Digging for Britain

We might be a small island,

but we've got a big history.

Everywhere you stand,

there are worlds beneath your feet.

And so every year,

hundreds of archaeologists across Britain

go looking for more clues.

Who lived here, when, and how?

You can even see the architecture of the bone

inside the jaw there.

Archaeology is a complex jigsaw puzzle

drawing together everything from skeletons to swords,

temples to treasure.

She's got a very cartoonlike face, hasn't she?

From Orkney to Devon, were joining this year's quest

on sea, land, and air.

We'll share all of the questions

and find some of the answers

as we join the teams in the field

digging for Britain.

From Roman times... The mystery of a man

buried facedown on a bed of meat,

a fabulous treasure trove of coins

dedicated to ancient gods...

...and the shocking evidence of 97 murdered babies

buried beneath this field.

I'm heading towards a place close to Hadrian's Wall

where archaeologists are finding signs

of that Roman influence writ large.

This narrow road with its passing places

is known locally as the Stanegate.

It's one of hundreds of similar roads

which crisscross this part of northern England.

But what makes this one stand out is that it was

once the northern frontier of the entire Roman Empire.

And guarding the central section of the Stanegate...

that important east-west supply route...

was the fort of Vindolanda.

Each year from April to mid-September,

an army of over 500 archaeology volunteers

comes here from all over world.

And every week they make new discoveries.

What you've got there, John, is a beautiful,

great big, dark-blue glass melon bead.

And there's a bit of a debate about those

because some people think that Roman soldiers

just simply wore these as decorations

or ladies wore them as decorations.

It's a very, very corroded lump of metal.

But what we've actually got here is the back of the helmet,

by the looks of things.

It's very, very badly bashed,

but you sort of see it in the side profile.

This is the neck guard at the back,

and this is the start of the top of the helmet coming up.

Vindolanda has been excavated for over 40 years,

but they estimate they've only uncovered 15% of it

and that it would take another 150 years to finish the job,

which is utterly remarkable

because the site as it stands is absolutely massive.

Vindolanda was bought in 1929

by the renowned archaeologist Professor Eric Birley.

His grandson Andrew is now its director of excavations.

The Romans built four forts here

by the time Hadrian's Wall was built, so...

Really? So the first ones predate the wall?

Predate the wall by a good 40 years.

And they're a long way down.

They're seven or eight meters beneath where we're standing.

And would they have been stone built?

No, the first six forts here are built in timber

and the last three in stone.

And so they knock them down, build them up,

knock them down, build them up very, very quickly.

So in perhaps only 125 years you get the landscape

really shooting up to the fort we're standing in at the moment.

So this is the last fort.

There is an enormous amount of it still in place.

It's because nine forts have been built

right on top of each other here

that so much archaeological evidence survives.

In just the last couple of weeks,

the team working here have uncovered

this wonderful flagstone street

which leads from the northern gate of the fort

straight up to the headquarters building.

And the stones are really worn with centuries of use,

and you can just imagine

the sound of those hobnail boots

as the Roman soldiers marched in and out of the fort.

As well as the excavations

within the walls of the stone fort,

this year a separate team is working in the vicus,

the civilian village

which lies just outside the garrison

here at Vindolanda.

So, what are you excavating here?

Well, it's all part of the garrison settlement

that sprang up outside the last stone fort

that was built at Vindolanda.

So it's a combination of sort of workshops, shops and houses,

sort of wagon parks and trading areas,

to supply and sort of, you know,

link in with the fort there.

So it was a bit like retail world outside there.

Had all sorts of shops flanking the roads.

Little bit of evidence for a pub as well.

We had a building on there where we found a room

right on the street front there,

and inside that room all the artifacts that were found

were basically drinking beakers and gaming counters.

- Fantastic. - Yeah.

It's one of those sites where you can almost be there.

You can virtually hear the Romans when you're digging

because there's so many artifacts coming from the ground

and you've got all these buildings

that are in really super condition.

For the past three weeks

Justin and his team have been working on a cobbled roadway

which ran through the heart of the Roman village.

We've been really very lucky with this one

because we actually got some super dating evidence

because trapped in among the cobbles we actually found

a little silver denarius of Severus Alexander

which was minted in A.D. 222.

So, of course, because it was trapped in the road surface,

it means that the road surface can't really have been made

before that coin was minted.

So we've got a super date for it.

Just beside the Roman fort is the conservation area

where the daily finds are taken to Barbara Birley and her team.

Are all of these artifacts coming out this year?

Most of them are, yes.

Oh, this is amazing, this little griffin.

Just pull it out and have a little bit closer look.

You can see it's got the fabulous wings here,

and you can actually just make out the detail of the feathers.

And then he's got the hindquarters there of a lion.

And the Romans had a lot of superstitious beliefs.

They felt that this type of being would have been very good

for protecting maybe something precious

and things like gold or treasure.

So we know that he's a little statue,

but we don't know what he was possibly guarding.

The village of Hambleden, near the Thames,

has always been a desirable place to live...

even so, it seems, for the Romans, who built villas here.

I'm just up from the river now.

I'm walking along on the edge of this beautiful field

which seems to be growing some kind of cereal crop,

but it's not the crop I'm interested in at all.

It's what's in the ground underneath it.

Almost exactly a hundred years ago,

this woman, Miss Glassbrook,

was walking along in this very same field

and started to find some strange pieces of pottery...

very much like these ones...

and she decided they were worth further investigation.

Miss Glassbrook approached a local archaeologist,

who in 1912 would make an extraordinary discovery

beneath the soil in this Buckinghamshire field.

The archaeologist Alfred Cocks had discovered the foundations

of a high-status Roman villa which he would call Yewden.

Over the course of a year,

Cocks would excavate and photograph the villa

while collecting the finds.

But in doing so he would uncover a dark secret

which is still troubling archaeologists

almost a century later.

The main villa house is what we see in this photograph.

And there's a little bump in the middle of the field here.

And the bump is entirely due

to that building beneath the surface.

But it's quite nice.

You can work out where you are,

and you know it's that bump because you can actually see

the scene in front of you.

You've got that house there

which has got a white front on it,

a white gable end.

It's now pebble-dashed, isn't it?

- That's it, isn't it? - That's right.

- This is a huge excavation. - It is massive.

He had to have a huge team of laborers to dig this.

It was all by hand.

It's all by shovel and wheelbarrows,

and so that would have been a huge labor force

and an enormous cost.

So this is all still there underneath that wheat?

Still there.

Just it's got all the backfill,

then the soil layer reinstated,

and of course crops on it for evermore.

For many years, the finds from Yewden Roman villa

were kept in a special museum at Hambleden.

But when that closed in the 1950s,

they were moved to Buckinghamshire County Museum

in Aylesbury, where, appropriately enough,

Alfred Cocks was once curator.

Cocks published his results in 1921.