Why Are There So Many Bodies In This Ancient Roman Industrial Site? | Time Team | Odyssey

Welcome to a ditch in Cambridgeshire. But this isn't any old ditch. Right here, two metres below the surface, is a layer of Roman fines. In fact, this is a pretty bountiful ditch. Because over the years, it's produced hundreds of examples of high-quality Roman pottery like this lot, including this beautiful find Which is all very intriguing, but we really knew we had to come and investigate this site when this was discovered. A Roman cheese press. Why all the excitement? Because this is Stilton, the place that gave its name to the world-famous blue cheese. Mind you, that was invented about 200 years ago. What was happening here 2,000 years ago? How long has cheese had a role in Stilton's history? We've got just three days to find out. Stilton sits just off the A1 near Peterborough, and it's close to the Neen Valley, a major centre of the Roman pottery industry for 250 years. So it's no surprise that the fields around this town have been producing bits of Roman pots, bowls and vases for years. Look at that. Four. There's just pieces. Oh, there's another one there. There's a bit there, look. Oh, gosh, yes. It hasn't come very far. It's not very braided, is it? But it's the sheer amount and quality of the finds coming out of these ditches that have really caught the team's imagination. Where was the flagon found? The flagon was actually found just down there in the ditch, washing out of the side. It was taken to Peterborough Museum and identified as a 3rd-century Roman flagon. So what's cropped up since then? A whole range of things, from metal, wood, kiln material, glass... And the cheese press. And the cheese press. Mick, haven't found another cheese press yet? No, no, we haven't. But we had to come here, didn't we? We did. Cheese press in Stilton's a must, isn't it? But we have got lots of archaeology down here. There's a whole layer of pottery running right through here, but it's all about a metre and a half to two metres down. What do you reckon's going on? Well, I don't know. It looks like this could be just occupation, but, of course, there are Roman pottery kilns nearby. If it's that deep, Francis, how are we going to dig it in three days? We'll only do that with some big equipment. But aren't you liable to damage some of the finds if you do that? No. The point is that down here, they're buried under, what, a metre and a half of river-borne flood-clay alluvium. So there'll be nothing in that. You can whack that off completely safely. You won't hurt anything. Watch hundreds of exclusive history documentaries with a subscription to History Hit. Our goal is to bring you award-winning documentaries that cover the events and figures that have shaped our world all in one place. Learn more about the wonderful and mysterious world of the ancients with History Hit. Follow us as we take you around some world-famous sites, including Pompeii and the stunning temple complex at Karnak. We also aim to bring you the stories and legends that shaped our world through our award-winning podcast network. Sign up now for a free trial, and Odyssey fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code ODYSSEY at checkout. So we're not wasting any time, as we're going to have to open a very big, very deep trench before we reach any archaeology. But if the previous finds are anything to go by, it'll be worth the effort, as any site producing stuff like this has to be significant. And it would seem that Roman Stilton was a very different place from the landlocked town it is today. It's on the edge of the Fens, almost a million acres of land that 2,000 years ago were marshland, full of streams and rivers. And that puts Stilton at the hub of an impressive Roman transport network. We've got a major Roman road coming right through the middle of it here, the Ermine Street. We've got a huge Roman town, Dura Breve, the Fortress of the Bridges, an industrial suburb on the Neen Valley. We've got one of the major pottery production centres of Roman Britain running down the Neen Valley. So it's pretty much in the centre of things in the Roman world. And then you've got the Fens out to the east. And what impact would the Fens have had? Well, huge. I mean, they would have been extremely wet for a start. Basically, in the summer, it would have been very lush grazing. But the most important thing, I think, from the Romans and this part of the world's point of view, is that the Fenland waterways, and, you know, they had canals, we're pretty sure of that, and rivers, were an important means of distributing heavy things. And the obvious heavy thing is pottery. So maybe Stilton was a centre of the Roman pottery trade. If so, then somewhere around here should be kilns, big industrial units producing the everyday crockery of Roman Britain. And one possibility is this area of high ground, where the farmer's been uncovering all sorts of Roman ceramics for years. In recent times, we've noticed it a bit more in a couple of circles in this field. Discrete clusters? Yeah. Yeah. I think... So it's even the untrained eye can spot these clusters, Mark. What's actually going on here? Well, I mean, you've just got to stop and look around, Helen. We've got bits of pottery, there's stone, things like this. This is part of a kiln bar that would have actually been a whole series of these coming off a central pedestal, radiating round, that would have formed the floor of a kiln. If we can find one, I reckon we ought to get on with it. I think time is of the essence. What do you mean, if you can find one? Oh, you've got to do it. Oh, look at that. Now, even you, Phil, might even spot that. Yeah, you are. I mean, there's two clear kilns in this complex, one that appears to be on its own, and then the other one with presumably workshops and waster heaps around it. Yeah, presumably that's in a ditch, you know, they've just chucked the waste products out. So where do you think we ought to go? This one that's so clear, or this one that's got all the stuff around it? Oh... I don't know. I'd say that one to start with, get an idea of how well-preserved it is, because it looks the less complex kiln. Yeah. Start on that, and then maybe move to that. So our first trench in this field goes in over the geophysics blob. Do we know how deep it's going to be? No. And John's in no doubt what they'll uncover. Fantastic responses. These are classic kiln anomalies. That's a bit of a jump, isn't it, from good responses to it being a kiln? Oh, no, they clearly are. The first geophysics was actually used not far from here, over 50 years ago, alongside the A1, looking for kilns. We know exactly what the responses are like. And did you do that geophysics? LAUGHTER Well, much as it pains me to say it, it does look like John may be on to something. I won't say I told you so. Oh, look at that. Yeah, it's got good edges. How thick is the wall of this thing going to be? About that thick. About that thick? Yeah. LAUGHTER I could have told you that. Eh? Yeah, but I'm a professional. Oh, yeah. In fact, John's so confident of his results, he's now put in another trench over a second anomaly, which he also swears is a kiln. Well, I'm certainly on some kind of... Something. Totally different to what Phil's got in his trench. It's just before lunch on day one, and if the geophysics are to be believed, this site already has all the hallmarks of a classic Roman industrial site. But the results of our field walking suggest it wasn't just the Romans who were here. We were just about to do a scene about this coin that Philip has just found, when there was a yell from over here. So let's have a look at this one too. Finds really are starting to come up, aren't they, Helen? Well, I suppose it's... When you look very hard, you're going to find things on these interesting bumps of land. What's this one? It's a Celtic silver unit. Oh, goodness me. Oh, fantastic. This Celtic, or native British, coin dates to the 1st century BC. Suggesting there was trade, or at least activity, going on here at least 100 years before the Romans arrived. And what's the coin that we were going to do a scene about? Well, it's silver, and it's actually a penny, but for some reason we call them shatters or skeets these days. And it's one of the most common kinds. The series E dates to the early 8th century, and they're found all over eastern England and Holland as well. What are we thinking on it? Well, I think it's stylised hair, and originally Roman coins had heads on them, so we've got the stylised hair of a person there. And what's on the other side of the porcupine? Well, again, it's Roman coins being copied, and this looks like a Roman standard or a little altar that's been sort of gone through lots of permutations and ended up looking like that. Fabulous finds for so early in the dig. But do they actually tell us anything? Well, it tells us that activity stretches back a few hundred years before the Romans were here making pottery, and a few hundred years afterwards as well. So it looks like we'll have more than just the Roman archaeology to deal with here. And if that wasn't enough of a surprise for halfway through day one, I've also just found out that Stilton cheese isn't made in Stilton. In the 18th century, the landlord of the Bell Inn in Stilton, his relatives invented Stilton cheese in Leicestershire, and they sold it at the Bell Inn to people going up and down the Great North Road. So that's why it became famous in the length and breadth of the land, because it was such a cracking good blue cheese, and it's still made to this day in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. So what about our Roman cheese press? Does that tell us that there might have been a similar industry going on around here 2,000 years ago? Well, it could be that there was a Stilton cheese 2,000 years ago in this area, and that the cheese press is a reflection of that. The alternative suggestion is that there were specialist potters here making cheese presses for people, the cheesemakers elsewhere. So were there cheesemakers in Stilton or elsewhere? Well, knowing for certain what was actually going on in the top field would help, but the archaeology refuses to be straightforward, because John's now slightly less bullish about his absolutely definite kiln in Trench 1. I must admit I'm surprised we're not seeing a clear structure yet. That's, you know, that's what I wonder, whether you're just picking up areas of burning, just random burning. There's obviously been a very, very intense heat. I think the signal is so strong here that there was undoubtedly a kiln at this point. So could it be possible that the kiln has totally gone and what we're looking at is the clay underneath that has been heavily burned? It's possible, yeah. It'd be disappointing. But the real shock is in Trench 2, where we've just discovered the last thing you'd expect on an industrial site. We definitely seem to have got the shinbone here. But then look, a very nice set of metatarsals, which our footballers are very fond of breaking, and some phalanges. What we seem to be missing in the middle is the whole of the ribs and the vertebrae, which we definitely need. It would be marvellous if you could get the skull out in good order, especially the mandible, because from the teeth where we might be able to say something about the age of the adult and from the shape of the skull, we might be able to say something about its sex. In fact, we seem to have two burials, as Matt's just uncovered some more bones at the other end of Trench 2. This site just gets curiouser and curiouser, and we now have two very different investigations on this small hill. So as the delicate unpicking of the burials gets underway, the more physical industrial dig continues, with Phil and John opening a third trench over another anomaly that John's also convinced is a kiln. Look at this burnt clay that's coming around there, and it comes around there, back along there. It's completely... Well, I wouldn't say it's nearly circular. It's unusual, isn't it? Well, it is. I mean, I don't think it's anywhere near big enough to be a kiln. No, no, it's not. But, but, I do think that it is different from anything we've had up on the site so far because of the amount of stone. Meanwhile, back in the ditch field, our first trench just gets bigger and bigger. Over on the other site, they're still digging through metres of dark, thick clay, but over here, just inches below the surface, we've already got a really good archaeological story, haven't we, Matt? Yep, you can see we've got the second body here, head to the west there, feet to the east. It's very delicate, very thin-boned something. It's probably quite a young child or something like that. We don't know the date of it yet, but it looks to me like it's cutting through these layers of all the pottery and bits of broken-up kiln in it, so definitely post-Roman, post-kiln. So would your best guess be Anglo-Saxon? Could be, yeah. And the first body is over here. You've got the skull! Yeah, it's a bit of a jumble mess because we've had a bit of plough activity in this region, but, you know, we've got the lower jaw, and look at its teeth, it's fantastic. What do the teeth tell us, Yvonne? Oh, well, the teeth, having teeth are marvellous because we can then give some kind of age to the individual. So if you look here at this tooth, this is the wisdom tooth, so the fact it's erupted, it's out, we can see it in the jaw, tells us this individual is more than 18 years old. Can you sex the skeleton yet? We'd like to be able to, and I'm sure we will get some information, especially if we can lift the jaw out and have a look at its angles and various things, and also look at the brow ridges, which are always rather heavier in the nail. It's only the end of day one, and we already have a multi-period site with ancient British and Saxon coins, burials, loads of Roman finds, and other stuff we've no idea about. Oh, God, it's like cement. We're absolutely certain what this is, and what makes it degrade in this way. How on earth we work out what it all means is frankly beyond me, because as far as I'm concerned, we still haven't decided what's in the first of the three, yes, three so-called kiln trenches that John's dug. At the moment, whether or not it's a kiln, I really don't know. John, let's be fair, this morning you patronised me. LAUGHTER Yes, you did. I said there's a big leap from a big spike to saying there's a kiln there. Oh, don't worry, you said my 97 years of experience tells me there'll definitely be a kiln there. That's a kiln. That's a kiln as far as I'm concerned. It'll be an even better kiln tomorrow. Mick, you're nodding. Yeah, because there's so much burnt material there. You can see the things diving down. I don't think we've dug far enough down into it to see it yet. I think if we do that tomorrow, if there are remains in the bottom, we shall see it. We haven't finished. I'd like to see something really substantial. Yeah. And you, John? Yeah, I want to see more of it. More of it?! You couldn't see less of it, John? Look, it's there. What about all these funny little holes? Yeah, well, we've got a line of postholes across here, which must be post-Roman, and we've got burials over there which could be post-Roman. It's all looking like something late or post-Roman, which is going the right way, for my interest. I think we all agree this is turning into a pretty exciting segment. We've got not only these postholes, we've got evidence of kilns, but we haven't quite got one yet, have we, John? We've got, over there, we've got a couple of skeletons coming up. We've got a strange thing in Phil's trench. We don't know what it is, but it's a thing, isn't it? It's a thing, yeah. And we haven't even started excavating over there, in the site where that beautiful Roman flagon came up. So, end of day one, still all to play for. Beginning of day two here in the pottery-strewn fields of Stilton, in Cambridgeshire, and we've found two very interesting skeletons, but we haven't yet found a pottery kiln. At least, that's what I think, although some of the archaeologists disagree. We are all agreed, though, that we've found a very interesting thing in Phil's trench, although what it is, nobody seems to know. No, that's right. It's too small for a kiln, isn't it? Well, it doesn't look like a kiln, but we've got to do a bit of work on it to find out, haven't we, Phil? Oh, yeah. We don't understand it at all. What do you reckon, Mark? Could it be a kiln? It does look a bit on the small side for a pottery kiln, although it's very well made. I'm wondering whether we've got a more specialised activity, perhaps like metalworking, a little furnace or something. I feel very, very constricted. Yeah. I want to make the trench bigger. Yeah, it's got to be bigger, isn't it, to see the whole thing, yeah. Basically, we seem to have Roman industrial activity in all three trenches in this field. Don't damage my shovel. And John's convinced they're all kilns. But there's so much archaeology to contend with that nobody else can say if he's right. In trench one, we've got a massive circular area of burning, but we're also trying to make sense of all these post holes. Look, we've got one. Yeah, you've got two more post holes there. Yeah, we've moved them back this way and there's more coming up here. Look, we've got one there. And quite close up to it, actually, there's another one there. And I think that's another one there as well. So these are coming in the line as well. That's fantastic, isn't it? I mean, we thought originally that was a fence, but we've got a road coming off and we might actually have buildings. Yeah, could be forming a rectangle. Brilliant. And look, the crucial thing is it cuts through all that Roman material. Brilliant. It's also going to be some time before we can understand the Roman element of trench two, as we're still working on the skeletons that were buried on top of it. This is a strip of iron, and the reason I'm so excited about it is because the first thing you think of when you see a lozenge-shaped piece of iron with a hole in it is that it could possibly be a ship rivet. I know that's probably going to sound completely insane, but there are burials that have parts of boats over them and they're incredibly rare, found up the east coast of England, and we are not that far from the east coast. And according to Stuart, that little town over there, that was actually a port town as well. Oh, that makes it even more exciting. With so much happening on this site, Stuart's role in understanding how it fits into the landscape could be crucial, as this area would have looked very different 2,000 years ago. In the Roman period, we're looking at all this area being the bog right up to the Ermine Street there, along up to that ridge up there, where the church spire is. That's right. People say that the fens are flat. They're not, especially on the edge. Lots of hills. If you come down here, you can see that really clearly, where the burials and kilns have been found. What's interesting, when you get down here, can you see the ridge where the burial's and so on, how it rises up? It's actually on a piece of high ground amongst this fenland, isn't it? It's standing proud of the land surface. This must have been dry during the Roman period. Oh, it would have been, yeah, Roman and Saxon period. But of course, the other thing to bear in mind is that we're standing on flood clay. If we'd been back in Roman times, we'd be at least a metre lower down, so those islands would be even more in relief. So the concentration of archaeology on the top of this hill could be because it was the only permanently dry part of an otherwise boggy, marshy terrain. But it wasn't just the geography that made this a prime industrial location, it was also the geology. The land around Stilton's packed with clay deposits, and we want to see how useful it is for making pots. So we've asked Rick, the field walker who invited us here, but who also happens to be a master potter, to build us a Roman kiln. This is a perfect replica of what we're hoping we're going to see up in the top field eventually, when the excavations are completed. Is it smaller than they would have been? Yeah, this is a much smaller version, but it's absolutely right in detail, with the bars and the flue and the stoke pit in front of it. So can we give you a hand with this? Yes, you could. What we need to do now is build a framework over with those withies and then we can start doming over. The pots, which have dried overnight, have already been loaded into the kiln and now need covering with a dome made from willow twigs and local clay. Does it matter if they touch the pots? No, not at all, because these will burn away completely. Right. But we do know that they're used withies like this because we find pieces of kiln material with the burnt-out impression. Right, so is it mud now, is it? It is. All that's left to do now is to set a fire and let the pots bake and cool for the next 24 hours. It's far too long to be anything like a ship's rove, isn't it? I think now it may be, yes. Back at Helen's trench, we've now dismissed the idea of a ship burial, but she's convinced we've found something special. I'm still hoping that it might be early Anglo-Saxon. Why do you think Anglo-Saxon? Why couldn't it be something to do with a Christian burial or, you know, early Christian, late... Oh, there it goes. There it goes, yep. Oh, it's got some shape to it. Lab analysis of this small piece of metal suggests it may actually be a coffin fitting, evidence that backs up Helen's theory that we've chanced upon an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. What I'd be expecting up here on this hill, quite a long way away from any habitation, is not actually Christian burials, it's virtually the opposite. You'd expect either early Anglo-Saxon burials that are attracted to this lump in the landscape or possibly, maybe even more likely, a 9th or 10th century execution burial. They're not common, but they are attracted to lumps in the landscape right away from any kind of habitation, like on a parish boundary. It looks like we've now got a distinct period of later Anglo-Saxon activity here, as well as the earlier Roman stuff. And Stuart believes that this Roman industrial site wasn't as isolated as the modern landscape suggests. This is nice here, Mick. You can see the... The Ermine Street goes right through Stilton. That's the old road, then. That's it, and the modern motorway goes round the edge of it. Yeah. But there's a routeway that comes from Stilton heading east towards the bay. Oh, so I'm crossing this area here, then. That's right, because Stilton looks like a cross-shape on the plan. Yeah, it does, yeah. A route coming through to the east. And that potentially gives us a link out to the island where the burials and so on are found. So you're seeing the island as on the end of a sort of peninsula sticking out into the pen, in fact. We should view it as being stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. It is almost on the end of the fingers of Stilton, spreading out into the pen. Stuart's also got a theory about our first site. We're still trying to reach a rich layer of archaeology at the confluence of these two ditches. And it's a site Stuart believes is perfect for another link into the Roman trading network. You've got the Ermine Street, then you've got a lot of dry ground heading down towards the edge of the Fen. Right. And at the edge of the Fen, you've got two streams that come off the high ground that come round Stilton. They come to a confluence just where the cheese press was found, believe it or not. Ah, right. So we know it's coming from Stilton at least as far as down in the corner here now. Right, yeah. So the corner of this field was once on the very edge of the vast complex of the Fenland waterways, perfect for transporting heavy loads of pottery and the like into East Anglia and the Midlands. We started this dig looking at this little ditch down here, but quite frankly, over the last day and a quarter, most of our concentration and excitement has been on the other site, which is a few fields away in that direction, and that's because the finds there were only a few inches below the surface. But if you look here, I mean, this is industrial-scale archaeology. We haven't got down onto anything yet, have we? Haven't we? Oh, yes, we have. You see that dark layer turning up there? Yeah. That's the Roman level. And I'm so excited because I was worried. I thought it could have been removed by the water that laid down the floodplain, but it hasn't. So what is this stuff that we're looking at? Well, that mass of clay above the digger bucket, that was laid down at very thin layers, like sort of a millimetre a year, over the best part of 1,000 years, and it's flood clay that's come in from the River Nene. And so it's actually buried, the Roman surface intact underneath it. So actually the quality of the archaeology might be even better than what we've been finding over there. Oh, much, much better, because there's a good chance it'll even be quite wet. Kerry! Come over here, mate. So what are you seeing on that level? What we've got is a much earlier Roman surface, at least 1½, 2 metres below, and it's absolutely stuffed full of pottery. Wow. And that's from one sweep of the bucket. And that hasn't been broken by the bucket? No, that's all break, so you can see the dirt on the sides there. Francis, can you see it's got all this shelly stuff in it? Yeah, it used to add shell. It made the pottery dry better when they were making it. So what's your strategy going to be now? What I'm going to do is finish this and get up to the section there, then we'll clean it up and then we'll dig down into it. Exciting. Normally, a layer of archaeology this crisp and pristine would have every digger on site straining at the leash. But at the moment, most of our resources are focused on lifting the skeletons at the top of the hill as we hunt for more clues to the Anglo-Saxon element of this extraordinary multi-period site. OK, so this looks as though it's going to come out now. Oh, wow. So it's come out. That's fabulous. Pretty well. Fantastic. Look at... That is fabulous. Now, just look at the shape of that jaw. Let's take that little bit off. What do you think, Radha? It's quite gracile, isn't it? It's not robust. And this part of the mandible, it's not, you know, really chunky. We've got no big kind of muscle attachments, have we? So, if anything, that's looking more like a lady. But as we start to remove the skeletons from Trench 2, it becomes apparent that we haven't just got two burials, but the remains of up to seven different individuals, including children and babies. I just wanted to show you this. I heard you talking about the teeth. There, can you see? Oh, wow. A molar popping through. So, obviously, it was a young child. I was wondering how old that would be, what age that. Yes, look at that. You look at that tooth there, it's very small, so you could almost say that it's milk teeth still. Adult teeth are, you know, coming through there. There they are, there's an adult one there, you see. Just coming up. I think that makes this a pretty young... About seven? About seven, yes. It's now clear that this was a significant Saxon site. The task for us is to try and work out what was happening here 300 years after the Romans left. I do think we have finally got the full extent of it. I reckon you're right. Thankfully, the Roman element of this complex field is beginning to make more sense. In Trench 3, Phil now has something that's beginning to look remarkably kiln-like. You need to know where the flue is in order to start digging it. I mean, have you got any clues of where we're looking for it? Well, the only gap in the circuit is between there and there. Yeah, cos of the absence of this yellowy clay. That's right. Yeah, OK. So it comes out of sections then. When can we get a section through it and start having a look? Well, I want to finish cleaning that off. I want to get Steve in to photograph it. And before I do that, before it dries out too much, let's get that polythene on. That'll make it sweat and that should keep it as moist as we can expect it to do. Lovely job. And now that the burials have been removed, we can also confirm that Trench 2 contains a kiln, although it seems to be of a different construction to the one in Phil's trench. I think what you've got, actually, Helen, is a stone-lined cut. In other words, it could be the actual chamber of a kiln. And this is like the stone lining for the cut. That's the kiln interior and then you would have had the fire bricks or clay lining the inner face of that wall, forming the actual furnace chamber for the kiln. It's now almost the end of day two and it feels like we've got more to investigate than ever. And that doesn't even include the masses of newly uncovered archaeology in the ditch trench. Oh, crikey, look at that lot. You can see the amount of pot we've got crammed into the centre there. So, I mean, this is presumably occupation, this. Oh, yeah, I think it's occupation with knobs on, I suspect. I mean, that much pottery, some of it's very fresh. It could be a kiln as well. I mean, and settlement. We know it's settlement because you've got bits of lunch. Oh, yes, you've actually got the cut marks on the bones, so somebody's at least eating down here, aren't they? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Crikey. But there's a heck of a lot of pot, isn't there? Yeah, and, I mean, the other thing about it, not only is there a lot of pot, but you can see the dark colour of the soil. There's a lot of charcoal in there and, of course, there's waterlogged wood in there. Not a lot, but it's there. I think that's quite incredible. I mean, it must mean there's a whole lot of stuff under this film, isn't it? Extraordinary. With only one day left, we're still confident we can deal with the archaeology from both the Roman and Saxon periods. That is, as long as nothing else happens. But, of course, this being time, team, up on the hill, something else just has. Look at the new geophysics. Can you follow my finger and see that huge enclosure? Oval-shaped enclosure. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Like an egg. Good Lord. If you hadn't told me it was there, I wouldn't have known, but as soon as you do, it's obvious. To me, that is prehistoric. Yeah. To Francis... It's heaven. Why do you think it is, then, Francis? Well, if you look very closely there, you can see that the three dark marks, that's a clue. This is a ditch that isn't dug in a continuous length, but in segments. Right. And it's a causewayed enclosure. So ditch segments separated by causeways. And if it is what we think it is, it's going to be about 3,500 BC. He's dug them, he knows about them in this area. So we've got 4,000 years' worth of activity. And one of our jobs was to see what the chronology was over a long period. So we're finding it very difficult not to think we ought to do something with this and find out if it's actually there and what date it is. If that's prehistoric, you can forget your classic kiln anomalies. Why? Well, this is far more important. Oh, so you're prepared to accept that there wasn't a kiln there? No! And it doesn't matter any more? Andy's forgetting about the post-Roman stuff. You never live with that guy, can you? Beginning of day three here in Stilton in Cambridgeshire. And this is the trench that everyone's getting really excited about. Yesterday they were speculating that in it is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, which is very, very rare. Francis has only ever discovered one in his life. Francis, now you've had a look at it, is this the second? Well, I'm very excited, Tony. First thing this morning, we found this superb Neolithic flint. It's beautifully sharp and, you know, I'm very excited about it. Well, I was for about ten minutes. And then we found this. And this is a piece of Anglo-Saxon pottery. That's just as exciting. Hang on, hang on, what are you saying? Are you saying it is a Neolithic ditch that's been reused in Anglo-Saxon times or are you saying it's not Neolithic at all? I'm saying... If it was Neolithic and reused, I'd expect a great deal more flint than this. I'm afraid, I think it's Anglo-Saxon. End of story. So why is that exciting? Well, because they don't turn up very often and to actually have the ditch, you have post holes, you have burials, it all starts to look like an Anglo-Saxon settlement. That's tremendously exciting. This is time, team. We find something, we think it's very exciting, it turns out to be something else, it's even more exciting. Yeah, that's it, that's it. Break open the champagne. Well, now we've dismissed the Neolithic, we can throw all our resources at investigating the complex Roman and Anglo-Saxon archaeology on this site. The Saxon element has already yielded burials, coins and a rare enclosure ditch, and there are now all sorts of mutterings going on between the archaeologists, although no-one's prepared to share their theories with me just yet. And as for the Roman, well, it seems John and his geophys results were right all along. They do show kilns in each of our three original trenches, but the archaeology shows they all had different functions. Mark, what we're looking at here, I can't even see a kiln here. No, I know, it's a bit more ephemeral than what we've just been looking at in Phil's trench, but what we have got here is this dense spread of bright red material. This is all the clay that's derived from the temporary dome structure that would have gone over a kiln. And we've also got a few larger bits of fired brick, which are probably lining elements of the kiln. Trench 1, with its big orange concentration of burning, actually appears to be a tile kiln. Unfortunately, trench 2, the one where we discovered the burials, has left us stumped. We can tell by its construction and the concentrated area of burning that it was a large industrial unit. It's just that we've got no evidence to tell us what it was used to make. But further excavation suggests that's probably because it was completely cleaned out to be reused as something else. It's just that we don't know what. It's a deep pit, it's a deep structure. If it's not a water tank or a plunge pool, I honestly don't know what it could be. But wouldn't a plunge pool be part of a bathhouse complex with things like a warm room and a hot room and hypercourse? And we found, like, one solitary piece of flue tile. Well, if it's not a plunge pool, then it's definitely some... It's designed to hold water, it's some sort of cistern or something. So all that we can say is it's probably some kind of water-holding tank, some kind of cistern. I'm inclined to think it's more industrial than domestic because we've got so few finds, I can't really imagine that people were living here for any length of time. So, um, more problems than solutions. Oh, it looks all right. Oh, look, we've got some pots in there. Definitely pots hiding in there, yes. Other parts of our investigation here have been more straightforward. Thanks to some experimental archaeology, we've now established that the local clays around Stilton were perfect for the Roman pottery industry. So how do you feel that went as a firing, then, Rick? Well, as a piece of experimental archaeology, I think it's been very, um, successful. Yeah. We've achieved what we set out to do. We've got a range of different, um, vessel forms, typical Neem Valley forms. But you didn't lose many, did you? I think I expected there to be more broken ones than there are. No, it's been a successful firing from that point of view. There's very few breakages. I must say, I mean, that's the thing that surprised me, how few actually have broken or developed faults during firing. It's basically an intact kiln, though, ready, as you say, for market. What's also useful is that the broken bits and pieces of our experimental kiln match the archaeology Phil's uncovering in Trench 3. This is just like you were whacking on... Yeah, we'll find exactly the same thing as that when we open the kiln. Right. The doming material, the straw, grass and straw, will have burnt away and left the impressions just the same as that. So is this the collapsed dome you're into? Yeah, I mean, what I've come down onto now, at this end here, look, you can see it's gone really, really red and orange. Yeah. Very, very... And it's tilting up that way. I did wonder, and I still wonder, whether or not this sort of setting of art, of stones, is part of a central sort of pier to support the floor, to allow the fire to go round. It could just still be collapsed, but it's getting really red there. There's a lot of burning going on there. So, at last, a picture of what this hill looked like in Roman times is emerging. This little island in a waterlogged landscape would have been a hive of manufacturing, producing the pots, the tiles, the day-to-day stuff of Roman life. It was the ideal location to be Roman Stilton's industrial estate. When you get into the Roman pier, the major change occurs, and that's obviously Ermin Street, whacking its way straight. It's almost like a coastal road up here, rather than being inland. Well, you see, what you've got is a road actually coming right out from where Stilton is now, from Ermin Street, along this ridge, which is like a finger pointing out into the mire. So all you then actually need is a little causeway across there and you're on to the island. They've got peat for fuelling the kilns, they've got fish, you've got rushes, which you need. It's actually a really nice economic unit, and with the... Because you're out here on the edge of the marshes, pottery kilns are ideal, cos it's not going to set fire to your buildings, basically, and things like that. But Ermin Street wouldn't have been the only route to export Stilton's goods. We're now finding evidence in the massive trench we've dug on the corner of these two ditches that suggests the Romans were also using boats. Gary? Tony. All finished now? We are. We've got a mass of different things in there. We've got a series of iron nails, we've got building stone, possibly a kiln or a trampled pot, a pit or a post hole. It just goes on. It's like a pick and mix stall, isn't it? It is. It screams out settlement, but then you've got the nails, and that screams out big timbers. And why would you have big timbers? Yeah, wharfage, landing stages, bridges, something like that. You think there would have been that much water here in those days? I reckon so. Pretty damp place, and I reckon they've spread this on to try and make it a bit less soggy, and what we've got are elements of the superstructure left as well. I must admit, there's a part of me that feels quite bad about this. We came here to look at this area. This is your patch, you invited us in, and at the end of the day we've only dug one trench. In some ways it's disappointing, cos you'd like to know more, but in other ways this is the perfect evaluation. We've confirmed what this part of the site is about, and we've done it in such a way that we can preserve the rest of it, which is great. The best thing to do now with this complex piece of archaeology is to rebury it, preserving this possible Roman wharf for the future. In just three days, we've uncovered another outpost of the Roman pottery industry and established the location of a port from which its goods were transported. We've now finished the original job we set out to do. Except this site's got even more to offer. A second story, 300 years after the Romans left. Back on the hill, more evidence from the Anglo-Saxon periods emerging. Brace yourself for treasure. Ta-da! Even I, as a Romanist, would recognise that as a significant object. Absolutely. It may not be beautiful. Yeah, middle Anglo-Saxon, 8th, 9th century. So it fits in brilliantly with the chateau and with the pottery that seems to be coming out of the ditch, which is really tremendous. It's really exciting. I mean, I know it's building castles in the air, but an Anglo-Saxon ditch, a middle Anglo-Saxon ditch round an island, it's beginning to look like, oh, it could be a monastery. There are now all sorts of theories running around the site that we may have discovered a significant centre of Anglo-Saxon religion. Oh, my goodness, what's that? What is that? It's another wall. And it's butting against the wall of the kiln. Somebody's built a wall into the kiln. My goodness. And that wall was cut by the graves. Oh, gosh, that's an awful lot of strange happenings all at once. Yep. They've created an apse. They've taken a circular structure and they've created an apsidal thing. The thing that I immediately think of with an apsidal building is at what date do they do this? Burials, apses, you know, it's all sounding awfully church-like. Now, suggesting a bit of reused kiln is possibly part of an early church seems a theory too far to me. And, in fact, it probably is, but for the archaeologists, this isn't some bizarre leap of faith. We could be on the verge of discovering something really special. I think this kiln is disused, stable, overgrown before these post holes are being put in, so post-Roman. And apart from Roman finds, the most common find on this site has been Middle Anglo-Saxon, so I would like them to be Middle Anglo-Saxon. And, in fact, Ben and I have been hypothetically building religious houses out of them for a while. What do you think? Two different periods on one site? Yeah, well, they're definitely post-Roman, like you say. The finds, the skellies, the ditch. You know, some sort of Middle Saxon community on this hilltop. And the local parallels for that are hermitages. Is that just like a little hut where a hermit lives? Yeah, kind of, a little sort of community. The interesting thing is we don't actually know what the sites look like because all the other sites grew into fantastic abbeys, so Crowland, Ely, Thorney, they all start off as hermitages and grow into big abbeys, so we just don't see the early stuff. Hermits were effectively the first monks, and if this is a Middle Saxon hermitage, we've found something incredibly rare, because most hermitages now lie under some of Britain's most impressive abbeys and cathedrals. We know the way the early church was organised, that's what people did. They went and lived miles from anybody else, on retreat, we'd call it today, wouldn't we? Sort of, you know, in isolation. And this sort of fits that same pattern. So is it anything more than speculation to say there was a hermitage here? No, it is speculation, but it fits the archaeological evidence for that period. So, you know, I'm reasonably confident that's what we've got. If it is a hermitage, how important a site does it make it? Well, every so often we do a programme, and I think what we find, that'll go into the textbooks, because it's a good example of this or a better example of that, and I think this is one of those, you know. You've got an enclosure from the geophysics, you've got Saxon pottery, you've got burials, you've got post hole buildings. That's the sort of thing that's going to get mentioned in any discussion about this period or this topic. So I think it's one of those. The only problem with the theory is that hermits demand isolation, and our work here has shown that in Roman times this hill was a busy industrial site. But the final work by Henry and Stuart shows that this landscape changed dramatically after the Romans left. Yes, I mean, what happens in the Saxon period is that the island actually acts as a bit of a dam for all the sediment that's been washed down the hill, and it all gets dropped in this area, you get alluvium. The water slows down, drops the material, it starts building up back, and it actually covers over the settlement, the area that Kerry was digging over here. That's why you've got that high depth of alluvium in that area. But what that does also, it sort of further isolates this island out here. It ceases to become part of the economy. There's no need for a settlement, as it were, out on this remote little island. Oh, except by certain people. Except by... You've got it. It becomes an ideal location for a little monastic hermitage. Absolutely. You're singing my song here. Just like the Somerset Level stuff I've been looking at. Every little island has got some crackpot old chap living on it, you know, in retreat. Sounds ideal for you. Sounds absolutely right. So this was once a small, isolated religious community. In so many other places, this would have evolved into one of the great Saxon and medieval abbeys and monasteries of Britain. For some unknown reason, that didn't happen here, and as a result, we've uncovered the rarest of archaeological finds, a hermitage. And this site still offers more. As the end of the day approaches, it turns out that the Saxons and Romans weren't the first people to recognise the importance of this small Cambridgeshire hill. Been a good day for you, hasn't it? You've got your kiln and you've got an Anglo-Saxon enclosure. Yeah. Now, it's been much better than that. Been a fantastic lot of geophys, that has. Yeah. Look what I've got for you. Another enclosure. Oh, my God. Where, where, where, where? Look, once you focus in on it, you can see it. If I turn it that way, it's like a pair of spectacles. But this is a double one on this side, isn't it? Yeah, I think that's your prehistoric one. More likely to be causewayed enclosure than before. Why? Why do you make that assumption? Because often there are concentric rings of these interrupted ditches, aren't there, in causewayed enclosures. So we're suddenly back into the Neolithic again. We could be. We've found more here at Stilton than we could ever have hoped for. In fact, the only thing we've failed to find is any evidence of master Roman cheesemakers. You're going to love this because I made it. Well, it's not fair, is it? You made it, really. But it's not going to stop us having a nibble on some of that particular delicacy. It was the amazing amount of pottery in that field over there which led us to the kilns in this field here, which, thankfully, we found at last. But, in fact, it was the discoveries on the final day that really got us excited, not least the possible Anglo-Saxon hermitage complete with an enclosure. In fact, this whole story has gone from the Neolithic to the Anglo-Saxon and now, in the final half hour, back to the Neolithic again with John's geophys and what we think is a Neolithic enclosure. Not that we've got time to dig it, but given that Francis lives so nearby, I'm sure that at some time in the very near future he'll be back again to help us resolve this final, definitely uncheesy twist... ..in the Stilton story. That is not my joke! That was Bill Hardy's joke!