The Largest Roman Mausoleum The Team Have Ever Found Time Team Odyssey

In my hand is a piece of Roman brick. It's not very smart, we've probably seen hundreds of bits of brick like this before, except when you turn it over, you can see that nearly 2,000 years ago, someone scrawled a list of names in it. There's Vincenti there, Marini there. They were probably some of the 1,000 or so soldiers who were stationed here at Vinovia, one of the largest Roman forts in Northern England. For these common soldiers, life in the fort without food, warm clothes, and entertainment would have been impossible. They had to rely on the attached vicus, a civilian settlement that depended on and provided for all the soldiers' needs. But until very recently, these settlements have been almost entirely overlooked by archeologists. So we're stepping outside the fort's imposing ramparts to uncover the lost world of Vinovia's vicus, the bars, the shops, and beyond them, the cemeteries, which would have been such an essential part of life and death for Vincentus and co. We've never had the opportunity to dig an entire vicus before, probably because it's such a massive undertaking, and we've got just three days to do it. Vinovia, or Binchester as it's known today, lies on Deer Street, the major Roman road that ran from York through Hadrian's Wall to the far north of the empire. This strategic route was lined with forts, the backbone of the Roman military presence in Britain, and the one at Vinovia is a fantastic excavated example. It's a classic layout of barracks for up to 1,000 men, kitchens and stables, and a commandant's house, complete with a luxurious bathhouse, all surrounded by a massive stone wall, and beyond that wall was the vicus, the civilian settlement on which the fort depended, but so far, archeologists have almost completely ignored it. There have been loads of people digging inside the fort, but actually only one person has ever had a look outside in the vicus area. It's this chap, the Reverend Hoople, in 1891, and he produced this very interesting plan of buildings here, and we've got sketches of what he found. Now, these are really substantial bits of masonry, lots of different faces. They do look like illustrations in a late 19th century children's book, don't they? We have been ripped off by antiquarians before who've come up with all these fantasies which you actually can't substantiate. Is this stuff real? Well, we've got something that can help us decide, because look at that aerial photoshop. I mean, this is sensational. Here we've got Deer Street, and look, what looks exactly like these buildings very clearly here. I mean, you can even see that that looks like the long building there. I mean, it just looks wonderful. It looks like this is a really accurate plan. Yes, but whenever we're on a site that's been dug before, I know what always happens, and it makes me so depressed, which is rather than looking at new archeology, we go for where the other bloke dug. Are we gonna have to do that this time? We are, and with reason too, because when who put Doug here? I mean, we don't actually know what he found. We've got a few sketches and a probably pretty inaccurate plan. So what we need to do is to stick a trench in here, test the accuracy of the walls, and actually see how much deposit he took out, and if he left any, how much he left. So if you just go around the outside, then we'll just crisscross it with the lines cut in half about that. So we're opening our first trench over the area dug by Hoople in the 19th century, and it should contain substantial stone buildings belonging to the Vicus. But all this area, including the fort, is a scheduled ancient monument, and that means our digging options here are very limited. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, as we suspect the Vicus extends well outside the scheduled area, and that means Geophys have begun one of the biggest surveys they've ever attempted on Time Team, starting in the large field to the east of the fort. The entire area on that side of this fence is scheduled, so we can only put in one trench there, but given how big that fort was, we think the Vicus might extend over here, which is unscheduled, where we can put in as many trenches as we like if we get the evidence. Stu, any joy so far? Well, this field looks rather interesting, Tony, because we've got some aerial photographs. There's the fort, that's the fence you just walked along. Can you see that angle there? That looks like it might be an annex, a ditch feature or something, an annex onto the fort. Either that, or it's even a remnant of an earlier fort, or something of that sort of order. And there's another aerial photograph which shows a road coming out of the entrance to the fort, heading over that way, so yeah, there's a possibility of lots in here. I mean, there's no doubt from my point of view that it's full of archaeology. There's your curving feature on the aerial photograph, there it is on the geophysics. And look at all these pits and all the other archaeology inside. I mean, one target we're definitely going to have to go for is this ditch, to see what its relationship is to the main fort. I mean, as regards the area in Hull, I mean, presumably, as you go away, it looks like it's thinning right out. You wish. Oh, you devil, you definitely, oh, that's not fair. There's the fence. This is where it gets exciting. Good God. Thought we were always there, weren't we? What is that thing, do we think? A little square structure. Stunning. I mean, that looks like a temple, doesn't it? You said it. Don't see your eyes, dig it. I've never dug a temple before. Late morning on day one, and it looks like geophysics legwork has already paid off, with two intriguing targets. We open our second trench over what appears to be two parallel ditches to the north of the fort. Where's it got to be, then? Down the line of the tape. You're just walking over the bank, you're just about to cross the first ditch, and there's a probable second ditch behind me. Ian, down the bottom, up the tape. If these are ditches, we want to find out whether they were part of the vicus or an annex to the fort. And almost immediately, we've got our first find. Roman, our first piece of Samian. Look, there it is, that nice, red, shiny-yellow surface, look. Does it have a pattern on it, can we tell? Ah! No, it would have been decorated, look, because you've gone through the middle, look, it's that little raised area, which is where the pattern would have been. So it is patterned Samian. While Phil works his way through the plough soil, our resident historian has been casting his somewhat sceptical eyes over our geophys. I've never been in an experience before where we showed the archaeologists this geophys and they all immediately went, it's a temple, it's a temple, they're normally so cautious. Now, this is the radar that John's done... Look at that face, do you see that face? How long did it take you to look at that, you old cynic? Bear with me. That's the roadway, which is on the far side of the fence, we think. This here is our temple and that was the blob in the middle. Well, I don't think it's a temple, because a Romano-Celtic temple wouldn't normally turn up here, which is that kind of shape. I think it's much more likely to be a mausoleum. Why do you say that? Well, it reminds me of a mausoleum just outside Rome on the Appian Way, which consists of an enclosure wall and then with a central tomb in the middle. So what's the difference between a temple and a mausoleum? A mausoleum is a place that's dedicated to the memory of a deceased person. You might actually worship there religiously, you know, you go and perhaps offer sacrifices to the spirits of your departed. But I'd guess, I'd guess, that it's more likely to turn out to be the mausoleum of maybe a commanding officer of this fort. Well, finding the last resting place of a Roman commander doesn't happen every day. And I have to admit the geophysics results are some of the most striking we've ever seen on Time Team. So, with a strong sense of anticipation, we open our third trench over what looks like one of the walls of our possible mausoleum. That's almost exactly the line of the wall where that sheep track is. Well, hold you to that. You know what they said, almost exactly. Ah, almost exactly. Yeah. I've never known a sheep walking a straight line. No. Bit like yourself, isn't it, after the beer? I mean, is there something else we've had on Time Team? Sort of false alarms on the mausoleum? You know, you're going, ooh, must be in the mausoleum. It never is. We've had our fingers burnt before, never more so than when re-excavating antiquarian trenches. And so far, our first trench over the site of a 19th century dig hasn't delivered the stone buildings we'd hoped for. Just a confusing scatter of rubble. But our second trench looks more promising. We put this rather long trench in here because earlier today, John did some geophys here and he came up with two things which look suspiciously like ditches. Naomi, can I come in your trench? Of course you can. Have you got the ditch? We have got the ditch, we are in one of them. Where is it? OK, if we come over here, we can see this light patch and this dark patch. This is the edge of one of our ditches. This is the ditch fill. OK, and if we come this way, where this light patch is, this is our other edge, so it's quite a wide ditch. That is a heck of a big ditch, isn't it? Yeah. What's that there? Well, here is just something we're just uncovering. It looks like a nice piece of mortaria. Which is? Which is kind of like a pestle and mortar for grinding food. And this stuff here? Again, just another nice chunky vessel. Both Roman? It's definitely looking that way. So does that mean that we can date this ditch as Roman? I should say so, yeah. And the other ditch is over here? Tracey, have you got that ditch yet? I tell you, yeah. We've got one end of it here, which I'm just working on, and then the other side of it all the way down to about here. I'm sorry, I'm not really concentrating. I've just noticed this down here. What's that? Oh, that's nice, isn't it? Yeah. That's a Roman greyware pot. Wow, could it be a burial then? It could be, yeah. It could well be. It's going to be really difficult to get out though, isn't it? We'll have to block lift it, I think, just to keep it together. It's fantastic. The finds are really starting to come up already. So we can be confident these ditches are Roman, but we're still not sure when and why they were dug or whether they're part of the Vicus. We believe the fort was built to guard the point where Deer Street crosses the River Weir. And Stuart thinks the landscape may help us to understand the relationship between the Vicus and the fort. I've built up the basic topography of the landscape as it is now, and on top of it, I've dropped what would have been the fort. The first thing you'll notice is half the fort's hanging off the landscape. I mean, there is a very good reason for that, because this side of the fort has actually slipped away. There's been a big landslip on this side here by the river, and it literally has gone. So it looks rather nice, but you're going to have to lose that side of it. But what that illustrates really well is this high ground that the fort sits on, because it actually sits on, effectively, a raised island, doesn't it? The river on one side, the valley down here. That's a really dramatic piece of topography for dominating this major crossing of the river here. It's very distinct, isn't it? It is. The Roman writer Ptolemy, who's writing during the Roman period, about AD 120, actually mentions Vinovia as being a Burgundian city, as if there might actually have been an Iron Age fort or settlement here before the Roman fort. We know the vicus extended along the road to the east of the fort, so there's a possibility it continued on the other side too. But the substantial stone buildings we were expecting to find along the road to the east are missing. The more I'm cleaning them up, the more they just look like a bit of a pile, really. There's tops all in and around them. Yes, it's just kind of bits of rubble. Nothing really. It's beginning to look like whatever was found here in the 19th century has gone. Late on day one, and there's still no sign anywhere of the shops and houses we'd expect to find in a vicus. So we extend our survey even further over to the west of the fort in search of the lost settlement, and we continue to survey the area to the north to see what happens to the double ditches. For everyone, especially geophysics, it's been a long day. But just as we're getting ready to leave for the night, there's a dramatic discovery in our possible mausoleum trench. It's a base. Now, does that mean it's inverted? We may just have found evidence of a burial because this pot looks like a cremation urn. Yeah, it is inverted. It is inverted, isn't it? I can feel it goes right the way round. Incredibly thin-walled. I'm amazed at just how well-thrown it is. I mean, look at the thinness of those walls. It's way for a thin. It's a beautiful piece of pot and it really is. I mean, do you reckon if we got this roadside mausoleum job, is this going to be a cremation? Well, to have a complete vessel placed upside down in this kind of position, the most obvious thing is that you would have a cremation burial in it, but you can't actually see anything at the moment. I reckon we might have to cut the trench back a bit. Yeah, we'll have to box it, won't we? If this is a cremation, it lends weight to Guy's theory that this is a mausoleum, but it's a long shot. We've never found a Roman mausoleum on Time Team before. It's been an extraordinary day and right at the end, Geophysics have come up with another curveball. Their continuing survey of the site shows that the double ditches we've been excavating extend around the fort and that suggests these ditches look less like an annex or part of the vicus and more like a huge earlier fort. If we're right, that would push the history of Vinnovia back towards the very beginning of Roman occupation in the north of England. It looks like we're in for another busy day tomorrow. Beginning of day two in our search for the Roman settlement around the big fort here in Binchester in the northeast and yesterday afternoon, John came up with some extraordinary geophys. Here, where we expected to see shops and houses, John has found this, which he thinks is a new fort, which is quite extraordinary, but that provides us with a bit of a dilemma. Do we continue to investigate inside this new fort? Do we go outside to search for the settlement or vicus as the Romans called it? Or do we dig in both? Remember, we've only got two days left. Mick. That's what we're thinking. It's a tall order, isn't it? It is, it is, and we've got a lot to do already. So adding extra sort of interesting projects is something we're a bit wary of. We don't really want one little hole because it might not tell us very much, might it? So, you know, we're not quite sure what to do. Yes, well, thank you very much for developing the problem. I just spent two minutes telling them about it. What's the solution? I think we've got to try and, well, we do have to try and resolve it. I mean, thankfully, we have got two, what we do, we've got two days, we've got two more days, so we can actually address it. We've got a lot of good diggers. That's amazing. They've told me absolutely nothing. John, why do you think that this is a fort? Why couldn't it be medieval or anything? There's a couple of things without getting too complicated. Look at these earlier results. We've got clear stone buildings showing in the geophysics. You don't have these. These look like timber slots and pits within these defences. So that says to me, Barrett blocks, earlier fort. All right, Guy, what's the significance of that? Look, this is very exciting. We've concentrated all our attention up till now on the later stone fort, but what I'm convinced we've got here is an early timber fort that probably pushes us right back into the first century and that big Roman push into the north. Okay, so where do we dig? Well, Phil and I reckon our best bet is probably to extend this into that area there. Yeah, but remember that in addition to that, we've got two possible cremation burials. We've got a whole flipping mausoleum there, which everyone was really excited about yesterday. Well, and we've got that trench to empty up there. What, the one that the old antiquarian originally dug? Yeah, so a lot of work to do. Can we do all of that? Well, I think so, if we only extend this rather than dig something new. If we didn't think it was possible, we wouldn't do it. So you reckon we can do what we need to do, but we're stretching ourselves. Yeah, but just don't come up with anything else. Nothing else to find today. So we extend trench two into the area we hope's an early fort and continue to excavate our possible mausoleum trench. We've now uncovered this fantastic wall and we need to work out how it relates to our potential cremation urn. That's coming out really nicely now, isn't it? That should be the interface, according to the geophys, of whatever we've got here. I'll take your word for that. With not one, but two discoveries of potentially national significance, our hunt for the vicus takes a back seat, with only Matt left scraping away in search of the substantial stone buildings recorded in the 19th century. Matt, we've got a mausoleum down there. We've got cremation burials. We've got a brand new Roman fort that no one's ever seen before. What have you got in your trench? Well, apart from all this stone rubble, we've got hope and we've got a day and a half as well, so we'll see how it goes. Can you hold the end of it and then go through what's left of that? So far, we've found very little archaeological evidence of the living, but we do have plenty of evidence of the dead. In our long trench, Bridge is excavating what could be a cremation burial. She's found a coin next to the pot and suspects it was originally placed inside. There could be more stuff when you block lift it, I guess. Well, that's it. I mean, the nice thing would be if we could find some cremated bone, something like that. And in our trench over the possible mausoleum, Jackie's still excavating what we hope is another cremation. Jackie, what have you been doing almost a day ago? You said you were going to lift that pot and it's still there. Yeah, we had a slight change of plan because if you look behind you, we thought we were outside this building. We're actually inside it because we've got the return wall. That's some fantastic archaeology. How many times on Time Team have you shown me something which you tell me is a structure, but it just looks like three stones to me. Even I can see what a robust wall that is. Well, three stones make a wall and we've got a lot more than three. So that's good down there. So what we're going to do now, we've got this vessel here. In fact, we've got slightly more than one vessel. We've actually got two. Cool. They're placed inside this building. So what we want to do is see how they relate to that return wall as it runs along there. So we're going to strip away a little bit more of the ground to that side. So you're going to take this part of the trench from here back this way, yeah? Yeah, so it's going to go out about two metres in that direction so we can find where that wall is and exactly how they sit in relationship to it. This new one looks even better nicked than the other one and much bigger too. So what do you think the story of this trench is so far? Well, this is starting to look like a possible mausoleum. So we've got a standing building which will have been there for quite a long time inside which potentially burials have been made, cremation burials, which is what this may be. But we don't quite know how they relate to each other date-wise. It's very exciting. It is jolly exciting. We're becoming more and more confident that this is a mausoleum and we want to see more of it. So we're extending the trench yet again. The mausoleum alone would be a major discovery but we also think we might have discovered a huge earlier fort. We know the fort that's visible today was built around 130 AD. So to prove this one's earlier, we need dateable evidence. So now you've got some decent edges to the ditch. You can get down into it now, we suppose? Yeah, it'll be nice to see how deep this goes now. I reckon it's gonna actually come a fair old way down. I hope so. Have you got anything coming out of it? Yeah, we've got some nice bits. There's this lovely Samian bowl. That's nice, isn't it? You've got a date on that. Late first, early second century. And you're not, well, you're nowhere near the bottom of the ditch. So if we get in first century stuff this far up, you should wonder what you got from lower down. Oh, hopefully lots more. What you got in this bit of bubble right here? Ah! I mean, ah! Have a look. Looking like an old crow. That's ah! I think you'll like this one. Here, look. Ooh, ah! It's pretty, isn't it? Yeah, that is pretty. Roman beaker of some sort. It's gorgeous though, isn't it, eh? It's that colouring, isn't it? The way it catches the light. And that's well and truly stratified in the ditch as well. Yeah, that is from the same context as the Samian. That's the second one down here, so. Excellent. Let's hope we get some more bits as we go further down. It's a promising start. These late first century finds take us back before the construction of the stone fort in around 130 AD. But there's no dating evidence in our first trench. In fact, despite Matt's earlier optimism, there's little sign of the stone buildings we'd expected to find. So have you sorted this out now, Matt? Yep. We've got it. That is the bottom of Huppel's trench, finally. Right. You can see, though, that there's none of this lovely masonry left. And we know that's the bottom of his trench because, look, the most exciting find of Trench 1 so far. Oh, well, that's not Roman, is it, at all? You're getting good at this, aren't you? Yes. Bit of 19th century willow, perhaps. And that was from right... Well, it's from down there in the backfill, so that's confirmed that it's Victorian. So once he'd done those nice drawings of all that nice masonry, somebody must have pinched the stonework, in fact. While there's no dating evidence in Trench 1, Bridge is hoping the coin from the pot in Trench 2 could provide us with a date for the ditches. You can see the original surface of it is completely gone. You can see how knobbly that is. But I have managed to pick out of the corrosion some letters coming up around here. Yes. And I can see the face of a man looking to the right. Yes. But who is he and what does it say? Well, I can tell from the size of the coin straight away that it's 1st or 2nd century. But do you see how, on the man's face, there's no beard? OK, bare face. Now, that puts it pretty well into the 1st century because most of the 2nd century emperors had beards. Oh, great. And I can tell you straight away, looking at his face, that this is the Emperor Vespasian. I can just tell from the profile. Now, that means that this coin was deposited sometime in the late 1st century or possibly on into the early 2nd century when that would have circulated. So, you know, it's a pretty good sort of date for us. It's quite early and it goes nicely for the dating of that trench, or Trench 2. Yes, it does. This coin is the strongest evidence yet that the ditches in Trench 2 belong to an early fort. We're getting lots of finds from this trench, but the truth is, none of them are exclusively military. I think I've got some more pottery here. To confirm our theory that this is an earlier fort, we need to find evidence of military activity, such as a barracks or granaries. I knew that we were going to extend this trench in that direction because Jackie wanted to sort out her cremation burials. But now we've extended it all the way up to here, even though this morning the archaeologists said to me they didn't want to do any more archaeology other than what was already on their plates and they didn't want to find anything new. But they have. And now I name these three guilty men. I thought you were going to come at us about this. Why? Look at the geophysics. Well, not only look at the geophysics, look at the trench. When Jackie extended, she got the main wall of the mausoleum and she got that second wall. And if you look at the radar, we've got these fantastic results. There's the main mausoleum wall. Here's the second wall cutting across here, turning through a right angle. And you see, we were debating earlier whether we'd got one or more mausoleums or mausolea along here, or indeed whether we'd got part of a temple complex. Now it looks from the geophysics that we've got a series of these mausoleums going along the road. That's fantastically interesting. It's not the sort of thing we get a lot of in this country. So if we've got lots of mausoleums in a long line, what does that tell us? It's a classic bit of Roman culture. If you go off to Italy today and you visit the port of Rome at Ostia, you can see the tombs still laid out one by one beside the throne. If you go to Rome and walk down the Appian Way, there's tombs all the way along. If you go to Pompeii, you can walk through the street of tombs. One final question. What do we think this is? Well, that's why we're going to excavate there. We thought this was so interesting. We ought to look at it and open it up. And so that's what we're doing. So in an hour or two's time, we'll be able to tell you that. When you've dug it. When we've dug it. Like you weren't going to do any more digging this morning. Get lost. Go on, clear off. You'll be glad we've dug it. Yeah, exactly. This is the first row of mausoleums to be found in Britain for 150 years, and only the second ever to be discovered. It's a find of national significance. And with the strange circular feature and Jackie's pots, this trench promises to get better and better. Jackie, this is the longest running story in the history of Time Team. 26 hours later, you still haven't lifted those pots. Yeah, unfortunately, the story keeps changing and it's changed yet again. Believe it or not, this rather pale material you can see here. Yeah. That's somebody's skull, or at least what's left of it. This is very, very acid soil, so it's more or less dissolving. And those are bits of tooth that are in there. And I can just about see the cut of a grave going through here now. So it looks like we've got a burial, an inhumation burial that's been made with a head here, and the pots have been placed up by the head. So those pots have been placed as grave goods in with this individual. Any idea how old that person would have been? Well, one of the teeth that I've got out here, that's a premolar tooth and it's slightly worn so that I know that that person must be at least over 16. That might be all I can say. So what happens now? Well, I want to extend down here and see if I can find the rest of the grave outline and see if there's anything else in with this individual. So those pots are unfortunately going to be there a little bit longer. I was hoping that as the sun set, you'd lift the pots and I'd do my end of day piece to camera. Well, you'll just have to adapt it slightly, dear. I'm sure you can manage. In fact, on this dig, it seems we're constantly adapting. And the more the story changes, the more questions we encounter. Was the mausoleum built for this person? When was our newly discovered fort constructed? And what's this mysterious circular feature? We've now got just one day left to find the answers. It's the beginning of day three at Alvinovia Roman Fort in County Durham. And we're making an early start because this is turning out to be one of our most productive digs ever. So far, we've uncovered what could be a huge earlier Roman fort. And not one, but a whole row of mausoleums. The first to be excavated for over 150 years. We're bracing ourselves for another busy day. And with such a wealth of archeology, we've got our work cut out if we're going to make sense of it all. Do you remember from the geophysics, there was that circular response in the center. I'm just wondering if this is the building, then this perhaps should be a focus. I'm only going on the evidence in my eyes. Late yesterday afternoon, geophysics came up with a strange circular feature next to our mausoleums. But making sense of the layouts proving tricky. I thought we had a big one with some dividing walls within it. Well, perhaps what you thought was not right. Perhaps. I can't believe that. In trench two, over what we hope is an earlier fort, we're looking for evidence of military activity such as barrack blocks. Excavating this is no easy task. Instead of large stone blocks, we're looking for traces of timber and subtle changes in the soil marking the bottom of the ditches. See, I don't know if that's natural or a primary silt that's fallen into the bottom of the ditch. Yeah, it is a lot cleaner down here, isn't it? Oh, it's absolutely, and it's soft as butter. But the trench is producing some good finds. Guy, we've got a fair bit of pottery that's been coming out of here. We've got a nice piece of amphora, some interesting pieces of greyware, but this is a real star find. Look at that, and those three all joined together. I can tell it's Samian, but I expect you can tell me a lot more than that. Well, it's South Gaulish Samian. And I can tell from the decoration, which we've got so much of, that this is going to be about 70 to 90 AD. We do know about individual potters. That's what you can tell from decorated Samian. It's very tightly associated with individuals. Also, we've got these key historical events where Samian has been found, and the classic example is Pompeii. It's August 79 AD, Vesuvius erupts, and one of the casualties is a crate of fresh Samian that's just arrived in the city, and that's been excavated. So we know exactly which potters were working in South Gaul at that time. But the best thing about it is that we've got so much of the decoration, we can definitely get this reconstructed. Late morning on day three, and an exhausted geophys team finally pack up their magnetometers. They've surveyed an area the size of 18 football pitches. It's one of the largest areas ever surveyed on a time team, but it's been worth it. This has got to be some of the most spectacular geophys we've ever had on a time team, hasn't it? It really is. I mean, we've taken Mark Knoll's earlier survey. He did it for GeoQuest, and we've combined them with ours. And so we've got this whole landscape picture now just in the geophysics. I mean, it's actually the patterning within that that's so important. You know, you can see different parts of the site. You can see that the Vicus is on both sides of the fort, for example. And that's important because it tells us the main axis of the fort, and that's exactly what you'd expect, a Vicus on either side of that axis. All that's fine, but you've got to admit, when we came here, we said we would look at the settlement, the Vicus. Then when we found the first mausoleum, suddenly we all became so captivated by that that we poured all our resources in here. I mean, we've done virtually no trenches elsewhere. If we'd been digging this site, and we'd found the Vicus and hadn't found a mausoleum, we'd have put all the trenches in the Vicus. Absolutely. The fact that that turned up, and that's actually relatively unusual, it's almost what happens in archaeology. You know, you set out with one thing. We've answered, actually, the question about the settlement from the geophysics. I think that's quite revealing what you've just said, though. Basically, you wanted to dig it. Not for me. I didn't. And it's looking more and more like it was the right decision, with yet another surprise in our mausoleum trench. Jackie's discovered a handful of iron nails, which means the person was probably buried in a wooden coffin with the bowls placed on top. It appears the grave was cut into the mausoleum sometime after its construction. Perhaps for a descendant of the mausoleum's original occupant. It's a window into the rituals and beliefs of the lost world of Enovia, a world we're beginning to piece together. Just glancing across this, we've got some massive things, like these huge great bits of tile. Those are bound to have been made locally, because, of course, tile is very fragile. If you have to carry it long distance, it's bound to get broken. But there's a single little tiny piece of pottery over here, which I think is the most interesting bit of all, even though it's almost the smallest piece we have. Now, that is off the side wall of an early form of decorated Samian bowl. And its profile is rather like, the rim is here, little vertical wall here, and then it curves right down like that. OK. And there's just enough of the decoration for me to say that it's probably been made between the years 70 to 85 AD. Now, that takes us right back to a governorship of somebody called Petilius Kyrialis in the early 70s, potentially. That's right at the beginning of when the Romans are up here, isn't it? That's exactly right. Now, that of all the pieces here, to my mind, is the most interesting, because it gives us that very early date. This tiny piece of pot from trench two is powerful evidence of an early, previously unknown fort at Vinovia, dating to the very beginning of the Roman invasion of the north. Yesterday, we all got really excited about this area here with this mausoleum and Jacky's pot. Then we found another mausoleum here. But then, towards the end of the day, John started to get really excited about an area over here where he found this mysterious circular thing. So, Phil, have we found our mysterious circular feature? We have, but it's not circular. It's square. This is it. Well, why does it look circular on the geophys? Well, I think the fact is that the inside of it does look circular. But actually, when you look at the geophysics too, you see, look, you've got that straight edge there, and there's another straight edge there. I think you could interpret that as a square mausoleum. Is a mausoleum for a very small person or a cat? No, not at all. I mean, it's perfectly feasible to have a cremation in there, and you can actually get a burial in there. I mean, when you look at the size of Ian against the inside there, you could actually squeeze a human body in there and get it in there, no problem. So there could still be a burial there? There could well be a burial in there. Bridge, it's a nice piece of masonry over there. Yeah, I'm glad you noticed it. It is indeed. It looks to be part of a column. You see this curved edge around here? That would have been the front of it. Why is it flat on the other side? Well, it's really been put up for aesthetic reasons rather than structural. So of course, as it was standing there, this flat side would have been flush against the wall of the mausoleum, and then you would have just seen that curved column on the front. So there was no need to actually build a round column. Yeah, but this is only half the story, isn't it? You've got something fairly small over there, but you've got this massive building here. You've got a wall there, a return there, a wall there, a return there. It's huge. Ah, but you see, you're taking the obvious interpretation, which was exactly the interpretation that I came to when I first came here, and thinking that you did have this one big building. But you see, what we've got on the geophysics is this, which actually contradicts that, that there's gonna be a wall across there, literally going across there, and we have no archeological evidence for it. So we're going to continue digging for the wall that Geophys says is here, while extending our trench to see if these two outer walls do join up. The truth is, it's mid-afternoon on day three, and the layout of the mausoleum is still a puzzle. Reysan and Guy are looking at possible models. Guy suspects each mausoleum was made up of a central chamber surrounded by a walled enclosure. But to confirm this, we need to find all four walls. Oh! That's it there, isn't it? There, look, there it is, there's Peat Grip. So we've got the... Oh, look! Yeah, that's the door socket, isn't it? Round one there, so you can turn the door. What's this gonna do, look? It's close up against that threshold there, isn't it? And so you've got the threshold jam there blocking it, and then here you've got the... Brilliant. And that's the wall coming up the outside. Wall back here. Starts again. Excellent, that was worth doing that. We'll move on back, Ian. What I'll do is take it round a couple of times, and then I'll start taking away the soil down the side. In the mausoleum next door, excavating the pots has reached a critical stage. What do you think the chances are it's gonna come out in one piece? I'm not really a betting woman, you know. So is the idea that both of these will be emptied in the lab? Yeah, I mean, this one, looking at it from this side, hasn't got a lot in it, which... That's quite loose, isn't it? Makes it slightly more difficult. Because it's not supported from the inside, is it? No, no. Let's just give it a little wobble. Yep. Right, we're gonna move it sideways. Yep, that's looking very clear in there. Right. There we go. Excellent. Jolly good. Well done. Phew. Extending the trench has produced not only the return wall, as hoped, but a beautifully preserved door socket. Bearing in mind I've got metal toe caps, wave your machine over that plug, door plug, and see if there's a metal plug in there. That's a big metal plug in there, then. I am a big metal plug. Yeah, it's very heavy. Well, I am. But it's a piece of engineering, too. You think, with all these raised bits around here, flush it all off. I don't know how the devil they do that. And then they gotta put a plug in there, just for a door, for a mausoleum. I mean, that's an incredible amount of work. That really is. We're ready to lift the second bowl. It looks almost perfect, and we're hoping it'll stay that way when we lift it. It's very hard up against the stones, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I think what it's done is, I think they've been on top of the coffin, and have slid off. Yes, as it's rotted. Yeah. To one side. Which is why it's wedged up against that edge, right? I'm just gonna... Is that moving at all? Oh, yes, it is, it is, yes. All right, OK. Here we go. Look at that. Oh, there's a crack down this side, but that's it, otherwise. Oh, yes. Phew. The two pots date to the late second or early third centuries, and were probably filled with offerings to the deceased, scented oils or wine. Inside the central mausoleum, we've found the wall we were looking for. It seems that this was an internal wall, and not a separate mausoleum. With a beautifully crafted entrance, columns, and fine stonework, it's becoming clear this was built for a very important person, possibly for a general. Late on day three, and trench three just keeps on surprising us. But our trench in search of the early fort has been almost the opposite, with ditches and pottery, but little signs so far of buildings or military activity. Yesterday, we put this trench in here because there was what seemed to be a big double ditch, which we thought was the outside defenses of a Roman fort that no one had ever found before. And sure enough, we've got the pottery dating, and it is Roman. So then Mick decided he wanted to extend it to see if he could find any evidence of that fort in the ground, buildings and paths and roads and whatnot. How have we done? And it's worked out extremely well because you just walked over the site of the rampart running in that direction, which would have been made of turf and timber and clay and so on, big great big wall across there. And at the back of that, you see this orangey clay area? This is probably either an oven or the base of an oven or burning associated with ovens because there were often ovens in the back of the rampart. Guy, why would you put an oven in the back of a rampart? Well, this is a timber fort, so your barrack blocks are made out of wood. The last thing you want them to do is to burn down, so you have your bread oven over here safely behind the rampart. They're the other side of the road because we've actually got the road. Look, see all these cobbles here? So the road's running in this direction behind the rampart. And then the other side of the road, we're starting to get the foundation for the timber buildings. We've got timber slots. We've got rows of nails where the beginning of the front of the barracks or other military buildings were going off into the fort that direction. But one of the reasons that we wanted to dig this trench, Guy, was because we wanted some dating. Yeah, we have had some very useful bits of pottery out of here. And one little piece in particular takes us back to the 70s A.D. And that's great because historically we know that in the early 70s, there's a governor called Petilius Kerialis, who has brought the Roman army up from the North Midlands right into this part of England to wipe out this troublesome Northern tribe called the Brigantes. Now, we may well have one of the forts from that campaign, which is brilliant. And there's probably a series of early forts like that to control Northern Britain. This has been a truly remarkable dig. We came to this hill in search of Avicus, the civilian settlement that supported the Roman fort. And in the process, we uncovered an entire lost landscape. We located the Avicus along the road on either side of the fort. But we also discovered a huge earlier fort, which pushes the history of Vinovia back to the very beginning of Roman occupation in the North. And a row of three mausolea, the first group to be discovered in Britain for 150 years. We came here in search of the living, but found a city of the dead, a street lined with grand tombs, a little piece of the Roman world in the far North of the empire. And at its heart, perhaps the grandest mausoleum of all. Antonius, my brother and fellow comrade soldier at the mighty fort of Vinovia up there. We've come down the street of tombs to venerate the memory of our great ancestor, our great, great grandfather, the mighty general who once acted as a soldier here. And we've come down to his tomb. And we've got to go through the vast, mighty door that would have once been here, pivoting there on iron. And then we come to the mausoleum area and towering above us here is his grave with an inscription that records his name, his mighty exploits. And around here, other graves of his brother and his cousins, other members of the family. And these are the men who make you and me important people in the fort today. And our great hope one day is that we'll be buried here, too, as great chaps. And as part of that, we brought down a meal of chicken and wine so that our great ancestor could share in that meal with us. After an amazing three days, it's time for a celebration of our own. We've set up a Roman taverna, the kind that undoubtedly flourished in the vicus, complete with authentic Roman-style ale. You got some for me? Yeah, yeah. Here, get out of here. And use the straw, too. I mean, I'm told it's the upper-class thing to do, the oipolo, you know, slugging it straight down. What's in this? Well, it's a beautiful, basic ingredients. There's wheat, barley and oats. That's the grains. There's water. Nothing could be simpler. Bit of bread to make it, give it the yeast and then to make it bitter, stinging nettles. I mean, it's got to be good for summer, hasn't it, really? Can I have a go, then? Yeah, get it down there. I've got at least two. That's great. Look at these! Crack it! I tell you what, what a great dig, eh? Cheers, everyone! To the fort, or should I say the forts of Vinnovia!