Unearthing Britain’s Most Remote Historical Site | Extreme Archaeology | Unearthed History

All over Britain, there are archaeological sites that are too dangerous to access or excavate. They could contain unique and valuable evidence of our past, which if not investigated, will be lost forever. EXA is a team of highly skilled archaeologists. Katie Hurst, in charge of excavation. Alice Roberts, doctor and expert in human bones. Meg Watters, geophysicist and digital imaging specialist. All experts in their chosen fields, who are determined to get into these inhospitable places, to forensically assess, survey and extract the evidence. The expedition leader will be me, Mark Davis, volcanologist, climber, caver and diver. This is Archaeology on the Very Edge. This week we are all on a steep learning curve, as we investigate this Shetland sea stack, that could have once been home to a group of solitary monks. This is the Kame of Izebister, a jagged tongue of rock in the far north of Shetland. This inhospitable place holds the key to solving a strange archaeological mystery. These rectangular features appear to be the remains of houses. So the big question is, who would choose to live in a remote and barren landscape like this? No archaeologist has had the privilege of setting foot on the Kame. EXA is about to be the first. 200 miles north of the Scottish mainland, the Kame of Izebister is one of the most remote archaeological sites in Britain. Kame, meaning rocky point or promontory, describes perfectly this wild and precipitous coastline. These strange rectangular features were first observed over 100 years ago, and have fascinated archaeologists ever since. But because no one has ever got nearer than this, speculation as to their history has been rife. They could have their origins in Shetland's dark Pictish past. They could be part of a monastery. No one knows for sure. EXA has been invited here to finally put speculation to rest. 30 miles north of the nearest town, two miles east of the nearest house, getting close to the site is an expedition in itself. And we've arrived in October, not exactly the best time for an archaeological excavation. As the team wait for the weather to clear, they've got time to reflect on the remoteness of the site. What you have to really think about is, why on earth would anybody go onto that Kame? It's completely isolated. The only people who I can think of who are going to do that are a monastic community, monks. Certainly good for solitary contemplation out there. But the other thing they could be are leper colonies as well. That would be amazing. If we find any evidence of skeletons or leprosy, leprosy is quite easy to diagnose on the skeletons. It's really vital to find out what date these structures are. We're going to have to look for things like pottery, 14 dating, things like hearths. You can get charred grain, charred wood. With this strong wind it's going to be a bit of a challenge, but we'll try to get some good data out of it. But hearths should show up. Why is it going to be a challenge? Because it's so windy, because the magnetometer itself is going to get buffeted by the wind. And when you collect it, it needs to be very steady, very straight on the same plane the whole time. So we'll give it a good go, see what it's like. OK, we'll just start doing that and we can start opening up some trenches. OK. The access onto the site is one of the most extreme we've so far attempted. A 50-metre knife-edge arete. A 20-metre climb. Another longer knife-edge. Then an even higher climb, made worse by gusting wind and rain. The delivery team have spent two days rigging hundreds of metres of rope, fixed to the shallow soil by steel anchors. The access is severe, even by their standards. All right, guys. Well, this is as far as we're going to be able to go without being clipped on. So we've set these ropes up. The ones along the ground you're just going to clip into. And at various stages you'll have to transfer over. So, first of all, we've got these two ropes that are going to get you to this short climb here. Now you're about 150 feet or so above the sea. It's very steep on both sides. You're going to have to be transferring over from one line to the other. Is it safe with all this wind howling across? It's really exposed, isn't it? Well, it's safe as long as we're actually clipped into something. Just always, always, always make sure they are attached at one point. And these ribbons are strong enough to take our weight, are they? This is Kevlar. This can take up to about four tonnes of weight. There's absolutely no way this is going to break. For safety reasons, the team have to negotiate each stage of the access one at a time. Katie is the first to face the long walk. The sheep track across the Arete is badly eroded, with great areas of undercutting and slippage on either side. The other side of the rope? Underneath it? The route is only one boot wide and extremely slippy. I can see what you mean about the rock being crumbly. I've got you attached. Who are aware the conditions and the crumbly state of the rock have made the going very slow? This will severely restrict our time on site. Yeah, absolutely, do whatever. Katie's slip at least proves all the safety systems are fully working. The delay is giving Meg time to reflect on her upcoming ordeal. It looks really daunting to me. And being so slippery and windy like this, I am a bit nervous. Katie, can you clip those things into that black rope before you come up this bit? With Katie on the final stretch, Meg is faced with the biggest, slippiest and wettest rock climb she's so far attempted. She'll climb it. She'll be fine. Good, well done Meg. Nice, looking good. By the time Alice sets off, the wind and rain has got much worse. Having said I wasn't worried about it, having seen two people go ahead of me and a lot of rocks fall off, I'm slightly more worried. It's slippery, isn't it? It's a really, really loose, scrumbly rock. It's not like anything you've climbed on before. As Bean tries to duck the gusts, our cameraman is not so quick and gets blown off. A bone-jarring three metre fall. The safety lines hold and Jamie escapes with a cut finger and dented camera. It's hard to imagine who in their right mind would live in a place like this. It's down to the sea and on the far side there's a 30 degree slope that just edges down to the churning water itself. Local archaeologist Val Turner has been puzzled by the structures on the cane for almost 20 years. There are two possibilities really. Either that it's early Christian or alternatively that it's a leper colony. So a group of outcasts. Yes, people who were shunned by society. Although society would keep on feeding them or whatever, they didn't want close contact with. So when you say Christians, what sort of age are we looking at there? Well, it could be Pictish in which case it would be from about 600 to 800 AD, something like that. But why would they send Christians out onto that rocky promontory? I mean, it's pretty barren, isn't it? Well, it could be monastic or alternatively it could be more like a place that they went for retreat. OK, so contemplation, retreat. And if it's a leper colony that would be later. That would be either late medieval or really quite recent. I mean, it could extend over any period within that. So if you've got a wish list for EXA what would that be? Definitely to find out the date and to find out who lived here. OK, and your hunch? Well, I have a suspicion that it might be Pictish Christians but we shall see. The only other person in modern times to get onto the cane is a climber who in 1876 discovered the rectangular features. So as Alice nears the summit our team are the first archaeologists ever to set foot on the site. Look at this, it's fantastic. Look at that. That's amazing. They're not on the slope, are they? They're terraced down the hill. It's faster than it looks on the aerial photograph, yeah. And they're bigger as well than what I thought. There's another terrace and there's some more structures down there as well. You can see the wall here. Oh, yeah. This is about a metre high. It's really substantial, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And this is spacious. This doesn't look like a little monastic cell. I don't think it's too big to be a monastic cell. If you had one big structure and maybe a few smaller ones so, yeah. But these are all pretty big up here. It might be a monastery. A monastery itself. 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 immerse yourself in the captivating stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description. Back in 1876, Coburn reported seeing 23 enclosures. Katie, Alice and Meg count only 19. So even though the Kames still covers an area of over 5,000 square metres, it's obviously eroding into the sea at an alarming rate. But the scale of the site doesn't stop there. If you think if one person lives in each of these structures, how many people would actually live out here? So if they're like 19 or 20, that's a lot of people. It's not just a monk or two in a cell. You could fit a whole family in each of these. So we have to think about population. If you assume that a family consists of four people, that's almost 80 individuals. I don't think I've worked out how they got onto the stack. Well, you might think this is utter madness. If people lived on the Kame, they'd have to go across this knife edge. But bear in mind that hundreds of years ago this probably was quite a fairway. The problem is, with all these cliffs around here, is that they're all slipping and cascading into the sea. And this has probably gone from a mysterious community bringing food and supplies across. How and where did they get fresh water? Where would they have got firewood? Shetland is barren of trees. The Kame is a perfect place to defend. But from whom? As well as finding a date for this place, it looks like we've got lots more questions to answer. It's windy, it's treacherous. I've slipped about three times coming across. This really is extreme archaeology. It's taken us the best part of a day to get the first ever team of archaeologists onto the Kame of Eyes Vista in Shetland. Finally, I get to join them. Hello! Blown a bit, isn't it? This is incredible. It's marvellous, isn't it? It's incredible, isn't it? So each one of these depressions tells you what it is. You can see the entranceway into some of them. There's a couple of rows here and then there's a big slate and then there's another one or another couple down the hill. So what are we going to go about doing this investigation then, Meg? What are you going to do first? Well, I think we're going to start and cover the place really quickly with magnetometry because part of the evidence that we're looking for is to put a trench across one of the structures and maybe take it across to another one so we can get a comparison of two structures. The 19 visible features are very closely packed together. Some appear to share adjoining walls whilst others have alleyways between. This is completely unlike any monastic retreat yet excavated where monk cells have been found to be circular beehive structures and the scale of the site does beg the question whether this could actually be the monastery itself. With most of the usable hand and footholds pulled off the rock face during access the delivery team have been busy rigging more safety lines and extra anchor points to give the team a safe exit so there's been no time to bring any excavation tools across. The delivery team are getting concerned about the weather it's going to take at least an hour to get everyone off. There's a load of storms coming in I think. It's freezing. The archaeologists are extremely disappointed but have to follow the delivery team's orders. It's much harder than you imagine it's going to be. It's really quite hairy especially coming back this way because you've just got sheer drops on either side of you I just want to be right back at the other side now. I want a hot drink inside me. It's not even that far away you could walk there in half a minute. That face there is really really crumbling you've got the wind lashing against you but the archaeology is absolutely fantastic. I don't know if it's fantastic because I just personally I just get a feeling that those buildings are just a little bit too luxurious for a monk. They're big and it just seems a little bit odd but I can't say at the moment. I really want to get digging that's the thing. This climbing has been a little more than I expected. I had some rather scary moments I lost a footing for the second time actually climbing like this up a cliff face so it was good. This site is fantastic it's really really great and there's a lot more to it than meets the eye than we saw in the aerial photographs so it's really exciting I can't wait to get down to work there. I think it's fair to say that anyone who actually lived over there must have been completely insane. It's freezing cold but it's been great we've set foot on the cave that's a first but as far as the archaeology goes we're nowhere near to solving who actually lived there and for me that's disappointing. It's our first night under canvas. We are staying on site to give ourselves the chance of an early start tomorrow morning and to get a feel for what it must have been like for those early inhabitants trying to survive in the supermarket but it does beg the question as to how our stack dwellers fed themselves. They could well be trading with other people or monastic communities often were supported by the mother church and monks would come over and bring supplies across to the monks because the monks who were contemplating God in their isolation I've read lots of archaeological science papers looking at pot residue analysis they scrape the inside of the pot and they work out exactly what they were eating mostly cabbage soup people in the past mostly ate cabbage soup so I think we're recreating it fairly well. Reality TV has finally made it to Shetland and already the diary tent has a steady queue it's been amazing we've had a good look round it's still a great privilege to be the first people on the island I think with so little time it would have been good if we could have got some of the kit over and started doing something. I'm really behind now to have a whole day to work really hard tomorrow but we'll be OK. What I really want to be able to do is contribute to what we're doing with some good maps but it's going to take a little bit of time so I've been a little worried about that I'm going to go to bed tonight in a tent on a bog in the middle of the Shetland Islands it's October it's wet, it's windy they're expecting gale force winds tomorrow life is not fair. Well my worst nightmares have come true the severe weather conditions have actually come in it's about one degree with a wind chill and air pressure is still dropping so the worst is yet to come I mean we got on there yesterday and they all looked spectacular but unless we start excavating today we'll never know who actually lived on the cane. It's not normal rain normal rain that goes down wouldn't be so much a problem it's the fact that it's horizontal makes things more difficult Because of extra safety duties yesterday the delivery team have even more work to do today all the excavation and geophysics equipment has to be lifted tied and dragged to the site by zip wire we were hoping to get an early start but bad weather has made us later than ever 10 o'clock in the morning we've got 8 hours left and everyone is already soaked probably getting pretty damn cold we've yet to get the moment to the windiest part and then all the work starts I think it's going to be a really interesting day The team have found a relatively dry place to plot a trench strategy well I guess it would be great to have one that went across the wall and into on either side that's exactly what I think then we can get two floors for the price of one exactly yes that's right I think it's really important to get the structure of the wall I think that's going to be potentially it's quite diagnostic and also of course the finds but not taking down the wall no no no I think what you want to do is go down onto the archaeology and see what's there rather than start digging into it within half an hour the storm has passed as we enter a period of relative calm it's time to get the team on site we're all just raring to go really because we've got the kit over there now so we can actually do some archaeology after yesterday's difficulties the delivery team have rigged an easier method of access instead of climbing Katie, Meg and Alice are using mechanical ascenders to pull themselves up the rope it's still not easy given the slippery conditions once on site it's straight down to work Meg is going to carry out a geophysical survey on the slope and terrace below the rectangle of features Katie has opened a trench across one of the walls between two of the structures the caim is a scheduled ancient monument Historic Scotland has given us permission to open a few small trenches so it's essential we position these accurately in the calm before the next storm the delivery team are facing a new challenge so we've got all three members of the delivery team trying to get Val up now she's never done any climbing in her life before so you can imagine if we were quite scared with all the wind on the arete yesterday she's going to be absolutely kicking herself but I can understand why she's doing it her sense of anticipation must be phenomenal because she's wanted to get onto that stack for nearly 17 years and only now she has the opportunity to do it Hiya Val she seems to be doing alright though how did you find us? Wow I'm here, that's the important thing fully recovered from her ordeal Val gets a tour of the site first stop, Katie's trench across the wall between two buildings can you see this here? that line there are big boulders on that side but all these little ones so they're infilling an entranceway certainly does, yeah the adjoining wall is really substantial and this carefully blocked up doorway proves that the two buildings were once interconnected not your average monastic cell if you come over here you can see the other structure to the other side and it's literally they look as though they're sharing the same wall once I took away the turf I've got a bit of an empty patch I'm just wondering whether it's a turf wall yes, I expect you're right you can see these dark patches here which might mean that it's been packed with turf Vikings certainly built like that Vikings had stone on either side and a turf in the core that's really exciting isn't it? it is! can you say that this is definitely the only time that they used this kind of construction technique in the Viking period? I'm not sure that I'd go absolutely quite that far but it's certainly indicative you've certainly got that on the west coast of Norway which is the nearest part of Norway to here that's what they found Val may be hedging her bets but the fact remains that the first people in Shetland to build rectangular houses were the Vikings so if this complex of buildings is the remains of a Viking settlement why did they build their houses in such an inhospitable place? and does this mean that our monastic retreat theory needs to be revised? I still think religious community is probably a Viking one Viking or Norse it's just so good to be here it's fantastic isn't it? there is no reliable date for when the Vikings first arrived in Shetland but they did begin raiding mainland Britain in 790 AD as pagans the Vikings attacked and destroyed Christian communities but by 900 they began Viking or from the time after the conversion finding the date for the buildings is now more crucial than ever after the most exciting site visit of her career Val negotiates the route back with new enthusiasm it's amazing I think it's Viking it's a Viking type of construction Viking to Norse type of construction with stone on either side of a turf core and a period Viking so why not? looks good with the 19 rectangular features clearly visible on the ground Meg has been surveying the slope leading down to the lower terrace her aim is to see via magnetometry if there are any subsurface features not visible to the naked eye it's a huge area to cover but we urgently need to find out the extent of our site the likely place to find dating evidence is on the floor of one of the structures Katie's working flat out it's finally time for me to get down to work well it's all hands to the pump Meg's down there doing her geophysical survey Katie's still working there and she's tasked me with opening up another trench in this rectangular feature right in the corner it could be for animals we haven't found artefacts that says yep someone lived here still a mystery could this corner conceal the dating evidence we are looking for? we are here at the Cairn of Isbister in the far north of Shetland we are investigating these strange rectangular features on this precipitous promontory it's one of the most extreme sites we've ever attempted to be rock faces to contend with but we've succeeded in getting the first ever team of archaeologists onto the Cairn we've already turned up a major surprise instead of an early Christian monastic retreat we appear to have found a series of Viking buildings but with absolutely no finds we are still no nearer to discovering the date of these structures the team are becoming despondent we need a piece of evidence we need a find we need to find something the stuff I've been digging out has got absolutely nothing in it you've got no charcoal for dating nothing like that Meg have you found anything in your survey? we've covered the whole of the bottom part of this little island here but I actually can't really see anything in the data until I look at it in my computer I really still have absolutely no idea but just the shape of these houses look very much like a Nordic Christian site that's all we can say I think that's the plus point today I know we haven't found any artefacts but that's the thing we've come across walls that are not built in Shetland or even in Scotland like that the nearest is Norway that's a good thing to bring out you've got to remember as well that this is part of the Shetlands and really very few people know what's going on here in terms of the logistics are you a lot happier than yesterday? did it work today? yeah we got the kit no actually I'm not I got half of the work done today that I thought I would we waited around in the morning the kit didn't get over here at 8 o'clock straight away like we said it was going to and the whole point of our from a point of view of project management this is the bit that I dread more than anything else and the reason for that is everyone's coming across cold but they're also complacent and mistakes can be made and I've been on so many expeditions where it's actually finishing and on the way back is when all the accidents occur so fingers crossed everyone will concentrate right till the very end of the night it looks like the dowry tent is in for a busy evening I'm an osteologist with no bones I feel I just want some bones really I don't think I'm going to get any on this one I don't know I'm probably just getting a bit down because I'm tired as well I'm very tired very cold my feet really smell I'm aching all over it's the beginning of our final day on site and I'm on a mission there's too many questions about this place that still need an answer firstly, how did the people who built the structures get on and off the cane I'm pretty sure that our route would have been much wider 1500 years ago it could easily have been 10 metres across by my reckoning even if large chunks of rock have fallen away it doesn't explain how they negotiated this first climb it also doesn't explain how they transported the building stone to the site there must have been another way onto the promontory one of the things that puzzles me on this site is the amount of stone that's gone into building these walls so they would have either climbed it up the sea cliff all the way around the top of the headland across the arete and onto the cane or the other way is in by sea now I know which way I'd rather do it and that's by sea itself so Trevor and I are going to look for any man-made features such as a natural wall you know it wasn't this used to be adjoined to that if that was the case this juts out a lot further that's quite a nice place to be in you can imagine bringing your boat in here yeah and if you could again with a low tide scramble out onto these ledges it's been estimated that the sea levels have risen 4 to 5 metres over the past 1500 years so it's entirely possible let's not forget that the Vikings were master mariners and probably used to negotiating trickier landings than this as Trevor and I try and find a way back up the cliff the solution to another major question presents itself how did they collect fresh water again the answer appears to be geological rainwater still percolates down through the peat and collects here at the rock face given the climate of Shetland having enough drinking water appears not to be a problem Meg's geophysical survey of the lower slope and terrace is complete she's covered over 1500 square metres and the results are promising we're looking at the magnetometry data from yesterday there are a few hot spots as we call them of high magnetic value this is actually excavating right now it's closer I think it's south of what looks like the exterior wall of the structure they show no more rectangular features on the lower levels but do indicate areas of very high and very low magnetism these could be areas of burning perhaps domestic hearths or even small kilns on rare occasions they've even been found to be cremation sites but there's hardly anything on the top terrace so Alice has opened a trench on this distinctly boat shaped area we don't know whether these lower features are contemporary with the rectangular buildings up top but, and it's a big but if this feature is also viking then this could be all that remains of a pagan boat burial well, Katie and I came down here the next morning and we decided to open a trench here because as you can see it's a bit of an odd shape because it's not rectangular like the other features at the top of the hill it's got a sort of curved into it almost a sort of boat shape up there but anyway, what we've done is put a trench in across the rim around the edge which presumably is a wall and I'm coming down on stones which suggests it might be a wall Viking boat burials are extremely rare in Shetland only a handful they were constructed by laying the deceased inside an actual longboat or sometimes a boat shaped cairn of small rocks as things are slowly beginning to make sense on the lower slopes Katie is working up top in the corner trench I started yesterday and is finally coming down onto the conclusive evidence we've been searching for it's our last afternoon on site and we're still searching all the way to the trench I started yesterday in the corner of one of the structures well I think we've actually struck what looks like to be a floor surface can you see where all this black stuff is here yeah what is that it's all charcoal you can even make out individual bits of stick yeah you can so this looks as though it's either part of a hearth or you can often find all sorts of bits trampled in like pottery and bone so the importance of the charcoal and this is the dating of it yeah because we haven't actually got an absolute date yet for these buildings all we can say so far is that the way they've been built with the stone and the turf in between is probably Viking but this charcoal is so so important because we can see the structure but it does prove someone at the same time the floor of the building was in use lit a fire but it would be nice to leave the site knowing the date of the structures one single piece of domestic pottery would decide the matter once and for all Meg is doing some additional survey work to try and give herself a digging target Alice is still working on wood, metal or bone I'm a bit intrigued by that stone over there which is large and doesn't seem to be part of the wall collapsing in so I just wonder whether it's part of whatever building was here and whether it was placed in the middle of it but it would be lovely to have some artifactual evidence as well with the light failing completely we've only got a couple of hours to go before I pull the plug on this excavation the winds are persistent they were 70 mph through the night and they've continued all the way through the day Katie's opening her final trench in the doorway of another building, a small one metre square test pit there's only one find that would tell us who lived here we're running out of time we're getting really pushed for time once she's finished we're going to get her to open up another small trench like this get as many trenches as possible just to try and find something there may be a very simple religious reason for the processions and things like pottery they could even have done without they could have had skins for storing water milk and stuff they could have used the local stone for sitting on you're not necessarily going to find anything here and all their rubbish could have been chucked into the we've now dug our full allocation of trenches I think it may be too little too late I know it took a couple of days to do your geophysical survey and you've only got a one by one but at the end of the day this is our last chance because all the other trenches the problem with this site for me is that we've come here we've done a lot of work hard graft not come up with hard and fast answers but opened up a whole can of worms that's given loads more questions there haven't been that many comparable answers I bet if we went to just one of these rectangular features strip the whole thing back we'd probably find what we're looking for but that's what we're all about it's tough archaeology I know that we really need to sample the site because we are coming in and looking at all this micro archaeology that's the thing almost immediately Meg comes down on the same spread of small stones that Alice found this uniform layer of rocks doesn't look like a collapsed building but with no finds it's not looking like a boat burial either it could be just a boat shaped can of stones but Meg's working on her own theory I'm digging here because there's something that showed up as a high signature actually a dipole over here a high and a low so have you got any theory about what this might be I'm hoping it's something that was burned or something that was record the trenches and evacuate the site before we lose the light our survey and archaeological reports may be of use to some brave soul in the future who's willing to take the risks and get in on everything well absolutely science is the best isn't it I got to excavate today if you couldn't tell I got very dirty yes it was good day excavating good geophysics I'm ready to go I'm really tired fully everything yeah but it was really good it's really good Katie's charcoal where they will be carbon-14 dated the results will take weeks one thing I'm slowly learning is that if you're into instant gratification don't consider archaeology as a career by the end of the day I was feeling really really tired so I've opened up a lot of trenches today and there's a lot of stones up there so there's always really hard work to move but it's also been quite disappointing but we did get loads and loads of charcoal so we can at least get carbon-14 dated in fact there was less than 4% charcoal in the soil sample in order to obtain a reliable date we had to use calculated mass spectrometry 865 AD wow well this is a really important date because we know that Vikings are coming across to Shetland at this time but this is exactly the point where they're converting to Christianity as well so we don't know whether our site is pagan or Christian construction methods used we can now speculate on how these buildings may have looked complete with turf walls and roofs this could have been much more than an isolated domestic settlement but what we might actually be looking at is the monastery itself and you get the geophysics of the whole slope in the bottom with all that information I'm just amazed we didn't get any artifacts at all and just from that tiny little bit of charcoal you actually got a date and not only that it was absolutely clinical we only opened 8 square