FEATURE LENGTH | TIME TEAM Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, Days 1-3 (Winfarthing, Norfolk) 2023

** By popular demand, we’ve compiled Days 1, 2 and 3 of this recent Time Team dig into one newly updated feature-length video for your viewing pleasure. ***

Join us for a special watch-along on Saturday 2nd December at 7pm GMT.

Time Team have been called in by Dr Helen Geake to investigate the site of an early Medieval burial in Norfolk that has unearthed some incredible finds. Can the team relocate the grave and is it the site of a larger cemetery? We have just three days to find out!

DIG DEEPER: Head behind the scenes for our extra Dig Watch coverage: https://youtu.be/gco6jFh4eGo

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THANK YOU

A very special thank you to our wonderful hosts in Norfolk for making us feel so welcome.

Special thanks to the professional support on site and post-ex reporting from the team at Cotswold Archaeology: https://cotswoldarchaeology.co.uk/

Thank you to our amazing community volunteers, caterers, re-enactors and all other services and individuals who helped to make this dig possible.

Music by Steve Day, Paul Greedus and Jas Morris.

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This field, near Diss in East Anglia, well  it may look like any other field but over a   number of years metal detectorist, Tom  Lucking has found some amazing finds   scattered across its surface including a  truly extraordinary Anglo-Saxon pendant  

And it was found in the grave of a high status  female burial excavated by Helen back in 2015.  The excavation left some unanswered questions  who was this Anglo -Saxon lady why was she   buried here and were there other burials in  this landscape and Helen has brought Time  

Team back to this fascinating site to see if we  can find answers to any of these questions and   of course we’ve got just three days to do it. The Winfarthing lady is one of a number of 7th  

Century high-status female burials in East Anglia.  It’s not far from Sutton Hoo where the famous ship   burial was found packed with treasures. The pendant has striking similarities   with some of the jewels found at Sutton Hoo and  its discovery was a moment that Tom will never  

Forget. Yeah, I remember the top of the  skull appearing and then I think it must have   been after lunch we came on the field and I think  I turned away to go and sort something out for   a few minutes and just heard yourself  or one of the others make this

Noise of excitement and look back and this piece of gold and garnet was just    appearing out the soil. You don’t think that  you’re ever going to like find or see   anything coming out the ground that’s quite so  spectacular. I do remember when like after that  

First bit of pendant appeared and Stephen  just peeled a bit more off and those interlaced   serpents appeared in the garnets and that was the point where we sort of, I think,   knew we had a serious sort of piece of jewellery on  our hands. The pendant was just one of a number  

Of fascinating grave goods placed around the  burial. They’re housed at Norwich Castle Museum,  and they’re too valuable to travel. So Bear has  scanned them to place them into a virtual museum,   so we can examine them on site, because each  one could be a valuable clue to help us uncover  

The story of the Winfarthing woman. Helen, this is a site of some national   importance. Well, certainly the  pendant that she was wearing,   which was an immense surprise, but it’s an  immense pendant, is of international importance.  It’s important on a European scale, and it’s  an extraordinary object that is going to be  

In exhibitions, in travelling exhibitions,  going to be lent everywhere for decades.  Everybody’s going to know the Winfarthing  pendant. And she wasn’t found on her own,   is that correct? No, she wasn’t. That’s right.  And that’s where Jo comes in, Jo Carruth,  

Who’s an old friend of mine, who is probably  the best early Anglo-Saxon cemetery excavator.  So Jo, what can we expect from this site?  Well, the first thing that I’m interested in   is actually looking at this grave again. So you  can see from what we can see on this plan here, 

That they only excavated a little bit  beyond the actual grave pit itself. Now,   one of the first things I’d be interested  in looking at is you would expect,  or you might expect with a burial of this  kind of status, that she would have been  

Covered with a mound in order to make her  stand out amongst all the other burials.   So the first thing I’d like to do, I think it  would be great to open up a much bigger area  

And see if we can find evidence of that mound, which we might see as a ring ditch going round.   I might expect it to be about four metres  across, probably, would be about sort of   typical for the period. So that’s something I  think would be really interesting to look at. 

And then we can see whether… I mean, we  might see whether that ring ditch was cut   through other burials, so that whether she’s  actually imposed onto an earlier cemetery,   or whether she’s in a space of her own, and we can see how, you know, how she lies in  

Relation to other burials. And how are we going to  relocate it? We’ve got a problem. And the problem   is the trench was recorded with a handheld GPS, GPS, not a sophisticated GPS. So we don’t   actually know where the burial is, except  for being approximately within an area. 

So the only thing we can try to find is the  disturbance from the excavation. So it’s a   bit of a long shot. We seem to have a lot  of data, but none of it quite matches up.  So Stewart’s going to have a go at the old  -fashioned method of lining up trees. Oh,  

You’re joking. And we will get there. It’s  just that it’s not as easy as we had the first   thought. It’s never as easy as the first thought. Well, good luck with that. Relocating the grave   could be like looking for a needle in a haystack.  All of Tom’s finds and the previous geophys  

Were plotted using the old equipment. And to add to the confusion, although   the burials marked as being to the north of the  ditch on the geophys, both Tom and Helen believe   it was to the south. But we’re hoping John’s new  geophys will help us tie all the data together. 

With this photograph, as you can see, there are  still trees, which we can still identify. But   just in case, Stewart and Tom are using a different  tactic to try to relocate the previous excavation.  I think we can probably get you  roughly in that position again,  

Using the photographs. We’re hoping that this  method will confirm which GPS point was accurate.  It’s aligning those two bushes with that tree,  isn’t it, and just having that tree on the   inside. That’s right. Well, the second key angle  is that bush on the right and the tree behind, 

Which only works if you’re a bit further this  way at the moment. It appears evidence from the   photographs bears little relation  to the GPS point from the burial.  Where’s your peg, Henry? Well I’m back here.  I’ve got red on green colour blindness, probably red pegs  

And green fields. So they’re at least 20 metres  off. Yeah, I mean Tom is further close to where   this visual indicator of where the trench was. But Tom and Stewart’s survey does seem to tie in   with John’s new geophysics. Okay folks. Here  we go. And he thinks he’s found something.  

We’ve relocated the ditch quite clearly  and that’s the so-called Medieval ditch.  And everybody said it was south of that.  Yes, exactly. So we’ve plotted where that   is. Looks good. Now on the geophysics, these  are really at the limits of our instruments. 

Okay, so I’m reading quite a bit into  it. But I think that that white square   there could well be indicative of the trench.  The fact it’s so close to the recorded spot,  we’ve got nothing else to go on at the moment.  I think we need to put a trench on that just to  

Establish if that is the old excavation trench. Nothing else to go on sounds a bit depressing,   but that’s absolutely brilliant, I mean that  looks like you’ve solved it. So with time ticking,  Matt’s keen to get digging. John,  bring your digger over here. Yeah. And  

By late morning, trench one is underway. Too dry, which is good. Yeah, that’s actually   not so bad, is it? I thought it might break. No,  no, it’s got enough crumple in it, hasn’t it? Can  

You manage that last couple of feet at the end? Our mission here is to find out as much as we   can about this burial. Why was she buried here?  Was she buried within a cemetery? And where might   she have lived? So we’re looking for signs of a  seven -century settlement in Winfarthing itself. 

Thank you ever so much for volunteering. I’m  Carenza Lewis. I’m one of the archaeologists   on Time Team. So we’ve enlisted the help of the  local historical and archaeological societies to   investigate the village of Winfarthing itself. We know that the church is broadly 13th,  

14th century. It’s got some earlier features, but  that’s only taking us back into the 11th century,   perhaps at the earliest. That’s all several  hundred years later than the burial.  So what we want to do is some excavations  throughout the village to try and see if  

We can find any pottery that is broadly the  same date as the burial up on the hillside.  So have we got any sort of 7th century middle  Anglo-Saxon date pottery? With the army of   volunteers briefed, it’s time to get digging. And  we’re starting our test bits closer to church. 

The bones of the Winfarthing lady are held at  Norwich Castle Museum and are too fragile to   travel to sight. They’ve never been properly  analysed, so Jackie and Naomi are going to see   what they can discover from her remains and from  the soil samples that were collected at the time. 

Well, that’s from within the bowl. Ah, right,  OK. So we might need to do some flotation for   both environmental and bone. Artifact retrieval,  yes. Because literally every fragment counts,  especially in this case. If enough survives,  we might be able to tell how old our woman was  

And what sort of life she led. And although  the bones have been clearly badly damaged,  Jackie’s confident that we’ll still be  able to glean some useful information   from them. There’s an edge there, isn’t  there? There’s a straight edge there,  isn’t there? Back on site, Matt and  Jo are beginning to think that they  

Might be in the right place. Was that the  natural that the grave was cut into? into   and so the cut is much cleaner and browner. I think it might be good to take just a bit   more off this side, but carefully because  we are higher here than we are on that bit. 

I mean we’ve got our level here though haven’t we,  Jo? But we’ve definitely got the level. You keep   going and we’ll either find out we’re in the right  place or we’ll go in the opposite. Where are we   going to put this spoil, Jo? Shall I swing it right and chuck it behind me  

Over there? One of the mysteries we hope to solve  is why our lady was buried here, because there’s   no known Anglo-Saxon centre of importance nearby, which begs the question, where did she come from?   One possibility is that she came from Frankia,  a hugely powerful kingdom which expanded across  

Modern day Europe during what is known as the  migration period after the fall of the Roman   Empire and some of the finds support this theory. This is the plan of the grave. Let me start   with the bronze bowl because that  was the thing that allowed us to  

Discover the grave. You can see that it’s big, it’s green, this is it in the ground and this   very corroded base just survives this corrosion  really, it’s only the rim that really survives.  And so this would be in, it’s quite  a substantial… It’s quite big,  

It’s not huge but it’s not really like any  other bronze bowl that we know of or brass bowl.  It’s quite important what it’s made of  so we really need to get it XRF to find   out exactly what it’s made of. That  was the bowl here, next to it is the  

Pot and the pot we know is a Frankish import. It’s not like a handmade Anglo-Saxon Migration   Period pot. It is wheel made, it’s entirely  different and having this quite wide mouth   means that it may have been used for drinking. Frankia was a very large successful early medieval  

Kingdom that unlike Britain never lost some of  those Roman techniques like wheel turn pottery,  mass producing wheel turn pottery. So we  can instantly see that this is wheel turned,   it couldn’t therefore possibly have been made in  Britain. It’s an import and although that sort  

Of pot’s fairly common in the Frankish  world it’s extremely rare in Britain.  So was this part of migration or trade do you  think? Well it could of course have been either.   So I think the fact that these pots are actually  quite rare in England suggests to me it’s not  

The sort of thing you could just buy and sell. So we know in this period from written sources   that leading families in Anglo-Saxon England were  sending their sons and daughters to be educated   in monasteries in Frankia in the Frankish world. So could this woman for example have spent some of  

Her earlier life in Frankia in a monastery there  and have brought back with her objects, ideas,  ways of doing things, all sorts of  things including this pot. But I can   show you something, it is absolutely  Anglo-Saxon. It’s this pendant there, 

Which is looking slightly different to the  way that you see it with the naked eye if   you like because the scanning process is  actually seen through these transparent   garnets and has allowed us to see much more  of the construction than we would normally. 

This is just the most phenomenal object  that if you have a look around it you   can see these rings of animal ornament actually  kind of made in garnet cell work or cloisonne.  Here you can see an animal head made out of  garnet, set in gold. This little tiny eye  

Is just about half a millimetre across. And with  the curving body and ending up in something that   looks like another head at the other end. So we’ve got a ring of those, and then  

We’ve got an inner ring of more of them. And  between the two, if I can raise it up a bit,   you can see that we’ve got a raised ring  of three-dimensional garnets in between,  which is something that I have just never  seen on something like this. It’s absolutely  

Phenomenal. What was it actually like  seeing this come up out of the ground?  So first of all, we were absolutely  flummoxed by the quality and the size   and the fact that it was appended. But it was  when Steven picked it up and turned it over,  

That was really the heart -stopping moment. That is exquisite in itself. And what’s   really interesting is that when you get  something like this on a big screen,   you always see something new. And Helena  and I were just spotting that the loop, 

Which is also inlaid with garnets, these flat  garnets here, it’s actually a human face,   a bearded man. Because I know these people,  they probably weren’t formally Christians,  but are these, I can see all sorts of crosses.  Yes, I think you’re absolutely right. It does  

Have crosses on it. What that means in terms  of Christianity and her personal views,  well, what do you think, Helena?  People have been arguing about that   for a very long time. But I do think  that combining the cruciform designs   with all these other much more obviously  pre-Christian sort of ideas and images, 

Like the intertwined snakes, I think that was  quite deliberate. I think they are trying to   integrate the two things to bring them  together in really interesting and novel   ways. So I don’t think it is a coincidence  or it’s just a fashion or just a design. 

I think it was deliberate, that ambiguity  was deliberate. Yes. So, Sutton Hoo? There   are some similar sorts of things that  were excavated from that site. I mean,  how does this compare? The Sutton Hoo  jewellery, a lot of the time, it’s so  

Perfect that it’s almost inhuman. It doesn’t  look like it’s been touched by a human hand,  whereas this has got a lot of humanity in  it because it’s got subtle flaws, maybe,   or things that we can see. You can see  here the lines of where each individual  

Panel has been soldered and you see these  bits here that look like almost solid gold.  They look as if the garnets have been set into  solid gold. Well, on the Sutton Hoo jewellery,   each cell is hollow and the solid ones  are made by soldering a lid on top, 

They’re known as lidded cells. Here, they’ve  been made by taking gold strips and popping them   into the cell and kind of smoothing them  down and you can just see hints of that.  What I find so amazing about this is that so much  soldering involved. You’ve got a gold framework  

And you’ve got a solder extra gold on using  gold solder. You’ve got to melt the solder,  you mustn’t melt the rest of the gold  and they’re doing all this without an   electric soldering iron and without even a  thermometer. The garnets from this beautiful  

Pendant might have come from as far away as Asia. They are so fine that it’s even been suggested   that the Winfarthing woman may have been of  royal descent. And Jo thinks that a burial   of this status might be marked by a mound or a  ring. Don’t really want to go any deeper because  

We do want to be able to see those ephemeral  features particularly you know we might get   a ring ditch and if we do we know they’re only  going to be they won’t be as deep as the grave  only gonna be 10-15 centimetres. Back in Norwich  Castle Museum, Jackie’s confirmed from the width  

Of the pelvis that the burial is indeed female. And then we come to the chin, lovely little   little feminine square chin, a tiny square chin, a  male chin would be much broader but this is quite   rounded but it has got that little square bit. It’s dainty. Well they’re rather like yours  

Actually, look at the front, the little squared  area there. But generally speaking looking at the   skeleton you can see it really is quite small  and gracile-sized, quite a petite individual,  possibly not quite as petite as you but quite  a petite individual. So the next question  

Is going to be how old she was. Well looking  up here I know she’s got fusion for sutures,  those are the where the bits of the skull  come together, the cranium comes together,   you’ve got those interdigitations that  come together, they are completely fused.  

It doesn’t show terribly well there but you can  see that little interdigitations along there and   you can see them quite well on the inside. So that’s the coronal suture, the bit that   goes across the front here and that’s the  sagittal suture, the one that goes down the  

Middle and they are very well fused. So she’s not  a spring chicken but then looking at the teeth,  the teeth are always reusable and what we can see  here is you’ve got very worn occlusal surfaces,   those biting surfaces of the teeth,  where the teeth come together you can  

See they’re almost worn flat and also  you have got exposure of the dentine.  So with those things there and also  some changes I can see in the spine,   I would say this woman is certainly over  40 years of age, potentially over 50. 

The other thing again going back to the teeth,  there is not a lot of dental calculus on here. Now   that suggests that she obviously had quite a good  diet as a child, she was looked after as a child,  she’s managed to live into a fairly  good old age for the time – Yeah, 

There’s some bone in here. – OK. – I  think we’ve got it. – And it looks like   we’re in the right place. – Oh, you’ve got… Oh, here, this is it, then, isn’t it? – Oh,   there we go. It looks as if  they’re in situ, doesn’t it,  

From the relationship between the two.  Yeah, I think, yeah, cos what that is,   that looks like… That’s femur. – That’s the whole of the femur   there. – Right. If it’s aligned how we  would expect it to be, then it should  

Be with the head at this end to the northward. – Well, that is what I’d expect. – It looks to   be… Cos you see how they’re diverging  that way? Well, that’s how it works. It   goes through your knees and it diverges  out to your hips. So I think it looks  

Like that’s going to be the hip area there. – The other thing that would be interesting   to try and work out… – Well, hang on. …is  whether we can see the top end of the cut,   the skull end of the cut at this end,  wouldn’t it? – Hmm. I guess I… – Yeah, 

I mean, you can see… You can  see how these are all old brakes,   right? So you can have had the plough damage, but  also it’s not just the plough hitting it, it’s the   pressure of the machinery moving over the top, which breaks it up. We now know for sure that  

Our lady’s grave is not the only one in this  field. Now, if there are any grave goods,   we might be able to confirm we’re  looking at a second Anglo-Saxon burial,  or even a cemetery. So did this site hold some  special significance in the 7th century? Sam  

Newton is an authority on pre-Viking East Anglia. There’s been pouring over the records in search of   answers. Well, the biggest clue to the  landscape is the place name. ‘Winna’s   fyurthing’, which gives us Winfarthing. ‘Winna’s quarter place’. The fourth part  

Is clearly a fourth part of a much broader  territory. And when we look at the map,   what we see is how the landscape used to be  organised into these blocks called hundreds.  It basically is an area for administrative  purposes corresponding to 100 households.   100 farms, if you like. And  they’re always distinguished  

By impressive boundary markers and above all, the central meeting place. When we look at ours,   we seem to be in what’s now called this hundred,  but we know from earlier documents that the   original name of the hundred was Winfarthing. So the whole hundred was a fourth part of a  

Larger unit, which means that this place  was the centre of authority for this whole   landscape. The next question arises from that, where are the other three quarters? So where are   the other three quarters? Well, we’ve got the  magic of the map here to show us and you can  

See that this corresponds to a larger block, subdivided into four, Winfarthing, Earsham,   Hartismere and the Bishop’s or Hoxham Hundred. So the Winfarthing we know,   which is just a village up there and  a relatively small medieval parish,  in the period that the lady was living  around here and being buried here,  

Was a much larger entity. Exactly. You would have  known a different Winfarthing to what we know.  Yeah, well the whole of the landscape would  have been called Winfarthing. It is at   Winfarthing that the meeting place was held,  which gives its name to the broader hundred.  

Although we only have solid evidence of  these hundreds a few centuries later,  if sounds right, Winfarthing could have been the  centre of influence for this whole area and could   help us understand why our lady was buried here  in the 7th century. So Stuart heads to the south  

And Derek and Lawrence head to the north, to the village of Winfarthing, to look for   evidence of Anglo -Saxon activity to support the  theory. It’s getting towards the end of day one.  It’s proving difficult to work out what’s  what in trench two. When we dig it,  

If we dig it really carefully we might  find some teeth. Where Jo and Hilde have   been searching for the head end of the burial. OK, so you think the top end is there? think the  

End is somewhere about here. It needs a bit of a  clean -up. Right. Well, in that case, it’s going   to have gone, because if you think where you’re, if we’ve got the hip area here, yep, right,   the hip area is sort of just below  middle. So a head would come up to here. 

Yeah. So if all we’ve got is that, then we’re  going to have lost a normal lot. These graves   are being gradually removed by the plough. So this  might be the last opportunity to see what they can   tell us about what might have been an important  part of East Anglia in the Anglo-Saxon period. 

We’ve just had our first Anglo-Saxon  find come out of one of the test pits   in the church in Winfarthing. Yep,  fantastic. So this is Thetford Ware,  I think I heard, on the grape vine. Ah,  brilliant. That’s been beautiful. Two rim  

Sherds there. You can see that sort of edge  there. It’s nice they’ve been washed as well,   and you can see they’re not the same vessel, because they’re kind of slightly different   shapes. We’ve got at least a couple. I mean,  this, the Thetford Ware is about 850 to 1100 AD,  

So that’s from kind of King Alfred  to just after the Norman Conquest.  That’s fantastic. That’s just that first clue  that we’ve got a pre-Norman Conquest settlement,   which is, I mean, this pottery is two or  three hundred years earlier than the church,   the current church building, suggests there was something  

Here there. And at the moment, you’re our  best bet for, you know, the possibility of,   if there was a settlement here that’s  contemporary with our burial up on the hillside,  that it might have been this area near the church.  That’s brilliant. Great news, and that’s not all,  

Because Derek and Lawrence’s eagle eyes have  already spotted some masonry in the wall,  that looks a lot earlier than the medieval  church. Lawrence and I popped back to site   and we picked up Adam’s drone, and he’s now  behind me doing a little bit of photogrammetry  

On the stone in the side of the church. And what that’ll give us is a really high   density 3D model that we can run some  analysis on and highlight any micro   -topographic features. So it should highlight  any carvings or engravings and help us figure  

Out if it is an interesting stone or not. – If the stone is from an earlier structure,   it might be more evidence of the village’s Anglo-Saxon origins. Back on site, there’s still no   evidence of the grave of our Winfarthing woman, but we’re feeling more positive in trench two,  

Where Jackie’s been soaking the ground to soften  the soil and bring out the colours of any features   or burials. – I think there’s something going  on here. – I think there’s another feature here.  Can you see the charcoal? – Yes, I think  there is something going on in there. Some  

Bones, it bone in that area there. – It’s  been a tough day, finding not a great deal,  but just as the light is beginning to fade,  one of the metal detectorists has discovered   something in the spoil heap of trench two. – Can I  borrow your towel? – Yes, sure. – Rather special, 

Isn’t it? – Wow. – Oh, isn’t that nice? – What  are we looking at? – Oh my goodness. Right, okay.   We’re looking… Oh gosh, we’re looking as… I want to burst into tears. – No. – We’re   looking at a seventh -century buckle, and  it’s got a slight curve to it, and if you  

Turn it on the side view, and if you turn it over, it’s actually clearer here. You can see the loop,   and you can see the pin, and it’s got a  triangular plate that ends in a big lump there,   and there’s something going on here. Oh, I really hope I’m right, but I’m not  

Going to know until I’ve cleaned it up. – Right.  – And it’s best. What might it be? – At its best,   given that we are in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, it would definitely be a buckle on a strap,  

You know, a thin strap that is probably at the  waist, and that’s curved to fit round the body,  and it’s early 7th century. But, as I say, I can’t  tell until it’s clean. And I sent you a little bit   emotional about it. Why? Well, you know, I hadn’t realised quite how much pressure  

There is put on somebody who calls  Time Team in to one of their sites,   and then there’s not much found on Day One. It just has made me realise how relieved I am that   the people who are on this site with my woman. It’s a huge relief to have found a precious item  

That might even have come from the grave  in Trench 2. You can see we’ve only got   the very, very bottom of a grave. It’s  obviously really badly ploughed damage,  but we can be confident that that is a  grave. Yes, absolutely. And those are legs,  

Are the feet over there? Yes, we think  it’s someone with the head. It’s a roughly,   sort of, northwest -south-east aligned, and we think the head was, well, we don’t think   it’s here now. The head was probably. Yes, you’ve  just got the very, very base. But, as you can see,  

It’s really badly damaged, and we’ve only got  just this tiniest bit of the grave surviving,  and that in itself is really frustrating, because  there’s nothing else in this trench. Apart from   plough scars. Apart from plough scars. But, of  course, this is so badly damaged and so shallow, 

We don’t know whether this is an isolated  burial or this is the only one that   survives. a fantastic end to day one. It feels like we’re just beginning to   reveal the story of our Lady of Winfarthing.  Although we now know she was not buried alone,  

We still need to find out how many  others were buried alongside her.  Was this an important Anglo-Saxon  cemetery? In which case, why was it   placed here? Two more days left to find out. If you want us to investigate more sites,  

You can make it happen. So, help us  reach 10 ,000 members on Patreon.  It’s day two at Winfarthing in Norfolk, where  Helen has brought the team together to investigate   the side of a grave of the 7th century Anglo  -Saxon woman. It was discovered by Tom Lucking  

In 2015, buried with some stunning finds. – This is the massive gold pendant. I know   it’s absolutely extraordinary. – That is a lot.  It’s exquisite. – Jackie’s analysis of the bones   tells us that she lived a long and healthy  life and even gives us a glimpse into what  

She may have looked like. – A lovely little, little,   feminine square chin of a tiny square chin of  very light cures, actually. – Our excavations   have uncovered at least one other grave, so we could be looking at an Anglo-Saxon  

Cemetery. – A hedge would come up here. –  Yeah. – So, all we’ve got is that. – Then   we’re going to have lost a awful lot. – It seems the side of this important   burial is gradually being ploughed away, so  every new find is incredibly important. – Oh,  

Gosh, we’re looking at what a person should do. – It’s the beginning of the day, and in trench   one, Matt and Tom are opening up a  bigger area in search of traces of   the grave of our Winfarthing woman. – Right, this is it. Fingers crossed. All of them. But  

There’s still no sign of the 2015 excavation,  the grave or a ring ditch. Nope. Nope.  Definitely not there. It’s interesting. This  is not… There’s actually not much. We know   we’re in the right ballpark, but there’s obviously  not much else going on around there. Further down  

The slope in trench two, the overnight watering  is helping Jackie and Hilde make out the grave   cut of the burial they found yesterday. You can really see the colours as well,   and the edges, or what remains of the edges,  a lot better now. We’re right at the bottom  

Of the grave, so it looks really narrow because  we’re right at the bottom and it’s so shallow,  but it has made it stand out. And I think,  obviously, the skull’s going to have gone,   but all we can do is investigate and  see what’s surviving there and what  

We can tell from it. Delicate operation. And there’s no point leaving it in situ   because it’ll just get destroyed. It’s so  shallow. It keeps right on the interface   between the plough soil and the natural. I  mean, this would be gone in another couple  

Of years completely with the ploughing of it, so… So, Helen, John, I see you’ve got a digger   ready. So, what’s the plan for today? Well, the plan for today is to treat this field   like any other field and just have the question  what is in this field and the plier standard  

Technique? I mean, up until now, we’ve been  led by work that’s been done in the past.  So, what we want to do is investigate our  geophysics now. We’ve got this clear ditch,   which we think is sort of shown on the early  maps, isn’t it? And at this point here, 

There might just be the hints of a square  feature. So, we thought a trench that takes in   that response and goes over the ditch as well. If it is a square feature, it would be very   interesting from a Saxon cemetery point of  view. Certainly. But it is a long shot. Right,  

So we should have two intercutting ditches here. So, Matt moves his attention to trench three to   see whether the square feature in geophys  or the ditch has anything to do with the   Anglo -Saxon cemetery. cemetery. OK. Yeah, lovely. [MUSIC PLAYING] Stewart’s   been scouring the landscape for an  Anglo-Saxon open-air parliament, 

Which confusingly is called a thing or a ting in  Old English. Sam Newton believes that this ting   could be the key to our story. Stewart’s begun  his survey in the village of Shelfanger and has   spotted a significant field name on the maps. This little strip of field alongside this hedge  

Line, this parish boundary, is called Pilgrim  Meadow, which is a very, very interesting name.  Is that a legacy of some memory of people visiting  this place for burial? A long-lost folklore.   But to retain a name like that in this landscape, where most of the field names are just  

Descriptions of the size of the fields, like  four acre or six acre field, actually raises   the possibility that this has been a historic route  way of some form or another in an early landscape.  And as he walks down to the stream, he’s getting  a very different perspective on the landscape.  

I’m almost totally enclosed. I’m in a hollow  in the landscape. I can’t see out to the east.  I can’t see out to the west. To the north, the  landscape rises again. So I’m at the feeling  

I’m within sort of a large bowl in the landscape. He’s following the course of the river along the   stream line past our site. What’s interesting  when you get down to the stream and looking   up towards the head of the valley is how  it does look as if you’re heading into  

A almost like an alcove in the landscape. And the further you walk into that alcove,   the narrower this valley actually becomes and  the further I walk in reality the higher the   burial appears upon the slope up to my right  he’s making his way to win farthing itself  

Where they’ve got a good number of test pits  underway to look for Anglo -Saxon activity   near the church what have we got here looks like  pottery doesn’t it and as the archaeology and the  finds get more interesting there’s a competitive  edge emerging. I think we’re all listening out to  

See what anybody else finds is a competition when  I found out that their hole was deeper than ours,   yes, yes, it makes you makes you sort of like  swing that mattock a bit harder.   The pit so far which has the most interesting find  so what is the most interesting find we’re  

Excited and one of our volunteers has experience of Anglo -Saxon finds, in fact   he dug with Basil Brown, the man who found  the graves at Sutton Hoo. I knew Basil for   about 25 years and very genteel man full  of knowledge, he said what you must do is  

Keep your edges straight on a section so  this is what I do. Back on site in Trench 3,  Matt thinks the square feature  on the geophys was just geology,   but the ditch is looking more promising. Well,  I would say, Lindsay, we’ve got the ditch here.  

Yeah, nice clear ditch coming through. Yeah. So, should we be able to clear off   the edges? Kind of along there. That side looks a  bit straighter, doesn’t it? It’s pretty good. But   it’s got some chalky stuff. Oh flipping heck, it’s rock solid!  

So hard around here. Look, if we want to  get into, if it is Medieval and there’s   Medieval stuff in it, it’s going to be… Right at the base. I guess, yeah, right   at the base and where it’s silted up and they say  this upper stuff. Mm -hm. It’s just kind of, yeah,  

Fairly recent. As part of our investigations, we’re creating a virtual museum. In it, we’re   collecting finds that help to tell the story of  the Winfarthing woman. And I’m curious to find   out what the purpose was for the shackling  rings that ran from her waist to her knee. 

That’s them in close -up and they weren’t linked  together. They were all separate and they’re   decorated on both faces with these stamped  circles, which is quite a common stamp shape.  And are they purely decorative or do they have  any purpose? Well, I’m always, well, I could  

Say anything is purely decorative. You know, they  may well have had some kind of symbolic meaning,  the fact that they sometimes have keys or kind  of symbolic keys attached to them, so they may be   meant to reflect something about the special role  of the woman in the household, by who can say? 

They can have practical things. I mean,  our woman has got a knife at her waist,   but sometimes there’s a knife on the end of this.  And so you can imagine that’s quite handy. You   hold your knives on a chain kind of thing. You can never lose it. And carrying on with  

The symbolism theme, moving up to her neck, she’s  got, in addition to the great big pendant, she’s   got this little short choker neckless as well. And two of the pendants are made out of Frankish   coins. So who’s depicted on the coin?  Well, the coin is struck by Sigibert III. 

So Helena, is this the royal head of  Sigibert III? Well, we assume that this   is meant to evoke the king of the Franks. But,  of course, it looks terribly Roman in a way,  doesn’t it? He’s wearing a diadem,  he’s got something around his neck. So,  

I think he’s meant to look quite Roman, but I  think we are meant to understand that he is,   in fact, the king of the Franks and the  person under whom this coin was struck.  And it’s been converted into a pendant by  the addition of this loop held on by a gold  

Rivet. And what’s on the reverse side? Let’s  turn it over. This is really interesting,  isn’t it, Helena? Because it’s got a cross. Now,  I think if we had just come across that cold,   we might have wondered if the cross was shown  to indicate one thing or the head was shown. 

On both sides, as excavated, it was the head  facing out, not the cross. The last thing in   the middle of this little choker necklace  is this rather marvellous gold pendant.  And I think something that you’ll like,  Helena, on the back, if I can turn it over  

And move it around a bit so you can really  see there’s a repair patch just there.  You can see that very clearly. Well, that is  really interesting, because in quite a lot   of these rich, seven -century female graves, you  have got very posh jewellery that’s been broken, 

Sometimes it’s been repaired, sometimes  it’s not been repaired, but it was clearly   relatively old and well -loved and well -worn  at the point at which it was buried. And you   wonder whether actually the importance of these  objects was actually enhanced by the fact that  

It was old and had been around for a while, maybe passed through several generations.   Who knows? The finds were clearly well used,  precious and suggest at international influence,   as well as pagan and Christian iconography. Derek and Lawrence are going to see what else the  

Grave goods can tell us using x -ray fluorescence,  because their chemical makeup should reveal   information that is invisible to the naked eye. It’s possible that the striking similarities of   our lady’s pendant with jewellery from  Sutton Hoo could indicate Winfarthing  

Benefited from royal patronage. The quality  of the gold might help to confirm this theory.  And whether the bowl was made of bronze  or brass, could tell us if it was made   in the Byzantine world or in East Anglia. The  bottom of the bowl fell apart on excavation, 

But fragments were preserved along with a soil  from inside it. So Naomi has been sifting through   the contents to see what she could find.  So right now it’s a little bit confusing,  a bit intriguing. And in amongst the green  metal of the bowl itself, she found some  

Organic material. So yeah, I’m not sure what this  this woody material is, it’s a bit confusing.  It could have been sort of a lining  or even the bowl could have been sat   inside this wooden thing. I’m really not sure, I’ve never seen anything like this. So yeah,  

More and more intriguing, but this is why  a lot of stuff happens in post excavation,   that’s when you get your answers. It’s painstaking work, but knowing the   contents of this unusual bowl could unlock so much  about our Winfarthing woman. Back in the trenches, 

We’re confident that there’s more than one burial  in trench two. So I’ve got the burial in the   middle, but you’ve just found this other possible  feature running in the same alignment. Yeah,  the top of the grave cut seems to be aligned  with the top of that one there. I started  

Cleaning this back to about here, and then  I noticed that there was a sort of shadow,   and I thought it was the sun, but then the sun’s gone in now,   and yeah, it’s definitely really well defined.  And yeah, I’m just gonna just clean it back a  

Bit more and see where we go. go. It definitely  looks a bit suspicious, doesn’t it? Suspicious,  yeah. On the other side of the trench, Jack has  been working away on another burial. I’ve got more   than one bone now because I’ve got one down here, but I’ve also got another couple up here. And  

Although it’s in awful condition, but it  does suggest that it might be articulated,   but it’s right on the surface. I can’t see a cut, a feature   that it relates to at all. It’s right  on that subsoil. But interestingly,  

It’s not the same alignment of that grave that  we found there or where you are over there.  But still, possibly three graves. Yeah, yeah. I  mean, I think we have, it is now starting to look   more like a cemetery than just singletons,  just run -off burials. In trench three, 

Attempts to get down into the ditch that  Matt found earlier are being hampered by   the solid ground. But a sudden  rainstorm has come to our aid.  There they come. How many people can you get  under one? They’re three absolute pros over  

There, still digging away in the rain. They’re  changing the colour in the trousers on one side.  Taking refuge in the dome, Helen’s begun  the lengthy process of cleaning the buckle   that was found yesterday in trench two.  And what this had been for a belt of? 

It’s some kind of strap, but they’re normally  found out in the waist, so it’s thought of   as a belt fitting. But because these are found  almost always with men, there is sometimes a hint   that it may have been some kind of sword belt. And what I’m hoping is that there’s going to be  

Some kind of decoration underneath here. And these  can range from a placade, separate components,   you know, like sometimes there’s one amazing  one where there’s a little model of a fish.  He also found a lot of Roman coins and artefacts  in the field to the north of the burials which he  

Thought might be the remains of a villa So we’re  wondering what connection it might have to our   Anglo-Saxon story But although there’s evidence  of a building There doesn’t seem to be enough to   suggest it’s a villa You’d be tripping over it, wouldn’t you? Romans really did like their stuff.  

Yeah, this is all local as well. It’s very  small scale, but the one thing we do need   to think about is the huge number of coins that  have been found in this field Like I think it’s  

About a hundred , hundred and twenty and they are  focused on the springs over there Don’t know yet.  I think we really do need a geophys plot to  help us just to have a look So geophys is set   to work to see if there’s any evidence of  buildings around the spring Interestingly  

Stewart’s investigations have led him up the  stream to exactly the same field This gap in   the hedge saved me a long walk round In fact, they’re just on the slope above the stream   coming from the field with a burial in it Come  through this hedge and try not leave too much  

Of myself behind it And out we come into the  field where all the Roman building material   has been found Kind of bit of a journey along  the stream really from Shelfanger Right up to   the north head of the valley, further north I’ve  come the narrower, it gets the more enclosed it 

Gets. That’s been a bit of a trip. I’m ready  for a bit of a sit down and a rest under a   tree, bit of thinking time now. A Roman  spring and a shrine might explain why   this site would have been a suitable burial  ground for Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. But do  

Tom’s Roman finds support this theory? Where does it start? Well, it starts   with this late Iron Age material here on  the cusp of the Roman period. We’ve got a   now Hemoderivative brooch or fragment of one. Oh, that’s one of those one -piece ones with  

The coils at the top all made in one  piece. Almost like a safety pin. Yeah,   yeah. And even a little Iron Age coin here. I think it’s a copy and then would have been   the core of the gold coin. And then moving  on into the first, second century. We’ve  

Got lots of objects of personal adornment, like bits of broaches, some of these lovely   classic Romano -British nail cleaners.  Oh yes, yes, hooking up the dirt. Form   part of those little cosmetic sets  with tweezers and those ear scoops.  And we’ve got this really exciting assemblage  of late, second, early third century material.  

And it’s really exciting because it gives  us some insight into the identities of the   people living or coming to the site at that time. There’s part of a little military belt plate here   that would have formed part of a sword  belt of a soldier. Right. And then also  

We’ve got several bits of harness fittings. We’ve got a pendant here and some studs. And   in the mid -Roman period, it would only  really be soldiers who’d have access to   horses. They’d be quite an expensive cultural. So that’s the Roman army, but what are they  

Doing here? Because this is just the  middle of nowhere in the Roman period,   isn’t it? But you have to think of the Roman army  as being mobilised throughout the landscape. And   we’ve got probably soldiers coming here  keeping check on the local population. 

And moving on to the coins, we’ve got this massive  explosion of coins from the late third century   all the way through to the end of the Roman  period. You know it was south of the ditch, 

Because you didn’t know where the ditch was in the  field. No, that is entirely a good point. Yeah,   we had absolutely no idea. No idea  where that was. Now we’ve got a GPS   point that coincides with the plan. We’ve got to look at it. That does  

Sound very tempting. OK, then, John, this is it  for the fourth time. No pressure. No pressure.  So Matt extends trench three to test John’s  theory, but also on the lookout for other burials   or a ring ditch. I mean, it’s definitely, that’s clean, clean, clean, isn’t it,  

There? Well, it’s nothing obvious,  but how can you lose a burial?  He did say it wasn’t going to be easy.  Back in the church in Winfarthing , Paul   Blinkhorn has been sifting through the fires  that have been coming in from the test bits. 

Hi, Paul. How’s it going? It’s getting  interesting. We’re down to about context   four now, and we’re starting to get some  really interesting stuff. I don’t know   if you saw these yesterday, but a couple  of nice bits of late -sucks and pottery. 

The rims from Thetford ware jars. You’ll be  unsurprising how he’s made it in Thetford,   probably in about the 10th or 11th century. I  mean, quite often in this part of the world,   the villages come into being  around about the 10th century, 

And so that’s kind of a good marker for early  part of the village. It was in the topsoil, but   nevertheless, it’s with the thumbs, sort of thing.  So that’s good. Yeah. What else have we got? 

We’re going to start again. A lot of nice bits of  medieval now as well. Another bit of late -sucks   from another one of the pits in Thetford.  Excellent. So we’ve got two different test   pits producing late -sucks and pottery. Yeah. Yeah. We’re getting bits of early  

Medieval now. Nice. There’s two little  bits of the standard early Medieval, 11th,   12th century. And my favourite find so far, it’s a 13th, 14th century joker rim. And   you can see where the potters made a lip with  his finger or finger. Yeah. I love that. It’s  

Brilliant when you get that with pottery, isn’t it? Yeah, it brings it to life. I   was probably made at Eddingham down  here, six. You find it all over East   Anglia from about the late -12th century  onwards. There are features on there, 

There are engravings on it. Doesn’t it look like  Path of a Cross? It does, exactly like that. It’s   nice to hear you guys saying that, because  this is what we thought. I must say, Derek   spotted this and he’s done amazingly well here. I mean, that’s certainly man -made, but very,  

Very weathered, of course, which is what you  would expect of a much older Anglo-Saxon   standing cross, very characteristic  of the 7th and 8th centuries, which,  of course, over time, would weather and the wind  and various necessities, the Danes marauding the  

Current side. They tend to fall over, and  so when it comes to building the church,   medieval masons would be recycling  any rubble stone that comes to hand,  especially if it’s nearby. But other than  that, as I say, we got a bit distracted by  

This. I can’t add too much more landscape story,  I’m afraid, but Stewart, hopefully, you can…  Well, I hope so. My Winfarthing is the whole…  That’s what’s really been challenging me,   and valleys, penetrating into  the centre of the hundred.  And this one particular one coming round  here is where we’ve got our… Lovely.  

You’ve got this shoulder sticking out.  It’s the perfect place to place a burial.  In this special place, as you come to this  wooded alcove in the landscape. But if we   look… That also might be pointing to… Oh, that’s right. I’ve used the word “shrine”  

Quite carefully here, but is that the sort  of place you might get for a hundred-meeting   place? It takes all the boxes for that. A holy well, perhaps a holy beck, holy stream,   and a natural amphitheatre structure, which would,  of course, lend it to the kind of soundscape you  

Want for an open-air meeting place. So it’s just possible that the central   meeting place could have been in the field just  next door to our Anglo-Saxon cemetery. I wonder   if it’s worthwhile getting the metal detector  just to flick over this and see what we can see. 

John? In trench two, Jackie’s hoping that some of  the burials that we’re uncovering might have grave   goods that could help us to characterise  the cemetery. The cut goes up to there,  there, but also it comes right the way down to  here. I’m going to get out of the way because  

I’ve got to steel toe capped boots on, so I don’t  want you picking. There’s a positive signal,  but it’s definitely an iron signal. It’s quite  long and thin, so I’m not thinking you’ve got   something that sort of… Yeah, because the  way you’ve got that high pitch peak was there. 

I think that might be the femur there, or one  of the things. So it’s almost like this level,   you know, sort of thigh,  waist thigh level. It’s small,  but it could also be being masked by the  irons. Why are you here? Do you think  

You can have a look at this where Romy  was? So you can kind of stand in there,  but you can see there’s a bright orange there and  a bright orange and a slightly dirtier orange in   the middle, and that’s the grave. So you can  stand across there. It’s quite long and thin. 

That sounds quite high pitch. We’ve got a non  -ferrous high pitched. Oh, wow. That sounds quite   interesting. That sounds to me, Romie, like you’re  going to have a really interesting day tomorrow.  I can’t wait. That’s of interest, but that’s  a particular interest, because it’s not… But  

You have to do the whole thing, not just  that bit. I’ll bring my best digger. OK,  right. Thanks, John. Brilliant. These burials  have suffered so much plough damage that any   grave -good surviving where they were buried  would be incredibly valuable to our story. 

By the end of Day Two, we’ve opened up two big  trenches to look for our Winfarthing woman. The   absence of any archaeology in trench one and three  suggests that our lady was deliberately set apart   from the other graves we’re finding in trench two. This might be a cemetery, and there might be…  

It’s definitely a cemetery, absolutely  definitely, but it might be quite a dense   cemetery, which is really not what I  was expecting, which is really nice.  It’s really nice to know that the  Winfarthing lady was in the middle   of a folk cemetery of people that were  around her, and it’s not just this trench, 

Obviously we’ve got more to do further  up the hill, but there’s hints of more   coming out there too, and in the northern  fields we’ve got evidence of a structure   both from the fines and beginning to come up, I think, from the geophysics, so it is all still  

Quite tentative and I’m very aware that we’ve only  got one day left. But I don’t think it’s all been   blitzed into nothing this by the plough. So one day left, come on let’s go and get   in the room. Yes please. Tomorrow we’ll  expand our investigation into the field  

Next door to see if there was a Roman  shrine here before our lady was interned,  and her burial is inspired Sam to perform for us  as the sun sets on day two. We’ve been spending   a lot of time looking at the landscape and  the forgotten features of this landscape, 

Giving us the setting of this wonderful  burial, but there’s another aspect to   it that has often overlooked, that is the  forgotten soundscape, what the sounds that   were heard, and obituary she would have had, that the traditional meaning for most ordinary  

People and for years after would be the poetry,  and so looking at the old language and some of   the words they would have used to describe the  lady herself and indeed that beautiful pendant,  I started listening a few things and then I  thought why don’t I sort of string them together,  

Try and simulate something of the  Old English verse that would have   been heard in this landscape at the time. What, whiff, warthing, warfinger lunders,   Edas Adalu, Althwis, frail for  yipten in winners fail inga,  thusendom wintrum, and frail hundum, no  thine banners slappinga, in bedigness bebeka, 

Clafdia good, ring roden, bithart onrayon  from earth grappa, sae o ‘er crafty,  sonners lukingas, ho brooklothwee,  theon breost sigaland, sae o ‘er yimmas,  cinch in golda, ya chen stanas, athol  cunas, ere yawoch, wunders smithas,  cunn inga weef, drole crafty,  althshiny lacha, (cheering)

So together we brought Time Team back  and now we’re gonna take Time Team to   the next level. Help us achieve 10  ,000 ongoing members on Patreon. – It’s day three of our dig in Winfarthing . We’re asking why a seventh century Anglo-Saxon  

Lady was buried here with the highest quality  gold and garnet jewellery. – That’s a lot. –   That’s a lot. – We’ve discovered what appears  to be a cemetery nearby and we’re hoping that   two of the burials have some grave goods. – That sounds to me, Romy, like you’re gonna  

Have a really interesting day tomorrow.  – I can’t wait. – We finished yesterday   evening with that discovery of that burial  site and raised lots of questions about why   those people were buried in this landscape and  we’re gonna hope to find some answers in this  

Adjacent field where we’ve found something  which we think could be truly extraordinary.  (dramatic music) It’s a beautiful morning and  Matt’s still hoping to find the old excavation   of the Winfarthing woman and signs of a ring ditch  around the mound that might have marked her grave. 

Jackie and the team in trench two are working  through the tough soil to locate the source of   the signals that the metal detector picked up  last night. – Yeah, you like digging concrete.  – The key to understanding why the Anglo  -Saxons chose this site to bury such an  

Important woman might lie near the spring  in the field next door. – Good morning.  – Hi, Gus. – So the team are putting  in one more trench. – Another field,   another day. – Absolutely, well, we’re here  because we’re trying to understand why the  

Cemetery was put where it was and also  what would have been visible to people   at the time of the Winfarthing lady’s funeral? What would the atmosphere have been like? like.   And we’re specifically here because the metal  protection in the past has shown that there’s a  

Concentration of fines around here. So John’s  put some geophysics in. It was quite nice.  We’ve got clear ditches in what appear  to be large post sockets and a complex of   anomalies and there’s lots of possible  interpretations for what we’ve got. 

We think there’s a lot of Roman material  here, so it could be something like a   Roman back house because we’re close to  water source just over the hedge there.  And Philippa also raised another possibility  that the fines could indicate some kind of  

Votive offerings. It’s quite a tenuous possibility  because they’re also the kinds of personal items   that might come off when you’re putting your  clothes on and taking them off for a bath,  like bracelets and fingerings and so on.  But it’s something that we ought to bear  

In mind. It could also be that these two  activities are using the same spring,  you know, having a bath and making a  votive offering, both use water. The   fact we appear to have these sort of  anomalies is what, abses? Abses. Yes. 

Then you can have those on bathhouses. You  can have those on shrines. You can have those   on churches. I mean, how far do we want to push  this? But the odd thing is there’s two of them, 

And there’s that square end. It doesn’t make a  coherent building as yet. So is this one deeply   complex building, or is it multiple phases of  building? I think there could be two phases.  We don’t know which is earlier, so that’s why we  need to dig it. But I think what’s so important  

About this is that people seem to think that the  Romans have in some way left and the Anglo-Saxons   have in some way arrived as a new people into  This stuff over the top is absolutely rock solid. 

– Crikey! – So I think it would be helpful  if we can get you to wet sieve that,   ’cause that’ll break it up a little bit more,  just to make sure that we’re not missing anything.  

– Absolutely. – The knife is a great find, and we don’t want to miss any other grave goods,   which could help to tell us about the people  buried in this cemetery. Over the last two days,   our test pits in the village of Winfarthing have  revealed evidence of late Anglo-Saxon occupation, 

As well as some intriguing finds. – We put it  in here ’cause they were afraid that the gold   would come off. (laughing) – So quite often you  get S -shaped buckles that you put on your belt. 

But this has got quite a lot of detail on it.  – Yeah, it looks like it’s got little feathers   or something on there. – Yeah, I would like to.  I don’t think it’s terribly old at the moment,  purely because actually there’s  so much of it still. It’s still,  

You know, the copper alloys. It’s not falling  apart or anything. It’s still quite solid.   Brilliant stuff. – Yeah, it was just sort of  sticking out of the ground like straight out.  It’s a good thing we didn’t smoot it with the  shovel. – It’s a lovely find, if a little later  

Than the Anglo-Saxon pottery we found nearby,  which is beginning to turn up in more gardens   as we expand our survey away from the church. – Well, we’re doing our best Carenza. We’ve   got five hairy guys here, as you can see.  They’re strapping lads, and they’ve been  

Working really hard, although most of them are  new to this kind of thing. – And you’re here.  So you’re the only ones at the other side of this  road. So what have you got coming out of it? –  

Well, we’re not getting a lot out of this context  layer, to be honest, but most of it’s geology,  I think. But we think that’s possibly Thetford  where? – Yeah, no, that looks very much like it,   doesn’t it? Now, and you say it’s not much,  but even just having one bit like that, 

And it’s quite a big bit as well, and  the breaks at the edges are quite sharp,   so it’s unlikely to have moved around very  much. – This adds to the evidence that the   Anglo-Saxons were here 200 years or so after the  burial of our lady and the cemetery on the hill, 

Where Rome is revealing what appears to be  another knife, which could help to date the   burials. – We’re gonna pick a little bit  more of it so we can get an idea of what   that is. – It might be another knife. – Do you want the probe, Rome? Let’s see  

If it’s… I’ve got that so it’s not going to go  anywhere. No, we’re okay. I think it just caught   that edge of it. It’s not curving at the end, is it? No, I think that’s just staining. Excellent   stuff. It’s painstaking work and Martin Carver, director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project,  

Has joined the team for the day to lend a  hand. So could you give me a sense of what   we’re looking at here? I am trying to conjure  a grave out of this unpromising piece of earth  

Here because it’s got a blotchy side here to  it and the edges aren’t clear but it’s possible   that that will turn out to be a grave. Are they all in the same orientation?   Interestingly not, interestingly  not. So that’s diagonal. This is, 

I don’t know what this is, but this one is  definitely east -west here. Is that different   periods? I think so, yes. I think the most  likely explanation is that there would be   a cemetery here where people buried in this  orientation and then the east -west are sort  

Of more likely to come later because we’re  dealing with the early Middle Ages and in   the 7th century they like to be east-west. So I think that’s bearing in mind the finds   that have already come out of here. Rich finds,  beautiful rich finds of the 7th century. I think  

That sounds as though it might be an explanation  but it’s pretty early days and whether there’s   enough left here to put the story together, that’s the big problem, I think. It’s a huge   challenge. It’s a race against time to find out  what we can before the burials disappear But  

The orientation of the graves suggests  the cemetery was in use for centuries.  And this tallies with the finds that  Tom has discovered. We start in the   fifth century here and they range from  something that’s reasonably complete, 

Like that. And you can see that this is a  long brooch where the pin would have come   down and been clipped into there. And it’s lost  its two side knobs. These things normally break   up so that all you find are the knobs. And we’ve got lots of knobs. And you  

Tell how many burials these might represent  then. Well it’s tricky to say, but you can   get them down to a kind of irreducible minimum  because people don’t tend to have more women,  don’t tend to have more than two brooches  per grave. So I’ve put pairs of brooches  

Together. You know, these two could  possibly have come from the same brooch.  So looking at that principle, we’ve  got six graves from this group which   have a kind of coherence. So you  could call this, this is early, 

Early Anglo -Saxon. It might be easier to call it  migration. Yeah, I was going to say that migration   period when we think there’s a lot of movement  happening in Britain. And then moving around,   we have this kind of big disjuncture here, the gap between the migration period and the  

Conversion period. And this is all represented  by this one brooch. So this is only one brooch   here that we’ve got? Yes, shattered  into four bits. That is a disc brooch,  a flat silver gilded disc brooch, which is  entirely different in style. After this big break,  

I tend to call that the conversion period  because that’s the big thing that’s happening,  a big political event. We’ve got Christianity,  Kings, and so on. And the material culture   is very different. We have something  like these very small, simple buckles. 

It’s a very simple style of dress. And you’ll  notice that there are no brooches in here. There   should be a few pendants, but line of the great  cut here and it started to show up over there.  I’ve got a femur coming down here and I  think that’s a bit of tibia down there  

And there we’ve got a small knife. That’s the  sort of tang end of it so that’s the blade,  that’s the back of it and that’s the tang end  that would have been the handle. So that knife   would have been buried perhaps attached to the  hip of whoever this was? Yeah I mean they’ve  

Probably had a belt that the knife would  be hanging from in some kind of sheath.  We have got in-situ remains, we have got  artefacts with them and that will enable   us to do a little bit of dating for it as  well although knives are fairly ubiquitous  

Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. They were a sort of general purpose   artefact that everybody would carry their knife  whether you were male or female you would have a   knife. And Romy do you mind if I step into the… No you’re right just there. Just here. Thank you.  

That’s all right. What are we looking at? So  we’ve got our grave cut coming up and around   here. This finds bags just hiding and looking  after some bone that we’ve got coming up but   really interesting is we’ve got another  knife in here if you can see that there. 

And we’ve also got a piece of copper alloy here as  well with the kind of bluey green tinge to it. Is   that a pin or is that a piece of decoration?  So it’s definitely a piece of copper wire, 

We’re not sure entirely what it is yet. It’s  a bit too small to be a clothes pin but we’ll   just have to find out. The knives were carefully  cleaned after the dig and traces of horn handles   and leather from a sheath were discovered. Bear’s reconstructions can go into my virtual  

Museum alongside the buckle and the sword pommel  which Helen thinks could all have come from the   same male grave. He would have died a few  decades before the wind farthing woman was   buried here with her beautiful grave goods. Is that going to show up against the black  

Background? You’d be surprised. Are these laid out  in time? Yes, yes. As well as the virtual museum,  we’re creating a timeline to help to navigate  through the story because the finds have arranged   from early Medieval back to Romano-British.  We’ll enter it and then we’ll pop the date in. 

-Saxon cemeteries are often found near  sites that were venerated by the Romans,   so a building like a shrine in our  new trench would make complete sense.  That is keen to get Helen’s take on the S  -shaped buckle from the test pits. These  

Are really interesting little things aren’t  they, because you’re probably not old enough   but I had a snake belt in the early 1970s  and they had exactly this kind of thing,  but these are birds rather than snake.  What do we normally date these to,  

17th century going into the 18th, I mean  they’ve got that continuity right up to   the 1970s snake belts that I don’t think they  ever go out of use because they’re so practical.  That’s not bad, I think our test pit volunteers  will be happy with that. Yeah, I mean it’s a  

Really nice thing to find because you can  immediately understand what it was used for,   yeah, lovely. Back in the Roman trench there’s  a first hint of a possible wall emerging.  Looks like you’ve got another stone there,  come out Hilde. Yeah do you think this could  

Be in situ? Yeah I think so. It would make sense  with John’s geophysics that there should be some   sort of high magnetic anomaly whether that’s  a wall or something attached to a structure,  so that obviously came up while we were stripping,  we’ve been a bit more careful in this area,  

We’re starting to get a number of large flints,  potentially we reveal a feature here. Yeah.   It’s looking a bit wall -like isn’t it? Yeah, wall foundation -y. Foundation would   be interesting. This wall tallies with  a feature in the geophys, but is there  

Anything to suggest it’s a wall of a shrine? It’s difficult to tell from the ceramic finds   coming out of the trench. We have pieces of  hypocaust tile, box flue tile, with the combed   keying so that the plaster sticks firmly to the  surface and can then be painted and decorated. 

We have the tequila, so you’d have another flange  along here and then the semi -circular imbrex goes   over the top to provide a waterproof joint. The remains of dinner, the last meal,   oyster shells, they’ve come a good distance  in from the coast haven’t they? So, 

We are looking at a solid building, in  flint walls, foundations and that’s what   we’re seeing here, the rob -date walls. I  really want to see one of these large pits,  have we started to see these pits yet? There  might be something just coming up over there,  

It’s looking a bit darker but I’m  not sure they’re down far enough   quite yet. I really want to see what these are,  whether they are big post -pit supports or  whether they’re actually pits, rubbish pits,   well there wouldn’t be rubbish  pits would they? Well they might. 

Well I suppose they might if they’re in a totally  different phase. This building is a puzzle,   it’s not the right shape for a villa or  a farmstead but we’ve found hypocaust,  domestic pottery, potential voting offerings  such as coins and jewellery. So what’s  

Going on here? As ever, Stuart has a theory. There’s a very good parallel I think for this,   although it’s on a much larger scale, it’s at  Groundwell Ridge in Swindon, it’s a sparse site,   it’s not a villa and it evolves over a long  period of time but people come there to bathe, 

To take the waters for its healing properties and  its magic properties as well. So does that account   for all of the breadth of artifacts we’ve been  finding in that field because the detectorists   have been finding all sorts of stuff haven’t they? People that are coming here and it’s not just  

Coming here to worship or to bathe perhaps they  have to be fed and they have to be watered and   looked after for a few days so there’ll  be dropping things there’ll be lots of   other artifacts which are not quite domestic  but give a hint that people are spending a  

Bit of time here but not very long probably. So I think we’ve got a really really complex   and interesting site in Groundwell Ridge  for instance it’s termed pilgrim sanctuary   even in its scheduling so these are  important places in the landscape. 

So the Winfarthing pilgrim sanctuary I like  that I can’t say it but I like that. And   this ties in with the field name that Stuart  spotted on day two and perhaps this helps to   explain why the site was of such significance  that centuries later it became the central  

Meeting place for the Anglo -Saxons and the  burial site for the wind -farthing woman.  Derek’s been analysing his XRF results  from her grave goods and he’s noticed   some oddities. This one and the gold itself was  pretty typical for Anglo -Saxon gold around 60  

To 70 percent with alloyed with silver but  there was an element an area down here that   was really high in iron which is peculiar  because there’s obviously no iron there.  Yeah well that is interesting because it is if  you go back to the original picture looking at  

My excavation photograph of it I mean this  is as it’s coming out of the ground we’ve   always noticed that it’s got this irony colour  over the top of it but I mean is this a pin?  Well yes now looking at it now it feels  slightly embarrassing that we can see  

It on the photo but we didn’t notice it  while we were excavating that is quite   an odd thing to have a pin overlying a pendant. – I was thinking about that and we always look at  

Grave goods like this and we imagine them being  kind of telling the story of this person in the   grave but could this have been for her? This was  linked to her and it wasn’t for everyone else,  it was for her. – Yes, well there’s a  kind of ambivalent relationship with  

Grave goods in the seventh century because  it’s a time when grave goods are becoming   in a way almost less fashionable. Some people have loads, some people   have absolutely none and some people have  them but they’re in a coffin enclosed and  

I haven’t seen anything that suggests a cloak  wrapping them up but that would enable you to   have your cake and eat it. And so maybe you’re right,   maybe this was concealed or maybe she had her  full dress on and then at the point of burial, 

It was closed down. – Yeah, maybe. But we  know these kind of artifacts have biographies,   don’t we? We can see that in some of the repairs  and if we look at this one in particular,   it’s one of my favourite pieces of  this one ’cause it’s so beautiful. 

This was one of our richest pieces in terms  of gold content. It’s sort of around the 80   to 90% mark but on the back here, as you  can see, this small repair is a much less   pure gold so it’s been repaired and refreshed. We shouldn’t underestimate the skill of the Anglo  

-Saxon goldsmith in these as well because  I was looking at some comparative data and   the Staffordshire Horde, for example,  there’s evidence that the smiths were   actually enriching the surface to make the  poorer quality gold look like better gold. 

– Essentially, they kind of try to corrode and  leach out the copper and the silver by using   kind of acids and salt. – So actual chemistry to  make these things look more gold and to kind of  

Bluff them in a way to bring out the gold. – Well, I do think that that pendant has   a curiously pitted surface, not just on  the scan, but in reality. So maybe that   had been treated in that way. – Now, the last thing we did,  

Which I know is perhaps getting more  interesting as we’ve studied it more,   is the bowl. – The main thing I want to know  about that bowl is where was it made? Because   if it’s a brass, it’s got the argument  that it was made in the Byzantine world, 

World, the Mediterranean and it’s  been brought here. If it’s not,   well I’m expecting it to be brass. Is it  brass? No. It is a classic tin bronze.  Oh, right. Where does that put it?  Is that making it more local? Well,  

That makes it kind of more interesting because  this is a very difficult bowl to parallel.  The only parallel I’ve found has been another  hitherto very odd bowl from Broomfield in   Essex. So maybe this means that there’s some  kind of East Anglian workshop making these. 

It just shows how very unusual this grave is as  if we needed any more. It’s pulling things in from   all over. The contents of this extraordinary  bowl might reveal even more about our Lady.  As I started going through this I started  finding all this brown material. The organic  

Material is surprisingly well preserved  amongst the fragments of the bronze.  It’s unusually thin isn’t it? And it reminds me  more of the kind of very fine copper alloy bodies   of the hanging bowls like the ones from Sutton Hoo  for example. Right, yeah. And the copper in there  

Would also help preserve the organic stuff which  might explain how you’ve got that preservation   inside a copper alloy structure like that. The royal lyre of Sutton Hoo had fallen   into a copper alloy bowl and then the  hanging bowl had fallen onto the top  

Of them. So the top of the lyre was actually  squashed between two copper alloy surfaces.  And that’s why you’ve got two thirds of it  preserved and the rest sticking out in the   ashes had to completely disappeared.  See this has completely blown my mind.  

So the next stage I guess is to try and get an  identification of exactly what species this is,  if it’s possible. Because that would be  really interesting because we might be   able to tell something more about medicinal  properties. Yeah, I think it would give us  

Potentially tangible evidence of her  status as perhaps some sort of healer,  if you can see something medicinal. For example,  some of the bark reminded me a little bit of   willow, which, of course, I don’t know when  they discovered the healing properties of  

Willow bark, but it’s the basis to aspirin. Right, of course. Well, this has, honestly,   this has been one of the most amazing  things that I’ve discovered in a long,   long time. The contents of this bowl would not  have been accidental and might help us understand  

Why the Winfarthing woman was so important. This was a time of epic poems, depicting warrior   kings like Beowulf and queens like Judith.  It was a time when our lady would almost   certainly have mixed with powerful women, women who achieved legendary status like the  

Frankish Queen, St. Baltild. Balderhild,  as she should be called in Old English,   who starts off, actually, an Anglo -Saxon lady. She’s captured in war. She becomes a slave,   probably a sex slave, actually. Marries  mother of later kings of the Franks, 

And later, probably for political reasons,  she’s bundled off to the nunnery. And it’s there   that we have preserved, as one of the great  relics of the monastery in which she lived,  just west of Paris, a beautiful embroidered  chemise, a little sort of light white tunic,  

Embroidered by her own hand with images showing  the kind of beautiful pendant jewellery and   necklaces that she would have worn during her  time as a senior lady and princess and queen.  And these show perfectly a beautifully  bejewelled cross with garnet inlays and  

Smaller little pendants hanging from that made  of the crystal garnets that we see here as well.  And so it’s absolutely wonderful to have  this sort of contemporary image of how   the jewellery would have looked in its  full glory. St. Balthild’s story gives  

Us an understanding of just how precious  this jewellery must have been to our lady.  We’re nearing the end of our time in  Winfarthing exploring her story but   back in the village the test pits have  started to hit solid archaeology. So   we’ve got something really exciting  in the bottom of the test pit here, 

Jeff that’s what 70 centimetres? Yes around  about that yeah we’ve been hacking through   this really heavy clay for ages and then  we suddenly appear to have come down onto   a what looks like a cobbled surface yeah. Yeah no I think you’re absolutely right  

Does it to me as well as you say might be  picking up the other side of the pit maybe   you’ve got a feature cutting through it yeah or  perhaps you’ve got quite a lot of charcoal just  

In the central bit there that could even be a  place to tell maybe going through it but we’re   right on top of it looks like it’s some sort of  yard surface where someone’s thrown down the load  of cobbles just to create a surface to  walk on. What sort of finds have you  

Had from immediately on top of it? We’ve had  very little but what we’ve got here in fact   a couple of bits of bone but I think we’ve  got we’ve got some possible Thetford-ware.  Yep I think you are probably right there we  need to get it washed to get that confirmed  

But it looks very much like that Thetford  ware, so that’s 850 to 1100 AD could be pre   -conquest could be just post -Norman conquest. In terms of what to do about that the issue here   is that we were thinking we’d take this cobbled  surface up and then just as we were looking  

At this we were called over here to this test  pit same garden nearby and look at this so in   here we’ve got well this again it’s completely  different to what you had above isn’t it Doug?  Yes it was quite an unexciting pit but the  last half hour it’d be starting to sort of  

See this delineation here. I mean this this  is amazing really because it you’ve got all   that chalk you haven’t had chalk like that in  a dense layer at all further up you can see   it’s not there in the section you can see  just where your feet are there you can see  

Where it’s appearing in the section behind you. It looks like there’s a lot of mortar in with   it looks like the footings of a wall perhaps  even a stone flint built wall something like   that. What it feels like here is we’ve actually  got a late Anglo-Saxon possibly Saxon Norman  

Complex here where we’ve got a building and  we’ve got a yard and we’re just adjacent to   the church and so Jim and I would have said in  your garden it looks like the hypothesis we’d 

Want to test if we had more time was is this an  Anglo -Saxon hall that typically are very close   to churches because the lords are getting their  sort of authority from their connection with   the church um you’d expect an enclosure around  it they have a wall they have a gate they have  

A tower the bell and all that sort of thing we  know that from documents and I think what you’ve   got is that here um you’ve got another six weeks and don’t mind the rest of   your garden being opened up by me.  It’s a great result for our Test pit  

Teams and Paul has spotted something else. There is however a joker in the book which   is Test pit Five. The other side of the street.  The bottom two layers in Test pit Five have both   produced late Saxon pottery and nothing later. Now there’s only one sherd in each layer but if  

You look at it it’s a really nice sherd it’s  big it’s fresh it’s way bigger than anything   else we hanged in any of the other Test pits  and it’s quite sharply broken yeah we were  

Talking about that when it came out of the pit  yeah it’s very fresh I mean now it looks like   late Saxon activity it really does so it might be  the Test pit Five it’s actually the site of the  original late Saxon call of the village. So  our community dig has certainly produced the  

Goods and we now have real evidence that  that Winfarthing was a Saxon settlement,  albeit at a later date than the burials a few  fields away. Back in the Roman Trench, we’re into   the late afternoon, and it’s all hands on deck. We’ve identified the wall line on the geophys  

And the ditch, as well as some post beds. Yeah,  that’s it. That looks like brown coming through,  doesn’t it? And there are more shrine  -like finds coming up. OK, I’ll take   a look and see if I can identify it. Let’s see. I can get it out the bag.  

Including some more coins to add to the  collection. Oh, wow, this is really well   -preserved. I can identify this perfectly. That’s the Emperor Theodosius I, and I’ll just   have a look at the reverse and see if I can narrow  down the date. OK, if you look really carefully,  

You can maybe see a person walking left. That’s a victory. Just. And you can see Victoria,   maybe? On that side? Yes. With the IFA? I  can. So that’s a Victoria AVGGG reverse,  and those are only minted in three  places, Arles, Lyon and Trier,  

Between 388 and 395. Well, that’s a nice, tight one. One of the latest coins from the site,   I think. But basically, the coins that are coming  off the spoil here from the top of the trench are   all dating from the late 34th century. So  it fits in with the other metal detecting  

Finds that Tom’s had from this field already. Very nicely, yes. Although we’ve only scratched   the surface of this intriguing building,  the evidence is still pushing us toward the   idea that this was a Roman shrine or sanctuary. The geophys suggests it was rebuilt several times,  

And we found evidence of flint foundations  supporting a wooden structure with a heavy   roof. Pits inside the building may have been  for beams supporting the roof and some could have   been ovens preparing offerings for the gods. There’s evidence it was heated and the geophys  

Suggests that there were gardens surrounding  the buildings. And just before we pack up,   there’s the tiniest bit of hope that we might  have found the grave of the Winfarthing woman,  which Helen excavated in 2015. – It looks as though  it’s going down. – You’ve finally found it. – I  

Reckon, why isn’t that it? – Well, it’s  the right size, it’s the right shape.   Now I can see it against natural. It does look very much like the   backfield. The backfield of our grave,  because our grave’s fill had none of this  

White flecky chalk in it, but the whole lot  with the topsoil was piled back in as a mix.  So I don’t see why this isn’t our grave. – Well,  this is where the GPS point said it was. We’re  

North of that ditch, which is where the plan said, this is what we got distracted from on the first   day. So we’re now saying at five o ‘clock  on day three, that’s it. – I don’t mind  

Encountering this right at the end of Day Three. I think it’s a win that we’ve got it at all. – At   least now, we can be pretty certain that  we haven’t missed any further evidence   from the grave of the wind -farthing lady. – Gosh, Helen, what a few days. It’s been  

An emotional rollercoaster. And what do you  think we’ve learned? – Well, what we’ve learned   about the Winfarthing lady is so much. We’ve found out from her bones that she’s   had a long life and she’s been wearing  her jewellery throughout that long life.  

And we also know from the jewellery that she’s  conscious of Christianity and that she’s hugely   conscious of her power structures of the time. She’s part of those power structures. – And   Stewart, does that concur with the things  that you’ve found in the landscape? – It  

Does. It echoes it. She was buried in  a very special place in a landscape   setting that may have been venerated for  generations before her from prehistory.  It’s all about the water and the springs that  are present here. And that sense of this being  

A special place is that something that you found  Carenza? Well it’s interesting the test pits   in the village have given us the next chapter  in the story where on the stream further down   there’s perhaps some of the earlier settlement  that might just have been the same period that  

She was alive in but actually a couple of hundred years later somebody reorganizes   the landscape, the beliefs, the way that’s  expressed and builds the church and their   hall immediately adjacent to that and perhaps  memory of our Winfarthing lady is lost as the  

Church is built and the community  takes its next step through time.  Yes but what’s really remarkable about  this place though is the Winfarthing   woman was the most important grave  in this cemetery so it was probably   dug the deepest and that’s why it survived. All the other people in this cemetery all the  

Rest of her community were buried in slightly  shallower graves that we have found but we’ve   only found the very bottom of them and modern  agriculture has removed everything but her   virtually it seems and this is not just happening  in Winfarthing it’s happening in village after  

Village across the country that we are we are  wrecking our Anglo-Saxon cemeteries with modern  agricultural practice and we’ve got to think  do we want to do that or shouldn’t we value   what we’ve got before it vanishes. Thankfully  Tom discovered the burial of this important  

Woman before a story disappeared Naomi continued  on investigations after the dig and managed to   identify the contents of the strange bowl. Foxgloves, horse tail, blushing lanterns,   bracken and apple or pear stems, plants with  healing properties, creating an attractive   display. They flower in early summer, revealing the season she was buried. The  

Bark was from birch trees, also known for  its medicinal properties. And incredibly,   enough would survive to suggest that she was  buried in a coffin or a wood-lined grave.  The ceremony would have involved poetry,  music and feasting, as our lady’s body  

Was placed with treasured objects, displaying  her status as a member of the ruining classes   and maybe as a healer. And perhaps, a cloth was drawn over her in the last moment, and her delicate features were hidden from view, set apart from the other burials in the landscape around her.

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