Uncovering Prehistoric Burial Sites Beneath A Lake | Time Team | Timeline

Welcome to Dartmoor, one of the richest and best mapped prehistoric landscapes in Britain. But not all of it has been investigated, and there's a very good reason for that. Because for the last 150 years, this has been at the bottom of the reservoirs that supply the people of Torquay with their drinking water. Fast forward to the present day, and the reservoir's looking pretty empty. Because the local water company have decided to pull the plug and give us a unique opportunity to explore a lost world. This could be some of the best prehistoric archeology in Britain. The only problem is, now we've got rid of the water, how are we gonna cope with the mud? It really is very difficult. Hutterford Reservoir is in an out-of-the-way valley on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. It's an isolated spot, so just getting into the site is a huge logistical feat, needing all our manpower. The reservoir's been here since 1861, when an incredible 30 million gallons of water were flooded into the lower part of the valley. But a couple of years ago, when the water levels were low, a local out for a walk spotted some mysterious stones sticking out of the mud. He called Jane Marchand from the Dartmoor National Park Authority, who became the first to investigate this hidden site. Why hasn't anyone ever discovered them before? Well, because they've laid under Hutterford Reservoir water since 1861, when the reservoir was created. And before that period, I don't think people were coming out looking at local archeology. It's a bit early for sort of the explorations on Dartmoor, which began in about 1880. What would you like us to find? Oh, basically, to give some idea of the chronology of these monuments, because we quite often get them together. We get circles, rows, and burial cairns. So some dates, and whether they're all contemporary or whether one was earlier and then decided. That decided the later ones. So it's what, where, why, in three days, in the mud. That's it, yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. There could be a complete prehistoric site waiting to be discovered beneath all this mud. But the prehistoric is a fantastically long period of time and covers everything before the Roman conquest of Britain nearly 2,000 years ago. Your perfect site. Oh, it's a dream, Tanya. You can actually walk across it and stub your toe on the prehistory. You know, I'm used to having to dig down to get it, but here, it's at the surface. Why are you here, though? Well, Dartmoor's been an interest of mine for about 40 years now. And it's because of that. It's because, you know, unlike almost anywhere else, you can walk through a Bronze Age landscape. But it's mainly because I've got to look after him, of course. You know, I've got to keep an eye on him, make sure he does things properly. We talk blithely about prehistory, but what exactly do we mean on this site? Late Neolithic sites, the end of the Stone Age and Bronze Age, some very roughly from about 3,000 to about 1,500 BC. Do you think the sites might all have been from the same period? Yes, I do. I think essentially the same period, although there's one enigmatic mound in the middle, which has got me scratching my head. As well as the mysterious mound in the middle, what we've been told we've got from the initial survey is a stone circle, two rows of stones in a line, which could be some kind of walkway, a single row of stones, and some other prehistoric stuff dotted throughout the site, piles of rocks that might be cairns where people buried their dead. If we can prove all of this, it'll be an archaeologist's dream. Well, John, is this the first time you've done a survey in the bottom of a reservoir? Yeah. Although for John, it's the stuff of nightmares. I mean, is it going to be plain saline? We have got problems, and that's mainly the granite. I don't know how magnetic it's going to be. So the fact that granite has originated from a volcano, that volcanic activity may actually affect the magnetics which affect your machine? Yes, and we can confuse that with what might be burning or settlement activity. So we'll give it a try. But I mean, how about the silt itself? Is that going to be a problem? I think what we'll try there is actually radar. You're actually going to drag that wheeled trolley out across the mud? Yeah, because that would hopefully give us the profile of that old land surface, get profiles of the sort of valley, and then build up a 3D picture. Well, I hope you succeed. As long as we don't lose Jimmy in the silts. So it could all turn into one big mud bath. Whose idea was this? I don't know. I feel like Jimmy's stuck in the incident room when you're dry. But thankfully, other parts of the site are better for the magnetometry and radar to see if there's anything else lurking beneath the surface. Although the first results are far from conclusive. The good news is the granite is not as magnetic as we thought it might have been. I mean, having said that, we can't see the cairns or the stone alignment. Can you not see where the stone alignment goes under the bank at the side of the reservoir? Well, I mean, there's hints of things, but I wouldn't really recognise them. So really, if we're going to do anything here, we've got to go with what we can actually see rather than anything you might be able to tell us. Maybe as we do a bigger landscape, you know, we can get a better picture, because presumably you're not going to let us stop at this stage. No. We can't wait for Geophys to sort themselves out. We've got to get on with the dig. So we're starting at the end of the single aligned row of stones. Phil's put in the first trench over this pile of stones, which we're calling the terminal cairn. Cairns are rock-covered burial mounds, so we're looking for any evidence of burial to try and get an idea of what the site was used for. While Matt is opening up trench two on the two cairns immediately south of the big mound. You can see the large one right there. Oh, yeah. And there's a little one just in front of us here. Yeah, yeah. And for the moment, we're just cleaning up all this silt just so we can get the full extent of them all, and then it's going to be a case of half-sectioning them. We're going to run a string across from there to there. After we've planned and photographed it, we're going to start carefully taking out this side of each cairn. Underneath, there could be a burial, there could be ritual offerings. I mean, that's another thing we're really looking forward to. Yeah. Well, I'll come back when you've got a bit further. Yeah, we're getting on. You know, this just doesn't look much like Dartmoor, does it? I mean, I imagine Dartmoor as this treeless, rocky place, a kind of blank landscape. I think it's quite well represented by this Ordnance Survey map. Helen and Stuart have begun their investigation into why our site looks so different to the rest of Dartmoor and give us a snapshot of what prehistoric life was like here. On this side of the map over here, where we are, this is an intensity of settlement and fields which shows it's been cultivated for a long period of time. Very different to the Dartmoor landscape that we have up here, which is bleak. You've got to remember, in prehistory, you're dealing with a totally different landscape. There was more trees, there was more activity. Prehistoric farmers were cultivating land. And over a long period of time, you get into a kind of cycle of soil deterioration. Eventually, the settlements and so on aren't valid any more, so it changed over time. And so is it that we see all the prehistory today because there's nothing else that's come later to take them away? That's exactly right. The conditions weren't attractive for the medieval farmers and the intensity of agriculture and settlement, so they've effectively been left behind all the stone circles and settlements. We can still see them. Making this very unusual. Well, it is, because what we've got here is a stone circle in the bottom of a valley. And that makes our prehistoric site unique in Dartmoor archaeology. We want to make the most of this incredible opportunity, so Francis isn't wasting any time in opening up the double stone row nearest to the mound. 12 o'clock, day one, you've already put in the third trench. Bit of a digging frenzy, isn't it? Well, not really, Tony. This is an incredibly busy landscape. But how do we know that's prehistoric? Couldn't that come from any period? If it was just the individual stone, yes, perhaps it could be. But in this case, we've got an arrangement of stones, two parallel lines, and that is, broadly speaking, only ever found in late Neolithic or early Bronze Age monuments. How do you know? I can't see anything at all. Well, you can't, unfortunately, cos only one or two have survived above ground. What do you think this is all about? Well, you know that big mound there? Well, I think it's got a sort of tail coming down in this direction and then heading off over there. And I think that would have formed a big, dry ridge. Maybe, you know, they had ceremonial processions and then, as part of marking out this processional way, they put a big setting of double stones. So it could just be a nice little path, but it could be ritual. I think it's ritual, Tony. Ritual. I've heard that one before. But I'll go along with Francis's theory for the time being. Some important clues could be on the mound. Flint was found here during the initial survey and today it's attracted our flint-obsessed anoraks like moths to a flame. The only trouble is, it could completely rewrite the history of this Bronze Age site as Phil's found something that dates much earlier. It's this gorgeous little endscraper. You can see the way it's been retouched so lovingly all the way around there. Now, that is the work of a skilled craftsman, somebody who really loved his work. Can you put a date on it? They are difficult to date in isolation. We really could do with some more of this flintwork. But my initial instinct is to think this is early. And when I say early, I think it's earlier than these stone monuments. That's really exciting, isn't it? Because that means you've got this early mound here with some sort of activity going on and then later people have built this path up to it. Absolutely. I think that this mound is the focus. This is what drew people in originally and then that these stone monuments were drawn in around them. Look at you clutching your scraper. I know! It's lovely though, isn't it? You're like a kid in a sweet shop. I know, I know, I know. But you see, I've made so many of these things. This takes me back to the real people who made these things. It's turning into quite a good dig, isn't it? It's the afternoon of day one and we're working on the bottom of what's thankfully an empty reservoir in Devon. We've already put in three trenches on what are hopefully three different prehistoric monuments that we suspect date from the Bronze Age. Trench one is over what we think is a terminal burial cairn at the end of a single row of stones. We've put in trench two on two piles of rocks that might be more burial cairns. And trench three is over a double row of stones that we suspect was a processional way leading up to a mound which Francis thinks is the central part of the whole site. It's possible that the mound was here for thousands of years before these monuments were even built as we've got dating evidence from Flint found on top. If we're right and it is this vast prehistoric ceremonial landscape, what does it mean? What's it for? Well, what it was for was the different things in people's lives that they want made formal and ceremonial. So these cairns would be when someone passes on to the next world. This double stone row could be a procession that marked when a new chief came to power, something like that. This stone circle was where people celebrated the changing of the seasons. So it's like a combination of a church and a registry office? And a town hall. Yes, it's all there. And the thing is, it all seems to fit together, Tony. It's almost too good to be true, isn't it? It is. Of course, all these theories rely on the dates of these monuments tying together. Well, I mean, I think it looks like these stones here from this cairn are later than these ones here. Over in trench one, we've got major doubts about the terminal cairn being prehistoric, especially when you compare it with the single stone row. Is the cairn earlier or later than the stone row? And we should get it in that section? Absolutely. All right, fair enough. And it's not looking any better in trench two either, as we're uncovering evidence that the cairns aren't prehistoric at all. We've removed the silt here. You can see it's really fine, almost clay on top there. And that was the silt from the bottom of the reservoir. It's sitting on top of this dark layer, which was the ground surface in 1860 when the reservoir was filled. And here's our cairn, and you can see that the stones of the cairn are sitting happily right on top of the 1860 ground surface. And that means, Rachel? Well, it means that it's not prehistoric, and we know that because it's literally just sat on top of that black surface. It's not cut into that, so there isn't a specific cut made for it. Does this mean that all the piles of stones around the reservoir are likely to be from the 1860s? Well, that one's 1860. This one here as well, to the front of you, that's also clearly sitting on top of that old ground surface. The cairns that we have are coming in a line along the edge of the reservoir. They're all in a nice line. My bet is none of them are prehistoric. I seem to remember not long ago saying that this all seemed too good to be true. Scarily, I was right. Since we've proved that the cairns aren't prehistoric, what on earth does that mean for the rest of the site? Could the double stone row be the next to go? That hole, what, was a stone in there once? Yeah, I mean, that's a really nice rubber. It's been pulled out, presumably, when the reservoir's been done. Yeah, it looks about that level. Then over here, we've got another stone, the one that matched that. Oh, yes. I think we've got the hole, haven't we, for the stone? It looks like it. You can see that small rock standing down there. That's the classic wedging for a stone in a stone row. And the other thing, of course, we've got this stony stuff at the top here. Do you think that could be the remains of a sort of walkway? It's degraded down and it's covering the surface, so this must have been the point at which this was open to walk up and down on. I think that's brilliant. OK, I'm convinced, especially with that little packing stone there, that this is a prehistoric double stone row. Yeah. I'm in little doubt about it. So Francis is very happy with his double stone row. But other parts of the site have got us scratching our heads. Could have easily been set up. OK. Which could have fallen over. We've got another massive monument to investigate and Helen and Stuart are getting their heads round it, the stone circle. They're looking much more into the centre, aren't they? That's right. This is the one that's vastly off the line. They're not sure that the stones are even in a circle. It's too late in the day to put in another trench, so the plan is to start digging tomorrow to try to prove the stones are prehistoric and form a circle. Have you got something going on over there? Back in Trench 1, Phil and Fay may just have found some conclusive evidence that dates the single stone row. There is, yeah. The good news is that it's prehistoric. That is the hole that has got our long row of stones in. There's a cut in there. You can trace it right from where your trowel is. That's it. Yeah, there. Now, if you go on up your trowel up there, keep going. That's right. It got right the way through that light grey. Yep. So what the sequence is, they've cut a hole. That's the line you've just scored. Yeah. Then they put the stones in. Then the whole lot is filled in with that dark grey stuff. That's it there. And then the whole thing is sealed off by that very, very dark topsoil, that old ground surface. This stuff we had earlier on, this stuff all the way along here. That's right. And then the cairn goes on the top of that. That is our sequence. So basically, we were right. Absolutely. The cairn is later than these. Ah. But it's really nice to see the archaeology prove it, though. Although the cairn isn't prehistoric, it's helped us to prove that the single stone row almost certainly is. We haven't got a lot of flint coming up or anything, have we? We still don't know why this row of single stones is here. So could Francis's idea of a ritual landscape be falling apart? Up until about an hour ago, we thought we had the perfect prehistoric site with monuments coming up all over the place. But now it seems that that cairn isn't prehistoric at all. It's probably about 150 years old and may well have been a base used for machinery. So have we got a prehistoric site or is it a building site? There's certainly a prehistoric site here. But rather more of it, I think, relates to that reservoir building. I think some of the other mounds do. Some of these lines out here, I suspect are probably field boundaries from that period as well. So what are we going to do tomorrow? Well, if you look on the geophysics, you'll see that the mound we're on is this noisy oval area here. That's where Phil found the flint this morning. And so we're going to do some sampling on that to see if we can get more evidence on it. Yeah, so test pits, which we'll sieve here. And then I want to go down there to the sort of focus of the whole site, this stone circle. For us to be honest, I'm having serious doubts about it. So will all our dreams turn to dust tomorrow or do we have anything prehistoric here at all? Fingers crossed. Yeah, we do have stuff prehistoric here. You say you do. On the basis of what? On the basis of holes. We've got a hole. Beginning of day two here at Totterford in Devon, where we're looking at a prehistoric site on the bottom of a reservoir. Although it got a bit worrying yesterday because a lot of doubt was cast on the date of some of the features in the reservoir. Although Francis is pretty confident that this mound here is prehistoric. And you do look as though you've been here all night. Feels like it. I've been hearing my brain, Tony. And what's your brain been telling the rest of your body? Well, if the double stones are some sort of processional way, what are they leading to? Well, the only thing they could possibly lead to is this great mound. So this great mound becomes incredibly important. I mean, if you remember, Phil and his merry men found a load of flints yesterday. And so what I want to do now is to put some test pits, some small holes, which we'll sieve very, very carefully to try to find flints. And if we're any luck, we might actually work out what was happening up here. We believe we've got a late Neolithic or Bronze Age double stone row that may have acted as a processional way leading to a central mound, which we think is thousands of years earlier. This is turning out to be a more complex site than we thought. That's the first one there. OK, Raksha, if you go in pit one, whatever we're calling it, I don't know what the numbers are, but let's call it pit one for the time being. To try and understand what's going on, the plan is to dig four small pits in ten-metre sections along the mound to see how much flint there is and to help us date the site. The person who gets the most flints gets a glass of cheap white wine when we get back home, all right? Most flints! Get going! If Francis is right about the site being ceremonial, there must have been something very special about this place that drew people here. What's really clear when you're in the bottom is that you feel enclosed. You feel like you're in a natural bowl or an amphitheatre. Stuart believes that the landscape is the key to the puzzle. So if you have a natural amphitheatre, it would make it quite an important place to be. Yes, is it natural or is it the result of having a reservoir there? I couldn't quite work out whether that was a natural barrier until I found this map which is early 19th century, it's 1801, first edition, a one-inch map and it shows on here quite clearly the brook coming down the valley and turns the right angle and goes down there so that barrier at the south is natural and would have effectively sealed that in. We have got an enclosed space in there so I think a key part of the archaeology down here has to be to get Henry to do some sampling of the sediments across the valley there to try and understand what that environment would have been like, standing water, flowing water all those sort of questions would be quite crucial in understanding that if it is a ceremonial complex. Back at the mound the test pits have produced our first tantalising discovery. It's a little blade, isn't it? Yeah, it's the same sort of flint, it's the same colour and texture of the flint of all the other stuff. This is razor sharp, there's no question they were operating on the top of the mound here. These flints are more evidence that people were here thousands of years before the stone monuments were built and for them working flint was a way of life. To get an idea of the tremendous skill that our prehistoric ancestors had as flint knappers and to see just how difficult it is to master, Phil's taken time out of the trenches to train Matt up as his apprentice. OK, Matt, the first thing we've got to do is actually get you used to taking flakes off. Watch what I do. Keep me fingers underneath and straight down. Right, so you're hitting it at quite an oblique angle straight down. Absolutely. Think about the shape of the flake. Look, it's got that ridge that's following it down there. You're going to take a flake off around there. Just get used to taking the flake off, that's the first thing. There we go. That's a big one, isn't it? Different shape. Why is it a different shape? I guess you've got the ridge coming across. It's totally the different shape that the ridge has made. Yeah. Not as easy as it looks, is it? Francis is having troubles of his own, as he's having major doubts about the authenticity of the stone circle. So he's putting in a fourth trench over one of the stones. Hello. Already? Is that the hole, do you think? The pit? It's looking like it. It does look quite like it. Thank you, Tracy, you've made an old man very happy. Francis, it looks pretty circular to me. I can't really see what all the fuss is about. We've established we've got this double stone row going up to the mound, you know, our main axis of the site. But why isn't this stone circle on that axis? That's where you'd expect it. It's off to one side, as if they were, I don't know, drunk when they loaded out. Have you got anything so far, Tracy? Well, no, we thought we might have had the stone socket, the stone hole in here. But it looks like it's just where the ground's literally sunk in around the stone. But that's actually really good. Why? Well, that suggests that whatever this stone was put in, it's actually lower down in the sequence than we're at at the moment, which suggests that it is earlier. Yeah, and the fact that it's slumped, that indicates that the softer deposits in the hole have shrunk. So, yeah, it's very good news. So it could still be a stone circle. Just because that turns out to be an ancient stone doesn't mean it's part of a circle. Yeah. So what I'd like to see now would be the results of a geophysics and see if we get a better pattern. So a lot's riding on geophys to prove that the stones are in a circle. Thousands of years ago, the landscape looked very different to what it does today. This 3D model shows the landscape setting really well, doesn't it? If we're going to understand what was going on here, we need to establish what the place looked like in prehistoric times. So Henry's been making a 3D model. Looking at the relationship of the stream as it comes down here, it's so close to the stone circle that if the stream had moved, as they do through time, it would have taken out part of the stone circle. So what I wonder, sticking my neck out, is whether here we've got another island like this one, but more subtle because the actual sedimentation of the lake has actually masked it. So after doing this bit, I want to start calling around this area and seeing whether there are other channels and other areas of possible wet deposits which might have made this into another island. Just get on with it, I suppose. What else is to say? So Henry starts his core sampling to test his theory that the site was built on islands surrounded by water. It's inorganic sediment, if you know what I mean, but it's got enough remains to make it brown. And over in Trench 1, Faye's found some evidence that supports this theory of water being an important feature in this prehistoric landscape. So I've got down here the cut for this linear stone whatever it may be, and on that side over there, we've actually got what appears in section is the bank of what I think, because of this sediment down here, a river. So we're right on the edge of the valley, in fact. When you say a river, you mean one of the streams is coming through here at some stage. Yeah, exactly. And really interestingly, then we've got all these stones which seem to lay in it. So they're contemporary of this river. And the key question, of course, what date? It's a very difficult question. We haven't got dating evidence, but with the amount of stratigraphy and the amount of all these layers, these sediments, I think we're talking about the prehistoric period. Right. With the single stone row deemed prehistoric, another piece of the Bronze Age ceremonial landscape falls into place. If only the same could be said of Matt's napping skills. You've been bashing away this. You're also not removing any flint. Look at that angle there that you're trying to remove. What sort of an angle is that? Well, across the top corner there, about 100 degrees or so. Exactly. You cannot remove flint where the edge of the core is greater than 90 degrees. I expect to see some improvement tomorrow. While Matt toils away, Francis has got his eye further down the double stone row leading up to the mound. This is a key part of the Bronze Age ceremonial landscape. But I'm still not entirely convinced of the idea of a processional way. I need Francis to demonstrate it to me. Why have you put in this little muddy square? Well, you see that there Tony? Yeah. That's a stone, right? We wanted to see if there was another one matching it. So we scooped off the mud with this and you see, that's hard and that is very soft. And that's going down. So that there is where they pulled the stone that was originally matching that one out when they built the reservoir. Do you buy that, Raksha? Couldn't it just be a hole? For once, I actually believe Francis for the first time. Because you can actually see the stones corresponding all the way up there. And it's absolutely slap bang in line with that stone and the next one and the following one. So are we going to say that that's proved? Without a shadow of doubt, Tony, I am actually quite excited. But what does it mean? I mean, we've got no pots with paintings of people processing in a serious way up to a hill in the Stone Age. They weren't doing that kind of thing. Okay, well, there are records of tribal societies where you have this sort of thing taking place, often with posts rather than stones. And I want to convince you, and the way to convince you, I think, because you're a profound sceptic, is to walk along it and we're going to think Neolithic thoughts. We're going to try to put ourselves back, okay? So suddenly now, we're actually on the sand ridge. Yeah. Okay? And it's getting firmer. Yeah. We've done it. Well, I'm not sure that's proved about the Stone Age, but it has proved we've got really good Wellington boots. It's good, isn't it? In spite of myself, I'm beginning to believe Francis' view that it was a ceremonial landscape. But there's still one big part that hasn't been confirmed. The stone circle. If it is prehistoric, it'll be a first for Time Team, a good enough reason to celebrate. And another thing I haven't told you is that it's our 200th dig. So, what better way to end the day than with some bubble. Who would have thought, all these years, we'd still be doing this? I didn't think we'd even get going to start with it. Well, this is turning into a really exciting dig. We've got our Neolithic walkway along here. We've got our Metalithic mound there. But over there, have we or have we not got a stone circle? Because if we have, it could prove to be the key to the whole site. We'll find out tomorrow. Cheers. Beginning of day three here at Totterford Reservoir in Devon, and everyone's a bit muted today after last night's celebrations, which is a bit of a problem because we've got an enormous amount of work to do trying to establish whether or not what we've got here is a giant prehistoric stone circle. Francis, yesterday afternoon we put this trench in to try and establish whether this stone had been buried a long time ago or whether it was much more recent. Have we proved anything yet? Yes, Tony, and I am certainly not muted on this. This really is exciting. We've got the hole that the stone was placed in. Right, but more than that, we've got the stones that were put in there deliberately to wedge it to get it at precisely the right angle. So you wouldn't do that if you were just making a field boundary wall or something. So this has to be a Bronze Age stone. Now whether it's part of a row or a circle, I don't know. I've seen some flints from around this stone. Those flints are definitely prehistoric. I am also convinced that that stone is prehistoric. But of course just because we've got one prehistoric stone doesn't mean we've got a prehistoric stone circle, does it? It just means we've got one prehistoric stone. Exactly, Tony. But look, over there you see that stone there, standing on its own. Well, Geophys discovered a stone hole next door to it. So if we put a trench between those two, and they're both real and they're both prehistoric, then I think we've got ourselves a stone circle. If Francis is right, then this is a very special sight. Because we haven't dug a prehistoric circle on Time Team before. Which way you going? That's if Ian can point the digger in the right direction. I have heard they're having a lot of trouble recruiting staff these days. And the digger driver is particularly susceptible to replacement. As well as Trench 5, we're opening up a further two more trenches on the stone circle. Faye's digging in Trench 6, while Matt is working in Trench 7 on a very large fallen stone. That's the biggest stone so far, isn't it? It is, yeah. This will certainly be the most prominent. That's already four foot long, isn't it? There we go, that's it then. Henry's continuing to core around the mound with help from Bob. They're hoping to prove that the site was made up of sandy islands surrounded by water, which is all part of Francis' idea of a ritual landscape. I've already started coring the other side. We're seeing the same materials on that island. See, I'm calling it an island now, because it's starting to look more and more like one. You're going to get an idea of what's happening then. Now the interesting thing is going to be looking that way, over to the stone circle over there, to see if that's something of an island, same as this one. Yeah. And we're not only looking on the outside of the stone circle, but also in the middle, to see what went on here. It's quite weird though, isn't it? Because you literally come out of this stone circle area, it's very boggy. And then as you come onto this area, it's actually quite dry. Yeah, it's just like the double stone row, you've got the same thing there. It's quite dry between the stones, isn't it? And I think that that obviously was important. Dry underfoot. Well, just like it is to us. Raksha has opened up Trench 8, and is starting to find more evidence that the stones were built on an island. Back in Trench 5, the digging frenzy comes to a standstill, as Phil is beginning to unearth something. Yeah, you can see there's definitely something coming round there. And it does have these big stones in it. That don't necessarily look natural. So, yeah, we'll have a look at that. It's mid-morning, and this is one of those moments where everything on Time Team seems to kick off at once. Matt, what have you got coming out of this little trench? Well, we've been clearing up this zone here, and it's much bigger than we expected. It looks like it's a good five-foot-long standing stone that's just fallen over. So you think that it's prehistoric? Oh, yeah, without question. And it's not only that. Over here, we've got Phil. Ian! Could you kill the digger for a minute? Phil, is that something there? That is another stone hole, Tony. Another prehistoric stone? Another part of the stone circle. Absolutely equidistant between that stone there and where Matt is. Come over with me, because we've had some news from Raksha's trench as well. We're doing sieving here, as you can see. What's that for, Phil? Well, that's to try and get all the flint. Raksha's had quite a lot of flint out of her trench, and we want to make sure that we get every piece of flint. And what have you got now, Raksha? We've got a whole heap of flinty goodness in this trench, and I think... I don't know whether that's a blade or an arrowhead. No, it's not an arrowhead, I'm afraid. It's a rather nice broken flake, but it's the same material, the Mesolithic material that we're getting off the mound. What do you think all this tells us, Francis? Well, it tells us that we've actually got two phases on this site. You've got this earlier Neolithic, Mesolithic, which you've got on the mound, and we've now got down here, completely unexpectedly, and then there is a later Bronze Age phase, which goes with the rougher-looking yellow flint, and that is contemporary with the stone circle and the stone row. It's extraordinary how once again we're finding so much stuff so late in the dig, and I would remind you that we only have just over half a day left. Geophys has had to tackle extraordinary amounts of mud to get the radar results from the stone circle. They've been working around the clock, but they think they've finally cracked it. This is where Phil's been working, and he was talking about finding the stones in that quadrant. Look at these results that Jimmy's now presented. One, two, three, and four. A perfect arc, and when you drop that arc into the bigger picture, it forms that complete stone circle. That is the final quadrant, and I don't think it can be clearer than that. I'm convinced, John. I'm absolutely convinced. So we're now certain that we have a prehistoric stone circle, which is a first for Time Team. But we still don't know how it relates to the rest of the site, and what exactly it was used for. Francis, yesterday afternoon, you said that if those stones turned out to be a prehistoric stone circle, then that could be key to our understanding of the site. And yet, even though we're digging over there, you keep being drawn back to here. Well, I do, Tony, because I think that's why the stone circle is where it is. This mound was always the centre of this landscape. That double stone row leads directly to it. It's linked to it. Yeah. But the stone circle, you see, is joined in a different way. It's joined as if there was some gravity. It's attractive to this mound, and that's why I'm so fascinated by the east-west boundary at the far end of the site there, because if that is contemporary with all of this, then that's the edge of this landscape. Well, it's hard for us to understand, isn't it, that there was a time when we got this processional way, we'd got the mound, a stone circle, a boundary. Why? It's intriguing, isn't it? One of the things that fascinates me is this contrast or difference between the wetter areas and the drier areas which we have on the mound here. And it's perhaps important that the stone row and the alignment leads from wetter ground onto dry ground. And perhaps the ritual itself involved some kind of movement from wet to dry, and that was a significant element within the ritual itself. It's so tantalising. It's something that we'll never really be able to describe in any meaningful way. No. It's all a great theory, but do the dates hold together with Francis' idea of a ritual landscape? Phil may just have found firm evidence in Trench 5, which dates the stone circle to the Bronze Age. Phil? You look rather like an Australian sheep shearer holding sheep droppings. Well, I'm over the moon, Tony. That is our prehistoric pot. You're joking. No, I'm not. Those tiny little pellets. Absolutely. Absolutely. How do you know that? Well, I've had a word with Carl, our local pottery expert, and he's happy that that is Bronze Age pot. Where was it found? It came from about 18 inches away from that stone. This trench is lovely and clean now. What are we going to do with it? Well, we're going to make it longer, actually, because we're actually beginning to build up a picture of the arrangement, stone arrangement on this side of the circle. And so far, we've got an additional stone hole there, we've got a stone there, and we want to get the third one in the arc, and it's probably going to be underneath that digger. Fantastic. We're finally getting close to linking our prehistoric monuments together. Both the double stone row and the stone circle are from the Bronze Age, while the mound dates much earlier from the Mesolithic when people were working flints. Matt's coming to the end of his napping, but would his work be good enough to fit in with our ancient ancestors who lived here? How's it going? Not bad, actually. I think I'm getting the hang of it. Think about one that you might want to use for a knife. Probably go for something that's, you know, knife-shaped, as it were, so something like that, I suppose. So why do you pick that one? Well, it's good and straight, and it's got these razor-sharp edges. So, you've got your knives. Let's think about something else. Think about scrapers. Right. Maybe something like that. The thing that you've got to select for a scraper is one that's got a dipping end to it. And that one is perfect for that. It's got this dipping end. Yeah. You could actually butcher your game. You can actually process your hoods. And those two tools, they're the basic tools for all the fin technologies for thousands of years? Cutting and scraping. And with those skills, you could integrate with our Mesolithic people living on the mound over there. You could survive with these skills. The results are in from the coring samples, and Henry reckons he's figured out what the landscape looked like during the prehistoric. So, Henry, this is the sum total of the work that you've been doing over the last few days? Yeah, this is the survey and the borehole work and everything else. We've got the coring transects we've been putting across here, just trying to understand the landscape and its environment. What we have are two streams from Francis's Bronze Age ceremonial landscape running through the valley, either side of the central mound, and an island on which the stone circle was built. As yet, we don't know how the stone circle links to the mound, but Raksha may just have found the answer in her trench. Raksha, what's this little depression here that you've been excavating? This depression here, believe it or not, is a post hole we found just after lunch. A post hole? Yep. For something wood? Yes, it's for a wooden post. How do you know that was for a wooden post and not for a stone? Well, if you look in Trace's trench, she has a standing stone in it, and there's actually a cut around it, so it would have gone much deeper. And to put all the packing around, which you don't need for a post hole. Any idea of date? Well, funny you should say that, I actually have a bag of flint, and I'd love Francis to have a look at them, because I would love to know what date they are. We're in the middle of a Bronze Age stone circle. We've got a post hole, and these flints are all Mesolithic. How long before the Bronze Age circle was here, would that post have been here? About 4,000 years. Wow. And that's the same sort of date as the mound up there? Yeah. That's extraordinary. So 4,000 years after that post was put in, all these stones were erected. So you were right yesterday afternoon when you said if we could crack this circle, then we would understand more about the logic of this site. You've got something that's Mesolithic here, and that's Mesolithic on that mound, and then later you've got the walkway coming up to it, and then you've got the Bronze Age circle. Yes. So this site began when people were still hunter-gatherers, then it became farmers, and then it was an age of metal. Phew, at last! That's a relief, isn't it? This is an incredible find. We've uncovered some sort of Mesolithic timber structure as old as the flint work on the mound. So we're now able to link all the features together in our ceremonial site. Now we can see that we've got a complete prehistoric landscape, but every piece of archaeology we've exposed asks the same question. Who were these people, and why did they erect it? Is there anything that we can really say about that? Well, I think the answer to that is they were just like us. I mean, this is a very special place. We were in a sort of natural amphitheatre, and all their religious monuments, their constructions, are all intimately related to a very small-scale landscape. It's a natural amphitheatre, isn't it? And then within it you've got these small rises and fall in the landscape, and they relate directly to the actual monuments that were constructed on them, the ceremonial monuments. The ceremonies that were going on here happened over an incredibly long time, 3,000, 4,000 years. So it's all about people's religion developing out of the landscape, and I feel a strong sense that this is a sacred place. Mick, you never get that excited about prehistoric sites, do you? No, no, I'm a pretty cold-blooded character about the spirituality and the religion and all that, but what convinced me was seeing it from the air, because not only is this site special in this valley, but this valley is in the top of a great, massive sort of mountain piece of landscape of Dartmoor, hidden away. You wouldn't be able to see it from below. In fact, you wouldn't be able to see it until you got really near to it. So it looks to me like a really special place, so I think I'll probably buy into it on this occasion. So yesterday he was Richard Dawkins, today he's the Archbishop of Canterbury. LAUGHTER The entire ceremonial site was made up of a central mound with a timber structure next to it dating from the Mesolithic period 8,000 years ago. Later, about 4,000 years ago during the Bronze Age, a double stone row was built, acting as a processional way leading up to the mound. Around the same time, the stone circle was built. A single stone row could have acted as an east-west field boundary to the entire site. It's been a pretty eventful three days, isn't it? It certainly has. What is it that you've enjoyed most? I think it's seeing the prehistory of this valley coming to life again. And, of course, people don't excavate stone circles on Dartmoor very often, do they? They certainly don't. I think the last one was about 130 years ago. So how important do you think this dig is? Well, I think it's been tremendously important for Dartmoor but I think it's been important nationally, too. Are you glad we came? Delighted. Thank you very much. I think we're going to have to rewrite some of Dartmoor's archaeology books because of you.