Have Archaeologists Found The Lost Iron Age Capital Of Wales? | Time Team

This slope could once have been part of an ancient capital in a rather unlikely place, the Ely housing estate here in South Wales. The hill is called Caerai. It's pretty mysterious and no one's ever dug it before, but it may well once have been a vital fortress for the Welsh tribes who lived here 2,000 years ago. This mighty fort built on a hill may have been the center of power for this entire region. I'm really excited about it, Tony. Untouched by spade or trowel for centuries, will we be the first to unravel its secrets? So, I'm hoping... Whoa! ..that's a little clearer for you. Oh, I can't believe it. It's down to our team of archaeologists to solve the mystery of this hill. Could this be the long-lost capital of South Wales? And if it is, will we be able to find it in three days? See, the thing about long-lost places is you never quite know what you're going to find, do you? Well, so here we are, Phil. This is our hill fort. There's nothing quite like it, is there? You're walking up through the entrance of a hill fort with ramparts towering up on either side of you. Absolutely immense. You know, it's a big hill fort. It's one of the biggest in South Wales. You know, it's a major centre. Yeah, but the thing is, Neil, it's big, so we've got to get cracking, absolutely. Oh, come on, Phil. Ordering, ordering, ordering. Also making their way up to the fort are our geophysics team. Their task, to survey this vast hilltop in search of an ancient tribal centre that may lie hidden here. Oh, wow. You wouldn't have thought it was this open up here when you're clambering up the ramparts, would you? No, you wouldn't. So this is about five hectares. That's ten football pitches in old money, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Caerai, which means forts in Welsh, overlooks Cardiff, capital of modern Wales. Built atop this massive hill, trees now cover the spectacular earthworks that give our site the classic profile of an Iron Age hill fort. But more than that, its size and commanding position suggest that it could have been the old capital and busy hub for the Welsh clans of the area. Time Team site director Francis Pryor has seen what he believes could be an Iron Age ditch, and it's got him very excited. I mean, look, you can really see it. It's incredibly clear over there, isn't it? Yeah, no, it's a really nice ditch. Right, you're back. Francis, you're the boss this week. Is this place really as mysterious as it's cracked up to be? Well, I don't think it's mysterious, Tony, so much as unexplored. You know it's a hill fort. It's a hill fort, so it is Iron Age, then? Yes, it's Iron Age. That gives us a lot of time to play with. You know, is it started at the beginning, you know, 600, 500 BC, or is it started much later, 300, 200? It could be either one. What sort of thing are we expecting to find? Well, what we're looking for, Tony, is where people actually live. I mean, that's our main objective. But initially, we want to find the earliest feature on the site, and I think our best bet lies really just down there in that ditch. I mean, you can see it as clear as anything. We're going to do the geophys first, though, surely? We don't need geophys. Francis, 20 years of Time Team, and then we geophys, and then we dig the trench. We are going to be doing a trench here. Hang on a second. You've got a cane here. Yeah. And one right over there where you are. This is a zonking great trench. It's a zonking great ditch. Yeah, the thing is, Tony, we've got to get on and dig it. Yeah. So would you mind please going somewhere else? Oh, yeah, blame me. Bye-bye! You would think we were just wandering around in the grass. The temptation to dive straight in at Caerai is too much for any red-blooded archaeologist to resist. This huge site could date back to the beginning of the Iron Age in Wales, as early as 800 years BC. If this was an Iron Age capital, our ancestors would have lived here in large numbers and left evidence behind. Ditches are a good place to look for artefacts that have rolled in or been thrown away. Francis is convinced the curving ditch he's digging is Iron Age. The turf's barely off, and it looks like he could be right. Very often what happens with Iron Age ditches, you have collapse over the years coming in, and so, I mean, your actual edge of that ditch is, what, twice as far back as we reckon? Yeah. It's very encouraging. You know, nice wide ditch, natural appearing over there, bank. It's just what we expected. Clues to the importance of this site lie all around us. Ramparts. The massive banks and ditches that surround this hill. They're part of what's always drawn Iron Age specialist Neil Sharples to Caerai. For years, he's been dying to dig here. We've been talking blithely about this place being a hill fort, but we haven't actually said what a hill fort is, have we? No, it's, well, it's a difficult question. That's why we're probably even avoiding it. Well, it's a hill and it's a fort, right? Well, maybe. It's definitely not a hill. What do you mean by a fort? Well, somewhere where there are soldiers, somewhere where there are defensive structures. We can see that there are ramparts here, can't we? So, what were these ramparts for? Well, I think, at a simple level, they're creating an enclosure that defines and gives identity to the people who live within it. Defining a community seems like a bit hippy-dippy to me. Well, no, it's... People in the period before this, in the Bronze Age, people were living in small farmsteads in the fields, in the landscape. The end of the Bronze Age is a major transformation and people gather together at these places, probably quite special places, and then they surround themselves in these ramparts and ditches. But why would you define yourself in such an incredibly military way? Well, it's not necessarily a military way. That's the way you look at it. They'd be very, very surprised if we found a spear inside the hill or any weapon. You're making it sound like something built by social services. Look, just because it took a lot of people to build it doesn't mean it was a community project, does it? It's a big statement of a sense of belonging and it's a sense of pride, community pride. We are a community that's strong, vibrant, we've got lots of resources, we've got lots of manpower. We can build a major, impressive monument that's going to really put all our neighbours into the shade. They're going to look at our ramparts and say, gosh, that's impressive, I don't want to tangle with them. They are a really important group of people. The geophysics team is using magnetometry to survey Kairi. It's a technique that uses magnetic waves to locate disturbances deep in the soil. We're looking for circular features, traces of Iron Age roundhouses that may have lain buried for more than 2,000 years. Francis has asked the team to survey a strip running across the middle of the hillfort. If there really were lots of people living here in the Iron Age, there should be evidence in the geophys. And the first set of results are already in. This is what we've got. Now, we did have a bit of a wish list this morning, which was going to be lots of archaeology, possibly some ring ditches. Yep. So how many of your wishes have you fulfilled? Erm, not quite as many as you'd have hoped, I'm afraid. Like, none? Yeah, we're verging on none. It's up for debate. Francis, you wanted roundhouses. Yes, yes, I did. Yes, it's... Yeah, it's... It's not exactly Iron Age London, is it? Not really. I mean, am I imagining something, or is that something there? Tell me there is something there. Come on, tell me there's something there. All right, yes, there is something curving through there. Well, can you drop us in on that? I think I can manage it. OK, let's go. It's not much to go on, but then Iron Age archaeology isn't for the faint-hearted or the short-sighted. Roundhouses, the typical homes of the period, were made of wood, mud and thatch, and after long centuries rotting in the ground, there's not much left to see. While Phil's opening up Trench 2, back at our first trench, Francis is hoping his archaeologist's gut instinct has been proved right. If this really turns out to be an Iron Age ditch, it'll help us date the hillfort. Yes, I think we've got a ditch there. Yeah, no problem. So that's your ditch, Matt. It's not exactly defensive, is it? No. The grey silt that we thought was the ditch fill actually is the top of this natural boulder clay here. So we carried on back this way, and you can see the dark ditch fill there. Oh, it's really clear. Yeah, lovely edge there. It goes all the way to here. How deep do you think it's going to be? I've been nibbling away at the edge along here, and it's going at about 45 degrees, so you may be talking maybe half a metre deep. No finds, anything like that? Absolutely nothing. The fill of this ditch is really solid. It's almost the same as the clay there, so I think it is very compacted and very old. But the proof is really going to be in the excavation, isn't it? Yeah, it will. Get cracking. At the base of this hillfort is Ely, the biggest housing estate in Cardiff. Unaware that an ancient capital might be in their backyard, some of the Ely residents have turned up hoping to find out something about this place. So what's it like having this fantastic ancient site right in your doorstep? Like, you didn't even know about it, really. I know. It was quite, like, hidden, cos, like, not many people knew about it being here. And, like, after all this, a lot of people know about it now. Over the next few days, we're hoping to tell the local people if and when Kairi was occupied and exactly what was going on up here. So we'd better hurry up and find something. One of the archaeologists just called me over and said, there's a house entrenched too, a house entrenched too. So I came over here and, look, there's swathes of brown soil and a few stones dotted around. Where's your flipping house, mate? Actually, I couldn't have put it better myself, Tony. There are swathes of brown soil, but it really takes the eyes of a skilled archaeologist to actually pick out what's in the trench. Well, we've only got you here. Well, I'm going to have to do, then, aren't I? Look, if you remember, when you looked at the geophysics, do you remember there was that curving thing which we thought was probably the wall line of the roundhouse? Well, we think we've actually located that in this trench. The giveaway is you've got one edge coming along there. You can see on this side, it's somewhat grittier. And then in here, it's clayier. And you've got the other edge coming around here and swinging round in this direction. And we think that that is either the foundation of a roundhouse or maybe a drip gully. We're looking for a huge community, aren't we? Yes, but huge communities live in houses. If we're right in thinking that this is our house, we are beginning to actually get a grip of that community. It is all a bit tenuous, isn't it? It is not tenuous, you old cynic! If this was a capital packed with people, we really need to find their houses and date them. Francis thinks that dwellings next to the ramparts could be better preserved because, over time, soil tumbles down onto the houses, protecting them from later ploughing. Jim! Afternoon. Got any more results for us? Certainly have. You'll remember, Francis, that after this morning's efforts, we were sort of grasping at straws, hopefully. Whoa! Is that better? Is that more what you were after? Oh, I can't believe it. We got one. One, two, three, four... five... what, six roundhouses, I guess, there? Optimistic, but I'm with you, yeah. I mean, I can't tell you, Jimmy. You may change your mind overnight, but at first glance, where do you reckon you'd want to dig tomorrow? Well, obviously, go for that roundhouse. It's obviously in such good condition. Ten minutes ago, we had a drip tray, and now we've got practically a whole civilisation. Well, we'll have to prove it to find out, won't we? And that means digging tomorrow. Discover the past with exclusive ancient history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Download the app now to explore everything from the wonders of Pompeii to the rebellion of Boudicca and the mysteries of prehistoric Scotland. Immerse yourself in the captivating stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description. Beginning of day two here in South Wales, and yesterday we spent the whole day searching for some signs of Iron Age life in this empty field and found virtually nothing at all until round about 5.30pm, Jimmy from Geophys came up with that. Isn't that beautiful? Lots of interesting linears and circles and mysterious shapes. For an archaeologist, this is just about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. So how are you going to start your fun-filled day, mate? Well, we've got a dream site here, Tony. Look, the Geophys has shown up a row of houses smuggled up against the back of the ramparts, which is what you often find on hillforts. And then look at that one. That's the best preserved of them all. So we're putting a trench in that from the front door, which is here, so we're going to do that half there. But you think these aren't the only round houses here, don't you? Yeah, I think there's another row running along here. There's certainly one there. There's another one in there, another one there, another one there. I'm quite happy. I think that's a row of houses. It's so funny cos yesterday I was really taking the mickey out of you for this idea that this was an Iron Age community rather than an actual military fort. But if you've got two rows of houses like that, that is the beginning of the community. I'm happy. I think it proves what I was saying was right. And, you know, we've got a community here. I mean, if you count them up. I mean, we've got at least five on this row, five or six on this row. You know, we've got at least ten houses. Eight to ten people in a family. So, you know, that's 1,800 people. And that's just one corner of our field. Excellent. So, you know, I'm really happy. But we've got to find something, Tony. We haven't found anything yet. We found a burnt stone. A burnt stone. We're quite excited. Only an archaeologist could get that excited about this amount of burnt stone. Burnt limestone, together with our stunning geophys results, have convinced Francis that he's found an area that was very densely populated by Iron Age standards. It could be the first step to proving that Kairi was a very important site. But the minute the topsoil's off, disagreement follows. Geophysics head John Gaither thinks he can see the marks of the roundhouse in the ground. But Francis is convinced that the jagged edges they're seeing were caused by Ice Age glaciers 10,000 years ago. There's a feature there at the very end. That's showing up nice and clearly. That's a proper feature. It's got pottery on it. There's nothing in there which is archaeological, honest. Look at the edge of that, John. See the wavers? Yeah, like that. That's cut by ice. I think that is the ditch of the roundhouse and that's the break, that's the entrance there. So the green is the edge of the trench where we're standing and that anomaly there is that anomaly and you're saying that's glacial. Yeah. And so it's pure coincidence that that is at the end of that ring. Yeah. Well, I don't believe you. You don't? No. Well, I'll take my hat off to you if it is. No, it is, John, it is. There is no archaeology there, take my word for it. So we'll have to come back here then and then once we've found it, we can follow it if we want. But I think the key thing now is to find it because we're lost until we do. If Francis is right, we haven't got our roundhouse yet, but he's not giving up. He's now extending the trench to try and find it. We know next to nothing about this site and very little about the Iron Age in this part of Wales except that it lasted for 800 years. But there are clues about the nature of the people who lived in the area and perhaps on our hill fort itself. It's a beautiful map, isn't it? It looks like Middle Earth. It's a cracker and it does a bit, doesn't it? What does it represent? Well, what it's showing us is the Iron Age tribes of Wales or at least it shows us how the Romans described the Iron Age tribes of south Wales. We have a wonderful account from the Roman historian Tacitus and he gives us this picture and this is a nice sort of representation of that. Where are we? We're just here. This is Caerai. So we're deep in the heart of these people, the Siluris. Absolutely in the heartland of the Siluris, that's right. What do we know about the Siluris? The Romans tell us quite a bit about them, in some detail, about the ferocious resistance that the Siluris mounted to the Roman advance, a 25-year guerrilla war. What do you think is the relationship between our hill fort and the Siluris' defence of their own territory generally? Well, it could be quite important because it's big. In the scheme of things and in the terms of south Wales, it's one of the bigger hill forts. And I think that we really should be thinking of the Siluris as a sort of a clan-based tribal confederation. So you will have had important regional centres and it may well be that we stood in the middle of one of them here in Caerai. We've now got three trenches up and running in our search for houses and finds. So far, Matt's ditch trench has given us nothing, but help is now at hand. Hiya. Some reinforcement tonight. Thanks. How many have you got? Huh? How many have you got? Oh, a few. The kids from Ely are coming to dig in our trenches. Maybe they'll bring us good luck. There's still a bit of cleaning to do in there, all that muddy clay, and then we'll get into the features and see if we can find some good stuff. You are going to get so muddy. Is that a problem? No. Not for you two? No. Great. Get stuck in then. Off you go. So, trowels on the ground, facing that way. Press down and pull, scrape, scrape, scrape. That's it. Matt and Raksha don't have any trouble putting them all to work. Nothing like a bit of slave labour to move this excavation along. But who were these ancestors that our kids are digging for? We know they spoke an ancient Celtic language, and we know that this language became modern Welsh. And they've left behind colourful everyday objects, some of which are kept in the National Museum of Wales. Hi, Ashley and Kaya. We're taking two of our diggers, Ashley and Kaya, both Ely born and bred, to see them. You need to put your gloves on. Kaya Raya hasn't given us any finds yet, but some of these Iron Age artefacts were found close to our fort. This stuff is 2,000 years old. These objects here are all from one hoard. They were all found together. People have actually brought things together, deposited them, put them into the ground, maybe as a sort of a ritual act, giving them to the gods. And a lot of these hoards from this part of the world, they relate to horses. So I think we can say horses were really important to these people. And if you can imagine, you know, big carts, chariots, with those things mounted in the horse trappings, you know, would have been really colourful. And that really does say something about how sophisticated they were. And I think that's important for us to remember. Can you see this over here? What's this? That's a Iron Age pint in it. Big mug, isn't it? It's the right idea, yeah. I think it's a little bit more than a pint. Yeah, about four pints. Four pints. That's a lot. And I think the idea is, isn't it, Ray, that they used to share, these. I think you'd want to share that round a bit. Yeah, it might be a bit much otherwise. These precious objects tell us that the Iron Age people from this area lived lives full of ritual and colour. To get a sense of how challenging it was to make objects like this, we're going to make our own communal drinking cup to discover a bit more about Iron Age technology. Cassie is going to help metal worker Dave Chapman make a bronze handle for the cup, and the process starts by getting metal from stone. This is going to sound like a bit of a stupid question, but this is the Iron Age, so why bronze? Well, they're using bronze quite extensively as a decorative metal. It's a really beautiful metal that takes lovely shapes, and you can cast bronze, whereas you can't cast iron, so you can get really nice decorative shapes. So any shape you can make in wax, you can then cast into bronze. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Locally mined malachite is a good source of copper ore, but to extract or smelt the pure copper, we need more than just heat. It's actually about creating carbon monoxide, which is bonding with the carbon in the stone, creating carbon dioxide and copper metal, so we're forcing a chemical reaction to take place. Whether you're smelting now or 2,000 years ago, extracting metal from ore is a complex process. Dave's using raw material from the local environment, in this case turf from our trenches, to control the gases inside the furnace. The carbon monoxide reacts with the ore, separating it into pure copper and the waste product, slag. Oh, there we go. We've got some on the bottom there. Oh, is it this sort of, that bit there? Yeah, yeah, that looks like a piece of copper. Very solid. Excellent. So what we'll do is we'll drop it in the water. At this stage, the copper is still attached to the slag. Oh, lovely. There we have it. After cooling, the copper can be knocked out. There you go. It's a big effort for a small amount of copper. We've got a lot of work to do before we're ready to cast our bronze handle. The carp is under way, but it would be great to find a real Iron Age artefact. And it looks like Francis' first hunch about where to dig was a good call. Francis, the whole field is abuzz with archaeologists saying that at last we've got a significant find. Isn't this it? It is, Tony, and it is a cracker of a find. I am really excited about it. It looks just like a piece of rock to me. Well, it is a piece of rock, Tony. It would have been a much larger piece of rock. This is a quern. It's a corn grinding stone. One of the things about these querns is they were quite sophisticated bits of kitchen equipment. Go on. This would have been part of a much larger thing. So this is the top stone, and there would be another one at the bottom on which it would have rested like that. And then you pour this grain through that groove there, which is actually a hole. Oh, you can really see that curved shape in there, can't you? Yeah. So that goes in there, and it meets the bottom stone. And then you can see, look, there's another groove there, and then that distributes the grain as it grinds, and then after, I don't know, a couple of generations of use, planes of weakness develop, and then eventually the thing cracks, and they say something rude in Iron Age and throw it into the ditch. But why are you so excited about this? I mean, it is, frankly, just a broken thing in the bottom of a ditch. I'll tell you why. This tells us that there were people actually living here. They were making flour in the houses, which were probably just over there. So it's very, very important. Now, Matt, where exactly did you find it? Is it important to get this right? It was just on the bottom of the ditch, just about there. And why is that so significant? Well, as you can see, it's a big thing, and it was found right at the bottom of the ditch. So I don't think it was something that was lying around but accidentally slipped in. I think this was thrown in there with rubbish. So it has to date the ditch. Matt, you know why he's so triumphant? This is his trench that he stuck in before Geophys, and it's turned up trumps. You're bang on the money. Yes, it's really been good, Tony. I'm really excited about it, Tony. This brilliant late Iron Age find dates our ditch, and it's proof that Iron Age people were grinding corn here at Kyrie. And where people were grinding corn, they were very likely to be living and even farming in the surrounding landscape. But to prove that this place was some sort of Iron Age capital, we need evidence of large numbers of people living here. And that means finding plenty of roundhouses. Yet halfway through our time here, there's still no definitive evidence of a single one. The pressure's on. We're at Kyrie Hillfort in South Wales, a massive unexplored site. We're looking for evidence that this place was once some sort of Iron Age capital. We're halfway through day two, and even though we've got this fantastic Geophys, quite frankly, what's been coming out of some of our trenches has been less than inspiring. So we're putting in trench four here over the oval enclosure, which you can see on the Geophys, and this is right at the entrance to the whole Iron Age hillfort. So hopefully we'll get something here that's pretty exciting. We've already put in three trenches to try and get a sense of how many people may have lived here and when. With the help of the local kids from Ely, we've found a single late Iron Age corn grinding quern, which points to it being a domestic site. But so far on this giant hilltop, we've found no houses. It's been a while since I've caught up with Phil. He's always firmly believed he's got a roundhouse in his trench, but is he any closer to proving it? Phil! Tea, a boat-towing tea? Yeah, tea's up, mate. OK, clear up your loose, we'll have a cup of tea. Give me some good news, mate. I've been looking round the other trenches, you can't see a thing. You're so negative. You want something positive? Yes, please. Well, I can positively tell you that that ring ditch, that foundation gully or whatever it was, is not a foundation gully or a ring ditch. I thought you were going to give me some good news! But I am! I'm going to be really, really positive. I think I can say positively that we do have a building in this trench. And where is the building? Well, it's actually in front of you. Where Callie is, she's digging a posthole there. Yeah. Now, about a foot behind her feet, there is a grey patch, there's another posthole there. We've got another one, look, there's a grey patch there with another posthole, and that all ties in with this feature that I'm digging here. Now, I've measured them up, the distances between them are the same, the distances that way are the same. They form a regular rectangle. Now, whether or not that's a rectangular building or part of something round, I don't really know. Is that positive enough for you? That's positive. Francis! Yes, sir? We've got a building here. Brilliant! Mind you, it is a struggle finding anything here, isn't it? It is incredibly difficult to see any forms of features in this brown soil. Well, that's not to be wondered at. The thing is, Phil, 10,000 years ago, this was glaciated, there were glaciers down here, frozen, and every time the ice froze, it would open up wedges in the ground and it would bring the clay up from below and it would mess around with the natural, and that's why it's a dog's breakfast. All right, don't give us a lecture, just drink your tea. Well, where is my tea? Never mind Gordon Bennett, where is my tea? Where's your tea, sir? Oh, I'm so sorry. Positive thinking is all very well, but the reality is that Phil's trench remains inconclusive. Our building could be round, could be rectangular, could be Iron Age, but we've got no finds and no date. It's game over at Trench 2. But it's not time to give up on Kairai just yet, and we've also got a replica Iron Age drinking cup to make. Dave has added a small amount of tin to the copper we smelted earlier and is melting them in a crucible to make bronze. It's almost ready to pour into moulds which contain wax replicas of the handles of the Cardiff Museum. So is it ready, Dave? It's getting there now. It's good and hot from over here. We think this is a very magical process. It must have seemed so then, mustn't it? It must have done, mustn't it? Even after thousands of years, you still get excited by it, thousands of pours. You can imagine that the people who did it must have had really high status in the community. I should think so, yeah. And kept very quiet about how you actually did it. Our bronze is now ready to pour into the moulds to create classic Iron Age-style handles. Fantastic colour, isn't it? How long before it'll cool down? About 10 minutes, something like that. You can see the bronze has a consistency of chocolate at this temperature. Yeah, yeah. Good, good. There you go, Tony. Perhaps you'd like to do the honours and knock it out. With this side? Gently. Yeah, gently, cos it's very pretty. Oh, yeah, it is fragile, isn't it? There's our casting. Can you see the edge of the casting? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A quick wash and brush up, and the handles are very nearly there. Here we are. Probably around 2,000 years since something like this was made on this site. 2,000 years ago, Kairi would have looked very different. Tree cover is hiding its most dramatic features. Its ramparts can only be seen using modern LiDAR techniques, which involve firing laser pulses from a plane at the site. These allow us to see through the trees and reveal the giant banks and ditches. Whether, as Neil has always believed, they were for showing off or were defensive, the one thing these ramparts definitely do is ensure people enter through the front door. Francis put Trench 4 over the feature at the entrance to see if it's a part of our Iron Age story. Oh, yeah, you've nearly bottomed that in, haven't you? Oh, yeah, Francis. What I've got, I've got the sides now, and these stones along the side, and the bottom's probably underneath these stones down here. Fantastic. I mean, those stones strike me very much as if they're in situ. They're placed there almost. Oh, yeah, they're not tumbled in. I mean, these have definitely been placed on the sides of the ditch all the way round. There's one behind me as well. And what sort of date is this? Well, we've got two bits of pot out of this. We've got one which is almost certainly Roman, that one there. That's out at the top. Yeah. This is Roman, isn't it? It's fairly hard and fairly fresh. And then we've got this very delicate handmade piece there. Yeah. Yeah, that looks Iron Age. And the Roman one's nice and fresh, and this is fairly weathered. That's been lying around on the circuits, hasn't it? Almost certainly, yeah. Yeah, well, that leads me to think that this is almost certainly Roman. Wouldn't you agree? It's looking that way. And interestingly, I mean, we've got also what look like two post holes here, either side of the entrance. So they could be gate posts? Could be gate posts or maybe fence posts. Yep. Yep. It's looking more and more like a Roman farm. But, of course, when we say Roman, we actually mean the Romans would be actually the same people as were here in the Iron Age, just wearing Roman clothes. Romano-Welsh. Romano-Welsh. Yeah. Smashing. A Romano-British cattle enclosure at the entrance to our fort is not what we wanted. When we say Romano-British, we mean the period that follows the Iron Age, when the Romans occupied Britain and our Welsh tribes had started to absorb Roman ways. But at least we found more evidence that this site was primarily domestic. To be honest, we've all been a bit disappointed today at the lack of finds. Of course, there have been some, and what they've done is to prove that this is definitely a late Iron Age site. But that's about it, really. The truth is that from this huge site, this massive hill fort, the closest we've got to the dense population hinted at by Geophys, are a few undateable post holes. Have we been digging in the wrong place? For the last two days, we've been searching for an Iron Age capital up here on this hill, but we've been thwarted by the geology and the thick, brown, sticky clay. The Geophys has been absolutely fantastic, although it's offered us what seems like a whole mirage of little huts and settlements, and we've got a few finds which are pretty good, too. But what we haven't got is a date for the time when this place was at its heyday, and that's what we're going to try and nail down today. If there were large numbers of people living on this fort, they would surely have left evidence of their daily lives, but we're simply not finding it. So Francis has come up with a new plan that involves looking for Iron Age ovens. I don't understand. If we want to nail down the dating, why is our last throw of the dice going to be looking at an oven? Ah, because, Tony, we've done that end of the site, we've done this side of the site. What we haven't done is this huge area over here... The middle. The middle, and that is covered, as you can see on the Geophys, by these oven kilny things. All right, do you think that by the end of the day, you can give us some robust dating? We are employing the right techniques to do it. That's not an answer, really, is it? Yes, it is. It's a very political answer. It's a stank of politics. Whether they're ovens or kilns, these features showing up on the magnetometry could be a sign of a busy, occupied part of the site. So it's our last ditch effort to find more evidence of occupation at Kyrie and an exact date. But when Matt actually digs some of these hot spots, the anomalies turn out to be Romano-British slag, proving that lots of people were working up here during the Roman period, but it doesn't help us in our search for our Iron Age people. Yet just when all seems lost, Kyrie surprises us. We think we may have finally found some promising features in the roundhouse trench. Ditch ends, features which would have formed the front door to a roundhouse. Francis extended this trench yesterday and it seems to have paid off. It's a real breakthrough. And that's not all. If we've got solid proof of one roundhouse, all the other circular shapes that showed up on the geophys are almost certainly roundhouses too. But we still need dating evidence. With time running out, even site director Francis has picked up his trowel. He's got a post hole, a feature you'd expect to find in a roundhouse, and even better, there's pottery in it. But is it enough to date the house? Well, look what we're getting out of it. Right on the top. I mean, it's only body shards, but they've got to be Iron Age. So if this pottery matches the stuff that Naomi's getting, that's fantastic because it's a straight line going through the front door, isn't it? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, getting over that way. So, I mean, that would sort of indicate that these two features probably are part of a house. Righto, I'm going to do a bit more digging because I want to make the most of this. Francis reasons that his post hole and a pit outside the door that Naomi's digging line up with each other, putting him right in the heart of our roundhouse. The pot shirts he's finding have grit in them, which means they're Iron Age. But to give us an accurate date, we need bigger pieces. If we know the shape of the pot, we can date it and date our roundhouse. Our Iron Age communal cup is almost finished. We've made a wooden vessel the same size as the one in the Museum of Wales, and we're now fitting the bronze handle smelted from scratch on this hill. Hold it. Brilliant. Does it hold it with four points of beer in? If you're offering. What do you reckon, Ray? I mean, it's cracking. It's wonderful, Andrea. Congratulations to both of you. It tells us something about these people, doesn't it? You know, it talks about communal activities and feasting. Well, you'd hope it was communal because if you had that to yourself, you'd be quite ill, I think. Absolutely. It might be tempting to try, but I think you'd probably want some help with it. Back at our roundhouse, the finds are coming thick and fast. And in the nick of time, Naomi has found something we hope Paul Blinkhorn, our finds expert, can date. All right, Naomi. I hear rumours of pottery. The rumours are true, and it's not just any old pottery. I think it's the pottery that we're looking for. Oh, I'd say, yeah. Yeah, that's what that is. That's definitely Iron Age. See the angle there? So it's going to come round something like that. That's a big pot. It looks like a storage jar or something. It is a nice size pot, yeah. That's fairly hefty. And it's in good nick, and there's more of it. So that's not stuff that's just... Is it in a feature, yeah? Yeah, I'm excavating this post hole here, and we have got another large piece here in situ. Fantastic. It's almost ready to come out. Oh, great stuff. I'll hang around then. Naomi has found a large section of pot from a post hole at the entrance to the roundhouse. Oh, wow, look at that. It's a proper little... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like I've got a teacup like that. It's tiny, innit? Yeah, it's a different pot, I think. Almost certainly. Oh, yeah. I think you've got a full profile. It's all the way up to the rim. I hear you've got something interesting for us. Oh, yeah, I think you'll like this, Neil. I know we're talking. Yeah, well... This is good. What we've basically got... Naomi's got a post hole down there, and so far we've had a little piece of a base of what looks like a big storage shell. That's a big vessel by the look of it. But we've also got this and these two bits joined together. It's a tiny little cup. Gorgeous. Isn't it? And you know what? I don't think that's middle to late. Do you think that might be early? I think that's early. This is probably the only complete profile of an early Hainese vessel that I've ever seen from South Wales. You're joking! There are not very many of them. What struck me about this as well is you've got this big sherd of this big jar and this little cup with it. It's almost like a representation of a drinking kit. You've got your big pot with your beer or whatever in, and you've got your little cup for scooping out, and it's right in the top. Let me have a look at it. There's more of it still in there. Excellent. It's all nicely fitting together, isn't it? So this unassuming piece of pottery, this tiny cup with its distinctive profile from bottom to top, turns out to be the key to the whole dig. It's the most complete early Iron Age cup ever found in South Wales. Not only is it a truly spectacular find in its own right, it conclusively dates our site to the earliest part of the Iron Age. A job well done. We came here looking for an Iron Age capital. In one tiny area of our site, we found a terrace of roundhouses from the very early Iron Age, around 800 BC, that could have housed 100 people. Glaciers, later industry and ploughing make kairi difficult to read. But if the rest of the site was as heavily populated as this one little corner, we could be looking at hundreds or even thousands of people living here at its height. Looks like our hillfort could be the ancient building co-op of Neil's dreams. It's a place where people had kitchen accidents and performed drinking rituals in the home. Our Romano-British farmstead proves that this hill continued to be occupied on into the Roman period before being abandoned. It's time to celebrate the community of kairi, past and present. What has amazed me is the sheer length of time that this place has been occupied. How long do you think? A thousand years. Phil? Oh, for me, it's the sheer fact that we've been able to find buildings. We all need somewhere to live. You've only got to look down there and see the homes of so many people. That, to me, is the important thing, that there is a real, live settlement on that hill all those thousands of years ago. And here, the Time Team tankard, and by us all drinking from it, we will bond together as a community. Lovely.