The Flying Archaeologist episode 2 - Norfolk Broads
The Flying Archaeologist episode 2 - Norfolk Broads
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00:00Nothing in our landscape is here by accident.
00:06It's all part of the incredible story of how people have shaped our country over thousands of years.
00:12Every 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.
00:31Aerial photography is revealing a different view of the past.
00:37I'm flying over the Norfolk Broads to take a completely new look at the history of one of our most iconic landscapes.
00:46Could the aerial view force us to rethink how long ago early humans first started farming here,
00:53and challenge our understanding of how people have shaped this place ever since?
01:00The Norfolk Broads
01:20The Norfolk Broads are a real challenge for archaeologists.
01:24Much of the landscape is either flooded or intensively farmed,
01:28so traces of settlement are lost underwater or flattened by the plough.
01:33But they don't disappear completely, because history leaves a footprint.
01:38Crops will respond to any changes in the soil.
01:41An ancient ditch or a pit that's been filled in long ago will show up as different colours across the fields.
01:47Crop marks.
01:49If you keep banking like this, this will be absolutely perfect.
01:53I can see something now. We're down. Just level up just ever so slightly. Thanks, Sean.
02:00This area is covered in crop marks.
02:02They don't all show at the same time, but they pop up at various points and places where the conditions are just right.
02:08There's prehistory, there's settlements, ritual sites, and Roman remains covering this river valley landscape.
02:17It's almost like time travel.
02:20Over the last few years, aerial observation of crop marks in the Broads
02:25has revealed a staggering 945 new archaeological sites.
02:30And it's made us look again at some we thought we knew.
02:36It's crop marks that's led us here to Ormsby St Michael.
02:42Not far from the seaside town of Great Yarmouth is a sugar beet field
02:47which has completely changed our understanding of how the Broads would have looked 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.
02:54Until now, we knew Bronze Age people must have been in the area, but no settlements have ever been found.
03:02When archaeologists first started looking at aerial photographs of this area, they discovered a series of crop marks.
03:08And right here, where I'm standing, was something that looked like field enclosures.
03:13Now, there's nothing particularly unusual about that because this area is covered in those sort of crop marks.
03:18But actually, when the archaeologists got to work, they got something a bit unexpected.
03:25Nick Gilmore is one of the team that carried out the excavation at Ormsby.
03:32Nick, this is the plot from the aerial photographs that you're working from.
03:36And I can see why you thought this could be medieval or post-medieval, something relatively recent.
03:42Because it just looked too well-defined, too large-scale to be anything prehistoric.
03:47When did you first realise that you were getting something earlier?
03:50Well, I think it was almost as soon as the bucket went in the ground.
03:53Because within the topsoil of the trenches, we were finding chips and waste flakes from the manufacturer of flint tools.
03:59And also a good collection of the tools themselves.
04:02And you've got end scrapers, side scrapers, and these sort of small thumbnail scrapers.
04:07If the site really was four or five hundred years old, why have we got flints that are four or five thousand years old?
04:13And then when you actually start digging in the ditches, this sort of pottery starts turning up.
04:18All the things that we can usually use to help date a piece of pottery aren't there.
04:23And in the end, that's really what dates it.
04:26It's just so slab-like and flat and essentially boring that that's what Middle Bronze Age pottery looks like.
04:34It doesn't look much, but it's so rare, it's so fragile, it's so precious, isn't it?
04:39Just to have pottery of this date still surviving.
04:42And you're looking at this, and you're looking at the flints, and suddenly now, you're getting into a prehistoric mindset.
04:49It's not medieval, it's not post-medieval, this is something much, much earlier.
04:55Exactly that. So you suddenly start thinking to yourself, what's going on here?
05:00Is this the only Middle Bronze Age enclosure in the Broads, or is it that we just haven't found them yet?
05:07And that's when you go back to the air photos, and strangely, the more you look at it, the more you then start seeing Bronze Age everywhere.
05:15And you end up in this funny situation of going from no Bronze Age to just, it's coming out of your ears, and actually it's over the whole of the Broads.
05:26The Bronze Age buildings at Ormsby would have looked something like this modern interpretation at Flag Fen, near Peterborough.
05:34Now, obviously, Bronze Age houses don't survive like this reconstructed one in this form,
05:41but they do leave very distinctive traces of the post holes, of the pattern of posts, of the layout inside.
05:48Did you get anything like that on your site?
05:51Well, we did have two groups of post holes. One of them was actually in a nice ring, similar to this.
05:57This is really significant. Wooden posts rot away, but the holes they leave behind fill with rubbish from the floor,
06:04such as charred grains and pottery fragments, and all that material can be dated, so we know the age of the structure.
06:12Were your posts of about this size?
06:15Pretty similar, in fact, yeah. It doesn't look like the most substantial post, but it can actually support quite a good structure.
06:21Well, I'm told that this roof, when it's wet, weighs about eight tonnes.
06:25Eight tonnes, well, there you go, about a tonne on every post.
06:30So, it sounds to me like you found a very well-developed Bronze Age settlement at Ormsby.
06:35Well, yes, and not only have we got the evidence that people were living here,
06:38but we've got the evidence of what they were actually doing to support themselves.
06:42As well as farming, they're also weaving, and we've actually found fragments of loom weights, such as this one.
06:48And if we look on this reconstruction, you can see how it would fit in quite well as being a fragment of one of these complete loom weights.
06:55And one of the other big things that we found is we managed to find a whetstone in another post hole.
07:00If you've got a whetstone, you need something to sharpen on that, which means, in this case, bronze.
07:05And in order to get bronze, you need copper and tin, so that must have come from somewhere as well.
07:09So, you start putting in these links to other settlements much further afield, across potentially the whole of Britain.
07:15So, they're connected with the wider Bronze Age world, and they're starting to alter the world around them.
07:21Well, they're having to manage the world around them.
07:23It's really the beginnings of mass altering of the landscape, because, you know, you cut down a lot of trees to build one house,
07:29and then that needs to be renewed. These things don't last forever, and each time you cut down more trees,
07:35and then you need space for your sheep to graze, for your cattle to graze.
07:40It's a real impact, a real change in the landscape, potentially for the first time in our history.
07:45So, we started off with a few crop marks, but now we know that Bronze Age families were living in what we now call the Broads,
07:53and not just living, but creating the infrastructure necessary for life.
07:57The droves, the field systems, they were connected with the wider Bronze Age world.
08:04This really makes us think, we've got other crop mark sites that look similar,
08:09maybe there's an extensive pattern, a Bronze Age world out there that we're only just beginning to understand.
08:17Archaeologists are now questioning the dating of hundreds of sites that were thought to be much more recent.
08:23With the evidence from Ormsby, they're now re-examining aerial photos to find out if they too are in fact Bronze Age,
08:31and therefore thousands of years older.
08:37More than 1,500 years later, long after the Bronze Age farmers had gone,
08:42it was the Romans who took control and dominated the area.
08:46Much of what they built has vanished, but the view from above has allowed us to rediscover entire towns.
08:54In 1928, an RAF crew were flying over the former Roman town of Venta Isonorum,
09:02modern-day Caester St Edmund, just south of Norwich.
09:08The early aerial photographs of this place were a real breakthrough in aerial archaeology.
09:13They showed the street plan beautifully, and remains all around the Roman town that you can't see from the ground.
09:20Look at that, isn't that beautiful?
09:22How well you can see the crop marks depends on the weather.
09:26The dry summer of 1928 was perfect for showing the streets of the town in the parched barley fields.
09:33Recently, we've had much wetter summers, so it's a little more tricky to make out.
09:38Oh, you can see the street plan.
09:42It's no wonder this photograph caused such a stir.
09:45This is the Roman streets, the hardcore of the Roman streets, stopping the crop growing so well.
09:50The detail is astonishing. Individual buildings are showing up here.
09:54Now, this obviously fired up the archaeologists.
09:57They had everything laid out for them,
09:59and it's no surprise that the following year there was a major campaign of excavation.
10:04It was one of the biggest digs of the last century,
10:07but by the time it was finished, it hadn't answered a key question which is still puzzling us today.
10:15Something went wrong at Caester St Edmund.
10:18It's one of the few major Roman towns that didn't go on to be successful in medieval times and the modern period.
10:25What happened here and why?
10:28To try to answer that question, archaeologists want to find out as much about the town as they can,
10:34and once again, it's aerial photographs that are leading the way.
10:38In the 1960s, a series of aerial photographs of the surroundings of the site
10:44showed a set of triple ditches that we hadn't previously been aware of.
10:49You can see them here just running across the field as dark marks.
10:55And more recently, other analysis of aerial photography
11:00has shown that these ditches are part of this massive circuit of defences
11:05that seem to run round the site.
11:08And we're fairly confident that the walls are a later addition to the town.
11:12You can see the streets extend outside the town on all sides.
11:17And so what we really want to know is what these ditches are about,
11:20what they're doing, what they're for, what date they are and how they relate to the town itself.
11:29Heather, we're in one of these ditches of the triple ditch system.
11:33We're in the ditch that's nearest to the town.
11:35It's exciting, isn't it, because we're just out of that plough zone where it all gets mished up.
11:38And this is exactly as the Romans would have left it. We're in these first layers.
11:45I can see quite a lot of animal bone.
11:47Yeah. Bits of sheep and cow and goodness knows what.
11:53And quite a lot of pottery as well.
11:55Yeah, I've just flicked this little piece out here.
12:00We're in a bit of a town dump, a bit of a landfill site.
12:03Well, that's final use, isn't it? It's interesting.
12:06The ditches have gone out of use and they're presumably just a hazard
12:09or in the way and being filled with rubbish.
12:11Yeah, when you want to level the landscape.
12:14So you'll get rid of your rubbish and fill up the hollow land.
12:18Lucky for us.
12:19And, ooh, look at this, look.
12:21That's a very delicate little vessel, that one, isn't it?
12:24There's not much of it, but that's a tiny fragment of a little drinking cup.
12:28Yeah, that's really fine, isn't it? That's really fineware for the table.
12:32Imagine someone just having a little sip of wine there, can't you, after a hard day's work?
12:36So all life is here, basically, in this tray.
12:40There's a chance that rubbish thrown into the ditches
12:43might provide evidence as to why Cayster was abandoned.
12:47But it's a second site, further away from the Roman town,
12:50on the other side of the river, where an answer is more likely to be found.
12:55What we're really looking for there is what happened after the Roman town ended.
13:00We want to know why there isn't a town here now.
13:03Why is it just green fields with sheep in?
13:06This is all crop mark data,
13:08and you can see this really dense archaeology going on here.
13:12That's incredible. I mean, there's a whole sort of framework,
13:15field systems, looks like,
13:17but you think there might be settlement in amongst that as well?
13:20That's right. This is where we might find post-Roman activity.
13:26I can see that you've actually got features starting to emerge here.
13:30Yeah, we've got a series of what could be post holes
13:33cut into the gravel terrace here,
13:35and in the centre of the trench, pretty much where we're hoping to find it,
13:39we have what looks like a very large pit right in the middle,
13:42where we're hoping to find evidence for our sunken future building.
13:45So, yeah, that's looking quite promising.
13:47And, yeah, so if we can prove that this is what we hope it is,
13:50then we can extrapolate and say,
13:52well, maybe we've got a cluster of buildings here,
13:54and we can go on to talk about having an actual settlement.
13:58What they're hoping they've discovered is an Anglo-Saxon building,
14:02which would have had a suspended wooden floor and possibly a cellar beneath,
14:06but these are notoriously difficult to find
14:09because they leave so few traces, just a few post holes and a pit.
14:13If you're lucky, the crop marks will give you a clue where to look,
14:17so the aerial photography is absolutely crucial.
14:20Come on, though, this looks pretty promising, doesn't it?
14:22Yeah, you're pushing me now, aren't you?
14:24Yeah, I mean, it's too much of a coincidence.
14:26There's too many factors coming together.
14:28It's got to be a sunken future building.
14:30Yeah, we're going to dig this down now.
14:32We'll take out the rest of these two quadrats,
14:34and then once we've found our level, we'll go down very carefully,
14:37and we're going to be sieving all the way down so we don't miss those small finds.
14:40Hopefully there'll be some glass beads or something exciting in there.
14:43This is looking quite promising.
14:45I'm trying not to get carried away,
14:47but it does look as though we could have an Anglo-Saxon building here.
14:50If we have got one, this will be a very important discovery.
14:59The Romans left their mark,
15:01but it was nothing compared to what happened 500 years or so later
15:05in medieval times,
15:07when millions of tonnes of peat were dug out of the marsh
15:10to provide fuel for people's homes.
15:13We're on our way to St Bennett's.
15:15It's a monastic foundation,
15:17and the monks came here to build a better world for themselves.
15:23St Bennett's is an important part of the story
15:26because this area was one of the earliest places
15:29where peat was dug in vast quantities.
15:32It was these diggings that later flooded
15:35to form the open water we call broads.
15:38Very little of the monastery survives,
15:41but from the air you get a great view of how the site would have looked
15:45as the surviving earthworks show up so well.
15:51This gatehouse is a really remarkable survivor from medieval times,
15:55and the windmill built into it is just extraordinary.
15:58But what I'm especially interested in
16:00is the earthworks that I saw from the air.
16:11These banks and troughs aren't the remains of buildings,
16:14they're actually fishponds.
16:16Now, fish was tremendously important to the medieval diet,
16:19and even more so to monastic communities,
16:22but these are among the best examples I've ever seen.
16:25But I think there's an element of display going on here as well.
16:29I can picture the abbot coming down here with visitors and saying,
16:32look what we've constructed, look what we can do,
16:35see how well we look after our people.
16:38The fishponds are impressive,
16:40but the first thing people would have seen was the abbey church,
16:43of which only the ruins are visible today.
16:46This would have been quite an impressive church.
16:49It would have stood out in the local landscape like a beacon.
16:52While it's very isolated today,
16:55in the Anglo-Saxon period and the medieval period,
16:58the river is going to be a key way for transporting people and goods around,
17:02so this has actually liked to be a highway, right next to a highway,
17:06and an awful lot busier than we see it today.
17:09The latest aerial photos of St Bennett's have revealed evidence
17:12of a couple of additional buildings not seen before.
17:15This is a protected site, so we can't dig,
17:18but today we're trying out something new,
17:21a remote-controlled flying camera.
17:24It's cheaper than a plane and can fly much lower,
17:27enabling us to get a completely new view of the site,
17:30and maybe also the buildings.
17:32There's a hint of something going on.
17:35What we're looking for are areas
17:37where the grass is just showing a slightly different shade of colour,
17:40responding to the archaeology below.
17:42You don't want to get too close to the river.
17:48Well, there's something in there, isn't there?
17:50But they look like the sort of crop response you'd get on ditches
17:54rather than buried walls, to me.
17:57What it would be nice to do is to turn him round
18:00and come back the other way and just see if the light...
18:03Soon we're seeing signs of the new buildings.
18:05This is obviously a good year for that part of the site.
18:08Yeah, so this is the main... There we go.
18:10Perfect. Yeah, keep him there. That's perfect.
18:14This is the bit that then turned into the Chequers pub,
18:17which is possibly the Abbot's lodging.
18:21Oh, that's definitely it. That's as clear as day, isn't it?
18:24Mm. Yeah. That's lovely.
18:27So has Tim any idea of what they might be?
18:31Well, given their location, which is very close to the south side,
18:34of the monastic church, where you've got the cloister
18:37and obviously the refectory and dormitory,
18:40it could be something related to cooking.
18:43So you could have a cook house, a bake house, brew house,
18:46something like that that's associated with the living quarters
18:50of the monks, I suppose.
18:52Now, they tend to be a bit detached because of the fire risk, of course.
18:55Absolutely. And which would fit with this?
18:57I mean, we've obviously got a two-celled building.
18:59You can see two little buildings that are part of one rectangular structure.
19:03It's intriguing, though, isn't it?
19:05It's intriguing and frustrating, I think.
19:08Everybody likes to know a little bit more.
19:10We got closer to the site than you could get with an aircraft,
19:13and there's definitely tantalising hints of features out there
19:16that require investigation.
19:18No firm conclusions,
19:20but no-one has ever seen the site in quite this way before.
19:26Oh, there's the edge of the fishponds there.
19:29Oh, that's nice. Yeah, they're showing up well.
19:32Oh, look at that.
19:35No landscape ever stays the same, and the broads are still changing.
19:40From their industrial origins providing fuel,
19:43the business of the waterways today is leisure.
19:46But what many of those exploring the rivers and creeks won't know
19:50is that there used to be many more broads than there are today.
19:54Aerial photos are helping track down those that have been lost.
19:59Kickling's a great place to try and look for lost broads
20:04because it was a much, much bigger broad, and the traces of that,
20:07if you look hard enough, can be seen all around.
20:10There's bits of partially reclaimed broad,
20:12bits that have been fully reclaimed,
20:14but there are soil marks and little clues of its former extent.
20:19We're circling round now,
20:21starting off from the known quantity of the broad as it is today
20:25and trying to work back through time.
20:28There were two other broads up here, Gage's Broad and Wiggs Broad,
20:32and they've entirely disappeared.
20:34There's nothing at all now in terms of open water.
20:38Finding lost broads is notoriously difficult.
20:42Below me now is Horsey Wind Pump.
20:44This area has some of the biggest expanses of broads anywhere in Norfolk.
20:48Historian Tom Williamson has been using historic photos and maps
20:53to look for the lost broads.
20:55Tom, this map is really interesting.
20:58It's a transcript from Fane's map,
21:00and the thing that interests me most is that there's lots of water here,
21:04lots of things called broads
21:06that don't appear on the modern Ordnance Survey map.
21:09No, absolutely, and this surveys 1794, 5, published 1797,
21:14so actually it's not that long ago.
21:16In the great scheme of things, it's not that long ago, a couple of centuries.
21:19Where do they go?
21:21Partly they go through deliberate drainage,
21:24but a lot of them, particularly sort of more inland,
21:28they disappear through natural processes.
21:30The broads are artificial, and they gradually silt up,
21:35and they get encroached on by marginal vegetation.
21:37I mean, it's an ongoing process.
21:39Now, I've been flying over this area,
21:41and you would think that it would be quite easy
21:43to spot these former great bodies of water.
21:45Actually, not so easy.
21:47A lot's happened over the years.
21:49These earlier photographs taken in the 40s,
21:52it's these dark patches we're looking for.
21:54I mean, these are dead giveaways, aren't they?
21:56Yeah, that's Gages Broad,
21:58which is certainly still there in the early 19th century.
22:01It's shown on the enclosure maps for Hickling,
22:04but goes rapidly after that, as far as we can tell.
22:07What I like about the photographs is they don't lie.
22:11The photograph is absolutely definitive.
22:13There was a broad here, there's no question about it,
22:16and this was its extent. Yeah, yeah.
22:19And by studying aerial photos,
22:21many taken by the RAF in the 1940s,
22:24an incredible 39 areas of lost broads have been rediscovered,
22:28including Gages Broad.
22:30The landscape has changed so much,
22:32I couldn't see anything of the broad from the air.
22:34Everything just appears dark green or wooded.
22:37But on the ground, it's obvious this area is very different
22:40to the farmland around it.
22:42So we're right in the middle of Gages Broad,
22:44or what was Gages Broad.
22:47I mean, there's water and it's sponge-like now,
22:50so you can see it's had a watery ancestry.
22:53There's no doubt about that.
22:55So right across here, you would have had water.
22:58A couple of metres deep or so, at the time that map was made.
23:03And in this case, we know why the broad disappeared.
23:06It gets enclosed by a parliamentary act in, I think, 1808,
23:11at a time when food prices are rising fast,
23:14it's the Napoleonic Wars, the French Wars,
23:17and they put in the commissioners' drain.
23:21They dig it right through, it just takes the water out.
23:24This is not gradual encroachment, this is not gradual loss,
23:27this is a deliberate, concerted attempt to very quickly
23:30get this area into productive agricultural use.
23:33Yeah, it's a classic example of that late 18th and 19th century
23:36improvement, you know, you've got to improve the environment
23:39to produce more food.
23:42So we've seen how the transformation of the landscape
23:45began in the Bronze Age,
23:47was stripped for fuel during medieval times,
23:50and how we're continuing to shape it today.
23:53There's one last question I'd still like to answer.
23:56What happened to the Roman town of Caistus and Edmond,
23:59and was it used by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors?
24:02It's the final day of the dig there,
24:04and the last chance to retrieve evidence from the ground.
24:07One of the nicest little things that have come out
24:10has been this tile, which you can see has got some paw prints in it.
24:15Oh, yeah, yeah.
24:17Which we think are the paw prints of a puppy
24:20that was clearly misbehaving as they were drying.
24:23We also have this, which is a rather lovely spout on a mortarium,
24:29a mixing bowl, really.
24:31And it's supposed to be a lion, and the later they get,
24:34the potters start getting a bit mischievous
24:37and putting thumb marks above them,
24:39so they start looking like bats,
24:41or it gives it the impression of Mickey Mouse, really.
24:44THEY LAUGH
24:46They just get bored with doing these artistic lions, you think,
24:50and start sort of creating havoc with them.
24:53The finds are fascinating, and they've helped to prove
24:56that the ditches were being filled in during the second century,
24:59but they don't help explain where people were buried.
25:03They don't help explain where people went to live
25:06after Cayster was abandoned.
25:08For that, we need to head over to the other side of the river.
25:12Will, last time I was here, there were just hints
25:15that this might be an Anglo-Saxon feature.
25:17What is it?
25:19Luckily for us, it has turned out to be
25:21an Anglo-Saxon sunken-featured building.
25:23Great.
25:24Which is wonderful.
25:26It's a big here as well, isn't it?
25:29It is. It's quite substantial.
25:32We've got a lovely post at one end.
25:35It's a big sub-rectangular cut into the gravel from the middle of it.
25:41We've had this material.
25:43Oh, yes. Wonderful.
25:45Well, there's no doubting that. That's not Roman.
25:47That's brilliant Anglo-Saxon pottery.
25:49What other finds have come out?
25:51Well, we were always drawn to this field
25:55because of the occurrence of these...
25:57Oh, yes.
25:59..wonderful Anglo-Saxon coins.
26:02Relatively few of them have turned up,
26:05but enough to demonstrate quite a significant presence here.
26:10These things are so rare, aren't they?
26:13I mean, they didn't throw coins around like the Romans, did they?
26:17I mean, you know, it's just truly incredible to find something like this.
26:21Again, it was the aerial photography that just gave that first hint
26:24that there might be something different going on here.
26:27This find takes the story of this site forward in time, beyond the Romans.
26:33There's an interesting relationship here, isn't there,
26:36between the Roman town and what came after it?
26:39I think we're looking at multiple little centres
26:43of Anglo-Saxon occupation around the area of the town.
26:47As far as we know, not within the walled area,
26:50but scattered, scattered around.
26:54Cayster's an extraordinary and unusual site
26:57because it has no modern occupation on top of it.
27:00The only parallel sites in England are Roxeter and Silchester,
27:04and neither of those really have this scale of Anglo-Saxon occupation on them,
27:11so it really...
27:13Having this here significantly increases the importance of it as a site.
27:19At West Stowe in Suffolk,
27:21there's a reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon village.
27:26This gives us a pretty fair impression
27:28of how the Saxon settlement at Cayster St Edmund would have looked.
27:32It was actually a great achievement from the archaeological team
27:35to find buildings like this.
27:37They're notoriously difficult to find.
27:39What they've proved is that the Roman town was abandoned completely
27:44and people returned to a simpler way of life, back to the villages.
27:52My journey through the Broads has revealed far more than I ever thought possible.
27:57For the first time, we've found traces of Bronze Age settlement.
28:02We've revealed lost Broads that only now exist as faint traces on aerial photographs,
28:08and we've discovered Saxon settlement,
28:11and this is giving us a great insight into the end of that Roman town at Cayster St Edmund.
28:16There's a lot more out there to be discovered, and I can't wait for my next flight.
28:20What I do know is that I'll be looking at the Broads in a totally different way.
28:30On BBC Sounds, Greg Jenner dives into the BBC archives,
28:34stumbling across random dates,
28:36and listens to recordings to explore what they say about who we are
28:40and why we're here.
28:42On BBC Sounds, Greg Jenner dives into the BBC archives,
28:45stumbling across random dates,
28:47and listens to recordings to explore what they say about who we are
28:51now.
28:52Passed forward a century of sounds.