagan invaders who came from Scandinavia to attack Britain and establish their own kingdoms here in 793 AD.

The find could reveal new insights into this turbulent chapter in British history, so it has been handed over to a team from Historic Scotland for analysis. When they lifted the lid of the pot, there were even more treasures inside to discover what theequipment. Modern scanning technology and that has quite a bit of density, yeah, and then there's a layer of dense material right at the bottom, here you can see it's got a lattice there, let's just see if we can get through it and take a look at some of the others. objects revealed by the scans.

Rings, brooches and other pieces of fine jewelry packed inside the pot. Excavating and preserving them has taken months, almost a year after making their remarkable discovery. Derek has come to see for himself the treasures that lie within that are difficult to put into words. I am absolutely stunned and by the amount of artifacts coming out of the pot and textiles, everything is so carefully wrapped and packaged, it shows that even 1200 years ago these objects were highly coveted and cared for, this horde is full of riches. and mystery, brings the Viking world to life and shows that there was more to these legendary warriors than just attacking Richard.

I think the appropriate response is wow, this is amazing, what a beautiful collection, it's quite something, isn't it? and it is wonderful. Everything is arranged like this in particular. The treasure has been created from a silver coin that gives a clue about the date and origins of the horde. There is the word Rex, yes, and if you come back here you can start with co e n Wu l f Cohen wolf Cohen wolf Rex Cohen wolf was the Viking king. of Meria in the Midlands, he ruled from 796 to 821 AD. C., leading experts to believe that this is when the Horde dates back to a period when Viking raids on Britain intensified, so do you think this is Viking loot that has been gathered and buried in soil?

I can't help but start to speculate that this is some form of Viking raiding loot, why would someone who was a devout Christian bury things like that wonderful cross? This cross is well, yes, it is exceptional and a beautiful and wonderful simple form of the Celtic cross with um, what we think of the four apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is not so wonderful. Can you see the saint's head there? Yeah, well, that's straight out of Kel's manuscript book. It is wonderful and the cross is. As you know, the wonderful cross of St. John on Iona, for example, is quite typical.

This cross is typical of treasures looted by the Vikings from the Christian monasteries of Britain and Europe, but further clues in The Horde show that the Vikings were not only interested in raids they were also motivated by trade. This porch at the top of this series of eight glass beads of various shapes is beautiful, some of them fastened with clasps with metal or silver fixings, but there seems to be a variety of objects and of different styles coming from different places coming from France, Anglo-Saxon styles and Viking styles, so what is this object here? So, Richard, we believe that what you see among the gold bra is a glass container of some description nestled inside very thin leather.

Bag of this extraordinary, sumptuous silk, a Semitic silk from the Far East or the Middle East, it's something very precious and very special, wrapped in something that was very, very exotic. Eastern treasures like this remind us that the Vikings were more than simple. By the raids of the 11th century, the Vikings' vast trading network extended across Europe beyond Constantinople to Baghdad. They were a trading superpower that interacted with cultures from all over the known world, but the Vikings were not the first foreign power to colonize Britain, the Romans began. Its conquest centuries earlier, in 43 AD, the story of Rome's 400-year rule is well known, but what happened here after the fall of the Roman Empire

remains

a mystery.

The end of Roman rule in Britain plunged us into the Middle Ages for several dark centuries during which there are few written records and indeed finding archaeological evidence from this time period is relatively rare, but a team of archaeologists are hoping to get lucky. with a new excavation at an abandoned Roman military fort near Lancaster. This is the famous Roman fort at Ribchester, where a team is searching for evidence to explain what happened in Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire and to reveal whether we really fell into centuries of chaos, often thought of as the Middle Ages.

They start by excavating the Roman road that runs through the fort and they get their The first intriguing clue has just cleaned the surface of this Roman road and we've just discovered that it's being stolen, which is really interesting. The road appears to have been dismantled after the Roman occupation and the heavier stones were removed from there. Really nice insight into the operations of the fort pretty much after the Romans left because they are destroying their infrastructure to build buildings and taking that material somewhere else, so what were these Dark Age Britons building with this stone and Where does the team think they found the first clues? the other end of the fort at the beginning of week three, uh, and we have big chunks of mosaic and that deeper orange is the stolen h road and that fiery orange element there suggests that we have some sort of workshop activities going on inside that building.

The scorched orange Earth suggests that this was the site of an arson fire after the collapse of the Roman administration, but this fire appears to be on an industrial scale, making it possible that there was evidence of manufacturing and further excavations revealed what they may have been doing. . That is fantastic. fantastic piece of evidence, really good stuff, it's really good evidence that manufacturing here involved glass, a bit of glass runoff, uh, probably from recycling old containers and things like that, it's a really key find of the week . Thank you very much, we sometimes think that Dark Ages Britain was extremely backward, but with this glass and signs of an industrial fire, this excavation could be revealing something very different.

Britain's conversion of an ancient Roman fort into workshops is new evidence of an era of enterprise and further finds offer further clues to this new post-Roman British economy. I just found a coin, oh marus, that's right, it's a small Roman coin from the 3rd or 4th century. Wonderful, here we go, the team finds over 20 more coins, all in roughly the same way. Now that Duncan has brought these and other finds to our laboratory, we hope they can tell us how this fort was used after the collapse of Roman rule and shed light on the truth about Britain in the Middle Ages.

Well, let's say we found. 22 coins when we're

digging

there, um, on those very top surfaces, um, so I think this is the end of the Roman use of the fort. Can we see some of these coins? Bring this so we can see them. a little more clearly, the head on that side is barely visible, isn't it? It's almost smooth, barely visible exactly, we're seeing a lot of wear and use, that's happening too, but this is a Roman coin that's the emperor. that a Valentinian is the emperor on that coin, so it was minted between 364 and 378, but Duncan believes that these coins were deposited perhaps two centuries later and are badly worn, suggesting that they may have been used long after that ended Roman rule in Britain in 410. and I think, given that we have all that, these coins were probably in circulation for quite a long time, certainly after seeing the collapse of a sort of Roman administration, really, the coins and the Ceramics are no longer created in the same volumes or in everything as they were before, but the people who live in these forts and in these types of Roman landscape places almost certainly remain there, so they continue to use quite a bit of this material culture and certainly I think you know we shouldn't.

Seeing this as an absolute point, we should not say that you know that in 410 AD. C., the Romans left. What is happening is part of an ongoing decline or transformation. It's probably a better way to think of it as something completely different without a post-Roman military government. Society in Britain would certainly have been more dangerous, but this new evidence suggests it may have been more sophisticated than we thought, so the person who dropped this coin here, for example, what was he doing in the ? from different manufacturing activities, so we have the glass that you can see there, we have the weights, we have coins for trade and exchange, we believe we have tanning pits and we believe we have evidence of

iron

manufacturing. too, but wouldn't you expect those things to be present in a Roman fort?

Not necessarily not, when you get to the 4th century it becomes a pretty dangerous place if you're moving large amounts of goods and valuable things around the north of Britain you're probably going to be attacked, there's probably a lot of bandits around that sort of thing. , so I suspect that as we begin to see the collapse of that administration of the safety nets that exist, then we will see that the fabrication to support the fort and begin to take place within itself, these findings show that we were wrong to Think of the Middle Ages as a period of chaos and total decline in Britain.

Archeology suggests that, in fact, this was a new era of ingenuity when Britain began. their own trades and industries and built a new society as England rebuilt after the Romans in Scotland, it was a different story here, the first line of Scottish kings were reaching the peak of their power, but today the full story of these rulers of the north remains hidden. In the mystery, the PS were the ancient people of Scotland depicted by history as fearsome painted warriors, feared even by the Romans, while southern Britain fell to the armies of Rome. Here in the north, the Wells were largely undefeated and continued to rule throughout Scotland and the north of England. to the 10th century, but its history is little-known hard evidence of the PS and its Kingdom has been difficult to find now, although a team of archaeologists believe they may have identified the seat of Pictish power.

Here is said excavation diary, some of the Very few clues that the PS left behind are stones with giant symbols, the most famous being the 6' tall scary looking man. These stones seem to be related to Pictish royalty. Archaeologist Gordon Noble has spent his entire career searching for evidence of the Pictish people and is now digging. At a site in eastern Scotland where some of his mysterious symbolic stones have been found, he hopes to unearth the seat of the forgotten Pictish kings. Right here we dare, this is a site where six symbolic stones with images were found in the 19th century.

At the top of the sea stack here only a few people visited the site in the 20th century and they didn't really notice much at the top, but already yesterday was our first ascent, which was quite precarious and scary. We found remains at the top. It is a promising find, but to investigate it thoroughly they will have to make the dangerous climb again. The pile is 60 feet high surrounded by jagged rocks and the North Atlantic of Chile. A strong defensive position for a Pictish warrior tribe, but not the easiest journey. However, for a team of archaeologists, if they have found a Pictish fort, it will all have been worth it, so now we are at the top of the sea stack where the symbolic stones were found.

We are at the bottom of what we believe. It is the fortified site that follows the trail of the Symbol Stones which is worth immediately the first test trench reveals an area of ​​possibly half flat stones, so it seems evidence of actual occupation and activities actually on top of the promise here, as well That's pretty exciting. Lots of charcoal and animal bone fragments, so I hope this gives good evidence of how people used promet in the past. It is a promising start and another trench provides evidence that this site may indeed have been a dwelling or even a fortress.

We're on test pit five right now, so we just opened this up and found a bunch of posthols, we have one that's been being activated and then we discovered four more. here in a row, look over here and there's another possible half of one sitting in the corner here, so this could be part of a building that we don't fully know yet, but we're taking samples from that one, so we'll wait and see what we have for the rest, a postol line suggests a wooden wall and by the fourth day the team has uncovered compelling evidence of a substantial fortification, so we have some pretty interesting results here, we have remains. of large slots here these were for wooden beams and this one here projects from the edge of the cliff to this feature here which is a very large giant hole for a post here uh so it looks like we have both upright uh Timber elements and horizontal wooden elements that create this big wall that encloses the sea stack here, so it's pretty exciting and there's great detail on the construction methods for this ramp.

Here the team has found compelling evidence thatIt was once a fortified site, but to be sure that it belonged to the PS, they will have to radiocarbon date their finds, that St rock seems really difficult to access, presumably it would have been connected to the continent by a more important Causeway, perhaps so we think, we think it was probably a prom Tre in the Pictish period, um, which makes a lot of sense, you wouldn't want to build a a on top of the stack today, certainly, the dating came back with some amazing results, this sea fort dates back to the time of the selections, but incredibly it is 200 years older. than anyone expected um well it's quite interesting the dates of most Pictish forts fall in the 5th and 6th centuries AD when they really seem to reach their peak of construction and use, but this example here we just received the radiocarbon dates and it's actually 3rd and 4th centuries AD, which is really interesting, so it's the oldest example we have so far.

What's more, they think that this fort was just one of a series of coastal defenses built by the PS to defend their territory and we know that these defense closures were deeply involved in royalty, so perhaps we get the first glimpses of that process in the that we have the rise of these first kingdoms in northern Britain, so if this is the rise of the first Pictish kingdoms, what is that that arises from smaller scale societies in the Iron Age certainly, um or certainly a shift towards more lineage-based models where we're getting certain individuals to style themselves as kings and really underscoring their power by building these forts so that they become larger political units, effectively in this period. it's the birth or the first evidence of these uh um essentially what became the first emerging medieval northern European states, so it's a really very important time period.

The discovery of Britain's first Pictish fort is huge, but it is not the seat of Gordon's royal power. He hoped, so he is starting a new excavation at Riny, whose name comes from the Celtic word for king, this is where the Riny man once stood and the site is still marked by another mysterious symbol. Stones. These symbols The stones date back to the 5th and 6th centuries ad um and we have this contemporary complex of monumental enclosures around. this standing stone here this standing stone here the spot of the cross that hopefully you can see there is a salmon here and a picture just Beast also has big long legs here and this snout here and this little main one at the top here The Stone symbol marks the entrance to a huge circular enclosure.

His hunch now is that the scale of this site shows that it was much more significant than Dare Fort, so we are trying to discover a little more of this settlement this year, which is why we have excavated this great place. Trench of approximately 40 m by 35 m to cover more elements of the enclosure complex. This new trench reveals that the circular enclosure was defined by a deep outer ditch and a defensive wooden wall or palisade. Alright, day 12 in Ry, a beautiful summer day, then. We're down here looking at the stockade and the configuration of posts that define the outer boundary of the fort here, so we're getting some really interesting architectural details down here.

We started to find evidence of actual planks and post configurations here and then. To my right here is a whole line of postcards and these seem to respect this outside enclosure here, so we have a big wall with wooden boards on the outside and then big posts on the inside, maybe creating a running platform, a walkway running around the Edge of the fort right here Gordon's team has found evidence of a huge fort, it would have been 60m in diameter and its defensive wall was complex. The team has found the remains of a second wall outside the first that looks horrible, it's starting to look.

Gordon's hunch has paid off. His team may have discovered a royal fortress worthy of Scotland's first kings. The reason this large wooden wall is important is because we know that in this period the psh kings were closely linked to these fortified sites and that appears to be one of the pillars of government and we have had very few excavations of the scale to reveal really this important architectural detail and really the scale of the outer enclosure is really astonishing in this relatively early phase in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Pictish kings are Britain's most mysterious rulers and now Gordon's team has pushed back the date of the rise of their power and discovered what may have been one of their main strongholds - but incredibly that's not all.

Gordon has also uncovered evidence here showing how the Pictish kings were Britain's most mysterious rulers. pish Kings lived and brought it back to our laboratory, so who really lived in a palace like this? I mean a king, what kind of area would he have covered? His family, there would have been an army there. um, well, first of all, I'm. I'm not sure if I call it a palace, I call it some kind of royal complex, it's really okay, um, it's clear that maybe at certain times of the year people live there, we have buildings inside, but at the same time we don't have any evidence real, you know. grinding grain or some of the most everyday tasks.

I think it is more likely that this is a place where kings come at certain times of the year and entertain their followers. Some of the findings reveal that this entertainment was done in a lavish style using imported luxuries. So these things don't look like much, they look like pieces of candy or something, but this is incredibly rare pottery in Britain and Ireland in this period, so it actually comes from, we don't know exactly, but somewhere in the This. Mediterranean, and these would have been great storage in the 6th century AD. or late 5th century, they are probably for storing wine or some other exotic food.

Do you think when they arrived in Scotland they still had wine? There, I hope, I can't imagine why else they would have gone so far, so these are the most northerly examples found in Britain, Ireland so far, and they are reaching very far inland, so the Pictish kings of Riny are getting A bit of a taste for Mediterranean luxuries, yes, it's amazing to think that actually high-status Pictish people were sitting on a river, drinking Mediterranean wine in the 6th century, it's a pretty fantastic image, isn't it? There's more going on at Riny than just a good dinner, the team also found signs of a ritual offering of cattle bones and teeth buried in a hole just below a spot where Gordon believes the Riny man once stood.

It is another clue to the ritual significance of the fort. It's not the most defensible location, most of the forts in this time period are in Promises or the Hills, so this is a more Len location and what we think we have here is that it's using Defense language, but actually maybe there's more going on here. So the Riny man, for example, carries this axxe um and it is believed to be a sacrificial ax for poisoning livestock, so we think there are probably cult dimensions to the site, plus perhaps there were residents at certain times of the year that the team is delving into. mysteries of the selections and have revealed what appears to have been a very ancient royal site, two centuries older than anyone expected to find here, perhaps it was the seat of Pictish power, a royal court with Mediterranean luxuries for Gordon, it is a satisfying conclusion to In his year-long quest for PS in archaeology, some fantastic discoveries occur only after years of painstaking research, others are made by chance and often against the clock, before any project When major construction is underway, developers must first call in archaeologists to study the site and to salvage any archeology that may contain commercial excavations such as this often turn out surprising and exciting finds, as the following excavation diary shows when Archaeologists discovered evidence of one of Britain's most intriguing Iron Age cultures in November 2014 in a small Yorkshire village and a team is beginning an excavation to rescue the archeology of a site where a housing development is planned.

Time is scarce. Excavation needs to be completed so construction can begin, but within days it becomes clear that there is more to this site than anyone had predicted when archaeologists began unearthing. a series of 2000 year old burials known as barrows, right, those are John's three very exciting barrows, now John, would you mind coming and describing your burial? Please, we have a burial crouched on his left side facing east with his head facing north, so you still have a lot to do, oh yeah, well, that's six, six, six burials in this barrel alone, there are two that Mars has that are just to the north, there is a definitive

grave

there and then I see some black spots that are There are still tons to explore to do shiny things.

More and more graves are

unearthed

until it becomes clear that the site for the new development is actually a large Iron Age cemetery and it is such an incredibly rare find that the developers agree to give the archaeologists more time. We are going to begin stripping this area this afternoon. We hope to see an extension of the square cemetery. Obviously there's a lot of anticipation because we still have no idea what's underneath. As burial after burial is revealed, the team realized that their excavations so far only scratch the surface of this extraordinary site. Oh, it looks very good, extremely good.

For months, the team works against the clock until on day 149 they have revealed a staggering 38 square burial mounds within the cemetery. We have square burial mounds of all shapes and sizes, this is the classic representation. 8 m by 6 M with a central tomb, here we have a much smaller one, but still with a central tomb. Cairn tombs like these are usually associated with high-status individuals like this man who has been carefully designed with his shield, yes, it seems. absolutely fantastic if we are right in saying this is a shield then it is quite special yes and Pete should tick it off his list and we came here eight months ago anticipating a couple of square barrows but in fact we have got a graveyard of N age Square Barrow.

We have excavated more than 60 burial mounds and 101 skeletons to date. This vast cemetery was a chance find due to a housing development, but who were the mysterious Iron AG tribe buried here. Only now can analysis begin on the Skeleton of a 25-year-old man buried with a variety of weapons dating back to the IR era. Obviously it is important within his community. It is very likely that he was a warrior who was allowed more rituals than the other burials we have. Seeing as he is an important member of his community and this is the only sword that you have on the site, yes this is the only example, we have other objects that have been found with um within the burial mounds, but that is the only sword that We have an iron blade with a scab still pointing at it made of wood and then the horn handle and these little bits of brass too, yeah, here and here, quite decorative on the top, it would have been really decorative yeah, the fine The craftsmanship hinted at a sword that once belonged to someone of high status and the spearheads found next to the body offer further information about the burial given to this high-ranking man along with the sword-wielding person who had been buried with several spears that they can be seen. around his body and they had not been placed, they were simply placed randomly inside the tomb.

Can you imagine people throwing them into the grave? That's what we think as part of their ritual, that they were standing on top of the grave and they were placing these spears inside the grave, this cemetery is in Yorkshire, but the style of the burials, the contents of the graves and the design of this sword are clearly continental, it is a mysterious phenomenon known as ARIS culture and unique in Britain in the East Yorkshire York museum. extraordinary collection of Aras Treasures that share cultural connections with France and reveal that these Iron Age people revered not only their male warriors but, more notably, their women.

These beads are artistically amazing, aren't they? They are beautiful. They are one of my favorite objects. in these cemeteries and the wonderful thing about this necklace, um, which is found in the grave of a rather elderly woman, we believe that it is made up of many different types of beads, these are eye beads and, on a cross-cultural level, we know that it is a Quite a powerful symbol to protect. out of evil, but these beads come from a different necklace, these are wavy beads again, from another necklace, these I beads have been made in a completely different way than these, so this perhaps suggests that they were not all made at the same time. same time specifically to do thisnecklace so no, I think they come from a variety of different necklaces and maybe as a woman as you enter your later years of life, you're in these beads through mothers and grandmothers, maybe as you go through things like the main Passenger rights. like childbirth and surviving it, something that not all women did, and this is something that you use as a high-ranking female figure in that community that speaks to those connections with your maternal ancestors, so I think it's an extraordinary object that talk about that biography of your connections and the families you're a part of and how the arest culture specifically fits into what's going on around it.

I mean, does it fit in with the rest of the Iron Age culture in the area? It's peculiar because there are very few other people buried their dead at this time, so the Barrow square cemeteries phenomenon is really unique, it has connections to the mainland, that's where you might expect to see that kind of Barrow um, so it's possible that the idea is brought by someone important or powerful, so for all intents and purposes our locals are at least first or second generation. The discovery of the Aris Cemetery was unexpected and extraordinary; offers us tantalizing evidence of our links to the continent on the Iron.

Age and to a possible mysterious tribe of ancient immigrants who came from Europe to settle in the heart of Yorkshire 2,000 years ago from Arisk to Star Car archeology can reveal how our ancestors lived and what they thought while, from the Scottish kings who built a new kingdom to Dark AG British who built a new way of life. It can illuminate worlds we never thought we could know to reveal ancient people with new ideas who laid the foundation for our modern r.