The Flying Archaeologist episode 1 - Stonehenge
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00:00Nothing in our landscape is here by accident, it's all part of the incredible story of how
00:09people have shaped our country over thousands of years.
00:13Every ridge, every bump has a meaning.
00:16I'm Ben Robinson and as an archaeologist it's my job to unpick the great story we've inherited.
00:23From my perspective the best way to do that is up here in the air.
00:28I'm flying around Stonehenge over one of the most intensively researched landscapes in the UK.
00:34Aerial archaeology is transforming our thinking about these iconic monuments.
00:39We're looking beyond the great hilltop monuments to the river below
00:42and it's water that's led us to a very exciting prehistoric site.
00:47Is this proof that people occupied this landscape thousands of years before Stonehenge was built?
00:59We're flying over Stonehenge in Wiltshire.
01:02It's an iconic site, probably the best known prehistoric site in Britain, probably in the world actually.
01:12The aerial perspective is giving us a whole new view of the landscape in which it sits.
01:17It's not an isolated monument, it's not on its own.
01:21It's in a great prehistoric landscape and I can see traces of that all around me.
01:26This is where archaeology from the air really began.
01:30In 1906, 2nd Lieutenant Philip Henry Sharp took a photograph from a tethered balloon.
01:36This photograph, I'm in about the same position that he was in
01:41and it's a real privilege to share the same airspace.
01:44His photographs caused a sensation in the archaeological world.
01:48People were amazed by what you could see from the air.
01:51But since those days, aerial archaeology has discovered more than even he could have dreamt of.
01:58Those early pictures revealed other ancient earthworks, exciting in itself.
02:03But since then, English heritage has been building along the way.
02:07Those early pictures revealed other ancient earthworks, exciting in itself.
02:11But since then, English heritage has been building a library of photographs
02:15that show the landscape in ever greater detail.
02:18We can now see how these individual monuments are linked.
02:22We're realising that there's a difference between our ancestors' use of the hilltops and the valleys.
02:29Many of the sites on the hillsides relate to burial.
02:33Aerial photography has recently revealed a previously unknown longbarrow,
02:37more than 5,000 years old, at Damerham, 20 miles south of Stonehenge.
02:42Different colours in the crops hinted that one patch of land
02:46was just a bit drier than the surrounding field.
02:49This site is an interesting case study in aerial archaeology
02:53because on one particular occasion, there was a vague, more enigmatic crop mark.
02:58It didn't fit the usual pattern,
03:01but there was enough there to suggest that something interesting was going on in that field.
03:06You're standing on a massive mound,
03:09a mound that's 80 metres long over there,
03:12and it finishes just where the break of slope is down there.
03:15Helen Wicksteed is co-director of the Damerham Archaeological Project,
03:19which aims to investigate this Neolithic burial mound.
03:22It was probably built over 5,000 years ago, about the time Stonehenge was first created.
03:28And we're still nowhere near the bottom of it.
03:31And imagine all the chalk in a huge ditch stretching 80 metres over there,
03:35another huge ditch 80 metres over there,
03:38piled up by people using antler picks and baskets, most probably,
03:42because we're in the middle of a whole landscape, an invisible landscape,
03:46a kind of hidden landscape of crop marks, only visible from the air now,
03:50and most of those are in that state because they've been ploughed
03:53and they've been flattened by the plough.
03:56It's very unusual today to be able to excavate a barrow
03:59that hasn't been plundered by treasure hunters in the past.
04:03I'm really looking forward to this.
04:05Neolithic long barrows are really, really rare,
04:08and it's even rarer to find one that hasn't been dug into by antiquarians
04:12or has been totally plough levelled.
04:14What we've got here is an opportunity to understand one of these monuments
04:18in a modern scientific way. It's thrilling.
04:26The team of amateur and professional archaeologists
04:29only has funding for a few weeks.
04:31They hope to excavate this site and find new evidence of ancient lives.
04:40The project's other director, Martin Barber,
04:43told me how he first recognised this almost invisible monument.
04:47So you could easily mistake this as just another little natural undulation
04:52in the landscape? You could, and obviously the way that the mound
04:55has been included over the years has made it look more natural than artificial.
04:59But once you're standing in this sort of position,
05:01you can get a real feel for the size of the mound
05:04simply by looking at the way the height of the crop changes.
05:07The mound starts at the end here and you can just see this rise
05:10effectively forming a horizon, particularly against the backdrop of the trees
05:14and continuing past the trench over to the far side.
05:17So we've got a mound that's actually 80 metres long, 2 metres high,
05:21completely artificial, built 6,000 years ago,
05:24but looks like a perfectly natural piece of hillside.
05:27The aerial photographs that I first saw didn't give a hint of it
05:30being a Neolithic long mound at all.
05:32There was this sort of almost shapeless splodge,
05:34which was actually caused by the fact that the soil conditions were so dry
05:38that the crop on top of the mound had died,
05:41rather than producing the normal colour variation or height variation you would see.
05:45It wasn't until I actually came here and drove down the track behind us
05:48and saw the profile for myself that I realised I was actually dealing with
05:52a very large mound that looked like a Neolithic long barrow,
05:56but large enough to make me wonder why nobody had spotted it before,
06:00because it is very big.
06:03The enormous size of this mound suggests it must contain a burial chamber
06:07constructed to enclose the dead.
06:11These mounds sometimes have, say, the bones of up to 50 individuals,
06:15not necessarily in the mound as complete skeletons.
06:19Sometimes in the mound as bits of bone that have been kept and left there,
06:25or that have been left out in various ways.
06:28So in the Neolithic we're talking at that time of a very interesting location
06:33that obviously has the dead as a significant part of it,
06:37alongside that animal bone.
06:39We have things like head and hooves deposits,
06:43so probably hides, because those are the bits of cow skeleton that are left behind.
06:48And we have other deposits of work flint and ceramics as well.
06:53And then, so that relatively small little area is in use for some time,
07:00and then this massive mound, far, far bigger than is necessary to close that building.
07:07Why? Why such a huge mound?
07:11And perhaps one reason why is that the process of building the mound is important.
07:17With only days left to go, little has been found, but then a skeleton appears.
07:22Unfortunately, it's neither Neolithic nor human, just a medieval lost sheep,
07:27but that's archaeology for you.
07:29Still, this Neolithic site is another piece of evidence
07:32to add to our understanding of why early people placed their monuments where they did.
07:39There's a magnificent white horse down there.
07:42It looks like it could be prehistoric, but it's not.
07:45It was built in about 1812, and it's really just the whim of a local landowner that put it there.
07:53But there's some very interesting archaeological sites down there.
07:58This is an intriguing landscape.
08:00The horse is perched right on the edge of the downs.
08:03It's visible for miles around, but there are other features.
08:06I can see other more subtle but more interesting features surrounding it.
08:12All these prehistoric sites occupy the same ridgetop position.
08:17When first constructed, the burial mounds, the barrows, would have been stark white chalk.
08:22They would have been highly visible, as visible as the white horse,
08:25to the prehistoric people that lived on the lowland.
08:30Of course, the view from above is not one the ancients ever saw.
08:34They got their views from the hilltops,
08:36and that's the key to why they chose this dry, chalky escarpment as the burial ground for their dead.
08:43I'm here on the edge of the downs.
08:45There's Salisbury Plain over there.
08:47Knapp Hill, with its Neolithic enclosure, is just over there.
08:51And right in front of me, Adam's Grave, a great Neolithic long barrow.
08:55This is a really dramatic place, a fantastic landscape.
09:00Very exposed, and that's the idea.
09:03These monuments were meant to be seen,
09:05and they offer great surveillance over the surrounding countryside.
09:09But it's not just up here on the highland where interesting things can be found,
09:14but also down there in the Vale, where perhaps things are a little bit more hidden.
09:20In fact, we're beginning to realise that the valley, and especially the river,
09:24is every bit as important as the monuments on the hilltops.
09:28Down there is a hidden spring,
09:30and a local man has discovered something very interesting about it.
09:34So you've got a map to show me?
09:36I have, yep. This is a 1900 edition.
09:39David Carson's family has farmed the land here for generations.
09:43He's found an old map that shows the spring,
09:46and David thinks it might have been deliberately dug out
09:49into the shape of a curious three-legged animal.
09:52So you've already been up in the air, I think, and seen...
09:56There's Adam's Grave there.
09:58That's right, yes, saw that from the air, and also Knapp Hill as well.
10:02So this is on the ridge.
10:04That's right, and we've got over here the springhead,
10:07which we're going to be looking at shortly,
10:09which has been cut into quite an interesting shape,
10:12with bits coming off, sticking out, and other bits sticking out there.
10:17And then the tail, if you like,
10:19it's almost in the shape of an animal leading off down to the south,
10:23which is the source of the River Avon.
10:25And it's not easily seen now,
10:27because the trees have grown up all around it.
10:29Even from the air, you wouldn't be able to see that clearly.
10:32It's a strong indication that the water source
10:35was really important to our early ancestors.
10:38This hidden spring is, in fact,
10:40the birthplace of the Wiltshire River Avon.
10:44You can see the water's bubbling even now.
10:47Oh, yes, right in the centre there.
10:50Oh, yeah, there it comes.
10:52So we're just in one corner of the spring complex,
10:55and to our right and to our left a lot more.
10:59So the whole thing, as you saw from the map,
11:01builds up into quite an interesting shape.
11:04Yeah, we're just in one arm of it, basically, aren't we?
11:07Yeah, we're just in one arm or one leg or one part of it,
11:10whatever you want to call it.
11:12But it's difficult to see in its entirety from any one spot
11:15because of all the trees that are here.
11:18Let's have a look.
11:22It's still going down.
11:25It's still going down. It's stopped.
11:27I've stopped sinking mercifully
11:30with only a few inches to go to the top of the wellies,
11:33but I'm actually standing on quite firm chalk.
11:36And every so often a little bubble comes up from the ground.
11:41And it is mystical, it is magical, it's incredible.
11:45But the water's so pure, it's so clean, it's wonderful.
11:49And pure, clean water would have been tremendously attractive
11:53to prehistoric people.
11:56You can see, as well as a practical purpose,
11:59that there could well be symbolism here as well.
12:03This is the very source of the Avon
12:06and the very start of the river.
12:09And if I was to turn round and walk in that direction,
12:13I'd end up on the south coast.
12:16But I'm not going to do it because this wellie has a leak in it
12:20and it's already getting cold and wet
12:22and it's a very long way in that direction.
12:25So what part might the river have played
12:28for our ancestors 5,000 or more years ago?
12:32The Vale and the Downs seem like two different worlds to me.
12:37And I'm sure that difference would have been even more marked
12:40to prehistoric people.
12:42It feels like it's a nurturing place, it's about life.
12:46The Downs and Plains, well, I think they can be quite unforgiving.
12:51I think they're more about death and commemoration.
12:55It's not too fanciful to imagine an early man
12:58having a connection to the river as a mystical force.
13:02And so many of the new sites we're discovering,
13:04many of them from the air, are close to the River Avon.
13:08But what's exciting is far, far larger than Stonehenge.
13:12I'm looking for traces of another large prehistoric site,
13:16a massive henge at Marden.
13:19It's basically a great big enclosed area,
13:22a bank and a ditch, it's massive.
13:25It's actually quite difficult to spot,
13:27but I think I've just seen it down there.
13:30Yeah, there it is, there it is.
13:32I can see a curving line of houses
13:34and there's some interesting earthworks in the field next door.
13:38The excavation of Marden Henge in 2010 made world news.
13:44The dig unearthed one of the earliest buildings ever found in Britain.
13:48It was constructed at least 4,000 years ago.
13:52The archaeologists speculate that they've found a very early version
13:55of a sauna, complete with a large fire hearth.
13:59With a big hearth like that, one wonders whether it's perhaps a sweat lodge,
14:04a purification ceremony before they go into the henge
14:08and conduct their ceremonies.
14:10The concept of a sweat lodge or sauna could explain
14:14why a relatively small building would contain such a large hearth.
14:18It's far too big for cooking.
14:20The theory suggests a low wooden hut would have been covered over
14:24with animal skins to contain the heat.
14:27The excavation has ended,
14:30but Jim Leary is still working on interpreting life in the henge 4,000 years ago.
14:36This is a huge monument.
14:39I mean, it's difficult to understand how you'd go about constructing this in the Neolithic.
14:44That's right, it almost beggars belief, doesn't it, the sheer size of this.
14:48You have to remember that this is ten times the size of Stonehenge
14:51and the ditches, although they appear shallow now,
14:54of course that's 4,500 years of erosion into them,
14:58so you have to imagine them three, perhaps even four metres deep,
15:02and then that material you need to put on the bank.
15:05So the banks were much bigger, the ditches were much deeper,
15:08and that really makes it a very monumental site.
15:11What we do know is that these are ritual or, if you like, religious centres,
15:18religious enclosures.
15:20Something that was going on here involved ritual or religion in some way.
15:27We don't have the magnificent stone settings of Stonehenge,
15:31but we have something so much more vital.
15:34We have evidence for feasting and buildings and people living.
15:40Stonehenge is very much a monument where cremation burials were placed.
15:47It's about the dead. This is about living.
15:50This is the living, breathing people.
15:52These are our ancestors and they created this.
15:54So this monument is the archaeologists' dream.
16:01The investigation continues across Mardenhenge.
16:05This is a geophysical survey which uses a powerful magnetometer
16:09to map traces of human activity beneath the soil.
16:13We're looking at relatively small areas
16:17compared to the very huge areas that the aerial photography can cover,
16:21and we're looking at them in great detail, hopefully.
16:24And over this sort of geology, we should be able to find something.
16:28And with our fingers crossed, we'll have some good results.
16:32Their computer instantly conjures up a ghostly impression
16:36of what lies underground.
16:38Well, the most prominent feature of this plot is obviously
16:41the large white circle you can see in the middle here.
16:44Now, that's a henge monument.
16:46This is a huge ditch circling a henge,
16:49and that was spotted as a crop mark by our aerial photography colleagues,
16:53but what we think we've got that they hadn't spotted from the air
16:56is a circle of very subtle post pits within the henge.
17:00And then what was a surprise was...
17:02I don't know if you can see these white straight lines.
17:05They're almost certainly much later Roman ditches,
17:08perhaps enclosures marking out paddocks and that sort of field around a farm.
17:13We'd need to do more investigation to really confirm that.
17:17That's just speculation at the moment, but it's promising, very promising.
17:23The incredible array of finds included pig bones,
17:26very early pottery, flint tools and arrowheads,
17:29all indicating this site was an important central meeting place
17:33for Neolithic peoples and therefore of huge significance.
17:37But I'm especially curious about its links to the river.
17:41What about the connection of this place with water?
17:44Well, there's an absolutely integral link
17:47between the henge monument and the River Avon.
17:50The monument itself is actually only D-shaped.
17:54It's not a complete enclosure.
17:57And in fact, the whole of the southern side is formed by the River Avon,
18:01a great big meander in the River Avon.
18:04So there's an absolutely integral link with this river.
18:08And in fact, there are a number of springs in the middle of the henge as well.
18:12So this is all about water.
18:18This is Hengistbury Head, where the Avon flows into the sea.
18:23Dave Field is the guru of the archaeology along the river.
18:27He's developed a theory that it held powerful magical symbolism
18:31and that our prehistoric ancestors had a mystical relationship with it.
18:36Can you imagine people gaping at one of these bubbling springs,
18:39wondering where this source of life comes from?
18:42And it must be very magical. Very magical.
18:45Well, it seems to come from the centre of the earth.
18:47It does. It does indeed.
18:49So these things must have been revered in some way.
18:52And I think that's probably why we often find
18:55accumulations of archaeological material around springs.
18:58There would have been some sacredness attached to the water,
19:01perhaps in the same way as we see sacred rivers around the world,
19:04the best-known one being the Ganges, but there are others.
19:07South America, all over the place.
19:09And it's very probable, I think,
19:11that our rivers were sacred in the same sort of way.
19:14And that people in different parts of the landscape,
19:17along the route of them, celebrated the river in different ways.
19:20You can perhaps imagine that the earlier part of the river
19:23reflects life's journey.
19:25It's youthful, it's young.
19:27Then it grows into middle age, in our sense, around Downton and so on.
19:31And then down here at Christchurch, it's almost an old person.
19:34It's slow and sluggish.
19:36And as it passes into the sea, it's a different world.
19:39The sea is a different world.
19:41And this might reflect beliefs in society,
19:45your passage through life and so on.
19:47So it's easy to see how the river would become a symbolic artefact
19:52and very, very important for life as well as death.
19:57So if water is central to prehistoric life,
20:00there'll be many more undiscovered sites down in the valleys,
20:04which takes us back to the place where we started, Stonehenge,
20:08but to a time long before it was built.
20:11The site of an excavation in the valley, barely a mile away,
20:15takes us to one of the most important recent discoveries.
20:19We're over Stonehenge,
20:21and I'm looking at the town of Amesbury off in the distance.
20:24There's some parkland on its western fringe and some woodland.
20:27There's a very interesting archaeological site in there,
20:30but there's also some very interesting excavations going on,
20:33and they may be extending the history of this landscape
20:36back thousands of years before Stonehenge was built.
20:40Thinking that water was important led archaeologist David Jakes
20:44to look at an area near a site called Vespasian's Camp.
20:48In 1999, a group of student friends and myself
20:51started to survey this area of Amesbury.
20:54The whole landscape is full of prehistoric monuments,
20:59and it is sort of extraordinary in a way
21:02that this has been such a blind spot for so long, archaeologically.
21:06This is the aerial photographic picture of a crop mark,
21:09which really was the trigger for the whole project.
21:12We're very close to the River Avon here.
21:15Vespasian's Camp is just to the other side of it.
21:18In fact, it actually comes all the way down to the river.
21:21But if we have a look at this ordnance survey picture
21:24and maybe get a better sense of things,
21:26you can see just how close Stonehenge is to it.
21:29It works out to be about just over a kilometre away.
21:33I was basically sort of...
21:35In this landscape, you can see why archaeologists and antiquarians
21:39over the last 200 years have basically honed in on the monuments.
21:42There is so much to look at and explore.
21:44I suppose what my team did,
21:46which was a slightly sort of fresher version of that,
21:48was look at natural places.
21:50So where are there places in the landscape
21:52where you would imagine animals might have gone to to have a drink?
21:55You know, my thinking was where you find wild animals,
21:58you tend to find people, certainly hunter-gatherer groups,
22:01coming pretty much afterwards.
22:04What we found, essentially, is the nearest secure watering hole
22:09for animals and people,
22:11atop of all-year-round freshwater source.
22:14It's the nearest one to this place.
22:16And I think it's pivotal.
22:19The dig is hidden in a wood
22:21which has been in private hands for 400 years,
22:24so it's totally protected from treasure hunters.
22:27Vespasian's camp was imaginatively named after a Roman emperor.
22:32There's so much coming out of this strata.
22:35But the finds are all suggesting
22:37there was regular human activity here since the Mesolithic period,
22:41several thousand years before the Roman occupation.
22:45Open university students and local volunteers
22:47have been washing and sorting the vast quantity of flint tools
22:51and wild animal bones being unearthed.
22:57Being in a spring at the bottom of the valley
22:59means that David's trenches soon fill up with water.
23:03We've got about 12cm pack full of Mesolithic tools, work flints,
23:09over 300 animal bones,
23:12but certainly, Ben, one is pretty much from the waterline down.
23:16From my point of view, I think we're all thinking it's sensational archaeology.
23:20I think I can see just a little flake or something
23:23poking out of that section there.
23:25Well, yes. You've got a little flake
23:27and, of course, you've got this nice...
23:29Something that's very typical of Mesolithic flint,
23:32where they've retained the cortex here,
23:34so you've actually got a natural grip.
23:36You've actually got some real personality to it.
23:40Perfect. They really do stand out amongst the natural stones, don't they?
23:44People just say, oh, that's just any other old bit of stone,
23:47but once you know what you're looking for, they really stand out.
23:50No. Well, I mean, what a thrill for us.
23:52This is the first time in, let's say, 8,000, 9,000 years
23:56that anybody's touched that.
23:58The last person, Batu, that held that and put that in there
24:03was a Mesolithic person.
24:05Even while we're filming, a huge wild boar tusk is found.
24:09That's a really big one.
24:11You look at the gradient on that, how big that tusk is going to be.
24:14Oh, excellent.
24:16And what's that from the same layer?
24:1871.
24:19The important 71.
24:21Right, right, right. It's just as what we've been talking about.
24:24It's basically just below this flint horizon
24:27where you've got this 12 to 14cm width.
24:30I mean, that is an incredible find.
24:32I mean, doesn't it just underline, Ben,
24:34the sensational quality of the archaeology here?
24:37Yeah.
24:39Wild boars were once common in Britain
24:41and always a delicious source of food.
24:44But Mesolithic hunters also regularly hunted and butchered the aurochs,
24:49the original gigantic wild cattle, almost twice the size of modern cows.
24:55Alas, the poor aurochs were later driven to extinction.
25:00Are you visualising the beast that this belonged to?
25:03I am.
25:04And the fact that since we knew that some of them had been cooked,
25:07you're then thinking about how people would have cooked it,
25:10what techniques they used.
25:11You know, they didn't have pots at that time,
25:13so presumably roasting and...
25:15It's just... It does set your imagination going.
25:18These are huge animals, aren't they?
25:20Massive and quite ferocious.
25:22How do you think they brought something like that down?
25:24Well, there must have been an awful lot of time
25:27David is very excited because all the evidence so far
25:30points to this place having been occupied by our ancestors
25:33at least 3,000 years before Stonehenge was built.
25:38Samples of the animal bones have been sent to the laboratory
25:41to be carbon dated.
25:43If David is right, it will prove his theory
25:45of continuous occupation at this site
25:47long before Stonehenge was even thought of.
25:50I mean, this must have been a special place.
25:52That's right.
25:532,000 years of activity coming back again and again and again.
25:57I mean, you know, it blows your brain.
25:59You just think, well, that's sort of how long London's been settled for.
26:03It's just on that scale, you know,
26:05most of the oldest cities in Great Britain, you know,
26:09can't go back that far,
26:10and yet here we are in this little nook at the bottom of a hill
26:14and it's just...
26:17And yet here we are in this little nook at the bottom of a hill
26:20with a river running round it,
26:21and it probably had more people coming to it in the Mesolithic
26:24than it's had people coming ever since.
26:26This type of thing throws up far more questions than it answers,
26:30but the very few answers that we've got are incredibly significant.
26:36Then David gets the latest results from the carbon dating laboratory.
26:41We all know that we've been really struggling to be able to fund,
26:45to get the funds for carbon dates,
26:47so we've had two so far that are Mesolithic,
26:49so they're between 6,250 BC and 4,700 BC.
26:55I mean, those dates are brilliant,
26:57but definitely it's a case of three being a lot more than two.
27:00So I can now give you the results.
27:02I've just come off the phone from the Glasgow lab,
27:04and the date is 5,400 BC,
27:09which is a fantastic date.
27:12It's a fantastic date.
27:14It means that we've got people here 6,250 BC, 8,000-plus years ago.
27:21We've got people now living here 5,400 BC,
27:25so that's 7,500 years ago.
27:27And we've still got people living here 4,700 BC,
27:32so nearly 7,000 years ago.
27:36So people have been settling, residing around that spring area
27:40for nearly 2,000 years.
27:42Absolutely superb.
27:44So thank you, everybody, so much.
27:46Thank you. Thank you.
27:48Thank you. Thanks a lot, Richard.
27:50David has now proved what archaeologists have long suspected,
27:54that people knew this place is special 8,000 years ago.
28:06Today, the great prehistoric monuments
28:08still hold their mysterious attraction.
28:11But I think that to recognise the significance
28:14of our ancient surroundings needs imagination as well as science.
28:19We're getting a deeper understanding
28:21of how our earliest ancestors lived
28:24and of what they might have believed.
28:27The history of human progress is written in our landscape.
28:41.