Digging for Britain

Hello, and welcome to "Digging For Britain,"

the program which brings you this year's

most exciting new archeology.

In this show, we'll be looking at highlights

from all the digs.

We'll get some in-depth analysis

and we'll be looking at treasures from the past.

- Hey! - Hey!

Once again, over the last year,

archeologists have been unearthing our history

in hundreds of digs across Britain.

Go on!

It's a tooth.

They've gone to extraordinary lengths

to uncover secrets from the past,

re-telling our story in a way that only archeology can.

It's in perfect, mint condition.

- Yeah, amazing. - Well done.

Woo, I was right!

And our archeologists have been out

filming themselves, so we have been there

for every single moment of discovery.

And then we're coming back here, to Norwich Museum,

and seeing if we can really make sense

of the new discoveries.

In this series, we'll be touring the country,

and tonight we're in the southeast.

First, we hear about incredible finds

at a Bronze Age Pompeii in The Fens.

We unearth an amazing hoard hidden in desperation

as Queen Boudica's tribe hunted down the Romans.

And we discover weird burial rituals revealing

the secrets of Anglo-Saxon motherhood and childbirth.

Norwich Castle Museum, originally a Norman fortress,

is now home to the archeological riches of the southeast.

Norfolk is the treasure capital of England,

and each year 20,000 finds are reported to the museum,

more than in any other county.

Finds like the Happisburgh Axe.

Dating to half a million years ago, it comes from what's

become one of the most important

prehistoric sites in Britain.

And the Snettisham Hoard,

the richest Iron Age treasure ever found in this country.

Our first story takes us 70 miles away from Norwich,

right into the heart of The Fenlands.

Must Farm in Cambridgeshire is being called

the Pompeii of the Bronze Age.

Preserved in the wetlands

of The Fens, this site is giving us an unparalleled

glimpse of prehistoric life, going back over 3,000 years.

In the past, archeologists have uncovered ancient causeways

running through the Fenland basin,

making them think that Bronze Age people

saw this watery landscape

as a sacred place, only visiting it on special occasions.

But now, on the edge of a quarry,

they're finding evidence of industrialized fishing,

opening up a whole new perception of life in The Fens.

It's something never seen before, and more importantly,

they believe it could stretch for miles.

This is archeology on a massive scale.

Mark Knight from the Cambridge Archeological Unit

has been analyzing some of the most recent finds

from a lost side channel of the River Nene.

Often we dig sites of the sort of

Bronze Age in this region

and we find one vertebrae and we say that that's evidence

for fish in the diet or we say that

maybe it's a chance find.

But we're just finding lots and lots of fish

and we're finding things like pike and perch

and carp and smelt.

And then when we went to excavate the channel properly,

we then found about 20 really beautifully preserved

sort of sock-shaped baskets that are definitely fish traps.

But alongside those, we're finding these sort of

chevron-shaped wattle fences, forming these weirs

across the length of the channel,

regularly spaced along the entire area of the channel

that we excavated, and there's a real sense here

of an industry, perhaps rather than maybe

something sort of ad hoc and stuff.

Remember, we've dug 300 meters

and we're looking at a channel

that we can trace for at least 10 kilometers.

If it's typical then, you know,

we're talking about hundreds of weirs

and thousands of fish traps being set within its course.

Mark, what an extraordinary site.

I mean, the preservation there is beautiful.

It's stunning, yes.

It's one of those sites where you don't

have to do a lot of describing to visitors and things,

they can see for themselves just what's there.

And it seems that fishing was going on

on an almost industrial scale, then?

It's a surprise, I suppose,

because we don't normally find fish bones

in the form of sandwiches.

So there we are, finding weirs and traps everywhere.

So we know where these people were working,

there must have been tens, hundreds of people,

possibly, working in this industry.

So where did they all live?

That's a really good question.

It's my opinion that, basically,

they're living in the Fens, they're living on the peat,

they're living on the rivers,

and we've got good evidence of that.

And the sense that it corresponds

to a phase within the dry-land sites

where there is no settlement.

So it's as if they're colonizing the wet, basically.

And the traps and the weirs are part of that new landscape.

I think we've got some more from this incredible site.

As the team continue their excavations

in the side channel of the Nene,

they started to find metalwork.

So we dig 300 meters of channel

and we come up with a whole host of swords,

spears and metal objects.

Finds like these are rare,

but some have been found on other Bronze Age sites,

leading to theories that they were ritual offerings

for watery deities.

But Mark believes the weapons recovered at Must Farm

had a more practical use.

The sheer quantity of swords and spears.

The sort of sense that this is a landscape

that appears to be newly colonized.

We're starting to think that maybe the metalwork being

found in the wet places was actually an indication of just

the scale of occupation of the wet spaces themselves.

So they were living on the rivers

or they were living on the marshlands themselves.

Some of these swords also have nicks

on the sides of the blades.

Signs of violence.

Swords like this were used to sort of slash things

and the idea was that, if you were hitting someone,

you'd get sort of marks on here,

but if you were defending, then you'd get marks on here.

And we've found swords with those consistent

signatures of conflict, I suppose, of them

being used in anger rather than just being

sort of symbolic objects.

You arrived being prepared to protect yourself,

at the very least.

Or maybe even upset people

that were already in that landscape.

So, Mark, you think these really were weapons?

They're not just symbols.

I just find it impossible to think that all those swords

and all those spears were just

purely there for show, basically.

So, it seems like quite an idyllic environment,

but perhaps not as idyllic as all that.

Yeah, I suppose like any landscape

that we occupy as human beings,

there is this sort of tendency

to want to hang on to what you've got.

You get a real sense within Fenland

that there is a territory,

the idea that this is our place.

So do you think this really was Bronze Age

prime real estate, then?

I get the feeling that basically this is the place to be

and essentially that the sort of switch

has come from Stonehenge

over to the main rivers of eastern England.

Right, we've got some more from your amazing site.

The River Nene is an extensive wetland which was first

created 4,000 years ago when sea levels rose.

But the people of Bronze Age Britain

took this climate change in their stride.

In fact, they flourished here.

Evidence of this resourcefulness is backed up

by a significant discovery.

Not one, not two, but eight log boats.

And unusually, virtually intact.

The boats have been moved to Flag Fen and are now being

conserved using the same methods

that helped save the Mary Rose.

There's a real sense here

that we're seeing the vessels of transport,

of movement, maybe of fishing.

But also of about the actual occupation

and the settlement of Deep Fen.

The first time we actually step off dry land and get into

the deep sediment, we find eight log boats

in 300 meters of channel.

So, either we've found the one spot

in the whole of Fenland or this is representative

of the rest of that landscape, and if it is representative

of the rest of the landscape then the scale is astonishing.

In the sense that there are thousands of these boats

up and down those channels and river courses.

And they represent that sense of

mass settlement of that wetland.