New Episode | Day 2: Secrets of Wytch Farm | Time Team (Dorset) 2024

It’s Day 2 at 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 two days left 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 3 coming soon)

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

Discover more about this incredible site on the Career in Ruins channel: @careerruins7044

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

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[Music] The dramatic backdrop of Corfe Castle is the scene of Time Team’s 30th birthday dig. Three trenches are underway as we try to find out whether two women discovered in the field were part of a rare Iron Age cemetery, what kind of community they lived in, and how it was affected by the arrival of the Romans. Yesterday, we found pottery from the Iron Age, right through to the end of the Roman period and maybe even the kiln that it was fired in. So, where Dan’s 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. [Music] The campers are up bright and early to make the most of the stunning location before getting stuck into the trenches. [Music] Beginning of day two and what a fantastic day it was yesterday, but apparently it’s going to pour tomorrow so today we’ve really got to get to grips with this site, so we’re back up to Matt’s trench to to see what’s going on. That’ll do, that’ll do. Work’s already underway in all three trenches. Hilde’s busy in trench 2 where there’s a hint of a ring ditch, possibly from an Iron Age roundhouse. Hayden and Helen are preparing the furnace they built yesterday for iron smelting later in the day. And we’ve got our work cut out in trench one, where we’re trying to get to the bottom of that banjo ditch, possible kiln, some post holes, and potentially another burial. How you doing? You’ve come at an opportune moment actually, we’ve just um found, well, bone or tooth isn’t it, something like that. It’s looking pretty bovine isn’t it? Yeah and we know we’ve got burials over there so uh we’ve just- well it’s literally just come up so we’re just having a bit of a discussion about what to do. That is amazing. And this this actual trench, what is it beginning to reveal? Well, this is over the entrance to the banjo enclosure, so we’ve got um the two entrance- uh the two sides to the entrance coming down there and there, and we’ve caught the first side which is this huge ditch there. You see next to Sam, the white sand, that’s one side of the ditch, then you’ve got what coup- three metres of ditch, and then it’s popping up on this side and it looks like we’ve got the remnants of a bank on this side which is where all this clay is. So Lawrence and I, we’re standing inside the inside the entrance. Wow, so this is what we were talking about yesterday Lawrence, isn’t it? Absolutely. This is the entrance to our banjo. To get the remains of the bank in itself is is pretty unique and pretty special often these are ploughed out and lost. Also if if it is the bank, we might have a buried earth surface underneath that so we could find a bit of Iron Age ground surface which would be incredible. So we’re hoping that this ditch joins up with the one James was excavating in trench one yesterday. In it, he discovered sherds of a large pot, which Harry thinks could be briquetage, the evaporation vessel in which water is boiled during salt manufacturer. It’s sitting on top of something made of shale and next to a large piece of bone. [Music] Now, what have we got. Hey, lovely. Beautiful firing shadows and colours on the side of the jar. That is a beautiful thing. And so that that gives a real way of us understanding how this was actually fired and made doesn’t it? Yes yes. Lovely piece. Very shortly I’ll be able to stick this one together. No! Yeah. I won’t glue it, but I can put it in the pieces in relationship to each other within- well as soon as I’ve washed it really. That’s incredible and this is our base. Wow. Thank you. Right you ready? I think it’s going to go. It’s going to go. I think that’s all the jar. Mm. Yeah. We’re taking soil samples to look for what was inside the jar, before James is able to carefully lift the fragile shale. That was fantastic. Now, do I dare? Yay. Oh look, we’ve got part of a pot on the underside. Oh wow! And I know we have another bit of that vessel that you found yesterday. What you- I I recognise it. I recognise it. It’s got the lines going along it. That edge is certainly roughly chipped. That one looks fairly rough too but I don’t- I think these cut marks in the surface are old. I don’t think that’s your trowel. So I think this was perhaps a cutting board or a chopping board that broke. The shale probably came from Kimmeridge, on the other side of the ridge where it’s been mined for centuries. [Music] We’re putting another trench in over a square feature on John’s geophys that looks a bit Roman. I think you’re pretty much near the edge there aren’t you? So that sort of darker band coming down on that side there. Yeah. And in trench 2, Hilde’s been searching for signs of a roundhouse in the enclosure adjoining the possible banjo. So, we were looking for a potential ring ditch. Do we think we’ve got it? I I think I may have got it. I’m being very careful in saying that. Mm. So I’m just cleaning it back here. If it’s there, it’s very shallow, because it it doesn’t seem to exist. That’s what we’d expect from a drip gully type thing though right? It’s not going to be a substantial structure. But that’s amazing. So that is looking like a feature now? Yes, we’ve got lots of other things going on as well. Oh, what else is going on? We’ve got a a small uh kind of burned feature in the corner of the trench. And is that where you’re thinking of extending, having the machine bring it. We’re just extending it so that we can get all of it. Nice. And the ditch is starting to take shape over there? Yeah, so a nice chunky ditch there. And so again we’re just going, getting it a bit more cleaned up now, and we’ll just whack a big slot through it. [Music] Just a couple of fields away, there’s a path up onto the ancient ridgeway above the site towards the impressive ruins of Corfe Castle. [Music] Well, there you go, Stew, you don’t get many better views than that. God, look at that. That’s definitely worth the effort of riding up here. Agreed. I mean you can’t imagine any period where that doesn’t almost attract the same attention that we give it. Look at that. Yeah. And you think of monuments that have deliberately built in prehistory, like Silbury Hill, where deliberately creating high high monuments to be impressive. It’s a great example to me of of how geology dictates everything, and and gives you that- I mean the visual impact when you’re on site of that in the middle of the gap is just so… it’s almost artificial in in its beauty, isn’t it? In its natural beauty. Yeah, it’s a shame there’s a castle plunked on top of it really. You’ve just offended every medievalist in the country, you know that? That’s fine. It’s almost certain that there were earlier features and monuments on that mound, isn’t it? I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a a Bronze Age barrow positioned on there for instance, like we we’ve got examples on the ridge here. But I mean you- whether I’d visualise something like a hill fort on top of there, I’m I’m not absolutely certain. It’s almost like a a natural gateway, isn’t it? It’s funnelling people through from the south to Poole Harbour, from the north to the resources we know that are on the coast. And that would increase in importance from the Iron Age through into the Roman period when it becomes some major area for imports and so on. So, given its location, our site could have played a part in Roman trade systems, and been increasingly influenced by Roman culture – a possibility reflected in our finds. So, what have you got for me then Keith? I’ve been detecting Matt’s trench in the spoil, and I think we’ve got our first period find. It looks very much like you have. Is that okay if I take hold of it here? Oh yeah. So, it’s a copper alloy finger ring, and you can tell from the form that it dates to the first-century AD, so exactly the same date as the that burial. And then you can see here, just about, that there’s a setting and it seems to have blue glass in it and that’s quite a popular um sort of form of decoration. So in the Roman period, it looked really nice like a nice almost like it’s gold, with a bright blue setting in it. What I find really interesting about this finger ring is just how small it is. It very definitely looks like it’s been made for either a child or a young woman. And what sort of young woman would have worn this ring? So, it’s not um a poor person, but it’s not somebody from the elite really. It’s tempting to imagine one of the small women buried here wearing a ring like this. It came from the spoil heap of Matt’s trench, where he’s found some pits inside the funnel of the possible banjo enclosure. Here’s the pathway, here’s the uh entrance coming along this way. The enclosure is in front of me there. But inside this pathway – don’t know if you can see – great big dark splodge there. A really massive dark splodge there. These are all pits probably, something like that, giant pits and a bit of what could be either chalk or possibly Purbeck marble there. Um another big feature here. And we get to this bit here, and here’s the other side of the entrance. Pits like these sometimes sealed the entrance of banjo enclosures when they went out of use when the Romans arrived around 43AD. After this, the trend was for more linear enclosures and buildings, which Miles is hoping to find in trench 4. This is structural material. We’re machining back and we’ve come up a little bit, but there’s this whacking great big- I mean that’s, that’s not their naturally, is it? No, no I mean this is, this is faced on this. So this is actually something which I think might actually be the cornerstone… oh wow… of a building. So, this could be a building? It could be. I mean I’m thinking if it’s actually there – that’s where it was machine hit, and we’ve got something going off in that direction, and there’s certainly a lot of stone work in here. So uh. I’m hopeful. Building here, possible kiln there did you say? Should we have a look? Yeah yeah there’s uh an area of burning activity here, and you can see this is coming off onto this surface. I mean that’s all all baked clay. I mean that – if it is – that’s possibly three or four we’ve got on site now. Quite a lot going on isn’t it? Yeah yeah, and burning or pits do you think? We’ve got, I mean it’s a large area of burning here you can see. We’ve got charcoal and again baked clay. I think we might have a large pit or or ditch feature into which a lot of this sort of industrial material has been dumped. So, if we’ve got a wall over there, we we could sort of tentatively think possibly Roman. Is it worth getting the detectorists into the trench to see if they can hit anything? I think so, absolutely. We need to get some targets. There’s certainly a lot of Roman pottery that’s been coming off during the machining. What that kind of reminds me of is, you know when you get the bases of amphora. Yes. Okay cool. As well as pottery, we have our first Roman coin. It’s not a victory it’s a personification of agricultural wealth who’s a lady called Annona. Okay. A silver denarius dating from 222 to 228AD. By lunchtime, the whole site is a hive of activity with volunteers pot washing, detectorists scanning the spoil heaps, students in the test pits, and our furnace getting its final touches. Given that we’ve got a lot of clay and several kiln-like features, we’re beginning to wonder whether pottery making was part of industrial activity on this site. So, we’ve extended the trench slightly. So you’re on the, you’re on the extension. We’ve extended it this way as well and we can begin to see- You’ve got more coming out, haven’t you? Yeah, we’ve got more coming out. So, we’re actually getting the full extent of the structure. Is this a big structure now? Yeah, yeah. We actually, we think we’ve got a bit of collapse there as well, so that’s really nice, so we we’re beginning to see a bit more um extent of this structure itself, so that’s that’s really good, that’s that’s going to progress for the rest of the day now. Is my bank still a bank, or have you killed my theory? No, it’s we’re working on it. You know it’s touch and go at the minute. Yeah. Dan’s done an amazing job here, just really trying to tease out what’s going on. I can see lots of material, are we getting anything good. Um yeah, we’re getting um uh kiln furniture possibly, we’re getting some briquetage, we’re also getting some just domestic pottery as well. So could the waste material here relate to this kiln feature or do we think that’s two different phases? Ah yeah, too early to say. Okay. Naomi is about to float the soil from the jar that James lifted out of the banjo ditch earlier. I’ve got the pot from trench one. Oh wow, look at it. It’s amazing. Look at the size of these pieces. Huge. And isn’t that one beautifully coloured. So is this an Iron Age goodie or..? No, I think it’s actually first-century AD. Oh okay. Everything else in that ditch is broadly middle of the century to maybe 80AD. Okay. We’re hoping to confirm whether the pot was used for briquetage or storage. Okay, so this is dropping through nicely. I can feel… And still more charcoal. Look at that. Some cereal grains would be nice. They would be. I mean that’s one- oh wow. Look at that one. Look at this. Look! Look! Oh oh more pot. More pot. Lovely. Oh, and that is. Ah, no. That’s not more pottery. No?That’s one of the deceptive stones. There’s another small piece there. That’s pottery. That’s pottery. That’s fine. All the work we’re doing on site is being fed into the Dome where Stewart, Eve, and Neil are working on the reconstructions. Take them over. We’re doing the chores of yester-year. Exactly. You take the logs over there. Let the computer do it for us. So I’ll take the logs over and stick them in there. Yeah. The reconstruction will eventually be populated with willing volunteers whom Bear is capturing on his green screen. Back over here again. I want to say these two were lightning in the back. By the end of three days, we hope to be able to paint a picture of what life was like for our two Durotrigian women. Jackie’s identified some features near where they were buried which she thinks might be graves. And right next door to this are some post pads from some sort of wooden building. [Music] Meg, with everything going on in this trench I feel like I’ve neglected you up here. What is going on? This is really exciting, we actually have an early Roman structure here. Oo. I know. So if you follow this really quite nice bright orange layer, this is our interior floor surface. So, that’s an actual floor surface and these are the the posts. Yeah, it follows our nice post pads, yeah. So, have we got six of these? Or just three and then… There’s a nice three, but there’s also one here, we had one in there that we’ve taken out, and there’s some potential ones in the section end. And you say early Roman, but that that feels a bit bit too early for up here, right? I know, we thought this was post-Roman but actually, from the pottery, we know that this is um first-century AD. We’ve got some nice inverted rims. That really squishes the chronology of this trench, doesn’t it? That’s really interesting. Yeah, it’s super exciting. Oh. Derek, Derek, Derek, how are you? I haven’t seen you all day. I’m alright, there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going on. I’d like some more to go on, please. Go on. I’m just coming to check you’re happy for me to open trench 5. This… ’cause trench 5 is this little cell, this this area of, like, cellular enclosures with high mag features in the middle of them. It’s only one more trench. I’m a bit worried though ’cause it’s, it’s halfway through day two, we’ve got a day and a half left, and we’ve got so much going on in these trenches. Have we got the resources to deal with it? We’ve got the re- it’s only… it’s not a big trench like the ones we’ve got. Okay. It’s only going to be a digger width. Oh, so a trial trench. A trial trench. Okay. It’s long, it’s 30 metres, but it catches everything, and it’s just going to give us a little insight into this really intriguing area. And we’ll stop there? We’ll stop there, unless you want to do more. Just the 30 metres then Lawrence. Alright John? This is the… This is the one. This is the one. Hello. Hello. So you’re going to like… The pressure’s on, and Hayden needs to get the furnace lit as soon as possible, if he’s going to get it to a high enough temperature for iron smelting. It’s horrible when people are looking at you. Oh wow look at that. Oh my word. That’s brilliant. You have to have asbestos fingers. Actually, if you want to grab that bowl there. Yes. Just chuck a couple of them in there, that’ll be fine. So I drop them in the… Just pour them in. Really? Yeah. A team of bellowers would take it in turns to keep the fire going and the temperature rising for the next 3 hours. Back in trench 1, James is pretty convinced that the ditch is deep enough to be a banjo ditch. So, you’ve got the bottom. Hi John, I have got the bottom yeah. And definitely banjo ditch? I think so, yeah, based on the geophys it looks, looks that way. It is pretty clear, and as you say if we go back that way a bit, that’s what I’m seeing as the edge of the banjo, and there should be another ditch going out that way. It would be nice to see the junction with the ditch that comes under the spoil heap, and joins with the banjo. So you’re going to put another section there? We will, yeah. We’ll try and capture that relationship just over here if we can. Okay, I’ll leave you to it. Brilliant. So we’re starting to define the shape of the ditch around the enclosure. A little details are emerging to help us work out what went on inside it. Ah, hello. I’m glad you came back. So you know I said I’d be really happy if I found some carbonised grain, well, next soil sample that went in, which actually came from the area around where the original skeletons were found – it’s in that area and there’s a kiln nearby – but I’ve got grain. And um… yeah. I’m really really really happy. Very, very well preserved. Clues like this from archaeology are really important to understanding how the Durotriges lived, because the only documentary evidence was written by the Romans. What was distinctive about them? They’d certainly got um a distinctive type of burial. We don’t get many burials for the rest of Iron Age Britain, but the Durotriges bury their dead, uh, in in crouch positions. So the legs are drawn up to towards the chin in like a foetal position, often in groups of about 20 or 30 within a cemetery. Their settlements, you get little polygonal uh style um ditches around individual roundhouses, so a very scattered population, uh and their their pottery types are also very um um distinct in that we get the black-burnished ware style. So archaeologically speaking, they’re very easy to identify but, of course, we don’t know anything about what they thought about themselves, or, you know, anything about their religion or or society. But but, we do actually know something about them because we have, here are two burials and they were small, weren’t they, I mean was that typical, I mean? Stature-wise we, we, yeah, we tend to be seeing people who are, compared to modern day humans, actually quite quite small. They’re sort of, we’re talking about, sort of the 5 foot um tall area, so quite small. I think a lot of it is due firstly to their diet: they’re eating a heck of a lot of meat and there’s no real vegetables in their diet as well. We also know that they’re living in very sort of smoky environments, so as far as their health goes we again, compared to a modern population, they they are not very well. The individuals that we get recovered from burials aren’t living to a great age, so most are dying in their twenties um we we get- Dying in their twenties? I think if you’re getting to your mid-30s as a Durotrigian, you’re doing extremely well. Wow, wow. And so they’re diminutive, they’ve got these meat diets, are they having any fun? I mean it doesn’t sound… Well, um, I mean, I guess as as farming communities, herding communities, there’s probably not a lot of time for fun. We don’t find a lot in the way of of portable artwork. We don’t find a lot in the way of of of any kind of of things which I guess you could say today is to do with recreation, so, uh, life is probably quite short and quite hard. This description of Iron Age life matches what we’re finding in the trenches where there are indications of small industries, such as meat and pottery production. Yeah, so I’m not sure if this is two separate features, or one large rectangular. We’re not seeing the roundhouses where they lived, but we might have discovered a cemetery where they were buried. If the features Jackie and Harry are working on are graves. Yeah, it’s quite a lot of bits of… Fragments, isn’t it? Fragments of redeposited animal bone in here, yeah. It could be that it’s gone in as a as a joint, rather than disarticulated bits of bone if you see what I mean, so I’m going to just carefully go around that. So we’ve got bits of upper limb probably of, we think, pig. So we’ve got bits of radius and bits of ulna, and that looks like a bit of the scapula, the shoulder joint, so. But it’s well preserved so. So much for this being a very acid soil. The soil in these parts is generally acidic, sandy soil and terrible for bone survival, so Naomi has been testing the pH levels of the soil samples to look for an explanation. Let’s have a little look. So as you can see, somewhere between a six and a seven, which is conducive to preserving bone and carbonised grain. A working theory is that all this rich, dark earth has neutralised the acidic soil and preserved the bones, and maybe other grave cuts have not survived because they were cut into more acidic soils lower down. But, although we’re still not certain that there was a cemetery here during the Iron Age, we’re getting more of an idea about the extent of the settlement. The test bits over on the far side there, furthest away from what I think is the epicentre where all the big trenches are and there’s all that geophysics. Trenches further away producing virtually nothing, uh, going down to natural at about 30, 40cm. Virtually no pottery at all I don’t think um. The trenches this side, you can see one or two are still carrying on, they’re going a little bit deeper and they’re producing two or three sherds of, sort of, sandy ware pottery that might be Iron Age, might be Roman, could be Medieval. Yeah. There’s a sense there’s slightly more going on this side, but overall the feeling is very much that the intensive activity you’ve got on the other side is petering out in this field and has petered out by the time you’re at the far side. Yes, so that drop off we’re noticing in the geophysics could well be a real drop off in activity. Absolutely, yes. Fantastic. Now, I can’t help but notice that this test bit looks a bit different. Yes, yes. So we extended it um to here, at which point it started to look a little bit like a grave. Yeah, I can see that. So, we then put that little notch out to see if it carried on, and we can see it doesn’t, um, so we’ve now extended this way to see what’s happening that end, and it seems to be there’s a bit more of it here. So, it’s getting more and more confusing the more of it we dig. So while some of the team work out what’s happening in test pit 1, Carenza is moving the workforce into the excavation field to refine the extent of the settlement. And Stewart’s been wandering the landscape in search of the water source he heard underground yesterday. So this is the small valley that, uh, raises where the, uh, the spring head is. Oh yeah, it’s got bulb grasses growing in it now as well hasn’t it to give it away. Yes, and you can see further down where the wet area is, where the yellow flowers are that that’s the small stream that flows in the winter. Well that, that would be the one on the other side that I could hear actually running, the water running on the other side of the road. It still flows now uh but not above ground. Right. And you have just to dig a few inches in and it’s flowing quite freely. Crikey. I mean it’s- what what strikes me as I come here, is the position of this spring head, in that it’s not only water going that way, this actually is an access route up onto the ridge, isn’t it? Yes, it is. It’s one of the only ones, isn’t it? Overlooking the gap. That’s, that’s amazing isn’t it? That if you want to go up on the ridge, you’re going to have to come up through here as well. As the Cromwellian troops did when they overpowered the castle. Oh right right. Both the access to the ridge and the water must have been important for centuries. Back on site, Hayden’s happy that our furnace has reached a high enough temperature to add the ironstone. You do it first, and then I’ll have a go. You can take over the bellows. Three handfuls. So I’m going to sprinkle that in here, and I’m going to try and put that towards the back of the furnace where we’re putting air in ’cause it’ll be hotter over here. Okay so that’s one, two, three. And then… grab some charcoal as well. So the the idea is that the reducing atmosphere in the chimney up here will reduce it and then down here it fuses, so mixing it in in sort of layers as it goes down. Do you want me to take over? Yes please. Okay, no worries. There you go. Oh, that is exhausting. I know. You’ll be able to do CPR for hours after this. Yes. Oh, see, your rhythm is much better. You’re much more, you know, obviously more than 10 minutes experience really helps. It does. And now grab the iron ore. Yep. And do about, sort of, three or four kind of fistfuls. Probably the rest of that that bucket to be fair, and just sprinkle that over the top there. Lovely. And this will be us for the next, uh, couple of hours hopefully. Right. Almost ’til it gets dark. Yeah. Well that would be pretty spectacular. Yeah yeah. And right on cue, Chris has found evidence of some kind of metal working in trench five. Actually, it’s a good job you’ve just come over, just pulled out a couple of bits of slag from the, the top of this ditch. What have we got? Well, you’ve got some, well this is metallurgical slag without question, um, the density alone tells you that. um I can’t tell without looking at it in a bit more detail if it’s smithing or smelting, but either way it means we’ve got metallurgical production on site, metallurgical activity, be that forging, be that smithing or be that making metal from ore, which is fantastic. Um, just need a little bit more of it, Chris, if that’s right? Yeah, no worries. So where are you Chris? We’ve got this is, is the ditch that you’re digging there? Yeah, we’re standing in that ditch there. Ah, okay, brilliant, and and is the rest of the trench showing us what we were expecting to see? More or less. We’ve got the ditches where we’re expecting to see them, but we have got a few added extras as you’d expect. What sort of things? So, so we’ve got down there, we’ve got some clay footings. Okay, oh just, just where they’re digging at the moment? Yes. Okay, let’s have a look. We’ve got bits of this clay in some of the other trenches, haven’t we? Early on we were thinking kiln, kiln, kiln, but that doesn’t look particularly baked, does it? Can I step in Chris, is it okay? Of course. Is it soft or..? Yes it’s it’s a real difference. So up in trench 1 we’ve obviously got that very highly fired, very cooked clay structure, which we’re calling a kiln – and I think it almost certainly is a kiln – but this isn’t cooked, this is still soft, you could you could pot with this if you wanted to, so it’s very different. And it’s just like the lump we’ve got in Matt’s trench, in trench 3 isn’t it? Yeah, so I wonder if it’s being used as a foundation material or some sort of footing or a pad to build something else on. Have you, have you picked up all the ditches yet, do you think? We we think so, it’s um, it’s a little bit murky in the trench at the moment, but we think we we were in the right places on them, yeah. Okay, and is this sort of in the middle of one? So so, I would be standing in a ditch here. Okay, with a return behind Derek. Yes, yeah. So it’s kind of in the middle of, if if we are looking at workshops, it’s kind of in the middle of this node of activity. I think we just need to clean it up and understand it a bit more, don’t we? I think so, yeah. But, great trench, hey Derek. I am quite excited about this one. Well done Chris. It’s possible that there may have been some Roman workshops in this area of the field if the dates of the finds are to be believed. Let’s take a look. Oh, it’s another coin, lovely. Not quite as nice as that denarius you found earlier, though, is it? I can see a head on it I’m thinking possibly a radiate crown there making it as a third-century, 260s, 270s, but it’s not easy to identify. [Music] In trench 4, there are two more of these baked clay deposits which Miles thinks could be related to kilns. That’s got an edge to it, so I think that might be, uh, it has to be a kiln. That really hasn’t, so either that’s baked clay in a feature, or it’s the remains of perhaps a kiln or a furnace, or something that’s been dismantled, or it’s just general burning activity. The wall line that Miles picked up in the trench earlier is proving harder to pin down than he hoped. This, I mean this… We thought it was a wall, it’s not. It’s got, you see, you’ve got pottery here, we’ve got pot, this you’ve got a handle and it’s a base, so it’s either a lamp holder or it’s some kind of fish dish, but that’s late Roman, that’s late Roman, and it’s pottery in amongst this rubble spread and there’s… Actually, sorry that is a rim. So you’ve got all this… I think this is a rubble dump and it might be it’s, uh, it’s a robbed out foundation line for a wall. So the wall was here, but they’ve taken the stuff out and the pottery and and whatever bits have gone back in here. I just can’t see the edges to it. Sounds about right for this site. Hugely frustrating. Yep. By digging small sections into the features, Miles hopes to identify them quickly, leaving time to investigate some of the other features on John’s geophys. John, do you want to, you fancy, uh, practicing moving a wheelbarrow? I’m quite happy to watch you. Look you get hold of those handles at either end, mate, it’s great. Go on, give it a go. Standing around, getting stiff all day, you see, not doing anything. Watch that hole behind you. Oh yeah, sorry. Where do you want, in here? No, don’t tip it in there pet. You sure? Yeah, look run up there with it. Get a run up it. Run up at it. We’re having to dig through vast amounts of this industrial-looking dark earth in trench 1, and as we do so, more and more Roman or post-Roman post pads are emerging. But we’re not sure what kind of building that they came from. [Music] They’re very high if those are post pads, which they look like, then they’ve- and they’re high in stratigraphy, which they obviously are, then the buildings are really high, above everything, aren’t they? Although that pottery, that’s sitting on on that stair, isn’t it? Yeah. It could well be floor. It might, might have been a suspended floor, and then it’s fallen through. Yeah and, and probably was. The question is: were the people that trod on the floor aware of the two women buried nearby, or were they long forgotten, part of an earlier settlement replaced by a later industrial landscape? There’s stuff in the way. Okay. Right so I’m going to give it a- When can I stop doing this? You can stop now if you’d like? At last, we’re ready to see if the experimental furnace has actually produced iron. Okay, nothing. Because we’ve stopped blowing air into the furnace, we’re actually going to open it up and try and get the bloom out because it’s cooling down. Okay. Okay. So we’re going to open the whole thing up. So the, so the slag is too solid to flow, and so we’ve got to whack out the whole thing – my goodness! I know right. Can you feel the heat radiating off that? Yes, absolutely. So don’t get too close. I’m going to try and get that out of there. So that’s all the charcoal that we’ve made. Oh my goodness! I know. Yes, we need fire screens at this point. Stand back a little bit. Do you need more water? Please. If I chuck you that – catch. Oh my God. So, there’s this huge kind of mound in there that basically is slag, and hopefully metal. But it’s pretty big which is good and bad because big might mean we can’t get it out of the furnace so we’d dismantle the furnace to get it out. Right, we might have to get this out later. While Hayden considers how to extract the bloom from the furnace, Derek and Lawrence are rethinking the banjo ditch theory. Obviously we’ve got these Iron Age enclosures as we’ve interpreted, with our main one being here. Question’s as to whether it’s a banjo enclosure or not? But we’re getting answers on that already. It’s not? No, no it’s… I’m going to, I’m just going to nail my flags to the mast here and say that is not a banjo enclosure. Things we’d be looking for: a ditch on the outside, we’d want a nice- this antenna here, we’d want it to return clearly down there, and it’s just not showing up in the archaeology. First and foremost, the ditch is clearly on the inside, we can see that in the trenches. We can see it in this section and we can see it in this section up here, and it doesn’t return in the way we’d expect it to if it was a traditional banjo. So, that was question one and we’ve answered it pretty emphatically then? Yeah, I’d probably agree with Derek on that to be honest. So, one lingering question, an important one: can we actually answer the question of who these two people are, these two women buried. I mean that’s, that’s kind of the elephant in the room, because the things that brought us here were those two burials, and we haven’t found any more, and I was convinced we would find more. And that thing that brought us here originally, that Roman structure, we’ve yet to find that clear Roman structure, and I’m hoping that perhaps we can tick both of those boxes tomorrow. We’ve still got a lot of questions to answer tomorrow, and there’s a storm predicted which has threatened to cut short our time here. So, as evening falls, Hayden’s got the furnace back up and running to try to extract what he hopes is a bloom of iron. Is that it there? That big bit on the right here? Yeah, I think so. Yeah? Try and cut that there, there. Okay, I’ve got something. Take that. Yeah. Here we go. Okay. Oh, there it is, there it is. Right, get that, all that out. Stand back. Okay. See it? Yep. Oh, it’s a big one. Oh bloody hell. There it is. God damn, right. Oh okay. Tell me when. Hit it. That’s it, go on. Okay, right. Happy? Good. Yep, keep going. Oh, there’s iron in there! Squidgy. And twist it. Okay, there you are. One more big hit. Nice. Okay. This one I’m holding. Okay, got it. I think that’s our show. That’s iron. Archaeological evidence suggests that the fate of this furnace was not uncommon. It took two days and a sizeable team to produce a lot of burnt rubble and a very small piece of iron. It’s a window onto the challenges facing Iron Age blacksmiths 2,000 years ago. And I wonder whether they, too, might have wound down after a tough day with some music around a fire. [Music] Join Time Team on Patreon to access exclusive 3D models, master classes, and behind the scenes insights.