The Romans Recycle (Full Episode) ｜ S15 EP12 ｜ Time Team (Wickenby, Lincolnshire)

Take a look at this. And this. And this! It may seem hard to believe, but the locals here in rural Lincolnshire reckon that all these are part of a posh Roman building. And they've got good reason to think so. Because nearby in this field, a local metal detectorist has come up with some really extraordinary finds. Isn't that beautiful? And... Look at that. And that. They all suggest that in Roman times, something quite special was going on here. And we've got just three days to find out what. The Romans reached Lincolnshire within years of the 43 AD invasion. Lincoln became a great Roman centre, but there are no records of Roman activity at our site, Wickenby, 12 miles from Lincoln. Wickenby seems to be nowhere near any Roman roads, and there's no evidence of a Roman town really close by. And yet metal detectorists have found hundreds of Roman brooches, coins and bric-a-brac in two fields around Wickenby. Initial geophys has been done by local archaeologists. But what was happening here in Roman times has continued to remain a mystery. Come on then, Francis, this is the 2004 geophys. What's it tell us? Well, it tells us there's a lot of archaeology there, Tony. There's an awful lot. There are a lot of ditches there. They're on at least two alignments, which suggests at least two phases. There are a lot of finds out of the middle. I think you're looking at a fairly major series of Roman settlements. John, the geophys has already been done, you're redundant. LAUGHTER There's lots of areas we want to actually revisit. I mean, take this anomaly here, that's on the far side of the hedge. I just wonder whether that's an industrial area. And then, look, they've not actually found the limits of the settlement. We need to extend the survey and get the wider picture. Phil, I've got an odd feeling about this one. The geophys has already been done, and it's Francis who's always saying to us that metal detectorists' finds can just be the background noise of antiquity and there might not be much going on here at all. Is it worth doing it? Well, it is, because what they were able to do was establish unquestionably that there is settlement here. And what we want to do is actually try and open out some bigger areas to put more flesh on their story so that we can actually see what's going on here. Righty-ho down here, let's make a hole. So Phil opens trench one over an area where a large concentration of finds have been discovered. And geophys get going over the rest of the field, where the ditches seem to continue. Not of a sniff of finds, is it? No. But it's not long before something Roman does emerge. Whoa. Our first find, our first shirt of pop. Look at that. I don't think we're called the British Museum quite yet. There's evidence of Roman towns outside Lincoln, but we know virtually nothing about the rural areas in Roman times. Wickhamby's Roman finds already give us a glimpse of everyday life in the country, with cosmetic devices, elaborate drinking spouts and religious icons. Yet we'd expect a countryside settlement to be a farmstead, not quite the place for so many spectacular metal finds. Our excavation gives us the rare chance to shed light on what seems to be a rural yet wealthy and active Roman settlement. It's not just the geophys and finds that suggest a community here, but some locals think these columns were once part of a Roman structure. It may seem surprising, but original Roman columns are lurking in other gardens. Stone expert Peter Hill sets off to investigate whether the ones in Wickhamby are original. Within a few hours of digging, our first trench is already giving us a new insight into what Romano-British people were doing here. Finds on the morning of day one. Phil, you've been working overtime. You bet. We've got all the evidence here for a Roman settlement. We've got masses of big sherds of Roman pottery. OK, they're a bit churned around at the edges because they've been in the plough soil, but we've got our first copper alloy object, which was the reason we came here, and we've also got burnt stone. So we can demonstrate that people were actually living here. You're happy that all that is Roman? Oh, yeah, I think so. But I'm very happy about this, Tony. It's white, it's very heavy. I think it's lead alloy, but what really excites me about this is that I think this could have been actually melted here on site. Look at this. A dozen manky bits in a seed tray and they think they've got the Roman equivalent of Manchester. There's archaeologists for you. Molten lead suggests not rural farming, but metalworking, and John thinks that a huge blob on the Geophys may give us more evidence. I don't understand why you're so interested in that blob when there's 50 other blobs. This blob is actually set within this small ring, and when you look at the characteristics, it's stronger than lots of the other anomalies, and it suggests to me that it might be small-scale industrial, say, a small kiln or oven, something like that. If it is industry, Guy, what do you think it might be? I agree with John, there's a range of possibilities. A kiln, pottery industry, that's perfectly possible, but actually we've got so many metal finds from the site and scrap-type metal finds that I think one of the most likely possibilities is that it's a furnace to do with bronze metalwork. And where would the metal have come from? There's going to be new metal being mined, but also there's a whole industry of scrap metal going on in the Roman world. You know, the time we live in, metal's terribly cheap and labour is terribly expensive, but in the ancient world, as in the Third World today, it's much cheaper to get a man to rework old metal, so you've probably got scrap metal coming in as well as the stuff that's being made here. So do you think that some of those metal-detecting finds, which look so fantastic to us, could actually have been old metal that's being recycled? Oh, some of them almost certainly are, because they're so broken and damaged, and it would explain why they're in that state and why they've been left here. Phil moves to open a trench over John's blob, where we think there might be evidence of metal working in a recycling centre. Nearly 100 Roman brooches have been found at Wickhamby, mostly dating to the first century. Helen's been studying them, and she doesn't agree with Guy that they were here to be recycled. A lot of brooches, Helen. Oh, there's an enormous number of brooches. It's quite incredible, and I'm having a look at them because one of the suggestions for the use of this site has been that it might be a manufacturing site for brooches, but I can't see any evidence of that. Everything that you can see here has been finished. Everything's been done. There's no unfinished bits and pieces here. The alternative, of course, is that this place might have been taking brooches to cut up for scrap and recycling, but in that case, why only brooches? It's a real mystery to me still. Guy, you are one of those who thinks, oh, this is scrap metal, aren't you? I think I am. Helen just said too many brooches, and that's somehow special, but you know as well as I do that every Roman site produces brooches in abundance. Yes, but not disabundance. Well, they're portable. That's because this is a manufacturing site, whereas the other ones aren't. They're portable, they easily break, and they go out of fashion. What better source of metal for scrap and reworking? Show me the unfinished brooches. I didn't say they were making brooches here. Hang on, hang on. You've had your say. No, you said it was a manufacturing site. That's what you said, and I just cannot see any evidence of it. These are all finished. The enamelling has all been done. All the tooling, all the pins are there. Everything is finished. And if it was scrap, why concentrate on brooches? Why not just use anything for scrap? I didn't say it was a brooch manufacturing site. Deary me! What manufacturing site is it, then? A scrap yard. This is the last chance that we've got to have a look at all the finds that have come up so far. There's going to be more fireworks when we start pulling up our own finds. Keep at it. And the quality of these things is extraordinary as well, isn't it? But if you've made brooches and they're broken... Halfway through day one, and Roman Wickenby is already bringing us to blows. Got archaeology here. But at least Phil's beginning to expose hard evidence of activity on the site. Tracy? Yeah? This is a lot more promising. Ooh, nice. Look, what we've got is the top of the natural creeping through, I think. That orangey stuff. And we've got the same stuff there. And then look through the middle. I think we've probably got some sort of a ditch. But when we come back here... Now, look. Oh, yeah. Charcoal. Nice. Now, that is the most encouraging archaeological material I've seen in any of the trenches. With signs of burning, things are looking good for Guy's proposed recycling centre, where tools, sculptures and bowls could have been made. And two years ago, a metal bowl was discovered just yards from Phil's trench. It's not just remarkably intact, but it may conceal more clues to life in Roman Wickenby. Why is it in such amazingly good condition? I mean, it's not broken. How did it get into the ground? Absolutely. I mean, it looks as though it has been held in a very alkaline soil. It's been in very good condition in the soil until it was excavated. It looks as though the bowl was deposited in this position, and then soil has been covered over it. And within that, we've got a lot of organics. We've got a lot of roots, a lot of leaves, that kind of thing. But that's still not telling us about the function of the bowl. Yes, and when you say organic, of course, as it's a Roman bowl, you start thinking about maybe it's a votive deposit, maybe it's something to do with a religious part of the site, with a food offering, or maybe even a libation of wine in it. I mean, it would be fantastic if we could just see one big white, fatty blob at the bottom of it. A big bowl of cheese. Absolutely, or some olive oil, or something like that used in that libation. In the village, we've been investigating whether strange columns around Wickenby could be from a Roman building, as some locals believe. We're right in the heart of rural Lincolnshire here. Lots of lovely houses, a lot of them new, neat driveways. But these really old pillars keep turning up. Could they be Roman? Most unlikely. If you look at this very clean, neat moulding here, much too neatly finished to be typically Roman, very largely unweathered. No, very unlikely. So what do you think it is? Almost certainly 18th century. It's a typical 18th century classical column. There's more to show you. How about this one, Peter? Right, very similar to the last one we saw. The same moulding on the top, now pretty much knocked about, but it is the same. Very cleanly worked there. No, it looks very un-Roman. Again, 18th century classical. There's going to be an awful lot of disappointed people in the village. I'm awfully sorry, can't help it. So, no grand Roman building for the locals. But given the range of finds and the complexity of fears, we suspect that there was more than a Roman farmstead here. And our first trench is giving us a glimpse of this mysterious settlement with a maze of Roman archaeology and hints of an even earlier community from the Iron Age, from the centuries before the Romans arrived. Well, you promised me a big trench. This isn't bad, is it? Well, you can see now, Tony, why we need such a big trench. It's absolutely crammed with archaeology. I mean, up here, there seems to be a floor or a spread of some sort. I mean, it's loads of pottery. You can see Roman pottery at the surface there. And then as you come round here, if you look along there, you can see there's a diagonal one. Just going right through to our feet here. To our feet here, and continuing. At the far end, that produced Iron Age pottery, so that could be early. When you come round here and there... You've got two things there. That's it, yeah. And they've got Roman pottery in them. So, I mean, there's shed loads of archaeology here. Would you say that this is categorical evidence that we've got Roman settlement here? Oh, without a shadow of doubt. Oh, yes. But is there Iron Age here, and anything later? That's what I want to find out. So not only have we got a substantial Roman settlement, but Francis suspects this ditch is part of an earlier Iron Age one. While we close down Trench 1, John's Geophys has uncovered a whole new feature. And we've heard there's a water spring in the corner of the field. Why have you brought us to the other end of the field? Well, look, we've put the three trenches in, and they've basically confirmed the results of the earlier geophysics. The one thing I said that we wanted to do was extend the survey in this direction, and that's what we've done. And look, we've got masses of ditches continuing, a whole series of pits, and then this fantastic circular anomaly there. What do you think that might be? Well, I think it's got to be a roundhouse. Yeah, it has to be, yes. So would that be Iron Age? Not necessarily, Tony. It can be Roman in this part of the world. Are we going to dig it? Oh, we've got to. Yes. Oh, absolutely. The thing is, Tony, this is now far more than just a mere farmstead or series of farmstead. It's much, much bigger. I mean, it goes way over there, beyond that hedge. It's looking for all the world, like, I don't know, in a small town or something like that, but there's more to it. Over there, behind the fence in those sort of dry reeds, we know there was a spring there. Now, springs were very often ritual centres. They were a focus. And I think we've simply got to dig that, because that holds the clue to why there's a settlement here in the first place. So we've got a spring. Who knows? Maybe a sacred spring. We've got a roundhouse. We've got a Roman new town. We've got coins coming up all over the place. What could possibly go wrong? It started raining. If you'd like to see more episodes like this, you can make it happen. Our new target is to reach 15,000 worldwide supporters on Patreon by the end of 2025. This will enable us to continue expanding the Time Team world. Enjoy front-row seats for the greatest show on Earth and under it. Beginning of day two here in Lincolnshire, where we're looking at what could be a huge Roman settlement. Yesterday, it bucketed down with rain. Today, we've got 25-mile-an-hour gusts of wind. But the archaeology is really intriguing. Behind me, there's what could be a Roman spring, or maybe it was used in the Iron Age. In front of me, there's an intriguing circle, which could be an Iron Age house, or once again, maybe Roman, which gives us quite a conflict of interest. On my right, we have Guy de la Bédoire, internationally renowned Romanist. On our left, Francis Pryor, who failed his Latino level. Francis, why are you so interested in the Iron Age stuff when it's a Roman site we've come to see? Well, because the Romans in Britain were Iron Age people. Roman settlements always start, at least nearly always start, with Iron Age settlements. The reason that Iron Age people were living here is the same reason that Romano-British people were living here. And if we can crack why the Iron Age people came here, then we know why the Roman people were here. I mean, they're far more important than the Romans. Francis turns up to all these places armed with his Iron Age and his Bronze Age goggles, and in fact, I'm amazed he hasn't got us looking for a Neolithic causeway enclosure by now. The thing is that all the prehistoric stuff's very difficult to find. The visible side to this site is Roman. This field is awash with Roman finds. That's why we're here. That's what we've got to understand. What about this spring? Well, if it is an Iron Age site, the Iron Age people would have used that as a sort of religious centre. It would be the equivalent of the parish church. And if we have a sacred spring or something there, it would be gorgeous, because that would explain why this place was occupied in the first instance. So it looks like we might have an archaeological goldmine here. No, Francis is always doing this. He seems to forget that you, I and even Francis have to drink water. That's why people come to springs in the first place. That's the most important thing. The religious bit comes second. Do you care that it looks like we might have an Iron Age roundhouse here? Do you know, if I had access to the most powerful microscope in the world, I would still, even then, be unable to locate my interest in that Iron Age roundhouse. LAUGHTER Each to his own. Francis opens a trench where the farmer remembers a pond of water that formed from a spring. If Francis can find evidence of an Iron Age settlement, it could explain why there were people here in Roman times. And it could also help us understand the transition here from Iron Age to Roman culture. In fact, any clues to this Roman site are important, as we're revealing Wickhamby to be far more than a farmstead. It's already produced hundreds of metal artefacts and coins. The most surprising is the large number of Roman brooches. Guy thinks that these were part of a rural metal recycling effort and that Phil's trench may give us supporting evidence. Guy, you promised me a recycling centre. All I can see is a big black stain in the ground. I didn't promise you anything. I was just indulging in some frantic but sincere speculation. What have we got? Well, it is a big black stain in the ground, actually. But it's what's in that big black stain in the ground which is really interesting. I mean, we are getting lots of things like this. Food waste. You see they're dining out on oysters. We're getting masses and masses of pottery. But something which we've not had before and we've only just started to get is this burnt clay. Now, burnt clay is structural. That has come out of a furnace or an oven. Probably something industrial. Aha! Aha! Yeah, yeah, what? It's a big black stain in the ground. If there is an oven there, could it still be there or is it likely to have gone by now? It could still be intact. I mean, what would happen is at the top part it would weather and so what we'd be looking at is the decayed top of it but we'd only have to go right the way down before we'd perhaps get the base, the intact bit of it. But rather than being a recycling centre, it could just be a rubbish dump. A landfill site, yeah. How do you feel now, internationally renowned Romanist? Not to be outdone, Francis is desperately trying to locate the pond of a spring which could give clues to the Iron Age and Roman periods. Doesn't look very like a pond. That looks strangely undisturbed. That's not a pond! Can we go further over, Ian? Yesterday, Bridge began to conserve a metal bowl found several years ago at the site. And with evidence for metalworking, there's been speculation this bowl was made from recycled metal. The Romans recycled many forms of metal including coins and indeed coins keep emerging at Wickenby. Silver denarius, sort of late 1st, early 2nd century. If you look at the detail on the head, absolutely crisp as a button, beautiful. The site seems crammed with Roman archaeology. But then the roundhouse John found that we thought was Roman could be much, much older, at least if Francis and his passion for prehistory turns out to be right. So, John, is this the latest geophysics? Yes, what I've done is I've zoomed in onto that ring feature we were talking about earlier and there's three actual elements. There's a definite kiln there, I have no doubts about it. Then you see this speckled sort of response. Now, that could be waste material from the kiln and then clearly we've got the big ring. I mean, it's 15 metres in diameter. There's no obvious entrance that I can see but there is an internal sort of feature. That could make it, well, I mean, an early Bronze Age barrow around sort of 2000 BC and maybe the thing in the middle is a grave. I mean, it's possible but it's the size of a thing. Look, I mean, if I run out to the edge... It's a long way. It's a long way and we've got to go right round. If you go over there to where we're going to dig, look, we've got to go round here. We're now on the edge of Matt's trench. Where are we going to put that? Well, like that, in effect, to take in some of this later material. Yeah, I think it looks very exciting. Right, let's go for it. So a trench goes in over what Francis hopes to be a burial mound, dating back over 3,000 years. So we're just getting down to this subsoil now, aren't we? There's a few bits of bone. Animal bone, I think that is. Vanage pot. Well, prehistoric pot. It's not Roman, thank heavens. I'll please you, then. Yes, it's interesting. While we're uncovering the Iron Age story, we're still on the search for evidence of how Roman culture impacted on rural Iron Age life. We know Iron Age Lincoln was transformed into a grand centre within decades of the Romans' arrival. But what about the transition in the country? Clues are emerging in Phil's trench. It's a cracking piece of pot you've got there, Maria. The rim is still going on down, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's still going down that way. So what we're actually looking at, we've got the rim of the pot going round there and then this is the shoulder here. That's the shoulder there, yes, and you can see the very sharp changing angles. So what sort of... I mean, are we looking at a pot this big or this big? No, probably only about this side. We've got quite a sharp shoulder and then it's going to come quite rapidly down to a base, I'd say. Is that a you-and-me type pot or is that a high-status knobs pot? No, that's rather an everyday, workaday vessel. Late Iron Age, but that will carry on over into the early Roman period in sites out here in the Lincolnshire countryside. But this could actually be very, very important to demonstrate that people were actually living here when the Romans arrived, that there was actually a pre-existing community living on this site and that they'd actually adapted to and changed and adopted the Roman way of life as when the Romans came in. Well, absolutely, I mean, there's this change of political control, but in many other ways the life in the countryside just continues on much as it did. In rural Lincolnshire, adaptation to Roman ways may have taken some time, with Iron Age culture surviving well into the Roman period. But we'd expect the new Roman economy and power structure to have radically reshaped the landscape. We know of several Roman roads around Lincoln and major Roman settlements cluster around them. But Wickhamby's a long way from these roads, and so Stuart's hoping to find evidence of a link between our site and the major Roman road network. And the Time Team website can help you find the Roman roads where you live. That could be the natural lair coming off. Is it coming down into the pond here or not? Could be. Earlier in the day we began to dig a spring, which could have been used in the Iron Age and Roman periods. Francis hoped it might hold valuable clues to the site. This morning, Francis, you hoped that this would be an Iron Age spring, and Guy, you were looking for a Roman spring. What have we got? Well, we haven't got an Iron Age spring and we haven't got a Roman spring. We haven't actually got a spring at all. No spring? No spring, no. No, this is a springless trench. Why? Well, Stuart's been doing some clever work with the stream patterns here, and where that hedge is, is a sort of straightened version of the stream system, but actually covered a large part of this area with ponds and things. So, rather than an isolated spring, the whole area would have once been a damp bog. And that explains why there's no Iron Age, no Roman, nothing in there. It was just simply too boggy. What Francis is saying in a roundabout way is that I was right, and the Romans just came over here to use the water and not chuck in dinky little votive offerings. Yes, but I'm also right, because it proves that the reason people came here in the Iron Age was the stream. And we've proved that now. OK, we haven't got a spring. No, but there must be a spring somewhere. No, there aren't any springs in the area. So, the good news is that we've settled the argument they're having this morning. The bad news is they're still bickering. Oh, shut up. So, we've found water in Lincolnshire. Great. We've also got lots of ditches, a possible prehistoric burial... That's definitely Roman. It's quite fine. ..and Roman pottery all over the site. But what people were doing in this rural Roman settlement still eludes us. Oh, there's a big old sherd. The greyware. Then Phil, who thought he'd got either an industrial site or a rubbish pit, begins to uncover some intriguing stones. That is it, innit? Just off the top of it, yeah. See that? It's got a stone buried in it, innit? That's dropping down there, isn't it? Yeah. The other side, or whatever it is. At last, we think we've got a Roman wall. Then John's geophys throws an Iron Age feature into the mix. It's gone five o'clock. Why are we putting in another trench at the far end of the field? Well, I think the answer lies in John's geophysics. Look, we said we wanted to try and find the limits of the settlement, and I think this curving ditch we've got here may well be the boundary of the Iron Age settlement. Now, I think this ditch potentially holds the secret of the Iron Age settlement here. It's all about its status and its role, and judging by it's got a rather elaborate interned entrance there, it was actually quite a substantial thing. You know, quite showy. This isn't just a fence around the edge of the garden. But we're not going to see that till tomorrow, are we? No, no, no, no, no. Shall we go to the pub? Oh, come on! See you later, Kerry! You have a lovely time. Thank you. See you again. My brain's turned to mush this afternoon. We've got geophys that looks like spaghetti. We've got archaeology which is just loads of big shadows in the ground. We don't really know where we are, do we? Well, in a way, the problem is we've got too much archaeology. I mean, on the ground it looks very simple, but once you take off the topsoil, we've got ditches everywhere, we've got pits, we've got post holes, we've got a mass of stuff. We've got fines virtually coming out of our ears, and I reckon in the last hour or so we think we've probably got a wall of sort of structure. You've got three bricks, Phil. It's looking like a wall! Look, what you need to do is stand back and look at the geophysics. We've just talked about this boundary to the settlement that goes with the Iron Age. A whole series of roundhouses are now visible across the field. These go with the curving ditches. Then you've got these straight lines, which I think is the Roman settlement superimposed on top. It's a clear picture in the geophysics, I think. Yes, but I don't think we're looking at something being imposed. You've got the original Iron Age, the native inhabitants, as you like, and then you've got the Roman economy changing, not Roman people coming in. This is a major period of transition, and I think the way to understand a change in the economy is to look at industry. And, well, that trench that you've got there, Phil, with the three bricks. And don't forget the kiln. Yes. And we think that kiln is crucially important, and we must get in and dig that tomorrow. OK, so we think we've got a kiln, we think we've got roundhouses, we think we've got boundary ditches, we've got a magnificent wall, and we've got just one day left to sort it all out. Join a thriving worldwide community of Time Team fans on Patreon. Our new target is to reach 15,000 worldwide supporters on Patreon by the end of 2025. This will enable us to continue expanding the Time Team world with more digs and greater access than ever before. Beginning of day three here in Lincolnshire, and I'm not just using the 4x4 because it's tipping down with rain, but also because this site has got so big that you need to drive from trench to trench in order to appreciate its size. And we've got only one day left battling through the mud in order to untangle the maze of Iron Age and Roman archaeology. Yesterday, our investigation into a Roman site took a new turn. What the hell it is? Ow! We began to uncover evidence of a huge prehistoric settlement. If you can get that loose up, but gently, gently. It could help us make sense of the settlement that was still here in the Roman period. And with time ticking on, we frantically started opening new trenches. We started digging what Francis hopes is a Bronze Age barrow and grave. And we opened a trench over what seems to be a huge Iron Age enclosure ditch surrounding the site. I see Ian's doing all the work as usual, Kerry. What's actually happening here? Well, he's doing very well. I'm just keeping an eye on him. It looks like he's getting towards the bottom of the ditch, but I think if you see that dark patch there, it looks like it might have some sort of pit. It looks pretty massive, doesn't it? I mean, that could be a huge posthole or something like that. Is there anything like that on the geophys, John? No, not really. All I can see is the ditch. I mean, having said that, you talked about this curving entrance. Now, that looks as though there might be two large pits there. I mean, it'd be nice if you could envisage a whole line of postholes down the bottom of the ditch. What a sort of huge palisade. Well, it's a possibility, isn't it? If there was a palisade here, it suggests a high-status Iron Age settlement. This might explain why people were still living in Wickenby in Roman times. Yesterday in the pub, Francis and John also decided to open a trench which could give clues to Roman industry on this rural site, as they think it's a kiln. So yet another trench gets underway. Well, we've got 10 metres square here. Basically, there's a kiln underneath it or something like that. So we want to clear that in short order, really. That's... Basically, we're just starting to hit that edge. Yeah. Yeah. Keep going in. Yeah. Over the three days, Bridge has been busy conserving one of the most spectacular Roman finds from the site, a metal bowl. That is really nice, isn't it? It's wonderful. It's just looking so much nicer than... I mean, I couldn't imagine that this is what was underneath all that horrible, caked-up old soil. It's so shiny and so lovely. Have you got any idea what it might have been used for? Well, it's certainly not for cooking. I don't think you can put any heat underneath that and the bowl survive. A bowl like this could have been used with some of the weights that have been found previously on this site and the bits of balance arm and so on, to be used for weighing something. I mean, if I take these three rather disparate objects I've got over here and try and show you what I mean, these two could be put together to reconstruct what's known as a steel yard. You hang it from there, so that's your pivot point. There's a hook on this end, generally, and you could use that to hang some kind of bowl from. And then you have a weight on this balance arm, which you move up and down until it balances. But if that was going to be used for weights, then it would be hanging from something, so you'd have to have holes so it could hang. Yeah, but that's the great thing. Now that the cleaning's been done, actually you can see that there's deliberate cut marks and wear marks around the outside of it. Although some of it is corrosion, I believe that this one here is deliberate perforation and cut on the side of the object. Also this one here. Now they would be two good places where you'd be able to actually suspend the bowl or the pan, so you could have had chains attached to the bowl and then pulling up and attaching to that scale that Helen's demonstrated. And we've also got some really, really nice wear marks on the interior of the bowl, so it looks as though whatever was being used inside it was at least harder than the brass it was made from, so you're chucking in things like bronze or stone or iron. The evidence that Bridge has revealed suggests a story of work, not of rural farming, but of recycling and industry. And the same story's emerging in what Francis had hoped to be a Bronze Age burial. Francis, the round thing that you were looking for in this trench, is it a round house or is it a round ditch, or is it just not round at all? No, it's round, Tony, and it's a ditch. It may be a house, but I think far more likely it's something rather different, because out of that ditch we're finding this stuff. This is plaster. And it's Roman. It can't be Iron Age. But what makes it exciting is that some of it is actually painted. You can see here it's painted in two different colours. It's lovely, isn't it? It is. Now, that sort of plaster only comes out of high-status buildings. So could there be a Roman building right here? Well, somewhere in the area. I suspect that what we're looking at here, the reason we're getting so much of this stuff, is that they could have been recycling stone. So you demolish a house and then you chip the plaster off the stonework here in order to reuse the stone somewhere else. So this could be some form of a workshop, I think. So, no prehistoric structure for Francis, but we have got a Roman workshop. Metal recycling and now stone recycling. Yet we still haven't worked out why there was so much Roman activity in this quiet corner of Lincolnshire. We'd hoped a possible kiln could give us clues. One, two, three. But in coring, we discover the feature, possibly a well, is very, very deep. It's still going. It's a well. It's definitely a well. The excavation becomes so waterlogged we just can't resolve this trench's story. But Stuart's found answers from the Roman landscape. We've got this whole complex of Roman boundaries and ditches and stuff in our field, but is there any evidence of that Roman life still in the landscape today? It doesn't look it at first shot, as it were. Here's Lincoln down here. Over here we've got Ermin Street. You can see it's almost got like a ladder, a very regular layout of parishes. And here around the site, it's almost like crazy paving in comparison. You'd think you'd have no chance of the Roman period landscape surviving in there. And by looking at the maps and their photographs and parish boundaries, what you can pull out from under that is the Roman landscape. There's Ermin Street. There's a Roman road coming northeast out of Lincoln, carries on down here. Clearly underneath there's a kind of a grid pattern of roads and fields within which our site sits. One thing that is really quite striking here is the way these old things come together towards this place called Rand, where there is evidence of a Roman settlement. Now, that looks to be like a small market centre where whatever was being produced here at our site would be transported down to Rand and then exchanged, sold, whatever, and then along the Roman road network to Lincoln and beyond. Is this kind of discovery of much smaller-scale Roman habitation fairly new? Oh, I think we really are on a cutting level with archaeology. If you go back 20, 50 years, nobody had any idea about this extent of settlement. All these techniques like geophysics, aerial photography or Stuart's skills, it's all adding to this mountain of information that the population in ancient times was much bigger, much busier and more complex than I think anybody had ever really understood only a few decades ago. Our site's a glimpse of Roman Britain archaeologists have been missing before. One of a large rural population, of widespread industry and recycling, stimulated by a new commercial culture. And Phil's triumphed with more evidence of this transitional time, with a structure to show off. Yesterday evening, the only tangible archaeology we'd got was stains in the ground, except in the pub, to much hilarity, it has to be said, Phil alleged that he'd got a wall, and the evidence for his wall was three manky stones. Have you still got a wall? Totally vindicated, Tony, absolutely. Those three manky stones that you described them as, look, this is what they are. Look, there they are, going through there. And the edge of the trench, as we saw it, came across there. Now, we've subsequently pushed that back and, look, we've got one stone there, we've got another stone there, but we've also got an inside edge to the wall as well, which is coming around there. And you can see the whole thing is curving back round. Now, I think that this is probably going to be a furnace or a kiln. Hang on, hang on. The furnaces you've shown me in the past don't have that light clay stuff there, they're always black. That's after they've been used. This one was never used. It was either constructed and it fell down because there was a flaw in the design, or failing that, they didn't need it. Maybe it just collapsed, maybe it was just unstable. But the thing is, this has never been fired. This is what they would have looked like when they were built. How does that fit in with what you're thinking about this place? I think it fits in perfectly. You know, we tend to think of Roman towns as all those regular places, like Lincoln, for example, with its grid of streets and its big public buildings that go up at great expense and are there for hundreds of years. But all these other minor settlements, well, if you come here one year and then the next year or maybe five years later, it would look different every single time, with an enclosure built up for one job, owned by one person doing one particular activity. It gets knocked down or washed away in a storm or something like that. But it's constantly changing. A bit like a town in the developing world nowadays. Yeah, if you were to go to a place, I don't know, in Africa, for example, you'd find a shanty town where the buildings are made out of corrugated iron and timber, and they're only there temporarily and replaced by other things. They're surrounded by drainage ditches. And most of all, what you always find there is there's lots of modern Western rubbish or manufactured goods that have come in from outside. And that's the sort of thing we've got here, isn't it? A kind of shanty town settlement, but all those flashy brooches and other manufactured goods. Yeah, because even nowadays, in a shanty town, you'll see a few loaded people with a lot of bling. Absolutely, yeah. With only a few hours to go, we've at last shed light on the Roman story of our site. But Francis is still so determined to reveal the prehistoric story, he's digging the enclosure ditch himself. Sorry, Francis, I didn't realise it was you. Is it a post hole? A post pit? Yes. Back here it is. Going down there. That's massive, isn't it? It's very big, John. It's very big. But you're still not at the bottom of the ditch? No, and the ditch is rather wider than we thought. It's at least three metres. Yeah, move over a bit. So what, edge here? Yeah, from there to where Ian is. I mean, that's a big feature. Yeah, but any dating? Well, yes. This post has been dated by pottery. This stuff here, and that's a cordon jar, cordon bowl, late Iron Age, so that's about the time of Christ, roughly. Now, that post hole is cut into a completely filled-up ditch, and we've got one bit of pottery out of it. It's not much to write home about, but I've shown it to our pot specialist and this is, I think, early Iron Age pottery. So my bet is that this enclosure ditch was dug sometime in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, so any time between, say, 300 to 500 BC. So this post, dating to about the time of Christ, was pushed through a ditch that was created up to 500 years earlier. I mean, that's coming together really well then, isn't it? It's fantastic, John. I am so glad you found this feature. We came to Wickhamby to investigate a Roman site. In doing so, we've uncovered a very early prehistoric site that grew into a vast and important Iron Age settlement. When the Roman economy arrived, the rural settlement here embraced it. People here were trading with coins, building kilns, working metal and even stone. This community constantly changed and recycled, adapting to a new Roman world. Just starting to rain again. Pretty muddy, pretty sticky, but pretty good three days. Oh, fantastic three days, Tony. I mean, we thought we had a scatter of Roman coins and a few ditches, you know, farms did something like that, and we've been able to shove the site back 500 years to the early Iron Age when it was an important site then and it became even more important in the late Iron Age. It really has been a revelation just what lies hidden under the soil here. Hang on, I just knew Francis would turn it into a prehistoric site, but he's missing the fact that we've also, for the first time, got a glimpse at a new type of Roman site. I think Wickhamby has turned out to be a little microcosm of what perhaps most of rural Roman Britain was. It's a new type of site that metal detectorists are finding now. We're recording it. We barely understand the archaeology yet. We're just at the beginning of the story, and it may take decades of excavations of places like this before we really understand them. At the beginning of day one, these two were both fighting their corners passionately. You wanted it to be Iron Age. You were desperate that it should be Roman. It doesn't matter, guys. We got both 1,000 years of British archaeology in three days. Not bad. Join Time Team on Patreon to access exclusive 3D models, masterclasses and behind-the-scenes insights.