A few years ago some geophys was done over some crop marks in that field up there and it produced some of the most tantalising results that we've seen for years. Not only that, but a metal detectorist has found a tiny bit of Bronze Age gold up there and... Lots of pottery has come up, including this 5th century piece.
But this is Cornwall, this is Turkish, and this tiny little bit, believe it or not, is African. So what on earth's going on here? Well, evidence has been found suggesting ancient mariners plied these waters thousands of years ago, bringing in from overseas exotic goods such as wine, silk and papyrus. and taking away local tin and copper. So is there the remotest chance that this is the shadow of an early trading site, the like of which we've never seen on Time Team before?
As usual, we've got just three days to find out. The Atlantic coast in Cornwall is a spectacular and perilous place for a sailor. Notoriously difficult to navigate and littered with treacherous rocks. But in amongst the dangers are sheltered havens like this.
The mouth of the river Camel, a huge tidal inlet that joins the ancient fishing port of Padstow to the sea. And just a couple of hundred meters from the turbulent Atlantic is Lelizik overlooking a beautiful sandy cove. This is so nice it just reminds me of holidays as a kid up on a headland watching the boats coming in and out. And they've probably been coming in and out of an estuary like this for thousands of years because this is an ideal place to live just above the beach south facing you know settlement in this field here. Steve spectacular geophers.
Just amazing GF is Tony and We first became aware of this site as a result of metal detecting activity and the range of Bronze Age and Roman material. A few years later, I did a flight over the area looking for crop marks, and one of the sites that we recorded was this field, and we found a lot of circular features, ring ditches at the top of the field. John, do you think these are houses?
I'm sure some of them must be. I mean, look at the detail. You can actually see what appears to be a central hearth within that particular structure. I like it.
I'm sure we're seeing lots of houses across the field. But they didn't get a town planner in, did they? No, but you wouldn't expect that at that date. If this is late prehistoric, you know, they didn't build things on grids and layouts then. It's much more random and haphazard how they're doing it.
We not only need to find out why this is this shape and how old it is, but what it was doing here at all, what its function was. Well, that's right, and is it something to do with a trading port or something like that in the estuary? So, with the old geophys as our guide, we're going to start our investigation by opening two trenches, one in each of the fields that overlooks the beach.
In the lower field, nearest the cove, Matt and Rakshar are putting a trench in over a large geophys anomaly, which doesn't much look like the traditional roundhouses in the other field. Could it be because the archaeology here, as Mick suspects, was linked to ancient trade? Whereas over in the upper field, Phil's investigating what could be an Iron Age roundhouse that wouldn't normally be associated with the types of finds previously discovered on this site.
Finds that include pieces of Bronze Age axe, Roman coins, and of course the intriguing exotic 5th and 6th century pottery from overseas. In fact, we could be looking at a thousand years of activity. But unfortunately most of this material has been found lying about on the ground and that means the archaeologists can't use it to date anything here.
So until we uncover our own finds buried safely in our own archaeology, we can only make an educated guess at the date of the settlement. Well, I think they could be Bronze Age houses. I mean, they're sort of 8 to 12 metres diameter.
That's spot on for Bronze Age. And then I suspect they probably continue into the Iron Age. But don't forget, down here we're not in a particularly Romanised part of the country. We shouldn't assume that in the Roman period they go on to rectangular buildings.
Villas, that sort of thing. There's very little of that in Cornwall. There's no reason why this can't go on into the Roman period, or even into the post-Roman period, and still be using roundhouses. It could be a very long period.
One thing that fascinates me about this geophys is that they seem to have really thick walls round these houses. What I think you've got is an outer stone face, a core of rubbish, midden material, and then another inner stone core. So it's a composite wall. Does cavity rubbish insulation make any sense to you, Francis?
Well, sort of sense, Tony, yeah. I think the main thing is you've got structure. You may have finds actually on the floor in the central harbs, but what that geophys tells me is that those houses are very understated. Well, we've dug prehistoric roundhouses before on Time Team.
And circles like this do suggest the remains of a mud or stone house, roofed with thatch or turf. It might also be surrounded by a ditch to drain away the rainwater, while inside there's normally a hearth for the family fire. But although archaeologically they're fairly easy to uncover, it's much more difficult to date a prehistoric house.
What you need are finds. Well, it's very corroded. The edges are all really rough.
This looks suspiciously like a coin. Normally the perfect start for a time team dig. Except there weren't coins like this around in the Iron Age. And within minutes Matt's trench produces another surprise.
Slag. We did actually find some of this in the topsoil and it was quite a big hefty piece. Yeah it's from the top of that silks underneath all this subsoil stuff.
Pieces of slag imply evidence of industrial activity but as yet we have no date. Carl, have a look at this. This is the first find of any significance that's come out of that trench. It's pretty manky. I don't know if you'll be able to date it at all.
From its shape, it's obviously a coin. Yeah, I was there. It's a coin.
This is a Roman coin, which is nice to see because several others have been found in the field by the metal detectorists. Why do you say that's Roman? From its shape, it's been hammered by using a hand hammer.
And also... probably go even a bit further and say that it's most likely from the emperor hadrian who was around about the second century a.d and it's hadrian because from the shape of the actual head the communist coin which has that sort of shape on it is of hadrian so confident and in front of a television camera that's experience look at that how many of you could tell that that was a coin of the emperor hadrian So our first piece of dating material puts Matt's trench firmly into the Roman period, possibly centuries after our potential prehistoric settlement in the other field. That is, if we can find it, because at the moment all we've got in Phil's trench are a series of strange stone features, which Phil is convinced are natural.
Bridge, however, is more optimistic and believes they could be remains of a structure. John is simply bemused and confused. Well, I mean, you've definitely got a good edge swinging round there.
Back in the lower field, Matt's on a roll. Um, pottery, prehistoric. It's Cornish, what we call native courseware. I wouldn't like to say whether it was Iron Age or Roman, because it doesn't change a great deal, but it's that kind of period. And that's just out of the edge here, where this natural's cut away into this silt stuff, isn't it?
So it's stratified among this material. It's good dating evidence. Yeah, I think...
Here's the second one. That's a rim. There you go.
Yeah, it looks like the base of a straight-sided jar. Again, native courseware. And look at the state of the pot.
It's obviously been used for cooking. Yeah, really burnt. So that's great. More intriguing finds, but no evidence yet that Matt's archaeology has got anything to do with Phil's possible settlement.
And in spite of Matt's finds, I'm also starting to worry... about Mick's hunch that this was an ancient trading site, even if at first glance it seems to be in the ideal position. This water is far too shallow to navigate even at high tide.
And that's not all. Stuart believes these cliffs are much the same as 2,000 years ago, and anyone can see that it would have been very tricky mooring ships alongside. So did the exotic overseas pottery really come here by boat?
Stuart's job over the next three days is to find out what links this quiet cove to the civilisations of North Africa and the Middle East. On top of the cliffs, the search for the Iron Age village continues. Phil's still trying to locate a roundhouse, and he's now extended the trench to see if these rock features are indeed part of a structure.
Makes a lot of sense widening the length of it, doesn't it, to get it clearer. Yeah, at the moment we can't actually see the curving arc of the ditch. But although we may be lacking firm evidence of a roundhouse, John's convinced he's found the edge of the village. Yeah, I mean it looks as though we've reached the limits in this direction at any rate of the ring ditches and it's just possible there's a sort of boundary that's coincidental.
Yeah, that's what really interests me John, that boundary ditch, because it then continues further on. But if the boundary ditch is contemporary with those houses then I think that gives us a much better chance of dating the houses than the stuff you'll find inside them. My thought was to put a trench that looks at the interior again a second time. It's a second look. Goes from that possible hearth feature across the ring ditch and also over the boundary, so along that line.
So Francis is opening a new trench in the upper field to see if we can locate another roundhouse and to see if that structure is built up against the boundary ditch. It should also increase our chances of finding some dating evidence. In the lower field, Matt's trench is starting to look like a house. Or so he tells me. And the fines are tantalising.
This is another one of these imported exotics. I don't recognise the specific type, although I do recognise that we've had identical material from Tintagel, which is the known type site here in Cornwall, which is only a few miles up the coast. So where do you think it's imported from?
It's most likely come from Turkey in the 5th or 6th centuries. Right, that's post-Roman. Yes, yes. This is fantastic, our first link to the Mediterranean.
And just as importantly, it looks as if this structure was used by local people from the early Roman period until 200 years after the Romans had left Britain. And that means at the minute there's little to link it to the prehistoric puzzles in the other field, where, in spite of the geophys, Phil's been struggling all day to find anything that looks remotely like an Iron Age roundhouse. Any sign of a hearth?
No, not yet, not yet, but I mean... Granted, he's found ditches that could have been cut away for drainage, but he still hasn't got any finds. In fact, the most Iron Age roundhouse-ish type structure on site seems to be in Matt's much later Roman and Beyond Trench. The geophysics showed this huge ring in this field here, and this is the ring here, it's this ditch.
Ah, so that is actually that. Yeah, it goes all the way around like that. So now I'm walking into the house and you can see that... The saw is kind of going this dark grey colour, especially round here. That's because there's so much charcoal in here.
And we found some burnt animal bone up there as well, so there's just rubbish all over the floor, really. Is this the wall on the other side? Ah, now, according to the geophysics...
The ditch there, the wall ditch, should go round behind you and should be at the other end of the trench there. So this should be about the centre of the house. So is this the hearth that's producing all the charcoal and burnt material?
Yeah, it looks like it. Right. You've got fines in the fines tray.
Yep, we've got some great stuff out of here. And there's another bit down there? Yep, there's another bit in situ down there, you can see.
That's a bit of amphora. So these are these big wine or oil storage jars, and this is coming from the East Mediterranean then? Yep, that's post-Roman as well, that's 5th or 6th century. Wow, cool.
If this isn't my outside wall, where is the other outside wall? Well, according to the geophysics, it should be right about the other end of the trench there. Right here somewhere? Yep.
Raksha, can you stand up for a sec? And the other wall is where Raksha is. If that's right, it's a heck of a big building, Mick. It's a huge building, especially if it's producing...
Material like this, this post-Roman stuff, that's really exciting. Why would it be so significant if it was that sort of date? Because we don't get structures that are sort of post-Roman very often, particularly with the finds associated with them.
And this is the so-called Dark Ages because we don't know very much about it. Usually because we can't tell her of that period because we haven't got the finds to go with them. So if this is 5th or 6th century, then this could actually be illuminating the Dark Ages, which isn't a bad job for tomorrow, is it?
Day two in our investigation of an ancient settlement in Cornwall that we think may have been involved with sea trading. We've had some striking possibly trade related finds in Matt's trench but so far nothing to really prove this place was a port. And in spite of Phil's best efforts and Francis digging a new trench we just can't seem to find the village promised by the cracking geophys in the upper field. Yesterday evening we got really excited about the trench on the far side of that hedge because we think we may have a very rare 5th or 6th century A.D.
roundhouse. Over here, we're about 1,000 years earlier. So, Francis, should I be as excited about this trench? Of course you should, Tony.
We've got what looks like it's the remains of an Iron Age floor in situ. and then right in the middle of them here, you've got this burnt earth, and that, I think, is the central hearth. And then just to one side of it, we've got that, that piece of pottery.
That's good quality stuff, isn't it? Yeah, I think that's probably 2nd century BC, something like that, later Iron Age. But over here, we've got the ditch that went round the outside of the house, so the wall would have been about here.
And then over here, it gets better, we've got another ditch, and that's the ditch that went outside the house, but then around all the houses in the settlement. So this is the enclosure ditch around the outside. So when we get the relationship of this ditch to that ditch to the house, we've actually potentially got the phasing of the settlement. Mick, what's the significance about the fact that we've got an Iron Age hut here hundreds of years before the Romans arrived, and over the other side of the hedge we've got a post-Roman hut? Well, in a way, this is what we expected to find when we saw all those crop marks and that geophysical.
I think we all said late prehistoric Bronze Age or Iron Age. So this is really what we expected it to be. We didn't expect to get anything like that.
But of course, that might turn out to have Iron Age stuff underneath it, and this might still produce some post-Roman stuff. So it's probably all part of the same settlement. Although Mick sounds confident, the fact is the dating evidence so far suggests there's a gap of at least a couple of hundred years between the archaeology in the two fields.
So we could be looking at an entirely different settlement here in the lower field. But it's a good one. Matt and Rakshar have already found evidence of industry, trade, and most intriguingly, what could be a rare post-Roman roundhouse. But to be sure, they need to find an entrance.
Two potential ones are... Here, aren't they? Or possibly there? Yeah, that looks quite good actually, doesn't it?
If we go there, we'll get a lot. The star find in Matt's trench yesterday was this small piece of Turkish pottery that had somehow travelled hundreds, even thousands of miles from the Mediterranean ports to Cornwall in the 5th or 6th century. And it's this evidence, along with the pieces of African pot that have already been found, that lead archaeologists to believe our cove could once have been visited by ships from all over southern Europe.
The problem for me is it seems an odd place to put a harbour. Talk to local fishermen who've plied these waters all their lives and they'll tell you that this quiet stretch of the Cornish coast is deceptively dangerous. You've got a big swell coming in that turns the boats over. They get there and they get smashed up. Is there a way?
through that local people know or do you just have to leave it alone? Only on the high water. The local boats will go in any time after about three hours, three hours or four hours flood.
Then they can go in and they take their time. They come across the bar and go across them. It would have been.
It would have been incredibly difficult a couple of thousand years ago, wouldn't it, if you were coming in from Turkey or Africa somewhere and you found this. That was where the sailing ships went aground, you see, because they would come up the channel with like a south-west breeze, gale of wind we'll say, and as soon as they got in here the south-west wind was coming out the river at them. And that's how they all foundered on the shore over there. They wouldn't know what had hit them, would they? And a quick look at the modern navigation.
This map would seem to confirm that this is not an ideal place for a port. This is the modern map, and our site is just in there, and you can see immediately how sheltered it is around the back of this headland here. You've got the full force of the Atlantic coming up here, but if you come around here, it's perfectly sheltered. This green area is all sands, which you wouldn't really want to bring a boat over. The main channel of the camel is out in the middle now, going off down the estuary, down up towards Padster.
But now that Stuart's got his hands on the earliest admiralty charts for the cove, he's beginning to think that a harbour here wouldn't be total madness, thanks to the constantly shifting sands. The area in the middle of channel is completely blocked off with these sandbanks up here. The modern channel cuts right through that sandbank there and this is called, oh crikey, it's called the Doom Bar. I think that probably tells you what it's spelt for the navigators there. If we go back a little bit further, this is 1634, a little bit more stylized but our site is in this area here.
And it's showing the sea coming up into the bay, Harbour Cove. Oh, and a little boat. I think that might be the cartographer's way of saying, here be harbour sort of thing.
So there seems to be a lot of evidence going back to the 17th century that there is a possibility that water comes right up into this bay and it could function as a harbour. So I think these charts and the whole story of the navigation around this could help us work out whether this was actually a trading centre and would have functioned as a mill. port actually. So with a renewed confidence in our potential port, geophys go back into the lower field to look for any signs of occupation or activity in between our dark age house and the beach. While Matt is continuing to search for the other side of this massive round building and hopefully a doorway.
Down on the beach, Stuart's about to test his theory that there was once enough deep water here to allow ships to reach an ancient harbour. I just love the high-tech approach of getting a large lump of metal and shoving it in the ground. Oh, Sam! If they can tell how deep the channel was in ancient times, then we should be able to work out how big a boat could have sailed here thousands of years ago.
Got some lovely bits of pottery coming up now, Carl. Over in the Iron Age settlement, it looks like Phil's made the breakthrough he's been hoping for. The confusing strips of rock are beginning to reveal a recognisable shape and there's at last some dateable pottery from the trench.
Well that's fantastic. This is the first distinctive Iron Age shirt I've seen on the site. I can tell that because it's very upright in nature whereas the Roman ones are much more folded over.
Probably sort of... late 3rd, early 2nd century BC. So there's absolutely no doubt this could not be into the Roman period. No, this is definitely Iron Age from the upright nature of the rim.
I mean, the thing that strikes me is that that shirt and the others with it are so big and in such good condition they can only have come from this building. Absolutely. It would seem Phil's now confident enough to say that there is a building in his trench and it's roughly the same date as Francis's roundhouse.
The trouble for me with a trench like this is all I can see are these great stripes of natural rock with this gritty stuff in between, and then down here, a great tumble of stuff. It's hard to imagine that anyone ever actually lived here. It just all looks so bleak until you come up with something like this, which Phil just found, and it's so crisp. It could have been made 25, 50 years ago.
But Phil... This is actually Iron Age isn't it? Oh most certainly it is. I mean we found it with all the Iron Age pottery.
It's a spindle whorl. It's a natural stone with a perfect hole just drilled right the way through it. And they would have used it to spin their yarn.
I mean what you have is you have a stick coming through there and you attach the wool to the top. And you literally drop it and at the same time you spin it. And this weight allows the momentum of the spindle whorl to keep going so you can... tease out your yarn. Do you get the same sense of relief as I do, that at last we've come up with something that belonged to a tangible human being who was living in the landscape?
Well, that's right. I mean, it would have been presumably a woman who would have... We've actually been making wool, or taking the wool to make yarn for garments. And although we haven't got the piece of stick, and although we haven't got the yarn, we haven't got the woolen garments, we know they existed simply because we got this.
But as one archaeological door opens, another slams in your face. We've gained an extra roundhouse in Phil's Trench. But Francis seems to have lost the settlement ditch he told me was right here. Yes, well, that's what we thought this morning.
But I now think that it's the ditch that goes all the way around a house. But you said that ran round the whole Iron Age roundhouse, that ditch, this one, ran around the whole settlement. Yes.
The problem has been that the ditch that went all the way around the house isn't there. So you weren't quite 100% right? No, I was 100% wrong. So what is this? Well look, here's your outer ditch for your house.
Yeah. Okay? Then the wall would have been about here. Ah.
And then here is the centre of the house. And right in the centre, look, we have a fantastically good hearth. That is gorgeous. Isn't it?
Lined with stone and then with all this burning here. And it's cut into a floor. And so this is certainly...
the level where people actually walk so that's very important and it's in a sort of oval feature that might just be the filling of a grave with a crouched burial in it because on iron age sites sometimes they placed halves on top of ancestral graves we may have lost one of our targets but it looks like we might have cracked what's going on in this top field or at least some of what's going on in this top field. Mick, we've got an Iron Age roundhouse in that trench there. Yep.
We've got an Iron Age roundhouse in that trench there. Yeah. Are you happy to say that these are all likely to be Iron Age roundhouses? I think that's the reasonable conclusion for that. What we don't know, though, of course, is what these linear things are that run round the site.
What do you think they might be? Well, I think they're probably field boundaries going with early fields. I mean, they're probably the ditch or the bank.
that goes with the fuel band, but we don't know what date they are. They could be earlier than the Iron Age, it could take us back into the Bronze Age, or indeed they could be later than the Iron Age. I think tomorrow we've got to try and find that out. Henry's now reached 2.5 metres below modern levels and deeper than the old charts show. The sand has turned to a grey, silty mud that could be the surface of our ancient channel.
This all looks very promising, so we're starting to try and work out what sort of ship could have made its way into this cove. We're also building up a more detailed profile of when and from where the more exotic finds on this site first arrived here. The pottery, in fact, is extremely helpful for dating what's going on in this trench. This pottery is from the 5th and...
the 6th centuries and what's very interesting is that the pottery is coming from the Mediterranean and some of it's coming from the eastern Mediterranean. Anthea Harris is a Byzantine expert. That's the period after the Roman Empire crumbled to you and I. The theory that this little cove had a trading link with the Middle East is backed up by the finds made in Matt's trench, such as the Roman coins and Turkish pottery. But I'm not clear what sort of building Matt's digging.
Hang on, if this is the outside ditch, where's the outside wall of the hut? The wall is actually there on top of that slaty natural, then you've got the tumbled stone. But yesterday we thought the outside wall was there. So now the house is about two-thirds the size it was yesterday. Well, it's more like half the size actually.
Oh, it's so unfair. Yesterday I'm going, oh, this is one of the most important post-Roman houses. that there's ever been discovered it's so big but it's still important because it's still got the post-roman pottery in the top layer so it probably is a post-roman building anything else wrong with it it's not looking really quite as round as it was it's more Rectangular or something?
It's not looking quite as round as it was. That is archaeology speak. Perhaps not round at all but more, I mean it could be rectangular. But we can't be sure of that yet because we're still cleaning it up.
So it does still make sense even though it's much smaller than we thought, the hearth isn't where we thought it was and it's rectangular not round. It might be rectangular. But apart from that nothing's changed.
Well I'm glad we've got that straight. So with just an hour or so to go on day two, We've made significant advances in both fields, but the picture's still elusive. At least some people have been having fun during our trip to the seaside.
While we've been putting our trenches in up there, a couple of the team have been mucking about on the beach. While most people would just write, I love you or hello in the sand, Anthea and Stuart have created an entire... of Europe.
Anthea, we've been talking about our pottery coming from places like Turkey and North Africa, but where exactly? Well, Tony, as you can see, I'm standing in North Africa and this piece of seaweed represents the city of Carthage. And this is the region from which we get African red slipware. But you're right, this is not the only place that we're getting pottery from, from this site. We're actually getting pottery also from the eastern part of the Mediterranean.
Okay. We've got pottery coming out of southwest Turkey, in particular around the Antioch region, and we've got pottery which comes from the Greek islands as well. And we think that what we may be seeing therefore is evidence of shipping coming directly from the east and possibly the city of Constantinople going through the Mediterranean and up the Atlantic coast to Cornwall. But Stuart, look behind you. That's the mouth of the River Camel.
Do we really think that 2,000 years ago, ships would have been able to sail through here and avoid all this sand in order to land by the side of our little site? It would. Evidence is increasing. towards that effect we've got the vessels coming up the Atlantic and coming into the mouth of the estuary here and we know those vessels are about 13 15 foot deep in the water when they're laden and the entry to the channel out there is about 20 foot deep so it's increasingly like that this whole Bay could have functioned as a deep water port for those vessels okay he's convinced me but we still have a lot of work to do to reveal the full story of this site To start with, we don't know if the archaeology in the two fields we're digging is even part of the same village, or how long there was a settlement here. While we'll be looking for Bronze Age farmers in this field, over here we'll be continuing our hunt for the Dark Age traders.
The house itself is proving pretty difficult to sort out, but hopefully we'll finish that tomorrow. In the meantime, look at this geophys, which is between where the house is. and this curve where the harbour would have once been. What's going on here?
Is this industry? Is it commerce? Is it an early Rick Stein fish restaurant?
We'll find out tomorrow. Beginning of day three here at our Cornish coastal site near Padstow and in prehistoric times we reckon there was a port all the way around here. We've certainly found Iron Age roundhouses up on the headland there and a mysterious structure from the time just after the Romans left Britain.
But last night John produced this really amazing bit of geophys, a bit dramatic for the end of day two isn't it John? It's pretty good, I mean the thing is these results are so different to the sort of roundhouse responses. These look like small-scale industrial activities, sort of workshops, maybe metalworking, boat building. If our port is down here and our post-Roman building is here and this is between, then that's a really interesting idea because that could be post-Roman in date, and if it is, that would be exciting.
If we're right, this is the prime location overlooking the ancient harbour, the sort of place where foreign traders would have come ashore... met the locals and exchanged their wares for Cornish goods such as tin and copper. We've already uncovered some evidence of this trade in Matt's trench, as well as a small and not terribly round house.
We haven't, though, been able to work out how this building fitted into the port. But we've all got high hopes for Phil's new trench, albeit for different reasons. Mick believes... this is just the right place for a trading post. Whereas John Giafiz has put his money on something like a workshop.
Either way, if we're lucky, we should get more information about where our ancient traders were from and when they visited. Oh, is that Sabian? Well, I think it is, except that it's so badly decayed. All the really bright red has worn off.
But look, it's got this sort of spirally pattern going round there and round there. It's very abraded. Well, it is. That is. But at least it's Good Roman.
But at this stage, it's impossible to tell if a Good Roman was actually here. Over in the other field we have a whole prehistoric village to deal with and Francis is now looking for signs of the first settlers possibly from the Bronze Age. Keep going down in. If Francis does uncover a prehistoric trackway it could push the date of our site back by another thousand years.
In the Iron Age roundhouses, we've had mixed results. Unfortunately, Tracy can't find any evidence of a burial under the hearth that Francis was talking about yesterday. So, we're going to close this trench down.
But in Phil's old roundhouse trench, Bridge is still coming up with the goods. We've got a small bit of slate that's come up and it's got a deliberate puncture through it and I'm just thinking about whether it's part of roofing. Uh, no.
At least I hope not. because you shouldn't have roof slates for at least a thousand years after the Iron Age. Okay, I've got two other options for you.
How about a weight for thatching or it's associated with fishing? It's a bit light for a thatch weight, but I like the fishing suggestion. because it has actually been sort of napped around the edges. Yes, it has been. So it's been deliberately reduced in size.
But that's really nice because obviously people were using the sea there. They would have been fishing and this is evidence of it. Yes, OK.
Although we haven't any dating evidence to link these roundhouses with the port we're digging... The archaeologists believe they could have been occupied well into the Roman period. Francis, I've put roundhouses, sort of generic roundhouses, on top of where the geophysics showed these ring features, but it looks quite strange, really.
I suspect these houses... would have had a lot more by way of clutter around them. And a picture's emerging of a densely populated settlement overlooking the bay. But we still don't know if it had anything to do with the trading port.
God, this shellman's beginning to come up the trumps. Down in Phil's harbour trench, the fines are coming thick and fast. Unfortunately, almost all of them are food waste, and that's not what John wants to hear.
This is domestic rubbish, so they're living here. But it's not just domestic. I mean, surely this is slaggy sort of stuff or some sort of...
No, this is actually burnt granite. But even so, that's certainly subjected the granite to a heat which is far more than the domestic situation to reduce it to this sort of grey ash. Are you picking up slag or are you picking up burnt granite on your geophysics?
Well, to be honest, I can't differentiate between the two. I mean, they're going to give such similar responses. But the results we've got here suggest that there's more than just burnt granite, there's some industrial process going on.
Can you think about what industrial purposes they might have needed granite specifically for? They'd probably originally have brought the granite to site for use as quernstones for perhaps grinding or crushing the ore but you know after time quernstones become useless for that function so then they may have used it to build a I'm furnace or something out there because granite being an igneous rock would have been more resistant to heat initially. So we want a furnace, Phil.
But you've got it on there. You get digging, you find it. Phil. Woohoo!
I'll get that one I can't. Oh well, that's fantastic. This is definitely... a native Roman ware, certainly late second, early third century.
That's fantastic. We've definitely got the Roman now. It's still not a furnace, though.
Get on with it. Oh, look, a dating. That's what we want.
Cracking, isn't it? Over in Matt's trench, we still can't figure out what this not-very-round house is doing here. Looks like there could be two pieces, actually.
They do. Now that's the same 5th and 6th century stuff that we had from this trench before. This is really high status stuff. I mean it would have had wine or olive oil in it. But I mean you just don't find this sort of thing on most British sites.
And uh... I mean, to find one really fresh shirt, it hasn't been lying around for long. So that's got straight into the ground.
And there's another one. There's another one down here. Let's get that bit out as well. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. They're from the same pot. What's the betting I can get them to join? I'll get you a drink if you can sort it out. Oh, there they go.
You owe me a pint, Matt. Yes, beautiful. I'm glad we've got an experienced archaeologist on this dig. This may be the least convincing pot reconstruction ever, but it's yet more evidence of trade. In this case, oil or wine coming along this coast in the 5th or 6th century.
If we brought a ship laden with cargo all the way from the heart of the Byzantine Empire, it would strongly indicate that the merchants knew their journey would be worth it. So we can only suppose they must have been exchanging their goods for the high-value tin and copper that Cornwall was famous for. But all our dating evidence shows that the merchants were not only exchanging their goods, but also exchanging their goods for the high-value tin and copper that Cornwall was famous for.
shows this lucrative trade stop suddenly in the 6th century. We've got a thousand years of trade, we've got farming, we've got some kind of industry, we've got boats pulling up at the harbour, and then suddenly, bosh, it all disappears. Why?
What went wrong? During the course of the 6th century, it's fairly clear that the Byzantine Empire probably overstretched itself financially. It was trying to retake the West through a huge military campaign in Italy and elsewhere, and although that was successful temporarily, it overstretched the Byzantine Empire financially.
At the same time, they were putting a lot of resources into defending their cities, with fighting on their eastern frontier, as well as building palaces. and churches. So just like the Romans in Rome 200 years previously, they overstretched themselves and had to retract and we were left high and dry. If you want to know more about trade between ancient Britain and the Middle East, visit our website.
Back in the upper field, a jubilant Francis has found his target. I've no idea how he can tell from this rather manky trench, but I know he's going to show me. Well, in some respects, I think this is part of the key to the site. That little depression where Ian's working is, in fact, a ditch. And there's another ditch here, and those two ditches mark the edge of a droveway.
You say a droveway. What are they driving along it? Sheep and cattle, probably.
Now, if you look at where this driveway is going to and from, at that end, over there, it starts just this side of those cottages. Yeah. OK? Now, all the way around this bay... you've got open grazing on the edges of the cliffs and the rocks.
So you probably had thousands of sheep and cattle out there, and then they were taken in, probably in the autumn, along this droveway, and then beyond them, over there, you've got a large animal field or stock enclosure. Now, if you look at the edge of the settlement, it's going round like that, and then like that, in two distinct arcs. And I think that arc is defining the edge of that stockyard, but making it unusable. And similarly, this is defining the edge of an arable field. And those two arable fields are precisely the same size, which is what you need if you're a farmer.
What about the date? Now, that's a tricky one. We know that this droveway is in a terrace that was ground down by animals'hooves over hundreds of years, probably. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if this droveway didn't begin in the Bronze Age, then go on into the Iron Age when it was formalised by the Ditches.
So... For all we know, there could be 1,000 years of settlement on this hillside. Thank you, Francis. That's why this cluster of houses was such a peculiar shape. We simply haven't been able to find any material evidence that links roundhouses to the port complex next door.
But with such a dense collection of sturdy large houses, I can't help but think this village must have benefited from the prosperity a successful port brings. It's a theory that would appear to fit in with Stuart's latest piece of work, because he believes our site was managed by a powerful tribe. You see the headland all the way around here?
The village is in here. And if you look between these two curves, see that line? You've got a bank and a ditch running across.
When you look in the field, you can actually see it. To the right, going across the field. across the track into the next field.
There's a bank and ditch that cuts off that entire headland. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a classic promontory for the Iron Age, where you control the headland and cut it off.
And I think that's why the village here, it's kind of supporting that centre. And indeed, the linearity of that settlement and its direction we've puzzled about, when you look at it, it's on this line here, and it points literally towards where you ought to cross into this tribal or chieftain centre upon the hill. I think its orientation is because it's geared towards that centre up there.
Yeah, but I think it would be a mistake to think that the headland and the political centre up there actually had many people living on it. I think the people were actually... living in our settlement over there.
And because they're on the best agricultural land, whereas up there they'd have been wind blasted and exposed. And I think these people were supporting the headland. Throughout the day in Phil's harbour trench we've been building up a picture of Roman traders.
We've found coins, salmon ware, slag and food waste. But we've been missing a crucial piece of evidence. Until now. These, Tony, are African red slipware sherds, which down here in Cornwall generally mean 5th and 6th century deposits. So that's post-Roman?
Indeed, yes. And where were they found? Well, this is the important thing. Those sherds were found in there. In other words, they are well stratified.
All the other sherds that we've had of that type of pottery have been in the colluvium, the hill wash, so they're totally unstratified. The stratification for them is good. Now that's digging speak for undisturbed archaeology. And it proves that these Byzantine finds in Phil's Trench are contemporary with Matt's finds next door. Although we didn't find any proof to link our two fields, we now believe the whole site probably evolved over many hundreds of years from a Bronze Age farming community into one of the small but bustling late Iron Age trading centres scattered around the Cornish coast, meeting the demands for local commodities as the Roman Empire expanded.
After the Romans disappeared in the 5th century, merchants would have continued to call in occasionally with their exotic goods, until the Byzantine Empire faded several hundred years later. It's lovely, isn't it? The perfect Cornish seaside picture, with fields rolling down to the sea. It's hard to imagine just how busy it must have been in the ancient past, with a thriving settlement trading with ships sailing in from the continent and beyond. And as they came in below that cliff just there, they would have brought with them fancy goods like oil and wine, and new ideas too, perfectly symbolised.
by this find that's come up in the last hour or so. It's a stylus, possibly the earliest evidence of writing ever found in Cornwall, dating from around 200 AD. Maybe it was used to record all those imports. Actually, after three days, I could murder an amphora of wine myself. MUSIC