New Episode | Day 1: Secrets of Wytch Farm | Time Team (Dorset) 2024

We’ve chosen a spectacular location for a very special dig. It’s Time Team’s 30th birthday and we are celebrating in style…

Time Team heads to Wytch Farm, in the shadow of Corfe Castle, Dorset, where Derek and Lawrence discovered two Iron Age burials back in 2021. They’ve called in the full team to investigate. Was this a cemetery, and how long have people been living here? Where were they living, and, above all, what were their livelihoods?

Will we uncover the secrets of Wytch Farm? We have just three days to find out!

Join us for the official three-part premiere, right here on the Time Team Official YouTube channel:

Day One: Friday 17th May, 7pm BST: https://youtu.be/mp7O9R-oV98
Day Two: Saturday 18th May, 7pm BST: https://youtu.be/NKMaeuWGwsI
Day Three: Sunday 19th May, 7pm BST: https://youtu.be/y7Ipo_K5iyY

(Video links for Days 2 & 3 coming soon)

Plus, join us behind the scenes now for our exclusive Dig Watch coverage over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeTeamOfficial

CREDITS

This episode is supported by:
Big Dig Brewhouse
Isle of Purbeck Brewery
Omnitapps
Purbeck Cider
Raglan LLC
Sails and Canvas
Sketchfab
Smiths Gloucester Ltd
South West Domes
@CannondaleBicycles71 electric bikes provided by Cycling Sports Group UK.

With thanks to:
Mark at Dorset Safaris
The Pitman Family
The Rempstone Estate
Alex Schultz
Robert and Pat Hemingway Hall
Museum of London Archaeology
Time Team’s Patreon Supporters

Photography: Harvey Mills
Romano-British black burnished ware jar: Hugh Fiske
Stratford Iron Age Pottery: Centre-of-Archaeology

Music
Paul Greedus (original theme)
Steve Day
Jas Morris
Ninebarrow
Charles Harrison

Executive Producer & Series Creator: Tim Taylor

** JOIN TIME TEAM ON PATREON! **
Support Time Team by becoming a patron and get access to exclusive behind-the-scenes content here: https://www.patreon.com/timeteamofficial

** MERCHANDISE **
You can now purchase Time Team’s Official merchandise here: https://shop.timeteamdigital.com/

Website: https://www.timeteamdigital.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/timeteamofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeteamofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetimeteam
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialtimeteam

We have chosen a spectacular location for a very special dig. It’s Time Team’s 30th birthday and we are celebrating in style. [Music] Morning! I went to University I just can’t put up a tent. It’s not even my tent. The fields where we’ve set up camp are farmed by the family of our very own Derek Pitman who’s found lots of pieces of Roman pottery over the years. So in 2021, he and Lawrence decided to do some geophys and a small excavation but instead of a Roman villa they found two Iron Age burials. Iron Age burials in this part of Dorset rarely survive in these soils so we’ve got a golden opportunity to investigate what could be a rare Iron Age cemetery site and maybe even find out where these people were living and how they were living. And also to find out something about that Roman material as well. And we’ve just got three days to do it. [Music] The farm is on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. During the Iron Age it was inhabited by the Durotriges who lived here for centuries before and after the Roman invasion in AD43. John’s already managed to complete a geophysical survey of the fields which are overlooked by the Purbeck Ridge studded with prehistoric barrows and earthworks, and the impressive medieval ruins of Corfe Castle. To the north of the site is Poole Harbour, which the Romans used during the invasion and has been an important trade route throughout history and prehistory. But on the morning of day one this stunning location is obscured by thick fog. And you had no idea that there were Iron Age burials here, is that is that true? Absolutely no idea. We were here looking for structural evidence: Roman buildings perhaps, industrial material, what we didn’t expect was to dig down a bit deeper and find two Iron Age burials. The soil just doesn’t preserve bone well so it was a real surprise to see these two here. And and what are the sorts of dates that we’re looking at? We’ve got a carbon date that basically puts it at 0, plus or minus a few years which um which means these these individuals were living right at the end of late Iron Age Britain, just before the Romans came. In fact their descendants, their offspring probably saw the transition to Roman Britain. Amazing. And what does the geophys tell us John? Well there’s just so much going on – ignore the large anomalies, those are pipelines – but we’ve got a mass of enclosures um spread over such a large area. Now this is where you put the original trench in and that seems to be set within this enclosure, more enclosures beyond, then a whole series of pits, straight linear features, could those be Roman? And so what what would the strategy be then with such a a rich site? Well we we know we’ve got to start with our initial trench I think, we’ve got to expand that, we’ve got to understand the context it’s in so we only did a 5 by 1 so we’re going to grow that, understand the relationship to this this enclosure that’s found here which, I mean it’s pretty interesting isn’t it John, that enclosure. Well when I first saw it, I thought it was a banjo. What’s what’s a banjo? That’s a classic middle Iron Age site that, I mean the clues in the name it’s shaped like a banjo. You’ve got a big circular top top bit in the north with with what looks to be an avenue coming up into it. There’s the avenue. There’s mixed views about how they were used, I mean they could have been high status some people have argued, others have said they’re just cattle enclosures. So the cattle would be pooled in this way but you’ve got the burials inside which makes it a bit confusing. Exactly, so I think we need to expand on where we were first and we want to understand the the purpose of the site – are there more burials? – and and what’s its relationship to the age of phasing to that ditch. So as the sun begins to break through the lingering morning mist, we’re getting ready to place trench one. So these these pegs are the footprint of your evaluation trench, is that right Harry? Jon Milward and Harry Manley from Bournemouth University worked with Derek and Lawrence on the original dig and have joined Matt to find and expand the 2021 trench. Our initial task is to find out how the first century burials and the possible kiln they found relate to the large enclosure ditch on the geophys. [Music] It’s very soft soil isn’t it so I think we’ll have to be careful. We’ll just take the top off with the machine and then as little as possible really and then it’s going to be hand digging really down to this level here, isn’t it? The first thing the 2021 trench revealed was a medieval post pad about a foot above the possible kiln, so we’re expecting to have centuries of complicated archaeology to entangle before we get to the Roman or Iron Age levels. Perfect got our first find. First find. Pottery, what’s that, it’s not, it’s- well- It’s orange on the inside which is interesting so- Yeah I thought it was black-burnished ware but it’s not is it? No, it’s- it kind of fools you. On that side you think oh maybe it’s black-burnished ware, turn it over, that’s probably some form of medieval pottery so. Right, okay. Yeah so so actually we’re in the right kind of layers, because we we found that medieval post pad at around 30 to 40 cm so we’re getting down to that level so. That’s great. I think yeah the dig is taking off to a good level now. You can just see these these bits of orange here so we’re getting fragments, flecks of bioturbated material, some inorganics in there, so we’re just coming down below that ploughed soil now, aren’t we? Yeah so we’re getting down to the right level. I keep keep thinking I’m seeing shale here as well which is exciting but- What is that, that’s not shale is it? No that’s that’s that’s probably a bit more prehistoric pottery actually. Oh right. But that’s that’s a fragment so that’s been kicked around in the soil for a long time. Yeah. But yeah so we’re getting a good mix now but that’s lovely that is. Yeah. That’s probably just sat on that surface for 600, 700 years. Okay did you get that done? Yep. Fire up? It’s looking promising in trench one, but before we can put our second trench in our metal detectorist team is scanning the area for small finds. [Music] I haven’t got my glasses on. The 2021 team thought they could see evidence of another skeleton near the two that they lifted, so we’re taking things slowly. It’s reassuring that we’ve been able to relocate our trench actually. You’re definitely in the right place. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. We should begin to see where that trench widens out slightly and that’s where we’re getting the skeleton, so this is really positive. And in the dome, Martin Smith has laid out the burials so that he and Jackie can reexamine them. The carbon date was taken from the later burial, which cut through the smaller one underneath. Well, I’m quite surprised actually that they are this well preserved, because this is heathland, it’s really acid soils. So, tell me what we’ve got here. Well, what we have is firstly a small and lightly built individual uh most of the long bones – well all of the long bones in fact – we can see are, the ends are fused so that person has finished growing, except, what’s really of interest is these two bones here. So this is the the clavicle or the collar bone, and we can see yes yeah that’s not fused there is it? So this is suggesting that this is more likely this person’s in their in their early 20s. Their early 20s and that’s the last bone to fuse and after that it’s all downhill as it were. Certainly is. That’s the finished that’s the finished growing. So I’m guessing it really is female. Um absolutely. Um so if we look at uh aspects of the pelvic bones we can see this curve here this is what we call the greater sciatic notch. That’s got a a form that we tend to see in female individuals, we’ve taken some measurements. It’s quite wide, it’s wide rather than narrow so it’s opening up that pelvic girdle. And the skull also? Well if we look at the uh the brow ridges or the or the lack of them, we can see this person’s got a very a very smooth forehead and again, that’s the sort of form that we would we would tend to see in female individuals. Yeah. So we’ve got lots of indicators. And that’s sharp as well isn’t it, the margin of the orbit is very sharp. Absolutely. This woman was, well, we’d say gracile, but petite I mean I have never seen a collar bone quite that lightly built in an adult. Absolutely they’re really they’re really slender aren’t they? Yeah. It’s really quite surprising. In fact that that’s the sort of normal size and shape you would see in a child. Yes, yeah. Right, so, this is our other one. This is the one that originally – I think when you took a rapid scan of it you thought might be male – but it’s still… that’s tiny, but this is still really quite small. Absolutely, both of these individuals come out as very very small by our standard – something like 4 foot 11, 5 foot nothing. Oh crumbs, and that is actually below what we, for this period, we would expect to be an average and I think, actually, it’s probably one of the smallest pair of individuals I’ve seen generally from this period. Absolutely, and the question was what could this actually be, a small gracile light relatively lightly built male. Yeah and I can see how if we look at that greater sciatic notch again that we saw with the other side, that actually looks fairly tight but that one looks wider to me. You can see it now we’ve reconstructed them. That looks feminine. Yeah. And looking at bits of the skull also, although comparatively speaking this looks heftier and more robust, they still look quite feminine. Now we’ve had a a better look at it I think it’s more likely female. I think I’d agree. Yeah. But what about age? This person certainly a little a little bit older. This joint here called the auricular surface, um, this is where the pelvic bones join onto the spine, and that deteriorates as people are getting older, and we can see that the the degree of deterioration there is telling us that this this person is certainly a little bit older, into the into their 30s, maybe early 40s as a guess. Yeah. We can look at the spine, we’re not seeing much in terms of deterioration on this spine in terms of, sort of arthritic changes that people pick up as they get older, so that that suggests this person isn’t of hugely advanced age. Yeah. But they’re certainly older than individual number one. And the tooth wear’s heavier as well, than it is with the other one. So, we have two women buried on top of each other in the Durotrigian tradition in a flex position, and we know that the younger woman died some time before the older. Further DNA analysis might tell us whether they were related, but we know at least one was buried between 50BC and 50AD. And we’re already getting pottery dating to a similar period in trench one. Nice piece, first century, acute angled fish line lattice decoration, but I can’t tell whether it’s pre or post conquest. I suspect it’s post. Yeah, okay. It’s it’s reasonably well fired, reasonably hard. And now we’re beginning to see the first signs of a building. So yeah, we’ve got one, two, three there. Another one coming up there as well. Yeah so I would say… it could be another one of the post pad type features couldn’t it? Yeah whether it’s part of the same structure or whether it’s just another structure which is close by- Yeah. -unsure but that’s that’s really nice, because that’s, because they’re all together and they seem to be forming a coherent unit, then probably we can say it’s not just a random scatter of stones, it’s actually forming something so that’s really nice. There’s that one and that one, there’s actually one underneath there as well. Okay. Uh and your first post pad, your other earlier post pad was- It was about 4 metres away Matt, approximately here and around the same depth as well, which is interesting, so again that suggests it’s contemporary. I’m just coming down onto the top of it now aren’t we so… And just by the post pads is another piece of Romano-British pottery. Ideally we want to find some of this amongst the stones. Wedged inside. So maybe the post holes are from a building that stood here at the same time as our Iron Age women were living here. The story of their settlement, which we hope to uncover over the next 3 days will feed into a wider investigation into the Durotriges that Miles Russell has been leading at Bournemouth University for 15 years. I suppose it’s the hill forts that dominate discussion of Iron Age Dorset. They are so massive, they’re so impressive and monumental, but they seem to be going out of use by about 100BC so it’s almost a century and a half before the Romans arrive, and what we’re missing is really what happens afterwards. And it could be that the site that we’re looking at is is one of these more lowland settlement sites – less sort of defended because there’s no need to defend their their their families and their their resources at that stage, so it’s the kind of site that hasn’t been investigated much in the past because it’s not so obvious, because it’s not so monumental. And I think that makes it far more important, because it’s probably telling us more about everyday activities and more sort of normal sort of trade patterns and things. I think John’s geophysics give us a real insight into the sort of local activity that’s taking place as well. So we we’re seeing what look to be pits and and activity there might be industry, there’s almost certainly going to be industry taking place here um, we’ve got these enclosure type features which I think we we’d call them banjo enclosures, wouldn’t we Miles? Yes yeah that’s that banjo and antenna enclosures, certainly there is one nice sort of distinctive ditch that we can see around here, and it looks like there is an entrance way coming off it, so a funnelling entrance down and possibly, sort of other enclosures, like petals around a flower, with a major settlement area in the middle. That looks like the kind of banjo enclosures that we’ve been invest- investigating in Dorset before so we think of that as a as a settlement zone, a farming zone, there’s probably other similar enclosures like a linear development, and I think it’s all those together that that gives us this sense of quite a large settlement, and industrial and agricultural area of production. Banjo enclosures are typically mid-Iron Age and so they could be high status, they could be stock enclosures, they vary in composition sometimes a ditch on the inside, sometimes a ditch on the outside, but the burials that we found when we first dug here they’re 0, sort of about 0, maybe a little bit BC, maybe a little bit AD. But they’re repeating Durotrigian burial traditions, but they’re burying them inside a banjo enclosure, so are they revisiting this site, or is it contemporary? There there’s some real questions to be- And are they banjo enclosures that give us a sense of what we might find? Yes, this is an excavation we did at Winterborne Kingston up near Bere Regis. Obviously it’s an aerial photograph, you’re looking down. You’ve got the the two ditches of the banjo enclosure come in here, and then the ditch goes off around in that direction, and then down here. I see. So you’re looking at- that’s the entrance and then much of the interior is given over to, these circles are storage pits probably for grain or or other sort of uh dairy produce, and then we’ve got things like this one roundhouse you can just about make out the gully for here, and there’s another one over there. If it is a banjo enclosure it’s the furthest south to have been discovered, so anything we can learn about it will be important. And we should have a number of Iron Age roundhouses inside where extended families would have lived. There’s nothing obvious on the geophys but there’s a hint of something round in the enclosure adjoining it, so we’re putting a second trench in to investigate. And that’s the so-called ring ditch. You think it is? I I’m borderline that’s why I wanted to take in this outer ditch. Yeah. ‘Cause this outer ditch appears to join with the the banjo enclosure ditch and so they’re going to look at the relationship there um. If this is a ring ditch then there should be a good feature in the middle. Mhm. But you’ve got this now. Well I can see it. Oh yeah yeah yeah that came up straight away. And there there’s a kind of weird blob coming out of the… oh yeah. See. This is weird I was actually matching up with the geophysics. It happens all the time. Meanwhile in trench one we’ve hit something that might suggest industrial activities within the banjo. We’re getting we’re getting a good spread of something. If we’ve got a structure which has then collapsed over maybe. And this this stone could be a part of the stone structure do you think? Yeah I mean it’s certainly big enough isn’t it? Yeah yeah. It looks like it’s been heated as well. Yeah look at this look it’s going on down here. Fantastic. Look at that. Okay yeah yeah yeah yep. Something’s trying to pop out here isn’t it? Yeah definitely. It’s really clear you can feel it as well it’s dropped- is it ash, is that ashy over there? Yeah. But everything is burnt, everything’s kind of mixed up, over-fired pottery. I think we’ve got the edge of a, edge of a kiln or something for sure. Fantastic, and that’s right on the back edge of our trench which was showing up in the geophysics as well. Yeah. So that’s- we could be coming down into one of those targets we’re interested in. Yeah and look how shallow it is. We were thinking: right we need to go down, what 30, then we went 40, actually we should probably go down to 60 cm maximum. Maximum, yeah, yeah. And then we’ve got the post pads at the far end of the trench which are what 40 to 50 cm down. Yeah. And in the middle, where we’ve got nothing, we’ve gone even deeper. What’s that? Oh my word. Oh wow, look at that. That is beautiful. Can you see the decoration on there? Yeah yeah yeah, you’ve got the top of the, is that the rim going across the top there as well where your hand is? Yeah and kind of uh… Striations on there. Beautiful we can get that cleaned up. And that is that Romano-British… uh yeah it’s very very late Iron Age into the very early Romano-British period. Beautiful uh and found right on top of a kiln, which is quite handy. Telling isn’t it. Ideal. And we’ll just kind of go back, you know… Any large settlement is likely to have had a number of furnaces used as pottery kilns or for other industrial purposes, and in this area there is a lot of ironstone, so we’ve invited Hayden Scott-Pratt to construct the kind of furnace that might have been used to smelt iron. [Music] This looks like fun. So what’s what’s happening here? Can I have a go? What’s going on? Anybody can join in. These two are our very expert mud mixers from Bournemouth University, mixing the mud with which we’re going to make these. Here you go. Thank you. That is quite something isn’t it. So so what is this? Well, it’s a, it’s it’s a clay brick isn’t it? It’s a bit of furnace wall. Yeah yeah yeah so these are bricks of clay that we’re making from local clays that we’ve dug up, basically to build our later Iron Age iron smelting furnace. And it’s got lots of what looks like hay in it, is there a reason for that? Yes that’s that’s organic temper, and that will help hold the clay together as it dries, basically like kind of rebaring concrete so it’s really strong. Wow. And so this is going to survive high temperatures, is it I mean? We’re going to, we’re going to subject the inner lining of that to temperatures well in excess of its melting point, so the majority will survive. So we’ve got to try and make the iron before the whole thing kind of starts to dissolve. It’s all an experiment but you know… With enough bricks prepared, we’re ready to start building the kiln. They seem to me to be big, to be going around that… This is, this is the fun part but essentially it’s going to be roughly… Oh, is that the size of it? That’s the internal diameter and then we will be putting… Oh right. Okay. So put that one just there. Yep. So if you’d passed through this landscape in this period, there would have been women, children, men, all kind of working in this way, stamping on the mud, creating these clay bricks. Yeah. And building these kilns. Yeah yeah yeah, absolutely. Make them a little bit thinner ’cause they’re already sitting up a little. I’ve already brought some. And it’s starting to get musical at this point. And essentially we’re making a giant a giant sort of vessel. Matt’s expanding trench one towards the banjo ditch away from the possible kiln, where the type of pottery we’ve been finding has pushed our story into the later Roman period. What date’s that? It’s very late fourth century. Wow, so that’s stretching the story. It certainly is. It’s right at the end of the black-burnished ware industry in Wareham and Poole Harbour. Everything was going pear-shaped within the local economy and the potters had one final attempt at commercialisation. In this sort of fabric, um, generally orange at a time when everything else has been black or brown, the finger tipped rims, rope rimmed jars, big jars, potentially for a completely different purpose of anything they’ve made in ceramics before. That was nice. So where Dan is working now, if that’s the furnace where this pottery is being made that’s incredible right? It is. That’s the first one we will have found. The first ever? Yeah. The discovery has had quite an emotional effect on Rachael. James Gerard wrote it up but I was the first person who identified this stuff. Wow. And if I’ve now got the first kiln. Sorry. That’s that’s overwhelming. That is more than I can cope with. So, if this is a late Roman kiln, there must have been people living and working in these fields for centuries. The question is: in what way did the settlement develop and did they have to adapt the way that they were living? We’ve recruited a number of eager students to help Carenza work out how far the settlement stretched with a series of test pits. So we’re going to do eight test pits in this field, sort of four of them closer to the hedge, four of them further away, and hopefully they’ll give us an idea of whether there’s similar amounts of material coming out from this part of the field as there is in the main bit, in which case it’ll mean the settlement isn’t tailing out, uh, it’s carrying on here and it’s just the geology is a bit different, or, if we get very little here, it’ll suggest that the settlement does end closer there and then we’ll maybe do the next run of test bits the other side of the hedge and get a bit closer. But that’s the basic principle. Okay. [Music] Stewart has started his landscape survey by trying to locate the most important of features: a water source, and he’s following the hedge line between the test pits and the main excavations. I’m now walking down the the hedge line that defines the the southern side of the field with our excavations in and I’ve dropped down again into the valley that I’ve been following and rather interestingly as I get to this point I can hear water tinkling and there’s water coming into the… there’s a drain alongside the hedge line here, but that water will be coming from somewhere. That’s not rain water at the moment, it’s not water from from drains or anything like that. Somewhere higher up the slope is going to be a spring that’s bringing that water down to this point, and then it’s being managed into drains. Now that’s rather nice to hear that, that sound about where where might water be on the site. The sound of trickling water should lead Stewart to a spring further up the hillside. [Music] We’re well into the afternoon and in trench 2, Hilde and Ivan have come down on features very quickly but there’s no sign of a ring ditch as yet. Where’s my round house? Don’t know yet but we are getting a lot of features. Okay, what’s this? Is it one ditch or two it looks… So we thought it was one ditch when we did the first trip here but it seems to split up uh or widen there uh with a bit of potential natural in the middle so. And that’s cut by a later field drain I presume. Yes, there’s a couple of field drains in this trench as well. So the round house should be there but it’s a bit higher up there so does that mean we need a bit of manual cleaning to to figure that out? Yeah so we left it a bit higher there because we don’t want to accidentally cut it away with the machine because it could be quite shallow. Yeah could be really ephemeral. We’re just giving it a good hard clean. Great. So Ivan’s already doing a great job there. Trench one is now enormous and Jackie has started to look for signs of a cemetery next to where the two women’s graves were discovered. Talk talk me through the strategy where have we got to so far? Right so our blue flags here they’re our original trench. Okay so this is the end of that trench where we had the two burials. Exactly, so where Jackie is working she’s working in this, our trench extension, um where we had our two burials and possibly, we had that hint of a third one. Mm. So we’re just really… So that would be just there right? Just under there, yes. Do you remember the the um furnace or the- Yeah- we’re calling it a furnace that was characterised by sort of orange clay and we’re getting more of that, which is brilliant so that’s… What’s this in the corner, Harry? We’ve got that there. Okay, so that’s the continuation of the what we thought was a kiln. What we’re hoping for. But the big news is in our extended trench, in the bigger trench we’ve got what looks like another furnace okay um. I mean this looks much more substantial though. Yeah yeah so this is stone-built whereas over there we’ve got melted sort of clay, burnt clay and so on. I mean could this just be tailings of burnt clay, scrapings from the furnace, does it… It could be, yeah, it may be maybe the remnants of what was going on over here. We’re not quite sure yet. Running right through the trench, the geophys shows the line of what should be the big banjo ditch. So what we’re standing on here I think is natural. I’m going to disagree. That’s fine, you’re allowed to. I I think that this this… Sorry guys, I’m actually thinking archaeologically for a second. I think this is a bank, Harry. Well it could be the… Um, like if you imagine, if you imagine the ditches here. Yeah. This is all upcast. This is natural but it’s redeposited natural, and then they got- So this is guff, later guff, filling in up against the ditch, so that is true natural where Jackie is. Yeah. So that is the level of our true natural, this could even be a buried top soil with all the scrapings of the kiln and the guff of life. You’ve got, you’ve even got it here look. So it’s this coming around here, the white there. Yeah. Could it not be? It could be. Well there’s only one way to find out and that’s to keep digging. James has already found a lot of pottery in the ditch which should help us to date the enclosure. Dan’s trying to confirm whether Harry’s kiln theory holds water, and Jackie has spotted some bone fragments which have survived despite the acidic soil. Don’t think that’s… yeah that’s a piece of animal bone, it’s not human. It doesn’t look in situ. The thing is just because it’s animal bone doesn’t mean to say it’s nothing to do with the burials because of course the burials would sometimes have had, um, animal offerings in the graves. That’s right. So bits of meat could could go in there so um. Yeah, it’s quite telling we haven’t found any other animal bone have we? Yeah yeah yeah so it’s it’s still an important find. Yeah. Where Jackie’s digging should be the heart of the settlement, but we’re beginning to find evidence it stretched all the way into the test pit field. Have a look. Oh can we peel back the covers? Oh look at that, that’s proper structure isn’t it? It is yes it’s a it’s a yeah it’s a it’s a man-made surface a person-made surface- Yeah -of local iron-rich sandstone. I mean that, that will be showing up on the geophysics nicely. I’d have thought so I’d have thought so. Nice edge along there I don’t think that joint there can be happen- can be made naturally. No this is this is a structure for sure so did you get any dating material out of it? We’ve had one very small piece of pottery over in that tray over there, about as big as your finger end, I’m- Oh, but it doesn’t get much more black burnished than that. That… We’ll have to show this to Grace in a minute but I’m pretty sure that’s either late Iron Age or early Romano-British and that came out of there? Yeah, sitting in this in the stones amongst here yeah. Wow. so that that is a structure from the period we’re looking for potentially. Excellent isn’t it. So can I see under your foot there that you’re expanding this test area. We are we’ve- Carenza’s ordered it- Super duper- to extend the trench, and she wants a soil sample taken from this layer- Lovely- immediately on top of there. Fantastic, well I better leave you to it, um you’ve got what an hour left today so crack on, crack on, thank you very much. You’re welcome. Later. By teatime, we’ve got eight test pits and two large trenches on the go, but apparently, that’s not enough for Derek. What on Earth is going on? Chaps chaps chaps. Hello. It’s gone 5 o’clock and you’re, what, looking like you’re going to dig in another trench. Yes we are, but this one was in a way so straightforward, we could probably resolve this in plan quite quickly. Tell me, where are we on the geophys? We’re at what we think is the entrance, you know, we talked about this funnelled entrance going into the main banjo enclosure, well the one ditch comes through here so the idea is if we take the trench across, go over that ditch, see what the big pits are on the geophysics inside, and see if we can find the other ditch on the second side, that’s all. Okay. But to start at 10 past 5 though. Doesn’t matter, I’ve got my beer ready for 5:30 so. I was going to say, it matters to me ’cause presumably I’m going to be the one standing here digging it up. Okay, fire up John, let’s get going. [Music] It’s a beautiful afternoon just right for a geography field trip to nearby Studland Beach. Yeah yeah so the geology here um is rich in iron and the beaches here at Studland and the cliffs. Iron ore will erode out and we call it ironstone. So is that what’s causing all that red in the cliff? Yeah, the red colouration in the cliffs, yeah so… And the ironstone pebbles will erode out and will form part of the pebble beach that’s over there. So this little piece here is a piece of ironstone this is a really good bit you you can tell because it’s nice and high density it’s really heavy and it leaves this lovely dark brown red- Yes- ochre coloration. So so oh yes that is heavy isn’t it for a small pebble. So so this can be smelted into iron? Yes. But also you said ochre, is this the same stuff as is used in the Paleolithic? Yeah yeah so ochre crayons, ironstone crayons in the Paleolithic twelve and a half thousand years ago, and then iron ore in the Iron Age, 2,000, 2,500 years ago. Back on site, we’re beginning to see signs of industry, the banjo ditch, and the bank all within trench one. I think I think the story is there now, we’re starting to get a sense of the chronology in the narrative and it it starts out as as we suspected on the geophysics, with an early enclosure, a ditch around an area where all of the upcast was chucked in inside of the enclosure to make a bank, and we’ve actually got that bank preserved in places I think which is really unusual so… That’s brilliant to see. We can see where that bank is. And what that then suggests is that site would have been visible for hundreds if not a thousand years until the modern plough came and essentially trashed it. So that’s probably why we’ve got, then, burials being buried here, because they’re they’re being buried inside a structure, inside a visible enclosure, and I suspect it explains the kiln as well, because banks are great places to build kilns, you just build it into the bank. You have your opening on the front, so it could well be that that kiln over there was dug into that that bank that earlier bank. And and what’s happening over here? Wow this… You know how you get an end of a day treat. We’ve been looking for connections between our site and the harbour and I think it might be emerging in this trench. You remember we had this enclosure ditch. Yep. Okay and so James has taken out half of this ditch and this is the side of it here and right on the side of it about halfway down it looks like some form of ceramic. But on closer inspection, we think it’s briquetage. What’s briquetage? Briquetage is used for the production of salt so it’s like a, so it’s like a boiling pan and it’s really really diagnostic of the late Iron Age. Oh so what we think is happening here: briquetage is being made here, that those pans are being created, fired and, then they’re being transported about a kilometre to to the edge of the harbour where actually that salt water is being harvested, boiled off and from it, that salt is being produced. So this is only the end of day one and already it’s yielding so much. You must be delighted. I I can’t wait for day two. I just want to carry on. Do we have to stop? Matt’s still going in trench 3 but predictably the archaeology is not as easy as Derek had thought it was going to be. Is that looking a bit yellow? Everything just looks kind of off off-grey. Oh, it’s impossible to see in this light, isn’t it? Really hard to see with the shadows and stuff. Yeah, what I what I’d do is I’d dig your 10m- Yeah- there and you may get better light in the morning. Yeah yeah. We’ve had evidence of occupation from Iron Age to late Roman, but one thing in particular appealed to our finds team. So these have come out this afternoon and um, I’ll let Rachael have a look at that one, I know that’s a particular favourite. Well, this one again black-burnished ware it’s a base sherd and at some point during the life of the vessel, somebody has gone to the trouble of drilling these holes through the bottom to change the use of a pot. They stop it being a container. It would now leak. Can’t be used. They wanted it for something else. It could be a whole heap of things from a flower pot, to potentially a clock if you filled the pot with sand and then filtered water through the sand, that would be a measure of the time it took for that water to go through. Into the virtual museum it goes, to sit alongside the two women who lived here 2,000 years ago. The evening sun is throwing its light over a hillside that’s defined this landscape for millennia. It’s a source of inspiration to Dorset folk duo, Ninebarrow, who are named after one of the monuments on the ridge. [Music] In Summer Fires is a song that is literally, it’s literally written about this hillside, um, the traditions of Midsummer day, lighting fires in the high places around the settlement, and it being a time to look forward to the harvest and hope that it was going to bring everything, uh that that you dreamt of, and it was going to feed your family and the idea was that you would leap over the dying embers of the flames of that fire, and the higher that you leapt the higher your harvest would grow. And what better way to celebrate Time Team’s 30th birthday than with a Durotrigian inspired hog roast as we consider our plans for day two. The end of a really really special day and it just feels so appropriate that we end it with the whole of the Time Team family enjoying a pint. Cheers! [Sung] Jump high, but I jump higher, we’ll dance the night across the fire. [Music] Join Time Team on Patreon to access exclusive 3D models, masterclasses, and behind the scenes insights.