The Rare Artifacts Found in a Lost Anglo-saxon Cemetery

Look at this lot. Brooches, clasps, wristbands. They were all found in this Lincolnshire field by a metal detectorist. And they're not only beautiful, they're pretty rare. But that's not all. All these came from the surface. But the detectorist dug a hole and he found this, which is actually an Anglo-Saxon warrior, who can probably just about make out these bones. And this blob here is a shield boss. Archaeologists reckon this is an important Anglo-Saxon cemetery, but it's now being ripped apart by ploughing, so Time Team have been sent in on a rescue mission. We want to find out how big this cemetery is, how old it is, and whether or not there are any other warriors buried here. As usual, we've got just three days to do it, and judging by these finds, we could have our work cut out. Our biggest challenge is the scale of the site. It's almost a kilometre long and 300 metres across. So to help us target our trenches, we've sent an army of field walkers to scour the surface for concentrations of finds before the diggers move in, while we have plenty of finds from the detectorist to mull over. Helen, this is quite an array of finds, isn't it? It's the most amazing group, yes. We've got everything from the mid-5th century right on to the 7th century. They're brooches and wrist clasps and girdle hangers, all sorts of things. What are these things? That's a brooch. You put it on your shoulder. Which way does it go? It goes like that. Not on your shoulder, obviously, because it's a woman's brooch, but it would have looked nice anyway, wouldn't it? What can you tell just by this array of finds? Can you tell how many people there are? Well, I've just been quickly counting up the brooches. We've got 21 of them, so that means that's at least 10 women buried somewhere in this field. How are we going to find out more about this cemetery? Presumably, we're not just going to stick in a load of test pits. No, we do want to dig one pit to try to re-establish the location of the grave that Andrew found and to make sure we've got all the data we possibly can out of it. But then after that, we're going to try to look for the edges of the cemetery to find out just how big it is. Are we likely to find any more stuff? I think so, yes. If you look at the breaks on these brooches, they're very, very fresh. These have just recently been hit by the plow, and there should be a lot more deeper graves out there to find. That's a pretty optimistic start. I think I am very optimistic. Geophysics have initially been targeting their survey in the centre of the field, where the metal detected finds so far have been most concentrated. John's hoping that the sensitive mag scanners might be able to help us locate grave cuts. But he's even more optimistic that he'll be able to guide us in by detecting metal grave goods such as shields, knives, or even jewellery from deep within the soil. We were hoping the field-walking finds might be able to give us an early indication of the extent of our cemetery. But even Phil's expert eyes have so far drawn a blank. They're doing a good job, the field-walkers. They are finding stuff. They're just not finding what we wanted them to find. There's a few little bits of Roman. There's a few little bits of what may be medieval. But in terms of Anglo-Saxon, I'm afraid nothing so far. Our hottest lead to an Anglo-Saxon burial comes from Andrew, the metal detectorist. So he's gone to help Phil relocate his warrior, if he can remember where that was. I think it's very close to here. Very close? How very close? It's here or hereabouts. There's no exact science. As an archaeologist, I would tend to fix the plot by perhaps pacing to a hedge. You don't use a system like that. I didn't find it necessary to locate the spot. So we are within 10 metres of it now, then, you reckon? I would have thought so, yeah. With the warrior roughly located, the diggers are going in. We're digging a large 10 metre by 10 metre trench to maximise our chances of finding Andrew's warrior and possibly other graves that may have been placed alongside. I'm about to ruin my spiders. Because the field has been heavily ploughed, Phil's concerned that some graves may have already been disturbed and brought up into the topsoil. So we're digging cautiously, gradually removing very thin layers, with experienced eyes looking out for any finds. We're also sieving the spoils so we don't miss any artefacts. And Andrew's helping us search for metal finds in each layer as we dig. Our site's next door to RAF Scampton, home of the Red Arrows. Whey! Oh, now we're talking. And it looks like they've come to see what we're up to. Meanwhile, the digger is raving at bones and gold brooches. Why didn't you say I was watching the Red Arrows? It's mid-morning and most of the topsoil in Trench 1 has now been removed. But there's no sign of Andrew's warrior. However, it looks like Phil has found our first Anglo-Saxon. I've actually got a piece of pot there and we've got lots more bits of pot in there, all the way round. But more importantly, I've got bits of cremated bone. There's bits there, look, there's that big bit over there. So in here, we've actually got a definite cremation burial. It's a bit smashed up. It is, but you can really imagine the whole pot there with somebody in it. Very soon you will not have to imagine it, you will see it displayed before your very eyes. But a skeleton at the other end of the trench might finally be Andrew's warrior. Look at this, Alice, you've got the eye orbit coming in here. How did you spot that amongst all of this limestoney rubble? Well, two reasons. First, I'm a professional. And secondly, the bone's in excellent condition. It's very good, yeah. So that must be the back of the head. This would be the front of the head, so the body's lying in here, isn't it? There's already getting to be quite a buzz about this site. Not only do we seem to have our first body in that trench, but apparently, John, you're quite excited about the geophys on here. Look at this, it's got some fantastic results. Whatever is that? Well, there's two explanations for this. Yeah. It's either a barrow with four chariots inside. Oh, come on. Or it's a pylon base that they've cut down and moved. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you so much, mate. Look, there's lots of really good stuff. All these iron spikes, you can see them in this plot. Lots of targets I'd like to go at. So where are we in relation to the field? Well, look, the trench is there. Yeah. That's on the ground. Yeah. And then you've got this bank coming through, and these iron spikes seem to be either side. That's this bank running all the way along here. Yeah, it's a clear earthwork. You just see it humping up there, can't you? It's right the whole length of the field, and there appear to be iron spikes either side. So whether you've got burials either side or whether, you know, it's being masked by the bank. So how would you like to approach this? Well, I'd like to dig some of those. I'd like to dig the linears. I mean, we've got even hints of, you know, circular features there. To try and make sense of John's geophys, we're going to have to dig. So we're putting in trench two alongside the bank feature, right over John's strongest metal signal, and Phil's once again guiding the digger in. For the past hour, Alice has been carefully excavating our first skeleton, and it's not just bones that she's finding. There are grave goods with it. Are there? There's something, yes. First thing I found was something metal lying underneath the skull, and it looks like it's iron. It's got a sort of rusty orange colour to it. I've no idea what it is because it's hidden under the skull. There's something oval and copper-like, but it looks like it might be glassy as well, doesn't it? Yeah, it's got a funny broken piece to it, which is almost shiny. And there are some beads as well. Beads? Yeah. Where are the beads? They're beautiful. Just here. Is that some orangey stuff on that bead? Yes, it's got little orange spots on it, and it's got a cross of blue that I can see just there. It's absolutely beautiful. And what about the state of the body? As you can see, the top of the skull has been completely taken off with the plough, and the shoulder's gone as well. But the bone itself actually seems to be in quite good condition, the bone that is there. Can you tell anything about the skeleton so far? It's an adult, and we know this is an older individual because the wear on the teeth here is really, really severe, and on that one, the crown has almost completely been worn away. And we've also got a missing tooth there, and you've got this really martyry modelling, so that tooth has been lost for quite a long time. From Andrew's finds, it looks like we're dealing with a very early Anglo-Saxon cemetery, probably established in the late 5th century, around 480 AD, only 70 years after the Romans left. Our Anglo-Saxons buried here were living through unstable times and inhabited a strange world of clan warfare and decaying Roman villas. After the Romans left, all these hordes of people came over from the continent, didn't they? The Franks and the Frisians and the Saxons. Which lot are our lot? It was really pretty chaotic for a while. For about 60 years after the end of the Roman period, it's hard to say who these people were. It's just a bit of a mishmash. So this is up to about, what, 470, something like that? Yeah, about 470, yes. And then it begins to be clear that what we're dealing with in Lincolnshire are people who thought of themselves as Angles, so coming from this area here. What do you mean, thought of themselves as Angles? Well, I think what it was really is that the top people, the bosses, were probably Angles, and so the downtrodden masses and everybody else wanted to be Angles to fit in with what was going on at the top. But they were actually the people who already lived here, just as the Celts who already lived here adopted Roman ways, now they're adopting Saxon ways. Yes, that's exactly it. Yes, they're taking on the dress, they're taking on the language, they're doing everything in the new coming way. So my whole idea, which I got in the classroom, which I'm sure you did too, of all these hordes of people invading and occupying the land is probably wrong. You'd really have to have too many people travelling across the North Sea for it to be feasible. It does seem to be just the aristocracy, just the elite, changing ideas rather than changing bloodlines. In Trench 1, the archaeologists have made another breakthrough. Dan to Tony. Hello, Dan. Something you should see here, Tony, I think. Coming all the way. Have we got something new? Shield boss. This here? Yeah. Are there any bones associated with it? Bit of a skull, look. Got a bit of a skull there. Sitting in a nice, really well-defined grave as well. This is the cart. What's that over there, Margaret? It looks like feet. So we've got the feet of the body as well? Well, the trouble is that would have been a very, very tall person if that's that person's feet. Now, it could be that it is a very tall person or it just could be that... Another grave. Another grave or it's disturbed or something like that. What does this shield boss tell us? Well, I think it says something about status. No, it means we've got a warrior class in the society represented in the cemetery. I've got my granddad's World War 1 trenching tool and I'm not a warrior. Well, he was. Yeah, but that's back a while. At some time during Anglian history, there were fighting people here. Would you both agree with that? Possibly. The iron shield boss is all that remains of an Anglo-Saxon shield that was buried here. The wood and leather section have long since rotted, leaving only the metallic central part which was used to batter opponents. And the rarity of this find means it looks like we've found Andrew's warrior grave. But in Trench 2, there's absolutely no sign of any metalwork. And a concerned John has called for one of his team to check the signal is still there. 400 nanotesla. Is that a lot? It's quite strong. I would think something, I don't know, the size of your hat. Oh. So the search continues. Stuart has been trawling through maps and aerial photographs to try and find out more about our cemetery's location and has discovered that the earthen bank running across our site is also visible in neighbouring fields on the air photography. That mark runs right across the field. It continues through the field up to the north out there as well. So there is something showing through there quite nicely. And after looking at a 17th century map, he's found there was once a road running through our site. If this road existed when our cemetery was established, it's possible that we've found our first boundary. In Trench 2, Phil's finally found John's metalwork. It's a talk. You've got some industrial archaeology, Phil. Well, you did say it was a bit head-sized, didn't you? Disappointment for John, but in Trench 1, the finds haven't stopped all day. Is that another bit of metal next to the shear box? It is, and we think it's probably a broken blade, whether it's a knife or a spear, we're not sure at the moment. What about these two bubbly things? They look like rivets, maybe holding leather or wood in place on the shield. Have you solved the mystery of the feet yet? Well, almost 100% sure that we've got one very tall person and just running a tape along, good six foot tall, so very statuesque. It's been a very good day one, hasn't it? Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Not only have we got this burial and all these finds, but we've got this cremation that Bridget's working on with all these little bits of bone here and this beautiful old skeleton with lots of interesting grave goods, including beads and something green there that we haven't even got up yet. But we've got a big problem, which is that we want to ascertain how big this whole cemetery actually is, but John's just told the archaeologists that you can't possibly geophys the whole area in the time that we've got left and consequently, presumably, we can't dig it. There's no way we're going to dig the whole field, no. So we need to work out some kind of way to ascertain how many people actually were buried in this. We really need to try and know how big the cemetery was, it's the most important thing. And we've got to do that by tomorrow morning? I've got to have a strategy by then. Beginning of day two and I'd been expecting to see the archaeologists here who were going to tell me what strategy they worked out so they could determine the size of this Anglo-Saxon cemetery, but all that's been turned on its head by this geophys, which is actually this way round. Yesterday, John had done that, but then last night, after we'd all gone home, he did this strip here, which revealed this mysterious circle, which is just over there, past where Jimmy's doing that geophys. And some of the archaeologists are saying it could be a barrow, but we won't know until John's done this next strip here so that we can reveal the shape of it. But whatever it is, it's going to be pretty exciting and I reckon it's going to dictate today's archaeology. While Geophys finished scanning the last of the missing strips, in Trench 1, work continues excavating the two skeletons we found yesterday, the one with beads and our warrior with his shield. Heavy rain overnight isn't helping matters and we've got a bit of a puzzle. Andrew, we've got two skeletons here, that lovely one there and one under the tent. Which one is the one that you found? Neither of these are the one that I found, Tony. And yet, you said, put your trench in there and you'll come up with my skeleton. That's true, but I may have made an error of perhaps three metres or so. Ah, so where do you reckon it is now? I think it's close to where we're standing. Right here? That's right. With two skeletons in our first trench, we're clearly right in the middle of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, so we're not going to continue the search for Andrew's warrior. Mick's back with us today and has joined a crowd of expectant archaeologists on the other side of the field to hear the results of John's intriguing geophys. You've done it yet? Yeah. Come on, man! There you are, look at that. Oh, look at that, crikey! That's so clear. Where is it on the ground? Well, just behind us. I mean, the entrance is here and then it goes out for 30 metres towards that red peg and then it curves right the way round. So, I mean, it's a big prominent feature. It is big, isn't it? And do you think it's a wall or a ditch? No, it's a ditch. Definitely a ditched feature. A ditched enclosure. I mean, it's got this one entrance. Whether that could be a small henge? It looks sort of like that, like a Neolithic henge, doesn't it? Is there any sign of a bank on the inside? I can't actually see one in the results. I mean, could it be a big roundhouse? Big Iron Age roundhouse? Well, it's 100 foot across. I mean, that's not impossible. Okay, how do we find out what it is? I think we'll have to dig a hole in it and see. I was hoping you'd say that. Where do we dig it? Well, if Crenshaw's right and it's a henge, then we ought to be digging somewhere around the entrance, I would have thought. I would have thought. For anything, really, that's got to be crucial. Because people deposit stuff in the ditches, you know, there may be post formations, that sort of thing. And if we want a date, then we want some finds of the right period and that's likely to be around the entrance. Mick, I know this is day one for you and you're not up to speed yet, but have they got a strategy that's going to find the edge of this cemetery? I think so. I think it's going to be difficult, but we do have this earthwork running across. Because if this is a pre-existing road that, you know, the cemetery went up to, then that's perhaps a boundary in that direction. We need to look at that. And then I think the other thing is to look at all the metal detected finds and map them, because that might give us the extent of the cemetery as well. So we've got a number of things to try out. To investigate John's possible henge, we're opening two more trenches. One right across the entrance to look for finds to date the structure and a second to take in the rim of the feature and investigate a mark on the geophysics. Matt's opening up our new trenches. Phil's continuing to look for Anglo-Saxons in trench two. And Henry's teamed up with Andrew to map out his original finds to see if they can give us an idea of the extent of the cemetery. Yeah, I don't think I found any brooches this side of the line at all. In trench one, we've got the painstaking process of excavating the badly broken cremation urn. But we've now got enough fragments for our pottery expert to identify it. It's very distinctly Anglo-Saxon. You see all these impressions in the surface? It's chaff. The clay was mixed probably with animal dung and then fired. And obviously there's a lot of organic material in it, like seed cases and bits of straw and all that sort of thing. This kind of pot, is it typical cremation urn material? Well, not usually, no. I mean, it's more the sort of stuff you associate with domestic settlements. Theory being that it was used particularly for cooking pottery. On the other side of the trench, Dan's discovered our warrior not only has a shield but also a blade. It's what I think is the spearhead. I mean, it seems the obvious choice. There's a base of it there and it comes to a point there. If you like, he's got it clutched under his arm there. It's the remains of a Hadzax, a small 6th century hand knife that many Anglo-Saxons would have carried with them. I'm going to measure it with this now. We've got some tantalising fragments of early Anglo-Saxon weaponry. And to get a better idea of what they may have been like, we've set craftsman Ulfric and Richard Darragh the challenge of making a replica battle shield using, where possible, authentic tools and techniques. Ulfric is making the shield boss, based on measurements from the one we've found, and is moulding a disc of sheet metal into a dome shape by heating, hammering and cooling to keep the metal flexible so it won't crack when in battle. Using just his eye as a measure, Richard is first shaving down a section of seasoned poplar wood which will form the light but rigid skeleton for the shield. This is then carefully axed to form the circular shield shape. For almost two days now, there's been nothing entrenched too but Phil's persistence has finally paid off. John, there's a big old lump of pot down in here, look. That's nice. God, look. Is it pot? Oh God, it's pot right now. I mean, I just have this horrible feeling it'll either stop or it'll keep going. I rather hope it's going to keep going. And it's not, doesn't look broken. You did well to spot that. It's so solid, look at that. It's getting bigger. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. See, it's in this brown blob which comes round like that. Oh. Look what we've got in there. That is broken, that is broken skull. It's a skull. Well, that solves that one then, another grave. It's our fourth Anglo-Saxon and everyone's feeling pretty pleased with themselves but just when I thought we were getting to grips with this site, our warrior in trench one looks like he might not have been quite what we'd imagined. Well, at the moment, it looks almost certainly like a female. A six-foot female? It looks like it. I would need to really have a proper look at the pelvis but the sciatic notch is really, really wide and that's something that suggests this is a woman rather than a man. Really? Yeah, really. I'm not 100% sure yet but I'm getting there. About 70% sure it's a woman and if it is, she's a very tall female for this period. Is that the only evidence you've got? Well, the other thing that comes into play a bit, just as a supportive thing, the bones are really quite smooth and very slender and that's usually considered to be found on female skeletons so at the moment, she's looking very female. It's a bit hypothetical at the moment though, isn't it? Have you got anything tangible that you can tell us about her? The only other thing I can mention is that she has got rather odd teeth. Instead of having an overbite where your upper teeth go outside of your lower teeth like we most of us have, her teeth met like that and so her front teeth are very short where they wore against one another which meant she would have had a very sort of small little face and quite an unusual smile. It's a six-foot but not very pretty. While Margaret gathers more evidence to support her theory, on the other side of the site, there's no sign yet of John's Henge. Three and a half metres from this end. And after leading Phil to a coil of rusty wire yesterday, he's anxious to find a bit of real archaeology. It's brown and brown in here, that's the difficult bit. Our Lincolnshire Anglo-Saxons were not just living side by side with Roman ruins, but also among features from much earlier civilisations. And Stuart thinks our so-called Henge may be the key to understanding why our Anglo-Saxons chose this site to bury their dead. We know there are a number of prehistoric burials along this ridgeway. There's evidence from air photography that there's one immediately north of where we're digging. There's that nice enclosure that John's picked up on the geophysics which looks as if it might be another prehistoric burial enclosure and it's possibly one to the south as well. And we know from other sites that the Anglo-Saxons love to bury close to where burials are already being established. So I think we should be looking at continuity of tradition. If Stuart's right, the Anglo-Saxons chose this site precisely because of these prehistoric monuments. In Trench 1, Alice has now cleared the soil from our skeleton with beads and can see from the pelvis that she was a woman. And arthritic scarring on her spine and worn teeth suggest she was probably a mature woman. And we've got more beautiful grave goods. Have you seen the objects? They're fantastic. There's these beads up here. That's an amber one and this one's got a lot of pattern on it. There's another one tucked in underneath there. There's these amazing wrist clasps which are copper. Just down there and then there's this ring here which I don't know whether that's part of a girdle hang or not, it might be. Right. Our Anglo-Saxons lived during the so-called Dark Ages, an era from which no records exist that might tell us more about who these people were. But Andrew's finds can tell us when they were living here and that's because they were just as vain as we are. The best way of dating is to use changes in fashion. What, like the difference between when we wore winkle pickers and when we wore chiseled toes? That's right, yes. So these marvellous finds that are so beautiful are also absolutely vital as dating evidence. And I can show you that by using these cruciform brooches. This is a really, really early Anglo-Saxon one. It looks just like a late Roman brooch but it's got this little animal head. Can you see that looks a bit like a horse? Yes, I can, yeah, yeah. Which is a really kind of Germanic thing. Now that one is not that easy to see but if we move on to, say, one of these which is one of Andrew's finds from our site, that much larger animal head is really, really obvious, isn't it? So that's later because it's developed more? Yes, it's developed a bit and it's much bigger. And so presumably this one has got a cartoon face? Yes, look at those nostrils. And they get bigger and they get flatter. So yes, you've got the next one, even bigger. And we move on to these two from Lincoln Museum. I mean, look at that. You'd never be able to understand that if you didn't know what it was supposed to look like. It's become completely debased, completely stylised. So very, very much later. Trench 2's now been extended into the earthen bank and Phil's uncovered evidence that suggests our road could be contemporary with our cemetery. So you're saying these might be ruts then? It's quite possible. They're right on the area they should be. Are they concentrating in any area? Are they spreading all the way across here? They were more concentrated on this side. I mean, I don't know what the actual gauge of a wagon would be. You're going to want me to dig over there just to prove what gauge they were now. There's certainly a lot more than one though, isn't there? There's a whole series of them. We now think the road may form an outer limit for the cemetery. To test this theory, we're going to be digging on the other side of the ruts to see if the burials stop. A few hours ago, the archaeologists said that they thought that this strange oval-shaped thing, which might be a prehistoric henge, could be the key to our site and the Saxon cemetery had actually been built around it. So we put a trench in there to try and get this entrance thing and that's this trench here. John, how did we get on? Well, sort of mixed results. We've got the ditch. That's it here? Yeah, going clearly across, but it doesn't stop. What do you mean it doesn't stop? There's no entrance. There's no what? It's completely circular? Yeah, that I'm afraid was a mistake. A geophys mistake? Yeah, and the person's been sacked already. I'm sure he has. So we've got a continuous ditch. It's clearly not a henge. Have you got any finds to date this ditch? Nothing at all. Well, don't let's give up. In addition to that trench there, we've put in another trench here to try and pick up that green blobby thing and this is this one here. Matt, we've got nothing in that trench except an undateable ditch. How are you doing here? Snaff. We've got the ditch there, just it wasn't the geophysics plot. Still going down. We've had one animal tooth out of it so far. Well, this is a puzzler, isn't it? It can't be a henge, presumably, because it hasn't got any entrance. So what could it be? Well, it still looks and feels prehistoric to me. This is a ring ditch of some type. It could be that you've got cremations placed inside it, perhaps prehistoric cremations, or it could simply be a space reserved for some sort of activity in here and you wouldn't get any finds with it. Typical archaeologist. It's a space reserved for some kind of activity. We haven't got a clue what it is. Until we get some proper finds out of it, we really don't know. Well, this could still be the key to understanding our site, but we're going to do a heck of a lot of work on it before we get anywhere near understanding what it is. Crikey, is that skeleton actually holding that pot? Yeah, it looks much like it, mate. You've got the fingers there, look. Yeah. There's the upper arm, and I think the lower arm must come in underneath. Right. And then it looks like the fingers are draped around the pot, really. That's rather unusual, isn't it? Well, I've been saying this a lot today, but I've never seen anything like this before. It's really quite remarkable. Obviously, you get pots in graves, but with the skeleton actually holding the pot, it could be unique. And is the pot definitely Anglo-Saxon? It looks it. I mean, it's plain, it's undecorated, but the fabric looks right. It doesn't look like the prehistoric pot should be around here. Presumably, your thoughts turn to somebody who was actually buried with his mug of beer. I can equate with this skeleton. He's just in that act of raising it to the lips. Yeah. Oh, no, I've been there so frequently. Getting your mind back onto the job, Phil, we were discussing this morning whether this alignment was the edge of the cemetery on the side. I mean, we've cleared quite a big area right there, and where Kerry's been looking over there, there's not a trace of any burials in that. So as far as we're concerned, this is as far to the east as these burials actually extend. But funnily enough, if this is the limit of the burials, they also coincide with our earthen bank feature and with the alignment of the road. So we now know that our road forms our cemetery's eastern boundary, but we still don't know how far it might extend westwards. One place where we are about to get some answers is in Trench 1. Is our six-foot warrior really a woman? No flaring. It's a girl. Quite a small mastodon, isn't it? It definitely is a girl. End of day two, and in here, we've got a fascinating mystery. We've got two skeletons, both of which our bone specialists are pretty sure are women. But one of them is the tallest Anglo-Saxon woman by 10 centimetres ever found by archaeologists in Great Britain. And she's been buried in full military honours, while the other one is decked out in jewellery. Why? Beginning of day three, and we still haven't managed to work out the size or the orientation of this Anglo-Saxon cemetery here in Lincolnshire. Even though we've had some fantastic finds, nor have we been able to decide what this enigmatic shape is. Yesterday morning, we thought it might be a Stone Age henge. Yesterday afternoon, we were tearing our hair out because we couldn't get any dating evidence out of it. Then yesterday evening, in this little hole here, we discovered this piece of pottery. And immediately, Paul, your eyes started shining, and you said, ah, this could be the key to what this thing is. Why is this so important? Well, it's a really nice piece of late Neolithic or early Bronze Age pottery, so 2,000, 2,500 BC. And can we date our feature from it? Yep, it's right from the bottom of the ditch, mixed up with all the charcoal in the primary silt. It's as good as dating evidence gets. What might it be? A beaker. They're kind of tall, narrow sort of drinking vessels that kind of spring up all over Europe round about the end of the Neolithic. Why are they significant? Well, the size looks like they might have been used as drinking cups, and because they spring up all over Europe at the same time, it's thought that the liquid they contained, the drink, was a particularly potent and exciting kind of drink. It's possibly the first thing, the first time we can see early alcohol drinking. There's another school of thought that says these cord impressions on the pot were actually made with hemp string, and it's kind of symbolic of the contents. We could be looking at cannabis beer. No wonder your eyes were shining. Okay, we can now date this feature, but it doesn't help us understand what it is, does it? It does actually, yes. We think that this is an early Bronze Age barrow. What we're looking for is some kind of burial, either a big inhumation grave perhaps, or it could be a really small cremation, and both of kind of early Bronze Age date. We're going to be putting a new trench right in the centre to search for these Bronze Age burials, and more trenches outside the barrow to look for Anglo-Saxon graves, as the barrow may provide a focus for the Anglo-Saxon cemetery. With the amount of activity around the site, it feels like day one all over again. Not only are we digging the new trenches, we're also carefully recording and lifting our skeletons in trenches one and two, and we're still trying to determine the size of our cemetery. But somehow, in the midst of all this, one of our diggers has managed to squeeze in a short lido. So what he's up to then, Victor, this underneath knee is up like that, and then this top one is much more flexed up. He's really jammed in, isn't he? That's right, and this one goes in underneath, and then he's face down with this arm underneath, and then he's got the pot, and he's got his fingers over the top, and then this arm is doing something, because he's doing that. So how long have I got to lay down here like this for you to draw it then, Victor? Only take a couple of hours. Our craftsmen are working hard to finish our replica Anglo-Saxon shield. Having hammered the dome into shape, Ulfric's now attaching the button to the boss with a rivet. This button section, only seen on 6th century shields, was used to trap blades in combat so they could be knocked from opponents' hands. Richard's going to glue a leather cover to the shield, which should prevent the shield board from splitting. He's giving Mick a crash course in Anglo-Saxon glue making. This is the heated milk. Yes, the raw material is heated milk. I'm just going to pour it into this bowl, and what we do is we add a little bit of vinegar, stale beer. Newcastle Brown, by the look of it. Well, I'm not going to say what make it. And then we stir it. So milk and beer so far. We've added an acid. Yeah. If you notice, it coagulates. So if you look, what there is in there is this mass of... Cottage cheese. Yes, cottage cheese stuff. Yeah, it's the stage I normally chuck the milk down at the density. What I've done is taken some wood ash... Right. ...and added some water to it... Yeah. ...to get out the alkali from the wood ash. Right. And then I put that in, and what it should do now is it should neutralise the acid in the first process. It's very difficult to believe that's going to stick anything together. We'll have to work on it a bit. Are you going to keep the solids and chuck the liquid, or...? No, we're going to use a whole lot of the glue now. Right. Almost going off while you're doing this, isn't it? Otherwise, my hand will stick to it. Despite Mick's doubts, the glue really works. But the big question is, will the shield? In Trench 1, the archaeologists are carefully lifting the shield boss so that we can send it off to an X-ray lab in Lincoln for analysis. Now that all the soil has been removed from our warrior woman, we've discovered that her bones have spread out over time, and after careful measuring, we found she was actually 5 foot 7. But that still makes her one of the tallest Anglo-Saxon women ever discovered in Britain. What makes her so special, though, is that she wore none of the typical female Anglian jewellery, but was laid to rest with a knife by her side and her shield to protect her in the hereafter. For the last two days, our whole focus of activity has either been here, where our skeletons are, or over here, where our prehistoric feature is. But suddenly, while our backs were turned, this vast trench has appeared right the way over here. Mick, do you realise quite how far away from everybody else you are? Yeah. That's good, isn't it? Why? Well, you want to know the extent of the cemetery. We all want to know the extent of the cemetery. We're not going to get it from the geophysics. We're not going to get it from the metal detective finds. We're not going to get it from field-walking the stubble and so on. So the strategy needs to be, in effect, big test pits to see if the graves are coming this way. Isn't that a bit irresponsible? Well, no, it's what you do... Say this field is going to go for a housing estate and you didn't know there was anything here, but, you know, you wanted to just check it out. You dig lots of pits or trenches across it to see if there was anything here. But what if we find skeletons here? We're going to have to excavate them, carefully remove the finds. It's going to take forever. Yeah, we're not going to do that. I mean, when we're trying to define the cemetery, all we need to do is to define any grave cuts. We don't need to empty them. And I think it's fairly clear there aren't any in here. It doesn't come this far. So the less we find, the more we have to dig. This could be the beginning of a very heavy excavation strategy. All morning, the archaeologists have been searching for burials in the centre of our Bronze Age barrow. So far without success. But all of a sudden, it looks like things are starting to happen. Well, we're just cleaning back and we've got lots and lots of charcoal turning up already. There's a piece of burnt bone over there. And it's all within this red sand, which you can follow around the edge here. Lots of... and a very wiggly line around there. So rather than one feature full of red sand, it could well be lots and lots of intercutting features. And what do you think those features might be? Well, charcoal, burnt bone, lots of small pits, cremations. That's very intriguing, isn't it? What about in the rest of the trench? Well, it just goes on. It just goes on and on. Look at this. See this linear thing curving off? It's almost like a barrow ditch with inside a barrow ditch. It's great to get such a fascinating trench in the middle of day three, isn't it? It is, and it ain't Saxon. It looks like we've got a lot more digging to make sense of this new mystery. After two days of delicate excavation, Phil's now ready to relieve his skeleton of the pot it's been clutching for one and a half millennia. This is the first time an Anglo-Saxon has been found clutching a pot and the archaeologists are speculating that he was a man known for his love of alcohol, who was given the opportunity to take his favourite drinking vessel with him into the afterlife. See if I can go in with this trowel in here. It's virtually like a wedge, really. Yeah. The importance of this grave's making even Phil anxious. Can you just brace that bit there? Because it is moving. I should feel a lot happier if you could just support it. There's an old crack right across the base, actually. I mean, that's been there a while. I feel it moving. Easy. Right, that's nice. It's pivoting about there, so we should be OK if we can get something underneath it. Right, we're free. We're free, are we? Hang on. Hang on, there's a piece of dirt. Let me... I've got it. You got that? Yeah, I've got the whole... I can't get my hands under it. I've got the whole chute. I think I've got the whole chute in match. Go. Beautifully done. Just support it under the tray. That's it. Beautifully done. I feel quite hurt. What? I've snatched his pint away from me. As feared, Mick's new strategy for finding the edge of the cemetery has led to a proliferation of trenches, and Corenza seems to be digging in ever-decreasing circles towards our original trenches. Corenza, the first two days, the digging of the trenches was really quite leisurely, but today we seem to have gone trench crazy. Look at that over there. Well, what we're now trying to do is find areas where there aren't any burials, which will tell us we're outside the cemetery. But Mick's strategy is way over there. Well, exactly. We know there aren't any burials over there. The cemetery doesn't go that far. So we're now moving in. Are there any burials here? If there aren't any here, we can move even further in. That trench over there has already been dug. There's nothing there. And anything in here? It looks as if there isn't at the moment, no. So does this tell us anything about the relationship between our barrow and the Anglo-Saxon cemetery? Well, no, at the moment that's all really very confusing. I was really expecting to find burials up near the barrow, and we haven't managed to do it at all. Because we've found no more graves to the west and none around the barrow, it looks like we may have a linear cemetery laid alongside the road, and the scatter of Andrew's metal-detected finds seems to be backing this up. Just comparing that to the area where Andrew's been finding all of his metal finds, all the Anglo-Saxon stuff he's had, it's all sort of from that, within that blue line just there. Combined with the date of our finds, mostly 6th century, it suggests that this cemetery was used by just a few families over about five generations. Our old lady, our warrior woman, and our drunkard may well have known each other. Our Anglo-Saxon finds are now back from the trenches and cleaned, and we've discovered some extraordinary jewellery. The beads are beautiful, aren't they? They are, but you have to look very closely at them to see how marvellous they are. This one's got green and yellow twisted trails, two of them, two stripes, and this is made by twisting together very, very fine pieces of green and yellow glass and drawing them out like barley sugar, and then rolling them into the warm surface of the red bead. Then we've got three that have got twisting trails of blue, and again on a red ground with spots, and we've got two amber beads. We've also found these women's wrist clasps, which are a form of Anglo-Saxon cufflink, and they've been crucial in helping us date our finds because they're a fashion item. In general, wrist clasps are between late 5th to the end of the 6th century, but because these look like they're fairly early stage, I'd say they were late 5th or early 6th, say about 470 to about 530. All this jewellery was worn by our second Anglo-Saxon woman, who was older and, unlike our warrior, wore traditional Anglian clothes. A necklace of beautiful glass and amber beads, a tunic gathered together with the wrist clasps, and a bag slung round her waist, which was sealed with an iron ring. Digging on our circular feature has ground to a halt. Our early bone finds now turn out to be just animal bone naturally mixed with the soil. Well, it looks fairly convincing as a ditch, doesn't it? And our barrow within a barrow is a frost wedge, a glacial feature gouged out during the Ice Age. But we've now done enough digging to explain what it was. It was a barrow, a 15-foot-high burial mound surrounded by a ditch built by the Beaker people, a tribe of European settlers who brought metalworking and sophisticated textiles to Britain around 2500 BC. The burials the barrow once contained are sadly long lost under the plough. The x-rays of our shield boss are now back from the lab and they've revealed some remarkable hidden detail. See this density here in a strip, that's the grip, the actual hand, you know, how it was held. The grip? The grip, yeah. We did a block lift down deep enough to undercut it and luckily we got it. What's it made of? It's made of iron and we can see how the grip was attached to the flange. This is quite intriguing. Do you see how this is at an angle, the top of the boss? And then here it's denser than the other side and so maybe we've got a little evidence of it being used in battle and it had a bash on the side. It must have been, mustn't it? Makes sense. At last our shield is finished and ready for testing and we've got our own trench warrior Phil eager to try his hand. I think you're going to show me how to use it. Yeah, certainly. Apart from being defensive, it's also quite a good offensive weapon. It would have created a bit of space between you and your opposition. Punch him with the shield boss. Nice and heavy. Don't have a nut. God, it's known to cruise. This could be dangerous. Well, he bent me knobble, look. That's exactly the same damage as on the boss from the Grave in Trench 1. Yeah. It was bent exactly like that. That's probably why I stopped using them eventually. But what's it like for defence? That's pretty stuck, isn't it Phil? That is. So does that mean you can't get it out of the shield and say you're spared useless then? It does because then the guy on that side just deflects you away and you've got to go with it. You've got to go with it. Yeah, but it's not only that, you've lost your life because you just leave yourself open and he stabs you. What about an axe? Yeah, I'd like to see with an axe. I'll game with an axe. Good Lord. Oh, look at that. Good God. You'd be pretty immobilised with that, wouldn't you? Just come right through there. It's your hand that's in there. You're not actually going to take the blow on your arm or anything like that. And there's one last test. What damage can the boss do? Over the past three days, the archaeologists have uncovered four and a half thousand years of our site's history. A Bronze Age beaker barrow, which the Anglo-Saxons must have looked on in wonder when they settled here. The ancient trackway along which our cemetery was laid. And finally, the burial plot covering a little over an acre, where our Anglo-Saxons began burying their dead around 480 AD. A small group of metal finds, however attractive they may be, were only ever going to be able to tell us so much about this site. But over the last three days, we've discovered the prehistoric story, as well as some of the more intimate details of the people who were buried here. The beautiful beads worn by the women, the man clutching his final drinking vessel, and our tall woman warrior with her shield and knife, have brought me that much closer to our small group of Anglo-Saxons who lived here 1,500 years ago.