Meet the Ancestors episode 3
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00:30On this building site near Bristol,
00:32they've discovered a massive stone coffin.
00:38It's been in the earth for centuries.
00:41What's it doing in the middle of nowhere?
00:44And who is inside it?
00:46Getting it out of the ground is going to be a major challenge,
00:50but it's what's under the lid that will really astonish the experts.
01:04The discovery of such an unusual, isolated burial
01:07has brought me to the West Country.
01:10Everywhere you look in the countryside around Bristol,
01:13there seems to be yet another housing development.
01:16But the people who live here won't be the first,
01:19cos something's come up on a site quite close to here
01:22which shows that people have lived here since the Roman times.
01:30The find's been made at Mangotsfield School.
01:33I assume it's closed down now,
01:35otherwise the kids have got a lot to answer for.
01:38The burial's under what used to be the playing field.
01:43I've been invited to help unravel this mystery,
01:46so I've come to join the team of archaeologists
01:49led by an old colleague and friend of mine, Andy Young.
01:52Hello, Andy. Hi, Jimmy.
01:54Making a bit of a habit of this, aren't you?
01:56What have you found this time?
01:58This is a Roman sarcophagus, we believe.
02:00Did you know what you'd found when you first hit it?
02:03Initially, no. Just a lump of limestone.
02:05It could have been part of a piece of masonry or part of a building.
02:10Not until we got in here and somebody cleaned it up
02:13did we realise what we had.
02:15So it is Roman, and it's a sarcophagus.
02:18Mark Corney from Bristol University is a Roman expert.
02:21Can he say when this person was buried?
02:25At the moment, all one can say is that this kind of burial
02:28should belong to the 3rd or 4th century, later Roman.
02:31Right. And can we get any idea
02:33whether it was a pagan or a Christian burial?
02:35Well, given that this is aligned north-east, south-west,
02:38it's far more likely to be a pagan burial than Christian.
02:41I mean, even the early Christian burials in the late Roman period
02:45tend to be east-west aligned,
02:47so I think chances are this person believed in the gods rather than a god.
02:55The developers are eager to start sinking foundations,
02:58so the sarcophagus and its contents
03:00will have to be removed to safety as soon as possible.
03:03It's a job for a civil engineer.
03:06Probably the best way to approach this is to put a couple of beams,
03:10one down each of the sides and just underneath it,
03:13sort of along the length of the thing.
03:15Sort of like rail tracks? Yeah, a couple of rail tracks, effectively.
03:18Clamp the ends of these beams and then we'll bring in some sort of crane
03:21so we can lift the whole unit out in one piece.
03:24You can't get a steel cradle for a sarcophagus off the shelf,
03:27so one's had to be made specially.
03:30It's basically four great big bits of steel
03:32bolted together at the corners with lifting eyes on it.
03:41It's an interesting thought that about 1,500 years ago
03:44there was another group of people digging a hole in this field,
03:48the original hole, to put the sarcophagus in,
03:51and I wonder whether they were looking forward to their lunch break like I am.
04:03Digging out the natural rock underneath the sarcophagus
04:08so that we can get the steel cradle underneath it to lift it,
04:13but it's got to go under quite a long way,
04:16which means undermining it, which is not very easy.
04:23And also potentially risky.
04:26Bloody great crack.
04:30Bloody great crack in the corner.
04:33Oh dear.
04:35I'm afraid it's emergency surgery until I can think of how to...
04:38You haven't got any rope on site?
04:40Yeah, there should be some in the hut, yeah.
04:42Because if we could put some rope around it and use a Spanish windlass method,
04:45that would actually tighten it up and hold it.
04:47Go and see if Abe's got that. There should be some blue nylon rope.
04:51I suspect the rope won't hold this anyway.
04:54Raymond, get the bar.
05:00It's moving in all sorts of directions.
05:03Couldn't see no bar in there.
05:05There's a bar outside.
05:07There's a steel bar. I've just brought a steel bar over.
05:12Some of the cracks that you could see in the sarcophagus originally
05:16have suddenly all started opening up, and it really looks very unstable,
05:20so we've got to stop, try and strap the whole thing together
05:23before carrying on undermining it.
05:26Otherwise I think the whole thing's just going to fall apart.
05:29Have we got another wooden wedge?
05:31Andy's convinced that we'll find a way to hold it together and insert the cradle,
05:35but the heavy stone lid is just helping to force the cracks apart.
05:40We'll survive.
05:43The lid's got to come off.
05:45This isn't as it was planned, taking the lid off now,
05:48but nonetheless it's a really exciting moment,
05:50because soon, I think when this piece comes off,
05:53we're going to get an idea as to whether there's actually anybody inside or not.
06:00I'm just going to take a bit of the loose off to see if there's anything inside.
06:06I don't think I can bear it if there isn't anything in here after all this effort.
06:13What's that?
06:15Good question.
06:17Is that a tooth?
06:19Yeah.
06:21It's a jaw, isn't it?
06:23Is that a jaw?
06:25There's an eye, I think.
06:28Oh, so that's the upper jaw there.
06:32That's right.
06:34I think that's resolved one question anyway.
06:37It does look as if it's occupied.
06:41We now need to think about getting the cradle underneath proper.
06:46Some temporary strapping is all that's keeping the sarcophagus together,
06:49but the weight of the soil inside it is still making the cracks grow.
06:53We need the cradle in there to provide support, and quickly.
06:57It's a very heavy heart rate.
07:10I never thought today was going to be like this.
07:13Yeah, we haven't got two bars.
07:19Argh!
07:27Right, washers.
07:33Well, it's on the cradle.
07:35It's on the cradle, is right, and we can straighten it up a bit tomorrow morning.
07:39I think we've minimised the damage, and it's still worthwhile.
07:43What a day!
07:50It's not over yet.
07:52The sarcophagus is ready for the lift,
07:54but if those cracks have spread right through to the bottom,
07:57then even that massive cradle might not stop a disastrous collapse.
08:01It's going to be a very nervous morning.
08:04So this is where we find out whether your design is going to work, then, doesn't it?
08:08Right.
08:09There we go.
08:11Well, it hasn't fallen to bits yet.
08:15Made it.
08:19No signs of collapse, despite the whole lot weighing in at just over a tonne.
08:23Adam's cradles kept it all in one piece.
08:26Right, corner first.
08:34It's actually gone a lot better than I thought it was going to.
08:37I just imagine the worst possible thing that could happen was the bottom.
08:40It's falling to bits.
08:42I can't believe it.
08:44It's going to be a very nervous morning.
08:46I don't think it's going to go to the bottom.
08:48It's going to be a very nervous morning.
08:50I'm going to to try and get it up to the top,
08:52going to. I just imagined the worst possible thing that could happen was the
08:55bottom would fall out of it and we'd end up with the burial all over the floor
08:58and it would just be a disaster but I think Andy plumbed it so well and it's all
09:03worked tremendously.
09:08After centuries in rural isolation our Roman sarcophagus and its occupant come
09:13to town. It's going to be excavated in a museum warehouse than the old Bristol
09:17docks somewhere with a strong floor. It's such a relief now that the sarcophagus
09:23is safely back in the museum but this is where the next stage of the excitement
09:26starts with the archaeologists start work on it and we find out what's really
09:30inside it. But it's a big job. It's going to take Andy Clarke some time to remove
09:38the best part of half a ton of soil so I think I'll take the opportunity to find
09:42out what the rest of the excavation can tell us. Apart from our lone burial all
09:48that's been found under the playing field are Roman ditches but they do
09:52contain some interesting finds.
10:00I'm hoping that they'll give Mark Corney some clues about the person in the
10:04sarcophagus. You can see a complete range of domestic pottery some of which is
10:09sort of local to this part of Britain. You've got this nice deep
10:15pie dish. There's an oval shaped one here complete with a little handle. There would
10:22have been another handle the other end. But we've also got some other pieces
10:26that give us a bit more insight into people's diet. This is a multarium, a
10:30mixing bowl and you've got these little grits set in it for grinding your food
10:35down and we've even got the spout here for pouring the liquid or pulp out of
10:39the vessel. We've also got evidence of foodstuffs and ancillary materials
10:44coming in from other parts of the Empire. This is part of a very large storage jar
10:50or amphora that contained either wine or olive oil that came from Spain. This
10:55points to these people being quite well off and privileged doesn't it? I mean if
10:59you if they've got wine and you know nice pottery for the table. Yes I think
11:04it does and especially when you look at some of the other material because
11:08you've got these items for instance. Now these are actually pieces of hollow
11:12square bricks. This is for taking the hot air up the walls from the underfloor
11:17heating the hypercaust. It's a flue tile. Where's the building that these came
11:21from? Well obviously outside the area of excavation but there are a lot of
11:24fragments of these pieces which strongly suggest that there's somewhere a fine
11:28building. You'd only find those in a big posh building. A building that's got
11:34heated rooms or a bath. And they found something else in the Roman ditches.
11:40It's been sent to Bradford University. I could appreciate the pottery but this
11:45stuff? I'm told it's very interesting but why? Dr. Gerry McDonnell specializes in
11:52slag, the waste products of metalworking and Gerry has found evidence that at
11:57Mangotsfield they were working iron, copper and lead. Is it unusual to find
12:02three sorts of metals all being worked on the same site altogether? Of this
12:07variety it is. On many Roman sites we find evidence for some sort of iron
12:11working and a little bit of copper alloy working but there aren't many sites that
12:14come to mind where we've got iron smelting, iron smithing, copper alloy
12:19working and lead working. It strikes me that what we're seeing is is an aspect
12:23of this settlement's economy. Under a microscope a rather featureless lump of
12:29lead slag from a Smith's hearth shows an amazing amount of detail. The crystals
12:33with all these beautiful shapes and beautiful colorations have frozen and to
12:37that Smith this was a waste product which they threw away. What we're trying
12:43to work out is what were they doing? The lead is a particular puzzle because it
12:48could have been smelted for a number of reasons. Under his scanning electron
12:52microscope at a magnification of 5,000 times Gerry has spotted little specks of
12:57impurities which the machine shows as peaks of copper and silver. He thinks he
13:01now knows what's going on. If you had a copper alloy brooch that was decorated
13:06with silver and the Smith wanted to recover that silver, if he just melted
13:10that brooch then the silver would just be dissolved in and he wouldn't be able
13:13to get it out. But if he was to put that material in to liquid lead, melt it all
13:20together and then blow air over it, the lead would oxidize out and it would take
13:24away the copper leaving a little prill of silver and that process leaves a
13:28residue called litharge which has some similarities to the material that we've
13:33got here. So is that something, I mean this might be something to do with
13:36jewellery making? Jewellery making is a strong possibility. It's amazing what you can
13:44tell from someone's rubbish but I've been called back to Bristol, there's a
13:48surprise waiting for me in the sarcophagus.
13:54Andy, what's that doing there? It's kind of what I thought when I found it.
14:01I thought we already had a skull up that end. It is unusual isn't it? So now we've
14:07got two skulls and it makes it more of a detective story of trying to find out
14:11what's going on. Obviously a desirable property this sarcophagus wasn't it? Yes, only one previous owner.
14:19Well this really is an incredible discovery. I'm sure when Andy started
14:24digging at what he thought was the foot end of the sarcophagus the last thing he
14:28expected to find was another skull. I think we all thought that it was going
14:32to be quite straightforward but now to be quite honest we haven't got the
14:35foggiest idea what's going to be inside this thing. I was hoping that it would
14:41become clearer as Andy exposed more bones but instead it just gets stranger.
14:46There appears to be one complete skeleton laid out on the bottom of the
14:49sarcophagus and then there's the extra skull and yet more bones. Is there a
14:54second whole skeleton in here? Apart from the bones there's nothing else except
14:59loads of rusty iron nails down by the feet. I think it's another job for Mark
15:04Corney to sort out. Andy's found four separate feet down this end of the
15:09sarcophagus and all around this area as well there's loads of little nails. Now
15:13are they bits of coffin? No, they're hobnails. Off boots? No, not from boots, from
15:21sandals. Very thick-soled leather sandals and if you actually look
15:26carefully at some of these there appears to be mineralised leather still
15:30adhering to the studs. So it's quite thick-soled. Yeah and you often find
15:36them in graves like this, often down at the lower end where the feet are.
15:40Sometimes perhaps the bodies actually had the sandals on the feet, other times
15:45they're just placed carefully at the lower end. I mean I thought that they
15:49might have been part of a you know wooden lining or something like that.
15:52No, no, no, they're footwear. Yeah, they're footwear. I mean some people think that they may be
15:56symbolic of the long journey to the afterworld. Yeah. So you're equipped for
16:01this long walk. Special heavy-duty ones. Exactly, exactly.
16:061,600 years ago those rusty little bits of iron began as shiny hobnails.
16:16Mark Beebe turns out hundreds of pairs of period shoes each year from his small
16:20workshop in Leeds and he's going to make a pair for us, hobnails and all.
16:36Roman sandals turn out to be quite sophisticated footwear, more like a
16:39sturdy shoe in fact. But what surprised me is that there's no difference between
16:44his and hers or left and right. They're all made just the same.
16:51Okay, the glue isn't entirely correct but Mark wasn't prepared to boil up a load of hooves just for us.
17:06Hammering the hobnails against the iron last turns their points over and the
17:10nail grips the layers of leather tightly together.
17:15The pattern of hobnails on the sole, very decorative as well as practical, is based on a complete
17:204th century shoe from London which is now in the British Museum.
17:25And there we are sir. Finished. Great. One pair of 4th century Roman shoes.
17:32It's a beautiful pattern isn't it but, oh I see, this is where they've just bent over inside,
17:39where they've hit the last and just, and just curled over.
17:44These sandals must have played havoc with the mosaic floor.
17:51With all the bones exposed it's clear that what we've got is unique.
17:54There are two burials in the one sarcophagus, the first time this has ever
17:59been seen in Roman Britain, and it's also clear that these two people weren't buried at the same time.
18:05Someone was put in the sarcophagus and left long enough to become a skeleton.
18:09When it was opened up all the bones from the knees upwards were taken out.
18:14A second body was then put in and the removed bones replaced but in a very odd way.
18:19The skull and the pelvis were placed on the legs of the new body,
18:23the thigh bones laid across its waist and neck and the arm bones by its side.
18:29This arrangement of bones must have had great meaning to those who carried out the second burial.
18:34It's a meaning that's lost to us but perhaps the bones have other stories to tell.
18:40With the sarcophagus empty the crack that caused so much panic is now clearly visible
18:45and stretches from one end to the other. It's quite astonishing that it survived the lift.
18:54Both skeletons have come to the Bristol Royal Infirmary.
18:57Rheumatologist Dr Geri Barber studies ancient skeletons in her research into the causes and
19:02origins of disease. First Geri's going to tell me about the newcomer to the sarcophagus,
19:07the most complete skeleton. This is actually the skeleton of a male, we've worked that out now.
19:13Measuring the long bones we worked out that the height of this individual was about five foot nine,
19:17175 centimetres in metric terms, which is well within the normal range for a Roman
19:23population. The average male height was about five seven, five eight. So a little bit taller.
19:28Slightly taller than normal yes but nothing surprising. Have you got any idea how old he was?
19:34There are two main ways that we would try and age this skeleton. One is looking at changes in the
19:38pelvis and also the way the teeth wear down as you get older, your teeth start to wear. But
19:44unfortunately this person doesn't have many teeth and he's lost a lot during life. As you can see
19:49here all this, the sockets here have all fused up but the teeth he has got are actually quite worn.
19:55This person was at least 35 to 45 before those teeth fell out. So what you're going to say is
20:01that he's more than more than 45? Yes about 45 or over. Is he showing any other signs of disease?
20:08Well we do have evidence for arthritis on the spine which although can happen in younger people
20:13does tend to happen in the older population. What about the other skeleton in the sarcophagus?
20:19If you actually look at the two skeletons together one of the most striking differences is the size.
20:23If I bring over the arm bone of the first skeleton we looked at and compare it to the arm bone of
20:29this skeleton you can see they're very striking. There's quite a difference in size isn't there?
20:33And this individual is female and she was probably about 4 foot 11. So that's quite small then.
20:39Well 4 foot 11 again it's slightly smaller than average but it is still
20:44completely with an acceptable means for these skeletons. I got the impression from looking at
20:50the bits that I saw before that she must be terribly elderly. Because the skull is actually
20:54broken we are able to use a new technique that we've been devising here in Bristol
20:58and what we've actually found is by looking on the inside surface of a broken skull
21:04we can actually see little pits on the inside. Like that one there? Yeah just like that one there.
21:10And these indentations are caused by vessels in the skull growing upwards and as you get older
21:15you get one about every five years. And unlike the other techniques the tooth attrition technique
21:20we're looking at things wearing down and falling apart. This is a technique that increases as you
21:25get older. So how old is this person on that basis? On that basis this person would be about 50 years old.
21:31Yes.
21:35I assume that this couple must have been related in some way. But how? Man and wife?
21:41Possible given their ages when they died. Or mother and son? Remember she died first.
21:47We may never know but we may be able to find out where they came from.
21:51At this time the Roman Empire stretched from North Africa to Hadrian's War
21:55and the couple in the sarcophagus could have come from almost anywhere.
22:01At Sheffield University they think that the answer lies deep in the enamel of the teeth.
22:10Everyone's teeth contain small quantities of lead from the environment where they grew up.
22:18Thin slices are cut from the couple's teeth and put under a high intensity laser beam.
22:22The laser vaporises a section across the slice and analysing the vapour reveals minute traces
22:28of lead isotopes within the enamel. These give the signature for the geological origin of the lead.
22:34We believe that that's the lead that was actually ingested by the person as part of their diet
22:40during their childhood and we're hoping that the isotopic composition of this lead
22:48will tell us where that lead actually comes from and therefore perhaps about where the person
22:53actually originated. So you might be able to tell whether this person was
22:57a Roman or whether they were born in Britain? We hope so, yes.
23:02The lead isotopes reveal that neither person actually came from Rome
23:06or anywhere else in mainland Europe. In fact they both grew up in the Bristol area.
23:12So either they were Romanised Britons or perhaps the descendants of Roman settlers.
23:17But what's most surprising is the sheer amount of lead in their teeth.
23:20The man's contained levels 10 times greater than the average person in Britain today.
23:25Maybe the result of all that lead smelting on the site.
23:31We would have liked to know what both people looked like but only the man's skull is complete
23:35enough to provide clear evidence that the man's skull was actually a Roman.
23:38Only the man's skull is complete enough to provide clues.
23:42Facial reconstruction expert Dr Robin Richards is now going to start to rebuild his face.
23:48What have you done to him? Looks a bit alarming. Well we've had to do some reconstruction work
23:52to fill in the gaps and put the teeth back in place so that it now looks reasonably like it
23:58did when he died rather than in pieces. And you need to do this for the laser,
24:02do you, for the scanning? We need a reasonably accurate contour
24:05over all of the bony surfaces of the face. At University College London,
24:11the contours of the skull are mapped by laser and fed into Robin's computer.
24:16How many points are there all over it? It's something like about 40,000.
24:22It looks as if it's made up of wire, you can almost see through it.
24:26And so what does the computer do? It takes all of those points.
24:28And draws a small patch between them to fill in a continuous surface.
24:32All right. What's the next stage? Well the next stage is to take this data across
24:36to another computer where we have an average face that will act as a reference.
24:45Robin has produced an average face from a group of males of similar age,
24:49which can be warped onto the skull already in his computer. The skull and the face are
24:53matched up point for point to produce an impression of what our man looked like.
24:58It shows a man with fairly even features, perhaps not particularly distinctive,
25:03but with quite a narrow face and a longish nose. Now it's up to illustrator Jane Brain to make
25:08him really look like a man of his age and times. All right. One Roman face, although he's not Roman,
25:17we found out he comes from the Bristol area. Right.
25:22What's he going to look like though? Well he was a bit of a bit of a bit of a
25:26Well, he would have had short hair. That's pretty much for certain. And I've got this
25:31reference which shows a man with short sort of curly hair, which I think would be quite nice.
25:36But what is interesting is that it shows the kind of garment that he would have worn.
25:40In fact, kind of. Is that a toga then?
25:42No, no, togas that wear out by this time. This kind of tunic is called a dalmatic.
25:47They were worn all over the Roman Empire at this date by people of this sort of status.
25:53That's amazing to be so certain about what sort of clothes he would have worn.
25:56It is, isn't it?
26:10Jane's portrait can now be combined with the original skull scan to produce a three-dimensional
26:15image. It's an experimental technique developed by Dr Gusser Lucey at the Royal National Throat
26:21Nose and Ear Hospital. Guss, you're a surgeon, so how come you're involved in helping us to
26:26rebuild faces from the past? Well, we've been involved in all aspects of computers in medicine
26:32and in surgery, particularly for teaching, and in particular using three-dimensional
26:37reconstructed models. In this particular case, we're using a soft tissue reconstructed model
26:43from the skull CT scans. So can you take a two-dimensional image and turn it into a real face?
26:50Indeed, we use the artist's impression of the Roman face, and we, if you like,
26:57wrap it around the model that was produced by the computer reconstruction.
27:02He suddenly looks incredibly human. I suppose the last time I saw it was Robin's reconstruction,
27:08where it was a very strange colour, but somehow all the flesh tones and
27:12everything just make him look like a person, don't they? That's right.
27:15So here he is at last, the man from the sarcophagus. We know he'd adopted a Roman lifestyle with all
27:25its little luxuries. We can suggest that he might have been a metalworker. All that lead in his bones,
27:31dreadful signs of pollution. One other thing that's certain as well is that when he died,
27:36he chose to be buried alongside somebody, a woman, the woman he shared the sarcophagus with.
27:42But what the bond was between them, what drew them together in death,
27:45I think is something that we'll never know.
27:58You're Dead to Me is the history podcast for people who don't like history
28:02and those who do. Join Greg Jenner to learn and laugh. Listen via BBC Sounds.
28:12You're Dead to Me is the history podcast for people who don't like history and those who do.
28:16Listen via BBC Sounds. Join Greg Jenner to learn and laugh. Listen via BBC Sounds.