Time Team's Top 3 COASTAL Digs

Deep in the gloom of these Scottish caves are messages from one of the most enigmatic peoples ever to live in Britain. This is just one of many symbols carved by the Picts, a people who so worried the Romans that they built Hadrian's Wall just to keep them out. But that's just part of these caves' colourful history. Over the centuries, Jacobite aristocracy, World War II refugees, even hermits have all sought shelter here. But now they're under threat. Rising sea levels mean it's only a matter of time before they succumb to the dark, cold Firth of Forth. And that's why we're here, to glean as much evidence as we can from these caves' rich past before it's too late. And we've got just three days to do it. The term Picts describes the people who lived in northern Scotland from the 4th to 9th century AD. Their name comes from the Latin Picti, meaning painted people, and they've fascinated historians and artists for centuries, despite leaving virtually no written history. The Picts' real legacy is their art, intriguing designs that have never been deciphered. And there's an unusually high number of them here in the Weems Caves on the very edge of the Pictish nation. We've got a stand here. Is that a Pictish name? Not as far as I know, no. No, that's not a Pictish name. But we do have some classic Pictish symbols here. This double disc symbol here is a classic one. What's this one here? Well, that's a salmon. Again, that's probably original, it's probably Pictish, and it probably dates from perhaps about the 7th or 8th century AD. But this fish over here... What, this one down here? That one there, it's quite different nature and character, and that's probably 19th century indeed. We've got 1,500 years or more of carving straight in front of us here. This wall is a chronicle of centuries of human activity here, but we're going to concentrate on these mysterious symbols and the people who made them. The carvings represent years of Pictish presence at Weems, and we want to discover if this cave was a communal art gallery, or if the Picts who left these marks actually lived here. If they did, we should find some evidence of occupation, charcoal, animal bones, cereal grains and the like. But we're going to have our work cut out. The 1,500 years of human activity here have featured periods of later occupation, industry, and unfortunately vandalism, including one case when a car was driven into this cave and set alight. The technology and methods being used today are a bit more sophisticated. As part of an ongoing project implemented by Fife Council, the caves are now being digitally mapped. We're getting a scan of about five millimetre resolution here. It's a point every five millimetres? Yeah. The laser scanning will create a high definition 3D model of the caves, recording them for posterity. And once the well cave has been scanned, we're going to put in a couple of trenches for our own investigation. Oh, everyone watch yourselves, it's really dark in here. Are you guys all right following through? Yeah. Cool. But over at the well cave, the laser scanning has finished, and Bridge and Matt can now start work on the medieval period of Weems history. That is incredible. Our first trench in here will investigate the well that gave the cave its name, and in particular, Bridge will be looking for any evidence of medieval occupation, the period when hermits are believed to have lived here. This is the well over here? Yeah, this is the well over here. The first trench is going to be around this? It's going to come straight out here, I guess about a metre extending from, see the sick stones here? Yeah. All the way around. Let's sit around the edge. The other intriguing aspect of the well cave is this tunnel, which according to folklore, leads to the 15th century Macduff's Castle, over 20 metres above our diggers. But in its current state, it doesn't look a particularly welcoming proposition. It's now down to Matt to try and find archaeological evidence of a medieval man-made passageway. We're going to put a trench sort of against that wall there, halfway into it, and let's see if we get some evidence that people made that hole. You can see here the layers of rock, these sandstone layers, they're very soft, and as the sea pounds against it, it breaks little bits off along these joints here, and every bit it breaks off, it then bashes further against the rock and knocks another bit off. So you get this like, it's like a huge tumble dryer of pebbles and rocks going round and round and round and scouring into the rock. If you look, you see just up there on that shelf, can you see there's a whole load of pebbles just there? Yeah, yeah. That's almost just a remnant of that last process, the sea coming in here, those pebbles are jammed into that rock, given a few more years, those pebbles would have brought down that ledge as they were swirled around, the cave would have got bigger. In Jonathan's cave, Mick has decided to open up another trench in the search for Pictish evidence. It would be nice if one of them gave us a result, if only. In Phil's trench, the expected two metres of archaeology, with a nice Pictish floor at the bottom, has spectacularly failed to materialise. Doesn't actually sound to me like evidence of Pictish habitation. It sounds to me like bedrock, Tony, that's exactly what it is. We've basically got two layers, we've got a layer up to this dark line here, can you see that dark line across there? Now, we've actually got a piece of pot from around there, which we think might actually be 17th century. In other words, that could be part of our Jacobi aristocracy that we know lived in here. But above it, we've got... So what's happening here then? Well, actually, this cave was once used as a nail making workshop. I mean, there is very, very little stratigraphy here. So does that mean the Picts who carved these things were extremely small? It would seem that the Picts who created these designs came, carved, and left again. There's no evidence that they lived here. I think this is extraordinary. Yeah, mind your head, Tony. Yeah, well, it's like a mini cathedral in here. It's fantastic, isn't it? It's like a proper cave, shouldn't it? How you been getting on? Oh, all right, we've got a couple of things going on here. Bridget's over there, look. Bridget, what have you got? Well, it looks like we're inside the well here. Tom's following around the curving edge. Inside it looks to be redeposited rubble, really, and we're finding crisp packets and paintings. But he has just said that he's come down onto a new layer, which does have some archaeological promise. Medieval jug handle, probably about 13th, 14th century. It's great. And that came from the lucid deposits up here, right next to the tunnel opening. So that's pretty good for explaining a link between the castle up there and this cave. They're maybe chucking rubbish down here, or there's something joining up between there. But I still want to get a camera down there, if possible. Yeah, but every single tunnel in the world, people say it goes to the nearby castle. Castle, or a priory, or a church. Maybe this one really does, you can't tell. Just a few years ago, this land surface went way out beyond us. I mean, this whole section of coast is so unstable. It's currently eroding at several meters a year. What would you expect to find in layers like this on the beach like this? Well, I said, what I think we're dealing here is with a medieval midden. When has he made a medieval midden? It's the rubbish from the kitchen, it's the old bones from the dinner table. We could actually find just about anything in this midden. We now want to find out what was happening out here, and relate it to what was going on in the caves. In the sloping cave, Phil's search for Pictish occupation is starting to uncover a lot of bone, although it's too early to say what period it belongs to. And something else has been discovered in this cave, but this time it's not Pictish, and for once we can translate it. So what is that sort of Y-shaped, fork-shaped thing that we're looking at? It's a very distinctive Norse or Viking rune. Oh crikey! But I mean, is it what you'd expect to find in a cave like this? You expect to find anything, and we know that there was Norse activity in this area. Which letter is it? It's the letter K, it's the sixth letter in the alphabet. And what's interesting is that the first six letters spell Futhuk, a sort of magical formula. It's almost as if I were to say, God bless you, or praise be to Allah, or something like that. This is a timely reminder that these caves contained centuries of history. We're getting so much bone, and it's all from this level here. The chances of that just being washed in, I reckon that's got to be... Too coincidental. Too coincidental. I think we could argue we've got occupation here. Good. It's really loose. That's probably fall. Yeah. This is more than just rockfall. These clean angular pieces of stone are debris from the construction of Macduff's castle in the 15th century. And that means anything directly below it will date to the same medieval period as the finds being uncovered inside the well cave. But what's more surprising is the bridge can't find any evidence of a water source for the well that gave this cave its name. It must be the natural. Back on the plateau, the archaeological evidence is now suggesting we're looking at a human presence here that stretches back well before even the earliest days of the Picts. If we begin at the beginning, and we begin with the wave-cut platform here... That's this smooth rock in front of us. That's right, that was cut by wave action, and we know from the geologists that that was cut from about six and a half thousand years ago. So that's Mesolithic. So that's hunter-gatherer period, when people are not farming or anything like that. That's right, that's before farming. We've then got these midden deposits, and they've been churned about by the sea. We've got a lot of shell and sea sand in there, but we've also got a lot of animal bone, and some of this is domesticated animals. So that's telling us that it's Neolithic. So that's after hunter-gatherer period. That's after hunter-gatherers. So somewhere in this, there's a change from hunter-gatherer period to when people are actually farming. Well yes, and that's right over the wave-cut platform. So if there was any Mesolithic, it's all been mixed up, and we can say that that lowest deposit there is Neolithic or later. It would seem that almost as soon as this land and these caves were carved by the receding waters of the Forth, people were using them for shelter and farming. 41 centimetres from the section. Right. And then slate around it. There's just too much archaeology in the trench, and some of it has to be recorded before it's removed. It's still got to be done precise, isn't it? Of course it has. I mean, the fact is, you see, what we've done is, we've got down onto this floor. Where these stones are down there? No, no. This black stuff right at the bottom, that's the floor. Now, see those big boulders and all that? That's just a beach deposit, which is actually coming in. That's actually protecting the floor. It's been marvellous. But if you look at that level there, that floor, and you look at those carvings on the wall, cast your mind back to Jonathan's cave, and how low those carvings were to the floor. So they could have been done by somebody sitting on that floor, in fact. Exactly. That could well be the Pictish floor. Right. If Phil's right, this would be the first evidence of Picts living in, and not just visiting, these caves. Are you nearly finished? Just about. I think we've just got it, yeah. Do we know how deep the well is? Well, I'm not sure if I'd want to call it a well anymore. I like the word pool a little bit. Yesterday, we dismissed the myth of a tunnel running up to the medieval castle, and now Bridge has discovered that the well that gave the well cave its name isn't, well, a well. A well suggests that you're actually tapping down into the ground to get water, but this seems to be an area where there's a natural accumulation of water, and somebody has come along at some point and cut a bigger area to catch that water. If you can see here on the sides, quite sharp edges. And if you had a naturally formed pool, you'd have pebbles scouring round and round and round and round, and you'd have quite vertical edges, and they'd be quite flat. We don't have that here, and it definitely looks like someone has been manipulating, changing the sides. The amount of wear on the step and the effort that's gone into making this pool suggests this was a facility that was in use for a long time. It's very possible that hermits were the first people to take advantage of the rock-faced seeping water, but the trench outside the well cave's entrance points to other, more practical people also living in this cave. And you can actually see in the bottom of this deposit, there's some lines. You've got these very distinct marks, these linear dark features. These are plough marks which are going right across here. I didn't dare to hope that's what they were. This neat bit of stratigraphy shows how much the plateau's changed in the last 600 years. At the top is a thick layer of Victorian landscaping, below which are the rocks that were dumped here when the 15th century castle was built above the caves. 600 years ago, the entrance to the well cave would have been a much more welcoming prospect, and as well as providing refuge to hermits, it may also have once been home to the people who farmed the plateau throughout the Middle Ages. Cutting-edge technology has digitally preserved the carved interiors, while the archaeology we've uncovered has told the story of a coastline that's had a brief but very eventful history. Time Team is 100% independent and funded by our incredible fans. Want us to make more episodes? Joining Patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews, 3D models, masterclasses and more. And you get to have your say in the process as we develop new sites. A few years ago, some geophys was done over some crop marks in that field up there, and it produced some of the most tantalising results that we've seen for years. Not only that, but a metal detectorist has found a tiny bit of Bronze Age gold up there, and lots of pottery has come up, including this 5th century piece. But this is Cornwall, this is Turkish, and this tiny little bit, believe it or not, is African. So what on earth's going on here? Well, evidence has been found suggesting ancient mariners plied these waters thousands of years ago, bringing in from overseas exotic goods such as wine, silk and papyrus, and taking away local tin and copper. So is there the remotest chance that this is the shadow of an early trading site, the like of which we've never seen on Time Team before? As usual, we've got just three days to find out. The Atlantic coast in Cornwall is a spectacular and perilous place for a sailor, notoriously difficult to navigate and littered with treacherous rocks. But in amongst the dangers are sheltered havens like this, the mouth of the River Camel, a huge tidal inlet that joins the ancient fishing port of Padstow to the sea. And just a couple of hundred metres from the turbulent Atlantic is Lilizzic, overlooking a beautiful sandy cove. This is so nice, it just reminds me of holidays as a kid, up on a headland watching the boats coming in and out. And they've probably been coming in and out of an estuary like this for thousands of years, because this is an ideal place to live, just above the beach, south-facing, you know, settlement in this field here. Steve, spectacular geophys. Just amazing geophys, Tony, and we first became aware of this site as a result of metal detecting activity and the range of Bronze Age and Roman material. A few years later, I did a flight over the area looking for crop marks, and one of the sites that we recorded was this field, and we found a lot of circular features, ring ditches at the top of the field. John, do you think these are houses? I'm sure some of them must be. I mean, look at the detail. You can actually see what appears to be a central hearth within that particular structure. I'm sure we're seeing lots of houses across the field. So, with the old geophys as our guide, we're going to start our investigation by opening two trenches, one in each of the fields that overlooks the beach. In the lower field nearest the cove, Matt and Raksha are putting a trench in over a large geophys anomaly, which doesn't much look like the traditional roundhouses in the other field. Could it be because the archaeology here, as Mick suspects, was linked to ancient trade? Whereas over in the upper field, Phil's investigating what could be an Iron Age roundhouse that wouldn't normally be associated with the types of finds previously discovered on this site. Finds that include pieces of Bronze Age axe, Roman coins, and of course the intriguing exotic 5th and 6th century pottery from overseas. In fact, we could be looking at a thousand years of activity. But unfortunately, most of this material has been found lying about on the ground, and that means the archaeologists can't use it to date anything here. So until we uncover our own finds, buried safely in our own archaeology, we can only make an educated guess at the date of the settlement. There's no reason why this can't go on into the Roman period, or even into the post-Roman period, and still be using roundhouses. It could be a very long period. Well, it's very corroded. The edges are all really rough. This looks suspiciously like a coin. Normally, the perfect start for a time team dig. Except there weren't coins like this around in the Iron Age. And within minutes, Matt Trench produces another surprise. Slag. We did actually find some of this in the topsoil, and it was quite a big, hefty piece. Yeah, it's from the top of that silt underneath all this subsoil stuff. Pieces of slag imply evidence of industrial activity, but as yet, we have no date. I'll have a look at this. This is the first find of any significance that's come out of that trench. It's pretty manky. I don't know if you'll be able to date it at all. From its shape, it's obviously a coin. Yeah, I was there. It's a coin. This is a Roman coin, which is nice to see, because several others have been found in the field by the metal detectorists. Why do you say that's Roman? From its shape, it's been hammered by using a hand hammer, and also, I can probably go even a bit further and say that it's most likely from the Emperor Hadrian, who was around about the second century AD. And it's Hadrian because? From the shape of the actual head, the commonest coin which has that sort of shape on it is of Hadrian. So confident, and in front of a television camera. Matt's experience. Look at that. How many of you could tell that that was a coin of the Emperor Hadrian? So, our first piece of dating material puts Matt's trench firmly into the Roman period, possibly centuries after our potential prehistoric settlement in the other field. That is, if we can find it, because at the moment, all we've got in Phil's trench are a series of strange stone features, which Phil is convinced are natural. Bridge, however, is more optimistic, and believes they could be remains of a structure. John is simply bemused and confused. And in spite of Matt's finds, I'm also starting to worry about Mick's hunch that this was an ancient trading site. Even if at first glance, it seems to be in the ideal position. This water is far too shallow to navigate even at high tide. And that's not all. Stuart believes these cliffs are much the same as 2,000 years ago, and anyone can see that it would have been very tricky mooring ships alongside. So did the exotic overseas pottery really come here by boat? Stuart's job over the next three days is to find out what links this quiet cove to the civilizations of North Africa and the Middle East. On top of the cliffs, the search for the Iron Age village continues. Phil's still trying to locate a roundhouse, and he's now extended the trench to see if these rock features are indeed part of a structure. If the boundary ditch is contemporary with those houses, then I think that gives us a much better chance of dating the houses than the stuff you'll find inside them. My thought was to put a trench that looks at the interior again, a second look, goes from that possible hearth feature across the ring ditch and also over the boundary, so along that line. So Francis is opening a new trench in the upper field to see if we can locate another roundhouse, and to see if that structure is built up against the boundary ditch. It should also increase our chances of finding some dating evidence. In the lower field, Matt's trench is starting to look like a house, or so he tells me, and the finds are tantalizing. This is another one of these imported exotics. I don't recognize the specific type, although I do recognize that we've had identical material from Tintagel, which is the known type site here in Cornwall, which is only a few miles up the coast. So where do you think it's imported from? It's most likely come from Turkey in the 5th or 6th centuries. Right, that's post-Roman. Yes, yes. This is fantastic, our first link to the Mediterranean, and just as importantly, it looks as if this structure was used by local people from the early Roman period until 200 years after the Romans had left Britain. And that means at the minute there's little to link it to the prehistoric puzzles in the other field, where in spite of the geophys, Phil's been struggling all day to find anything that looks remotely like an Iron Age roundhouse. Any sign of a hearth? No, not yet, not yet, but I mean... Granted he's found ditches that could have been cut away for drainage, but he still hasn't got any finds. In fact, the most Iron Age roundhouse-ish type structure on site seems to be in Matt's much later Roman and beyond trench. The geophysics showed this huge ring in this field here, and this is the ring here, it's this ditch. Ah, so that is actually that. Yeah, it goes all the way around like that. So now I'm walking into the house and you can see that the soil is kind of going this dark grey colour, especially around here. That's because there's so much charcoal in here, and we found some burnt animal bone up there as well, so I mean there's just there rubbish all over the floor really. Is this the wall on the other side? Ah, now according to the geophysics, the ditch there, the wall ditch, should go round behind you and should be at the other end of the trench there, so this should be about the centre of the house. So is this the hearth that's producing all the charcoal and burnt material? Yeah, it looks like it. Right, you've got finds in the finds tray? Yep, there's some great stuff out of here. And there's another bit down there? Yeah, there's another bit in situ down there, you can see that's a bit of amphora. So these are these big wine or oil storage jars, and this is coming from the East Mediterranean then? Yeah, that's post-Roman as well, that's 5th or 6th century. So if this isn't my outside wall, where is the other outside wall? Well, according to the geophysics, it should be right about the other end of the trench there. Right here somewhere? Yep. Raksha, can you stand up for a sec? And the other wall is where Raksha is. If that's right, it's a heck of a big building, mate. It's a huge building, especially if it's producing material like this, this post-Roman stuff, that's really exciting. Why would it be so significant if it was that sort of date? Because we don't get structures that are sort of post-Roman very often, particularly with the finds associated with them. The star find in Matt's trench yesterday was this small piece of Turkish pottery that had somehow travelled hundreds, even thousands of miles from the Mediterranean ports to Cornwall in the 5th or 6th century. And it's this evidence, along with the pieces of African pot that have already been found, that lead archaeologists to believe our cove could once have been visited by ships from all over southern Europe. The problem for me is it seems an odd place to put a harbour. Talk to local fishermen who've these waters all their lives and they'll tell you that this quiet stretch of the Cornish coast is deceptively dangerous. You've got a big swell coming in that turns the boats over. They get there and they get smashed up. Is there a way through that local people will know or do you just have to leave it alone? Only on the high water. The local boats will go in any time after about three hours, three hours or four hours flood. Then they can go in and they take their time. They come across the bar and go across then. It would have been incredibly difficult a couple of thousand years ago, wouldn't it, if you were coming in from Turkey or Africa somewhere and you found this. That was where the sailing ships went aground, you see, because they would come up channel with like a southwest breeze, gale of wind we'll say, and as soon as they got in here the southwest wind had come out the river at them. And that's how they all found it on the shore over there. They wouldn't know what it is, would they? Got some lovely bits of pottery coming up now, Carl. Over in the Iron Age settlement, it looks like Phil's made the breakthrough he's been hoping for. The confusing strips of rock are beginning to reveal a recognisable shape and there's at last some dateable pottery from the trench. Oh, that's fantastic. This is the first distinctive Iron Age shirt I've seen on the site. I can tell that because it's very upright in nature, whereas the Roman ones are much more folded over. Probably sort of late 3rd, early 2nd century BC. So there's absolutely no doubt this could not be into the Roman period. No, this is definitely Iron Age from the upright nature of the rim. I mean the thing that strikes me is that that shirt and the others with it are so big and in such good condition they can only have come from this building. Absolutely. It would seem Phil's now confident enough to say that there is a building in his trench and it's roughly the same date as Francis's roundhouse. The trouble for me with a trench like this is all I can see are these great stripes of natural rock with this gritty stuff in between and then down here a great tumble of stuff. It's hard to imagine that anyone ever actually lived here. It just all looks so bleak until you come up with something like this which Phil just found and it's so crisp. It could have been made 25, 50 years ago but Phil, this is actually Iron Age isn't it? Oh most certainly it is. I mean we found it with all the Iron Age pottery. It's a spindle whorl. It's a natural stone with a perfect hole just drilled right the way through it and they would have used it to spin their yarn and although we haven't got the piece of stick and although we haven't got the yarn, we haven't got the woolen garments, we know they existed simply because we got this. But as one archaeological door opens another slams in your face. We've gained an extra roundhouse in Phil's trench but Francis seems to have lost the settlement ditch he told me was right here. Yes well that's what we thought this morning but I now think that it's the ditch that goes all the way around the house. But you said that ran around the whole Iron Age roundhouse, that ditch, this one ran around the whole settlement. Yes, the problem has been that the ditch that went all the way around the house isn't there. So you weren't quite 100% right? No I was 100% wrong. So what is this? Well look here's your outer ditch for your house. Yeah. Okay Then the wall would have been about here. Ah. And then here is the centre of the house and right in the centre, look, we have a fantastically good hearth. That is gorgeous. Isn't it? Lined with stone and then with all this burning here and it's cut into a floor and so this is certainly the level where people actually walked. So that's very important and it's in a sort of oval feature. That might just be the filling of a grave with a crouch burial in it because on Iron Age sites sometimes they placed hearths on top of ancestral graves. That would be nice wouldn't it? It would be lovely. Phil! Look at that one there Carl. Oh wow, that's fantastic. This is definitely a native Roman ware. Certainly late second, early third century. That's fantastic. We've definitely got the Roman now. It's still not a furnace though. Get on with it. Dating, that's what we want. Over in Matt's trench we still can't figure out what this not very round house is doing here. There could be two pieces actually. They do. Now that's the same fifth and sixth century stuff that we had from this trench before. This is really high status stuff. I mean it would have had wine or olive oil in it but I mean you just don't find this sort of thing on most British sites and I mean to find one really fresh sherd, it hasn't been lying around for long, so that's got straight into the ground and there's another one. They're from the same pot. What's the betting I can get them to join? I'll get you a drink if you can sort it out. There they go. You owe me a pint Matt. Yes, beautiful. I'm glad we've got an experienced archaeologist on this dig. This may be the least convincing pot reconstruction ever but it's yet more evidence of trade. In this case oil or wine coming along this coast in the fifth or sixth century. And if they brought a ship laden with cargo all the way from the heart of the Byzantine Empire it would strongly indicate that the merchants knew their journey would be worth it. So we can only suppose they must have been exchanging their goods for the high value tin and copper that Cornwall was famous for. But all our dating evidence shows this lucrative trade stopped suddenly in the sixth century. Back in the upper field a jubilant Francis has found his target. I've no idea how he can tell from this rather manky trench but I know he's going to show me. Well in some respects I think this is part of a key to the site. That little depression where Ian's working is in fact a ditch and there's another ditch here and those two ditches mark the edge of a driveway. You say a driveway what are they driving along it? Sheep and cattle probably. Now if you look at where this driveway is going to and from at that end over there it starts just this side of those cottages. Yeah. Okay now all the way around this bay you've got open grazing on the edges of the cliffs and the rocks. So you've probably had thousands of sheep and cattle out there and then they were taken in probably in the autumn along this driveway and then beyond them over there you've got a large animal field or stock enclosure. Now if you look at the edge of the settlement it's going round like that and then like that in two distinct arcs and I think that arc is defining the edge of that stockyard making it a usable shape and similarly this is defining the edge of an arable field and those two arable fields are precisely the same size which is what you need if you're a farmer. What about the date? Now that's a tricky one. We know that this driveway is in a terrace that was ground down by animals hooves over hundreds of years probably. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if this driveway didn't begin in the Bronze Age then go on into the Iron Age when it was formalized by the ditches. So for all we know there could be a thousand years of settlement on this hillside. Thank you Francis, that's why this cluster of houses was such a peculiar shape. We simply haven't been able to find any material evidence that links round houses to the port complex next door. But with such a dense collection of sturdy large houses I can't help but think this village must have benefited from the prosperity a successful port brings. We found coins, samionware, slag and food waste but we've been missing a crucial piece of evidence until now. These Tony are African red slipwear sherds which down here in Cornwall generally mean 5th and 6th century deposits. So that's post-Roman? Indeed yes. And where were they found? Well this is the important thing, those sherds were found in there in other words they are well stratified. All the other sherds that we've had of that type of pottery have been in the colluvium, the hill wash, so they're totally unstratified. The stratification for them is good. Now that's digging speak for undisturbed archaeology and it proves that these Byzantine finds in Phil's Trench are contemporary with Matt's finds next door. We now believe the whole site probably evolved over many hundreds of years from a bronze age farming community into one of the small but bustling late iron age trading centres scattered around the Cornish coast meeting the demands for local commodities as the Roman Empire expanded. After the Romans disappeared in the 5th century merchants would have continued to call in occasionally with their exotic goods until the Byzantine Empire faded several hundred years later. It's lovely isn't it? The perfect Cornish seaside picture with fields rolling down to the sea. It's hard to imagine just how busy it must have been in the ancient past with a thriving settlement trading with ships sailing in from the continent and beyond and as they came in below that cliff just there they would have brought with them fancy goods like oil and wine and new ideas too. Perfectly symbolized by this find that's come up in the last hour or so. It's a stylus possibly the earliest evidence of writing ever found in Cornwall dating from around 200 AD. Maybe it was used to record all those imports. Time Team is 100% independent and funded by our incredible fans. Joining Patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews, 3D models, masterclasses and more. Please join us on this exciting journey. We need more support to make more episodes. In early 2006 a light aircraft flew across the north coast of Anglesey on an aerial survey of the island. Then the photographer spotted something strange and took this photo. It revealed a massive earthwork about the length of two football pitches and on an island that was once home to one of history's most mysterious groups accused of magical rituals, human sacrifice, even cannibalism, the Druids. So what exactly is this strange earthwork? As usual we've got just three days to find out. Bec we've got this huge site here clearly visible and yet nobody's ever dug it. That seems a puzzle to me. Not only they've never been dug but they've hardly been recognized. Even the great survey of Anglesey done in the 1930s just said a few scrappy earthworks mainly destroyed. Are they mostly destroyed? It doesn't look like it does it? I mean there's huge great banks and ditches. Have you any idea what period it is? Well they just suggested it might be Roman but I don't think we know really. Dating this massive earthwork is going to be critical. If it's Roman then it's the product of one of the bloodiest episodes in Welsh history. In AD 61 the full force of the Roman army descended on this small island. Their mission to destroy the stronghold of the British resistance. An insurgency led by the Druids. In a merciless attack unprecedented on British soil they massacred the Druids and their followers and burnt down their sacred oak groves. But if our earthwork was built before the Roman invasion then it could be a remnant of the very people the Romans set out to destroy. A relic of a lost world dominated by the Druids. So we put in three trenches over the large rectangular feature. Phil opens a trench over what looks like the entrance. Matt looks inside the rectangle in the hope of finding evidence of settlement and Bridge opens a trench across what Mick thinks might be a stone rampart. We'll have two bucket widths from there that side of that line. Go let's do it. The relentless elements have made the ground bone dry. Digging's going to be tough. I'll just say you've got the natural where it comes over the rise. Yeah. And you've got the natural there just in between there that's not some sort of ditch. Where? Oh look at that. He spotted that. He felt it in the fingers. You should swap jobs I think. Phil with more than a little help from Ian has uncovered what appears to be the entrance to the enclosure. The ditch across the front would have made it impossible to approach the entrance directly. It looks defensive but is it Roman or Iron Age? An imperial fort or the last refuge of the Druids? I know we've got evidence of Iron Age counts in this part of the country but do we actually have tangible evidence of Druids? If you go over to another corner of the island to RAF Valley Anglesey back in the 1940s workmen not archaeologists discovered in the peat where there had once been a lake close on 150 objects of iron and bronze and we have some replica examples here and some images this image of a bronze decorative plaque think of this as the Mercedes Benz sign on the front of your fancy car but put this on the front of your wagon or chariot and the question is who was directing the dumping now let's use a better word deposition gifting of these objects including swords they'd been bent and broken before they were thrown into like who was doing that so this is what Francis would call ritual deposition just like you have on your own site at Flagfen over in Cambridgeshire yes absolutely this is this is one of the classic ritual sites throughout Britain and Europe you have deposition of offerings into bogs and wet places it is a religious activity and it's only towards the end of that period in the last three or so centuries but it actually gets attributed to the Druids they were the blokes doing this stuff we've put a trench over some exposed stones that Mick thinks could be a rampart bridge has cleaned them up and they're looking good well Mick this is fantastic we don't usually find archaeology like this on day one it looks very impressive doesn't it yeah it's not what we're looking for at all what do you mean well I thought it was probably part of some sort of iron age rampart structure sure well of course the problem is it's outside the enclosure it's the wrong side of it and it now looks if it's the end of a barn or a building going off in that direction and it turns out to be much more to do with a post-medieval farm site post-medieval round about when do you reckon 1800 something like that probably if you look at that enclosure on the map and you look at this bottom half badly affected by later ploughing and that being post-medieval farm then our best bet for getting the outline of this enclosure is going to be up the top there yeah if you follow this I followed it so far could you explain it back to me so hopefully we'll find something in this field to help us date our site because so far these are our only finds and dating them is proving difficult we've called in fine specialist Kai Paynton to take a look initially when those coins were dug up everyone was saying Roman Roman possibly early Roman really exciting but then these waves of doubt began to hit us or maybe it's not a coin at all are they coins are they Roman the good news is they are coins they are Roman one of them could potentially be quite early and one of them might be a little bit later this one here looking at the size and what it's made of this looks like it's what they call a cistercius which could be as early as first century maybe even a little bit earlier but this one I mean it's in grotty condition but it looks like a coin called an ass so it's a grotty ass and it's it's made of some kind of a very coppery alloy which is why it's sort of blue in the middle it looks like quite an early coin so this could well be a first century coin about you know the time of the invasion here I think as Kai says they've been they've been around for a long time they've circulated for a while so you don't think that the early coin was being clutched in the hand by a Roman warrior as he murdered the druids on this very spot I think it's possible but I have to say unlikely in fact the coins are so worn they could have been in circulation long after the Romans invaded several hundred years after they'd wiped out the island's druids their brutal campaign was so successful that today it's easy to think the druids are more myth than reality it's more than shelters yes it's houses this would be a substantial house you know the way people have reconstructed they're quite substantial buildings and at nearby melon plan on a team of experimental archaeologists and modern builders are demonstrating just how substantial their reconstructions show these were simple but brilliant designs carefully placed posts bore the weight of the roof and defined the large communal space and a thatched roof would have kept out the very worst Welsh weather it was the perfect house for this hill a substantial weatherproof home fit for even the most powerful chieftain so is the mysterious pit next door another part of this domestic picture even Francis wouldn't get this excited about a rubbish pit hang on I see another of these yellow stones just under there yeah right so what it looks like then Francis is a kiss so it'll be a little grave possibly lined with stone and probably what bronze age early bronze age well it certainly is of appropriate size and shape for a crouched if you know so much about it do you really want me to bother and dig it this is completely unexpected looking for signs of iron age settlement it seems we found a bronze age grave not two but four thousand years old the oval grave was lined with large flat stones the body would have been curled up inside it seems the acidic soil has destroyed the bones but the discovery helps us rewrite the history of this hill we're saying those post holes are about 2 000 years old and that burial is about 4 000 years old in other words the people who were looking at that burial were as far away from it in time as we are from the romans but think now if there were a heap of stone over this burial pit yeah it was there it was being respected by the builders of these new houses it's odd isn't it because for us special places like churches and synagogues and what have you tend to be very much separate from our everyday lives and yet that seems to be right in the middle of our age everyday life but then as as we all know the landscape has changed and the way we read the landscape has changed and i think we've lost so much meaning in terms of you know the specialness of the hill the ancestors who have worked this land for millennia and that's the mindset i believe that these people had and of course we were advised by those special people those druids who were helping us to make sense of history three days ago this earthwork was almost unheard of one of the few clues to its existence was a photograph now we've uncovered four thousand years of history on this welsh hillside it begins with one person buried but not forgotten because two thousand years later this hill was still a special place the power base for an important chieftain it gave him a link to the past shelter food even a sacred lake he had it all and then the romans arrived life on anglesey and on this hill changed forever the curiously empty ditches suggest wind and rain began to fill them with earth soon after the invasion the roundhouse post holes were covered by a blanket of soil and a roman coin dropped on top it seems the chief and his people vanished and the once mighty earthwork was abandoned the roundhouses fell into disrepair or were even demolished and the terrifying events of the roman invasion were hidden beneath gentle pasture this exposed hill bears witness to the island's darkest hour david's really come on hasn't it yes it has uh growing nicely we're almost on the last stage despite dry willow and strong winds dave and his team have proved it would have been possible for the iron age celts to build a wicker man let me show you the head does that remind you of anybody as dave puts the finishing touches to our wicker man it's easy to forget that two thousand years ago this would have been a gruesome spectacle but stuffed with straw instead of humans it's far from terrifying in fact it feels strangely familiar phil certainly seems to be feeling a connection it's tempting to find faint echoes of this ancient custom in our modern traditions from corn dollies and the green man to guy forks how much of the ancient british way of life did romans really destroy how much do we owe to that elusive elite the druids hello my name is john gator time team is fan funded by patreon this vital support helps us to make new episodes joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3d models and master classes plus lots more