Saxon Death, Saxon Gold (Full Episode!) | S18 EP2 | Time Team (West Langton, Leicestershire)

Hard to believe it, but this field is a bit of a hit with archaeologists. Not when it's like this, obviously. But when it's like this, it's a real belter. Because over the years, it's produced metal brooches, beads, studs and loads of pottery, including this. It may not look much, but it's actually part of a 6th century cremation urn, a classic sign of the complex burial practices carried out by the Anglo-Saxons. So, if there is a Saxon cemetery here, can we find it? And if we can, what else might be down here? And most importantly, what will it tell us about the way our ancestors treated the dead? Oh, and by the end of the dig, one of our team is going to have witnessed their own Saxon funeral. Spooky. We're spending the next three days in the rich agricultural landscape of south-east Leicestershire. Over the years, these fields have been investigated by archaeologists as part of the Langton Brook Survey, and they found all sorts of evidence of Anglo-Saxon activity. And we've now used their results to focus in on two of the most intriguing areas hidden amongst these massive fields. This is the result of the group's field walking. As you can see, it's a simple grid, and on it is written the various concentrations of finds that were discovered. This is a classic way to discover Anglo-Saxon sites, which, quite honestly, are very difficult to find using other techniques. But we're not using this just for archaeological information. As you can see, we've chopped down about two hectares of oilseed rape. That's about five acres, and we've done that based on the information on this grid, which is a great idea, Mick, but some finds in a field, and we're looking for cemeteries and goodness knows what. It does seem a bit of an act of faith. Yeah, well, they're not easy things to find from field walking, or, in fact, geophysics, but luckily, I have two partners in crime with me on this. We've got Jackie, who knows about the bones from cemeteries, and Helen knows about the finds that come from cemeteries. So I'm going to defer to them a lot of the time. All right, Jackie, what do you think when you see that? What this is showing us is the concentration of pottery, and the kind of pottery that's been turning up up here is the sort of decorated pottery that is normally associated with cremation urns. So we may well have a cremation cemetery. That's one of the suggestions. The other thing this doesn't show you is that we've also got metalwork finds from here. We've got brooches and strap-ends, exactly the kind of things that you get in an emacium burial, so we could have a mixed-rite cemetery. Helen, Anglo-Saxon England is your passion. What are you thinking about? Well, I'm thinking about how exciting it is that we don't just have what I think must be a cemetery up here. We've also got this other very interesting site down here. Now, we've got concentrations of pottery that's not decorated. It looks more domestic, and there's no metalwork down here. So possibly what we may have is a settlement and a cemetery from the same period. We've also got probably a Roman villa there. But surely we don't want to excavate a Roman site when we've got all this Anglo-Saxon to do. But it can help us to understand the transition between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England. It's a lot for three days, though, isn't it? Yeah. It usually is. That could be the understatement of the year. We really do have our work cut out here, even without the additional burden of a search for a villa. Saxon sites can be nigh on invisible to geophys. Their buildings were made of wood and clay, which rots away, leaving just organic stains in the ground. And from John and his team's point of view, cemeteries and burials aren't much better. I mean, what you're effectively looking for is a hole that's filled with the same dirt that has been dug up. That's right. We may just have to take a gamble and rely on the field-walking results. Well, it looks as if geophys are well on the way, isn't it? Let's see how they get on, and let's see if they can get anything at all, because it's quite likely that they won't. In which case, we'll have to go with this anyway, won't we? But there's yet another problem. Everything about this site is big, even the squares on the field-walking grid. These squares, each side is ten metres long, so the precision is really not good. I mean, it suggests there's a sort of 40 by 30 metre concentration at that end. So we're going to put trench one in to investigate the greatest concentration of results. And it's going to be massive. So we want 40 from that corner. See one problem? The 30-metre tape. 30-metre tape, yeah. We plan to dig a whopping 40 metre by 40 metre trench. It's so big that it could take us all three days to dig it. That's horrible stuff, that is. I suppose that's the Midlands for you, is it? Helen, if we have got a cemetery, what kind of indications will we get? First of all, I'm hoping we'll see grave cuts, the outlines of the tops of the graves. Then as we go down, bones? I don't think we're going to get any bone because the soil here is so acid, we're on boulder clay. We might get a smile, and that might be it, apparently. So we're going to have to rely on grave goods, and we're going to be using the metal detectors as much as possible to alert us to the presence of metal grave goods, but when we do find them, we'll be able to date them and we'll be able to say something about the person who was buried with them. So while the machine starts in the south-west corner of Trench 1 to look for grave cuts... It doesn't matter how big an area you strip, you've got to be able to see stuff. ...we'll send in the metal detectorists at the top corner to see if they can pick up any more evidence of the metal grave goods, brooches, spears, belt buckles and the like, that characterise Anglo-Saxon burials. You've definitely got something there, Boots. And as if on cue... This has just come out the ground. Really a rather nice late 5th, early 6th century fragment of a small longbread. Exactly what we would want from a burial site of this period. Suggests a woman, they wear these on their shoulders. These are indicating probably burials. I would think so. You don't find hardly any of these on settlement sites. You find them with dead Anglo-Saxon women. Unfortunately, this particular dead Anglo-Saxon woman's brooch is a good 30 metres away from Phil's trench. Phil, you got anything yet? Not a sausage, Tony. Now, this is really weird, because we've been excavating like mad. As you can see, they've got an enormous amount of dirt out already and nothing at all. But over here, where the metal detectorists have been working, they've got loads of lovely little metal finds, including this one, which they think is some kind of fastening, maybe off a belt. It is Saxon, and it's got these lovely little pieces of gold decoration on. So, nothing there where we thought we'd find a load, and lots of stuff here. What's going on? Haven't a clue. Afternoon, day one, here at West Langton in Leicestershire, where we're looking for a possible Anglo-Saxon cemetery. And already we've cleared 10,000 square metres of oilseed rape, and we've dug a 100-square-metre trench. And what have we got? Three interesting Anglo-Saxon finds. Not from the trench, but over there. And in the trench, nothing. But we're not giving up yet on this trench, although we are starting another one, as Mick's told Phil to open up a new area over the concentration of metal-detecting finds from this morning. Something in there, which will tie up with what we had in that other bit. And within moments, it looks like the switch has paid off. You hit that pretty hard. It's not a grave, but it is something that gets even the most hard-hearted archaeologist all of a quiver. It's a nice big ditch. And that's a strip that comes through, well, about that wide, look. And then it's coming through here. Here's the light, here's the dark, and here's the light again. There is something coming through there. The good news is the ditch is just visible in John's early geophys results for this field. But that's just the start of it. We've now extended the survey, and if you follow that trend through... Wow. Because John and his team have continued their survey, and his new results are a revelation. It looks as though we've got a massive ditch. It's just a pity that it doesn't seem to be Anglo-Saxon, but actually some 600 years earlier. In Anglo-Saxon terms, that looks Iron Age to me. Very Anglo-Saxon, that's for sure. That's interesting, because if that was visible in the Anglo-Saxon period, which it sounds like it was, then that could have provided a focus for the burials. You do get the odd Anglo-Saxon cemetery that's focused around Iron Age linear earthworks, particularly in East Yorkshire. I know this isn't the classic Bronze Age ring ditch... It's also not East Yorkshire. I know we're not in East Yorkshire. So Trench 3 goes in over the Iron Age feature that appears to surround the top of this hill. And this being time, team, our first find isn't Iron Age, it isn't even Anglo-Saxon. That looks like a braid of Samian wear, doesn't it? Yeah. There you go. Going up. First floor. But we do now have to admit defeat with our original trench, where we had such high hopes for Anglo-Saxon burials. There's nothing that's unequivocal grave size or shape there, is there? There is absolutely nothing in it. I think there's a fair ground on it, isn't there? On the plus side, it means we can now throw all our diggers at the two trenches that have the Iron Age ditch in them. And more importantly, the possible Anglo-Saxon cemetery that lies inside it. I mean, clearly, there's not a lot going on in there. We'd be better going up through where the main fires have come, wouldn't we? Yeah, because that seems to be where you might expect to get the focus of activities. Not right on the crown, necessarily, but round the crown of the hill. So where are our Saxonists at this crucial time? In a different field, getting all hot and bothered about a Roman villa. I don't understand you both. You, the most passionate about Anglo-Saxon England, yet you're drawn like moths to a flame to this Roman villa. When you're an archaeologist, you're interested in the origins of things. And if you want to know about the beginning of Anglo-Saxon England, how it all started and what its foundations were, you've got to go back to look at the late Roman period, haven't you? The key word is transitional, Tony. It's so convenient to talk about history in periods with sort of ends and beginnings, but, of course, on the ground at the time, there was no sort of sharp break like that. You've got to remember that the Romans who leave are an absolutely minute sector of society. They're leaving behind lots and lots of ordinary people, including the kind of people who would have lived in this villa, wherever it is. And once the administration of society begins to collapse, think that it all just gets too hard, and one day they wake up and they think, for heaven's sake, you know, is it really worth putting on the toga and sitting in this draughty stone building? Why don't I wear the trousers? Why don't I live in one of those nice wooden buildings? It's easy to heat. And it's incredibly difficult to get that fine dating anywhere in archaeology, and particularly in the fifth century, where we've got no coins and we've got none of our usual means of dating. I think this place offers us a possibility in that the villa and the Anglo-Saxon settlement might be in the same place. They might have stratigraphic archaeological relationships, and therefore we can see the relationship between those two cultures. So we're now starting to look for evidence of Anglo-Saxon settlement in this field and how it might relate to the villa discovered here in the 1970s. But Helen's grand plans for the villa field are going to have to wait until tomorrow. Ah! Because back up in our potential cemetery field, Phil's now finding archaeology inside the area surrounded by our potential Iron Age ditch. That looks like... Is that a pot? Yeah. That's the first bit, as I'm aware of, that's actually come out at a trench. Yeah. Where is a pottery expert when you most need them? We've got some prehistoric flint. A whole mass of Roman late Iron Age pottery. Well, I know exactly where he is. Up the hill at Raksha's trench, where he's now confirmed the ditch is Iron Age. But what's more, it was visible right throughout Roman times and on into the Anglo-Saxon period. We have got four sherds of early Middle Saxon hand-made pottery, so we've finally found what we're looking for. We've got a bit of everything, really. The interesting thing is the Saxon pottery all seems to be coming off the top of the ditch. Right. Now, you do sometimes get Saxon sunken-featured huts actually dug into the top of ditches. Yeah, well, there we are. It's your task for tomorrow. I'll crack on, then. So, possible evidence of Anglo-Saxon settlement right at the end of day one. It's just a pity it's in the field, where we expected to find a cemetery, and the two don't normally go together. Come and have a look at this. It's the same confusing story in Phil's trench. In here, look, we've got this... You see, look, there you can see the edge of it going along there and back round here. It's a big square feature. Now, is it a pit? Is it a grave? I really don't know. But the stranger thing is, look here. We've actually got what looks like a beam slot. What's a beam slot? Well, a beam slot would be a foundation for a building. So, is it actually a settlement? I don't really know. One thing I do know is we've actually got pottery, which somehow or another, I'm sure it's got to be Saxon. This is really intriguing. It looks like we might have evidence of where the Anglo-Saxons lived in a cemetery. What were they doing living in a cemetery? I really don't understand this site. Beginning of day two here at West Langton in Leicestershire, where we're looking for an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. And yesterday, we put in this very large trench and found absolutely nothing, which, of course, was very disappointing to every member of our team, except one who seems positively gleeful about it. Here is the guilty party. Why are you so cheerful? Well, as soon as we knew that there was nothing archaeological in that trench, I realised that that suddenly makes this enormous geophysical feature much more important, because if they're using this as a boundary, then that trench becomes outside. It should be empty. That's right. And everything else becomes inside, and therefore, we're likely to find much more. But we are pretty confident that we've got some kind of substantial Anglo-Saxon activity going on in this trench? Well, I don't think so. You old cynic. Well, we've got an Iron Age ditch. We've got no features that have got Anglo-Saxon pottery. Not yet. What do you mean, not yet? We've hardly been here five minutes. I mean, there's plenty of time. I think I might be with John on this one. This trench is a bundle of contradictions. The animal art here is really good, really crisp, really well made. The metalwork we've discovered, like this belt fitting we found yesterday, says Anglo-Saxon cemetery. These things attach to the gaudy kind of heavy man's belt that could have carried something heavy like a sword. But the archaeology Phil and his team are now carefully unpicking suggests Anglo-Saxon settlement, and Anglo-Saxon settlements and cemeteries don't normally go together. There's clearly been a lot of activity up here, and all of it seems to have occurred inside the massive Iron Age ditch Geophys discovered yesterday. So, this is what we've done this morning. And John and his team haven't finished yet. God, that's stunning. Lots and lots of ditches. But this fantastic piece of survey work isn't from the cemetery. It's from where the villa was discovered in the 1970s. That's got to be Roman, hasn't it? Although the Geophys seems to show everything here's Roman... ...we're interested in this field because it's also produced evidence suggesting an Anglo-Saxon settlement. So, we're going to put our first trench in based on the highest concentration of Saxon finds from the earlier field-walking survey. Go for it. But we might be able to kill two birds with one trench here, as our target just happens to be over one of the many possible Roman features in this intriguing field. It almost looks like there's one ditch there and there's another one here, isn't there? So, two ditches. Possibly even three, in fact, if you count that engraved bit. Look what has just come off the spoil tip. Back up in the top field, we're now convinced we've got an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. We've actually got four separate pieces. But it's the same brooch. They're one of the earlier forms of brooch. It seems like they don't outlast the first half of the 6th century. And everything else fits in with that same date range. It's all late 5th, early 6th century, which is quite tight and quite early. But it is a cemetery. Well, that can't have come from anything else. Ah, yes. But then, you see, there's a problem because this metalwork here and all the other metalwork come from this end of the trench. That is exactly the same area as all the pottery from the field-walking and also from the pottery that we're getting. Paul has had a look at it, and it kind of hints that the actual pottery is not cemetery-related but domestic-related. In other words, it looks like we've actually got a settlement and a cemetery in the same area. So, what's going on? What would be the explanation for that? They don't have to be mutually exclusive. All this metalwork that we're getting is early. The pottery extends into the 8th century, potentially. So, I mean, we could have... And I think that's very likely. We've got a cemetery to start with, and later on, we've got a settlement over the top of it. So, we're now looking at an Anglo-Saxon site that spanned centuries and was, at different times, a home to the living and the dead. But all the evidence suggests any trace of that later settlement in the ground has been lost to agriculture. Archaeologically, what we have are the remains of that early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. It would seem these people's stamp on history, their legacy, doesn't come from how they lived, but from how they treated their dead. And that's got us thinking. In order to understand a bit more about Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards death and cremation and burial, we're going to set up our own ritual, because the whole thing's actually much more convoluted than you might think. And we had a vote, and the team unanimously decided that the person who should die would be Raksha. Actually, that's not quite true, is it? You volunteered yourself. I did. You're mad. But the good news is that because we're going to need you in the trench for the next day and a half, you don't actually have to die. I'm quite relieved about that. What we're going to need you to do is to go through all the preparations and the whole ritual. You happy with that? I am. As long as I, you know, come out the other side unscathed, that's fine. And what a ceremony it'll be. With a cremation, feasting, music and an oration. Just as soon as we finish the pyre. That's metal, is it? Yeah. So, from now on, we'll be relying on the graves and grave goods to tell this site's story. This looks to me like a bead in here, doesn't it? It's something we've been doing since the very beginnings of Time Team. Presumably, because of the grave goods that we've found in various places around here, it implies that they were actually prepared to go off on their journey. And also that these would have been... And to explain how it's done, Helen's decided to teach me the art of dating burials using an example from Time Team's own stratigraphy, our archives. Oh, that's about 15 years ago, isn't it? Is there a Winterbourne gunner near Salisbury? That's right, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery site. If I was about to embark on the long journey to Valhalla, I'd need my car keys. And there you are in your grave. A map. I wouldn't have a map book now, would I? No, is that an app? Newspaper. That's absolute dating, isn't it, that newspaper? Except, of course, it wouldn't survive, because it's organic. Oh, yeah. A bit of hairspray. Hairspray? No, I don't need that any more. Portable telephone. The size of that! Now, I think the mobile phone is very instructive there, as well as being very hilarious, because they change so fast. So you could call that absolute dating? Yes, that's really good dating. But things like your glasses and your belt buckle and so on, they change perhaps a bit more slowly. If there'd been any disturbance to that grave and it had taken the mobile phone out, you would probably date it earlier than it really was. I think you would, wouldn't you? I mean, those glasses must have been around for a while. And that jumper, that's got to be very dating. Don't let's carry on about the jumper. The other thing about this burial which is so obvious is all the stuff laid around it. Twin Anglo-Saxon, what do you think that would mean? Mainly displaying your status within the community. Somebody has laid a dead personality. It's got some of your personality in there, but it's also some of what other people in your community have wanted to display about you. The thing is, what we see in the grave is only the final part of a more involved mortuary ritual. If you were cremating somebody, it would be even more complicated. So, Sam, I was wondering where you were taking me and you've brought me to my own funeral pyre. Well, I know that sounds bizarre, doesn't it? But all for a good cause, actually. It's all a bit slightly surreal. Yes. What would a woman in the Anglo-Saxon times have been buried with? Well, typically, we find, well, with her best regalia, with her best finery, which would include metalwork, cloak fastenings, wrist clasps, that sort of thing, which would tend to show up archaeologically. Yeah, they would. So, I've got my trowel. That will definitely come out. That's right. That would be a very important object for you. And, of course, let's not forget your shovel. Yes, it's very small, so we're calling this the ritual shovel. And something that's very special to me is my stripy digging hat. Right. Well, of course, that would have to go with you. So, these are things which are really personal to you. And they might include, if you had pets, a dog or even a horse, which is something we find a lot archaeologically. These would be so personal to the individual that nobody else could deal with them. So, I couldn't have Matt buried with me as well. Well, let's put it to him. That's a good idea. Brilliant. Bring it on. And even as we're discussing the finery left in Anglo-Saxon graves, up on site, Phil is uncovering a spectacular example of a grave good. Look at the colour of that. Oh, look at that. It doesn't look like there's a bit of gold on it. It's got gold on it. It looks like tiny teeth. Oh, look at the way it shines in the sun. It's now just after lunch on day two, and in the space of a few hours, Phil has miraculously uncovered not one, not two, but at least four potential burials. You can actually see it in here. And, in fact, the easiest way to see it is actually to focus in on this area of stones. You can see that it is actually an oval-type area. So, that's one of them. The next one is a little bit easier to see, actually. It's a very clear line with charcoal down one edge. And you can see, underneath this bucket, you've got a bead there, another one there. There's one over there, too. So, we know that there's likely to have been an amber necklace. You said four burials. I've only shown you three of them. Have a look at this last one. Underneath here... What's going on there, Phil? Here, we've got an enormous brooch in between this enormous bow. So, that's a really big one, then. I know. Absolutely stunning. That is good, isn't it? Fantastic, yeah. Well done, mate. Is it really? It looks like we've now got ourselves a mini-time team in this one trench. There's the Iron Age enclosure ditch, Phil's four burials, plus a number of other intriguing targets identified by the metal detectorists. It's absolutely brilliant on this, can't wait, hang on. And there's no shortage of archaeology or targets down in the villa field, where we're hoping to find an Anglo-Saxon settlement. Tracy, this is the Tesserae, then? Yes. Look what I've just found alongside. Well, that's nice. That's got to be hypercourse tile. Well, that's a good start without digging. We're now putting in the second trench to look for evidence of day-to-day Saxon life. No pottery yet? No. Not what I'm saying anyway. And not a sniff of Saxon again. Right now, I don't know. But so far, this field has remained stubbornly Roman. Matt, you seem miles away from everybody else. I've been abandoned. Why did you put a trench in here? The reason why we chose this part of the field is because this is where most of the Anglo-Saxon pottery came from field-walking. So, have you found anything Anglo-Saxon? No, but we have found quite a lot of Roman stuff, which I think has probably been dragged around and associated with the villa. So, what are you going to do? Well, there's been a lot of talk about what these things could be. They look a bit like a planned Roman town. They could be field boundaries. So, we're going to carry on down, get to the bottom of that ditch. And when I pull out a bit of Anglo-Saxon pottery and say, here it is here, then we can say, yep, it's an Anglo-Saxon field boundary. What with the geophys and the finds, there's obviously a fantastic Roman story here. Do we go across one of the ditches at least? Because they may have reused those ditches in somewhere and there may be Saxon material in them if they are Roman ditches. They're finds traps, aren't they, ditches in here? And bizarrely, our best chance of finding later Saxon activity is to continue investigating this Roman landscape. Back on the hill, we're continuing to get more information on how the dead were treated. Phil? You know there's lots of little bits of what look like charcoal in here? Including, it seems, signs of our first cremation on site. I think I have got a tiny weenie little bit of burnt bone out here as well. Ooh! I mean, it looks like a piece of one of the forearm bones. So you can tell from a piece of bone that small that it's a piece of a human forearm. It's now almost the end of day two. And thanks to the motorised Lone Ranger of the Pottery World, we now have proof that, as well as burials, we have at least one Anglo-Saxon cremation on site. Oh, yeah, that's Saxon. Oh, jolly good. Oh, yeah, definitely. That's quite nice quality. It's early middle, as you'd expect, the sort of thing we're looking for, the handmade stuff. The problem is, the shape of this feature doesn't match the normal practice of cremated remains buried in a jar or a pot. What we've got here may not be the remains of a burial. It may be the remains of some other type of cremation-related deposit. What do you mean? It might be a pyre. It might be pyre debris. It might be the remnants of a pyre site. That's really rare, though, isn't it? It is quite rare, yeah. But that's why, you know, I'm not too worried about that not being part of an urn, but I am interested in what part of the Saxon it's in. Can't be all that old, can you get it? As part of our own burial ritual, it's finally time to cremate Raksha. And it's an event that's not only attracted a crowd, but could actually help us understand more about our site. Jackie, why do you reckon they burned the bodies? Do you think it was a question of hygiene? Well, it's odd you should say that, because the Romans certainly did it for hygiene. But the main thing is, it's an immediate transformation process. You're going from one state to another, and that both has visual effect and has a spiritual meaning behind it. You're nodding. Did the story support that? Yes, amplified beautifully in the poetry, especially the Old English epic of Beowulf, where we have an unusually detailed account of a cremation, especially when it culminates with a rather immortal phrase, heaven swallowed the smoke. The sense that the soul is released from the body and finds its way to heaven up in the sky. As we've said, we need Raksha in the trenches tomorrow, so she gets a last-minute reprieve. I bet you never thought you'd see your own funeral. Oh, no. But as we want to see if we can recreate the archaeological remains that Jackie's found up on site, we're throwing a rack of pork ribs on the pyre. The results should be interesting, because it's looking a bit toasty on top of there. Beginning of our final day here at West Langton in Leicestershire, where we've been looking for evidence of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. And after a very shaky start, this has turned out to be a highly successful dig. We've got evidence both of cremation and burial up on the hillside there. And yesterday evening, in order to learn a little bit more about cremation practices in Anglo-Saxon times, we cremated Raksha, who miraculously has come back to life again today, looking none the worse for wear. But, Jackie, this whole process, it's actually given you some rather interesting evidence, hasn't it? Yeah, well, the first thing is, we had a pile of wood that big. And look how much is left of it. And that's because we had a very good oxygenating fire. But how does all that relate to what we've got up there? Well, what it kind of signifies is what we have and what we haven't got. There are a number of things. One is this deep red colour, which is where the burning has taken place. Now, that I don't seem to have up there. But I do have some of the components we see here. I do have some of the fuel ash, the charcoal. So, by looking at the components that I've got here and comparing it with what I've got out of my feature at the top, I may be able to work out better what kind of deposit I have. It looks like it's going to be a busy day, because we've established that inside the massive Iron Age ditch is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery with evidence of all sorts of burial rituals, from Jackie's cremation... I think it is the most gorgeous thing. Yeah. ..to the grave where our staff find this fantastic gilded brooch. Is it an equal-arm brooch? It is an equal-arm brooch. These things blow me away. I've only ever seen one of these once before, and that was in 1975, and it was a dig in my own village. I've never, ever seen one since. I never, ever dreamt that I would be here and actually have one in front of me. We've so far identified four burials in just one small portion of our trench. Phil? Phil, I think we've got something. And the finds have suggested they all belong to women. This certainly looks like another brooch, doesn't it? And we've got a little smear of iron there, which is presumably going to be the pin. That is, until now. Helen, you know, we had four burials. It looks like we've actually got a fifth one. Really? Yeah. I mean, you see, it's actually in here. Oh, look. Wow. That's a small, long brooch, definitely. Can you see that there's a kind of nip down there? So it's only what's called a truffle, I've heard of one, with one, two, three rounded lobes. And that is likely to be up on the shoulders here, is it? Of a woman, though, so up on these shoulders rather than yours. I don't care what the sex is. I'm worried about the position of the bone. But look what we've got this morning. Got this iron thing coming up at that end there. It's kind of tubular, though, isn't it? Because the obvious thing that that looks like is the ferrule off a spear. That's what I... Yeah. That's what I was working for. If this is a lady, she should not have a spear. That's a man thing. I heard there are some fairly wild women around up here in the Saxon period. What's now very clear is the amount of effort that went into staging Anglo-Saxon burials. That is the circular button on the top of the shield bossa. Whether it was the intricate grave goods on an inhumation burial... We don't actually put all of the bones in there. No, they very rarely seem to fill the vessels to capacity. ..or the sheer time and energy involved in a cremation. That's child soft tissue. You very rarely find that in archaeological deposits because it is so brittle. Should we be seeing cremation and burial on the same site? It's not at all uncommon. It seems that you could make a choice between inhumation and cremation, but we don't know what's underlying that choice. It could be something like the cultural affiliation that you feel. So if you think you're part of the Anglian culture group, you'd be more likely to opt for cremation. If you feel you're a Saxon or a Kentish person, you'd be more likely to opt for inhumation. But these are just broad trends. One of the other things is, of course, what becomes the fashion? It sounds a bit superficial, but if something becomes taken up by, say, the elites, quite often that will slowly filter down to the lesser mortals. You're nodding wisely, Sam. Well, this is a question which has been asked over and over again. There was an Icelandic scholar back in the 13th century who tried to make sense of it, and he imagined that there'd be an age of burning and an age of mound-building. But I sometimes wonder, in the end, if it's just a question of what the family does. After all, it's a very personal thing, and it's traditionally what Grandad did, and we still do that, with wakes, of course. Pottery. Pottery as well. Even at this late stage of the dig, this cemetery trench is still producing new discoveries. So, one end of the ditch is there. But our other field is also crammed full of archaeology, and it's the big, chunky variety. Thought it ended here, but no, the grey field is going along. There's the other end there, a good, what, seven metres? We had hoped to find evidence of Anglo-Saxon settlement, or even more burials, near or on top of an earlier Roman villa here. But instead, we seem to have stumbled upon a site that could keep a team of diggers going for a month. Everything does look as though it's on this regular alignment. So, I think it's fairly safe to assume that's all Roman. I mean, I think we all know that we're not going to get Anglo-Saxon stuff here unless it's by action, don't we? We've now only hours to get our heads around what we've uncovered in the lower field. Roman? Roman, Roman, Roman. But at least we've now solved one mystery in the cemetery, the mystery of the grave with the potential cross-dressing wild women with the brooches and spear. I can't really see where their heads were, other than just from the grave. Hang on, you said where their heads were? Er, yes. There's not one person in here. There's two. We've got one set of teeth there. Yeah. And we've got another set over here. Can you tell me anything about these people? Not at the moment, but... No, but I can. I was always aware that this was going to be a slightly tricky grave because spear and brooches mean man and woman and they shouldn't be in a single grave. So, I thought we might have two graves or we might have a double grave. And we now have the proof that we do have a male warrior buried alongside a woman. You can see where Jackie's pointing at. Yeah. The button on the top of the shield, boss. So that the hand would grip under there and the board would come out here and tip down into the ground there. Oh, fantastic. This grave gives us a tantalising glimpse into how one Anglo-Saxon man and woman were last viewed by their family and friends. And yet we can only guess if this was some sort of husband and wife burial or just an opportunity to lay two people to rest at the same time. We now have only a few hours left of day three. But with storm clouds looming, the whole dig looks under threat of grinding to a halt. Cor, Matt, have you been upsetting the gods? It's getting pretty bad, isn't it? Yeah. And with as much manpower needed as possible on the top field, we have to admit defeat of a sort down in the villa field. There's Lake Roman in the bottom of the ditch, Lake Roman in the middle, Lake Roman at the top, Lake Roman on top of the cobbles there. We can't find any Anglo-Saxons, but boy, have we uncovered a fantastic Roman site. I think this is one of the most beautiful trenches I've done in my life. We know from the geophysics and having dug this, there are some major Roman features here and these would have been visible to the Anglo-Saxons for hundreds of years. Matt, stop waxing lyrical, will you? Let's get out of the rain. Let's dig it. The Roman archaeology we've uncovered down here is bigger and more complex than we could ever have expected. But any further investigation will have to wait for another day. You need a medal for that. Because we've got our hands full with the cemetery. Clean the whole thing up, chop some square up the sections and have another go there, really hit it. In fact, at the last count, we still need to sort out five burials and a funeral. Raksha's no longer with us. She's just ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but we want to keep her memory alive, don't we? So, Sam, you've created a sort of Anglo-Saxon epitaph for her. That's right. It's simulated in the old English style, which would be a very important function of the poetry in basically a society that values poetry as its central medium. And a bit like the Queen Mother's funeral, there was a great declamation of her titles and achievements. In Raksha's case, of course, it's her supreme skills as an archaeologist, although archaeology is a modern word, so the equivalent, I reckon, in old English is... Digger lady. I love this phrase. You've written after it. Sharp shovel wife. Yes, again, this is a formulaic style. And for the actual delivery, of course, our senior man here and an absolute natural for the park is, of course, our dear old Uncle Phil. Why is he a natural? Well, because with that natural Wiltshire accent, you've got a voice there that is closer to the authentic old English dialect than my more posh southern accent. I wish that stone wasn't there on the... But before that, our orator-in-chief needs to sort out the brooch he uncovered. Come on, baby. Come on. And that means lifting it in a block of its surrounding earth to keep it in one piece. Ah, there it goes. It's gone. Got it. I've got it. And all that effort's worth it, because back in the conservation lab, the brooch, now heavily taped to hold it together, is revealed as a fragile but gobsmacking work of art. It's pretty impressive, eh, Phil? It's amazing. It looks pretty awesome. Oh! This one here is only the fourth one of this type. Get out. The fourth to be found in Britain, but it's probably the best of the lot. The next stage is also the most nail-biting. I might just try and lift it. Removing the brooch from the block of earth. All right, I'm going to do it now. Yes. Once it's cleaned up, it's obvious that it's one of our best finds ever. And even more importantly, it may just offer us a rare insight into that elusive crossover period between the Roman and Anglo-Saxon ways of life. I've had a word with our specialist here at Wessex, and he reckons they're mid-fifth century, so about 450. Really? So they're within a generation of the sort of end of the Roman period, then? Absolutely. But, you see, this one was probably a bit older when it went in the ground because around here, all the way around the edges, there's a lot of wear, so this thing was probably quite old when it went in the ground. But nevertheless, it was probably worn by a descendant of the Romano-Britons who were in that area then. Very likely. It's safe to say this dig will stay with us for a long time to come. We've got bits of cremated bone, not a lot, but it's there. We've got flecks of charcoal. We've got redeposited Anglo-Saxon pottery. Even the cremation remains on site are from a rare discovery. What this most reminds me of are features that you sometimes get in Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries in the south of England, which are called fall posters, and which, oddly enough, as it sounds like, has a post at each corner. And it may be that what we've got here is a little mortuary house where the cremation burial itself was made on top and pyre debris was deposited in the feature below it. It almost seems like a Victorian cemetery, that you've got all these different kinds of burials going on at the same time. That's a really good analogy, actually, because all of these burials, I think, would have been marked in some way. A little mound, maybe flowers planted on them, something like that that we can't recover archaeologically. And then you've got to imagine the whole thing contained within this big Iron Age earthwork. As with so many Anglo-Saxon sites, the evidence of settlement has almost completely eluded us. And yet, we've still learned so much from the departed. But it's now the end of a hectic three days and a time to feast and celebrate the culmination of our own burial ceremony. Who can we kill next? Nominations on a piece of paper. There must be a list, isn't there? Let us honour our sister, Raksha, Dave's daughter, Delvera Eadus. Let us honour our sister, Raksha, Dave's daughter, Digger Lady, Sharp Shovel Wife, who elsewhere wendeth. Our own little ritual and the evidence we found on the hill are separated by centuries, but maybe we can just feel a link to the Anglo-Saxons, who left a stamp of their identity on this Leicestershire landscape some 1,400 years ago. And praise her people that men poor time teem. To Raksha! To ensure you catch all the latest updates, please do subscribe to this channel, follow us on social media, and sign up to our newsletter, and join us on Patreon.