Meet the Ancestors Episode 10
Meet the Ancestors Episode 10
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00:00INTRO
00:29There may seem nothing unusual about this bungalow.
00:33But when its owners wanted to build a garage, they found that their driveway was full of
00:37ancient burials.
00:55The bungalow lies at the edge of the small village of Wintbourne Gunner near Salisbury
00:58in Wiltshire, an area steeped in history.
01:15This bungalow belongs to Mr and Mrs Bushnell, who built it a few years ago.
01:20When they were building it, they found that it sat on top of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery and
01:23I helped with the excavation.
01:25Now they want to build a garage next to the bungalow, so this is why I'm back.
01:40Just taking off the top.
01:41There's no chance of seeing any burials at this level because it's all disturbed.
01:48It's really only when we get down to the surface of the chalk and we can clean it up that we'll
01:52get an idea of whether there are any burials here or not.
01:57The story began in 1992, when Jill and Brian Bushnell started to build their bungalow.
02:03A surprising discovery made them realise that this was no ordinary building plot.
02:07I thought you might like to have a look at this album, Julian, to refresh your memory.
02:12Do you remember when we first moved here we had no idea at this point what we were going
02:17to find.
02:18So this was the plot as you bought it?
02:20That's right, yes.
02:21During the digging of the foundations, a remarkably well-preserved sword appeared.
02:25I wasn't actually here when that actually came out of the ground, but I'd been out and
02:29when they came back they said, look what we've found.
02:32And we realised that it was something of significance, so the work that day had to stop.
02:43It's amazing, isn't it?
02:44Yeah, you don't get any idea from that photograph just how big it is.
02:48No, no.
02:50It's hard to imagine, isn't it, that underneath all of this crusty surface there was once
02:54a beautiful shiny iron blade that no doubt the person who had it was terribly proud of.
03:04The sword was the first clue to what lay here.
03:07Weapons are found in the graves of pagan Saxon warriors, and there were plenty of graves
03:12under the bungalow.
03:13No, indeed not.
03:14How many were there altogether?
03:15Well, there were 23 in total, Julian.
03:18There's a diagram of the ones that were found.
03:20So there were 23 actually underneath the bungalow?
03:24Yes.
03:25And are some of them still here?
03:27Oh yes, yes.
03:28They only excavated the ones that would be in the way of the main footings.
03:33So which room are we in now, Jill?
03:35We're in the dining room at the moment, so we've got one on the corner of the dining
03:39room there.
03:40So there's one over there?
03:41Possibly, yes.
03:42And one between the dining room and the sitting room.
03:48Jill has burials under most rooms in her house.
03:52So how does she feel about living so close to the ancestors?
03:56It doesn't worry me at all.
03:57It did initially, when I realised the significance, I got a bit panic-stricken.
04:02In fact, I even rang the local vicar and said, you know, I'm rather upset about all this.
04:08But he said, well, don't worry about it, because it is just their remains.
04:12Their souls have gone elsewhere.
04:19As soon as Alan Graham from AC Archaeology turned up, we could get on with the dig.
04:23How are you doing?
04:25All right?
04:26Yes.
04:27Let's see what we can find.
04:32It wouldn't take us long to get down to the solid chalk.
04:35But would we find any burials?
04:38Wetting the surface of the chalk should, we hope, reveal any dark patches marking graves.
04:45This one here is now really clear, the one that goes just up to the fence.
04:54This one comes right from here, down here, right up here.
05:01And obviously, it's been chopped through by quite a shallow pipe at some stage.
05:08There's the end of another one coming around here.
05:19We've got the site cleaned up now, and we know how many burials there are under the garage.
05:24And I'm just about to break the good news to Mrs Bushnell.
05:27Jill, do you want to?
05:28Yes?
05:29Um, we know I was teasing you last night and saying that there were 13 underneath here.
05:35Well, there aren't quite that many, but we have got one, two, three, four, and we think five and six.
05:45Really?
05:47Yes.
05:48Fortunately, only two of the graves would need to be excavated,
05:52the ones that would be destroyed by the garage foundations.
05:55But did Jill mind more burials being disturbed?
05:58No, I feel we can't be blasé about it, because after all, it is somebody who's buried here.
06:04And I visualise that they lived probably further down the village,
06:07and they decided that this was a special place to bury their dead.
06:11And so, therefore, we have to treat it with respect.
06:15And remember that it is somebody, somebody's father, somebody's mother.
06:19We won't know until you have a look, will we?
06:21Yeah, I quite agree.
06:22I quite agree.
06:27After two days of digging,
06:29Alan and I had reached the level where the bones should start to appear.
06:35Have you seen this, Julian?
06:38No.
06:39We're just getting the top of the skull.
06:45The top of the skull appearing there.
06:48There's the brow ridge there.
06:51And I think you can just begin to see the other brow ridge.
06:54So the nose, the nose bone is just beneath the point of the brush there.
07:00In the grave that I was digging, the skeleton was in terrible condition.
07:07It's a shame we haven't got a complete burial here,
07:09because a service pipe running through has taken off the legs about at this point.
07:14But what is left up at the head end is actually very informative and very interesting.
07:20I think that because of the fact that the head has fallen back and the jaw has dropped,
07:24that this burial must have been placed in some sort of a void, maybe a coffin of some sort.
07:29And there are indications of other things as well.
07:31There's a dark charcoal-y stain running down the right arm here,
07:36which again may be the remains of something that's decayed within that coffin.
07:42Alan had made good progress with his grave.
07:45The skeleton was much better preserved than mine and was beginning to look like a male.
07:50Jill was curious to know what we'd found.
07:53Did you find any grave goods this time, Julian?
07:55Nope, nothing with either of them, which is quite strange really.
07:59But to me it's interesting as well, because it begs that question of who was the person?
08:05Was it a Saxon or was it one of the Britons who were living here at the time that the Saxon
08:09invaders came in? So I think that's one of the questions that we'll want to try and answer,
08:14find out as much as we can about the burial.
08:16The next day, bone specialist Margaret Cox arrived.
08:20I want to know what these are, because we think, in our ignorance,
08:23that that's a male that Alan's digging and this is a female.
08:27I think you're right.
08:28Are we right?
08:28I think so. The pelvis, it looks, although it's very damaged and incomplete to be female,
08:34because you've got such a wide sciatic notch.
08:36Which bit's that?
08:37That's the two sort of right-angled arches that you can see.
08:41And basically the width of that notch determines the width and the size of the pelvic outlet,
08:47which is crucial to whether or not you're going to be able to deliver a child through it.
08:50Okay, so you think this one's a female.
08:52Now what about this one over here?
08:54You've already said from a distance that you think he's a hulking great chap.
08:59Yes, it is almost certainly a male.
09:02The main criteria are on the skull, the super orbital ridges.
09:06Hang on, are these the ridges over the...
09:08The eyebrows, the eyebrow ridges basically.
09:11What they are, they reflect the size of the sinuses underneath them,
09:15and males have fairly large ones and women don't.
09:18Is that, I mean this sort of curving of the spine,
09:20that's just the way it's laid in the grave, is it?
09:25It might be, but there is a pathological condition called scoliosis of the spine,
09:32which results in sideways curves of the spine,
09:35which can result from an awful lot of different things.
09:38And without actually taking that up and looking at the bones individually,
09:42it's impossible to say.
09:44Sometimes it is just the way that they've fallen in the ground.
09:48And that's probably the case, but not necessarily.
09:50Right, is there any indication as to what age the person is?
09:57Now this particular bone is the clavicle.
10:02Right.
10:02The clavicle is actually the latest, in terms of years,
10:07bone in the human body to actually finish its growth.
10:10And you can actually see when it's finished that growth,
10:12because a little sort of plate of bone on the end fuses to the rest of the bone.
10:18Now that usually happens in the late 20s.
10:21Now in this individual, we can say quite confidently that that bone has fused.
10:27So this person was over sort of 28, 30 when they died.
10:33Right.
10:38When all the bones are removed,
10:39Margaret's promised to take a closer look at them in her lab at Bournemouth University.
10:45It's actually quite nerve-wracking when you get to this stage of taking the skeleton apart,
10:51because especially in a case like this where the bones are so fragmentary,
10:55and it's a worry because you don't know whether a bone's going to crumble
11:00into a thousand pieces as you lift it.
11:02This is why we've been so careful trying to record as much as we possibly can
11:06while the bones are still in the ground.
11:08You almost feel like apologising to the person as you're doing it,
11:11but we're being as gentle as we possibly can.
11:20In her pathology report,
11:22Margaret stated that there were no clues to the cause of her man's death.
11:26In fact, his joints were in very good condition, with no sign of disease or arthritis.
11:32Unfortunately, the same could not be said for his skull,
11:36which had collapsed completely and would need careful and expert attention.
11:44In Richard Neve's studio at Manchester University,
11:46I was hoping that something could be done with the shattered skull,
11:49or we wouldn't have a face-to-face interview.
11:53It's a question of opinion here as to whether
11:57we can actually do anything with this one, or not.
12:02Yes, you see, in the ground it looked not too bad.
12:07Clearly, it's all there. All that frontal bone's there.
12:10The nasal bone is there, somewhere, in a moment's time.
12:15It's not there, but it's there.
12:16It's not there, but it's there.
12:17It's not there, but it's there.
12:18It's not there, but it's there.
12:19It's not there, but it's there.
12:21Somewhere in amongst all this rubble.
12:24Yes, that can be put together, and that definitely is a task for Caroline.
12:29She's very, very skilled at piecing these things together.
12:33She likes a challenge, you see, does our Caroline.
12:38Richard gave the job of rebuilding our Saxon to Caroline Wilkinson,
12:42who soon noticed he had some very interesting facial features.
12:47Yes, you can really see, can't you, the fact that...
12:49I mean, the two eye sockets are different heights, aren't they?
12:52That's right.
12:53This one's higher up than that one.
12:54Yes, it's got a full, a little tilt to the face all over, really.
13:01And also in the edges of the nose,
13:04the nose aperture itself is actually off centre, too.
13:07Yes, sort of heading off, isn't it, towards the right.
13:10The whole face kind of heads that direction.
13:14You'll probably see it a little bit in the smile.
13:17You'd notice it with the teeth.
13:19At Salisbury Museum, I met up with Saxon expert, Mark Corney.
13:28I wanted to know more about the cemetery at Winterbourne Gunner
13:30and the people who might have been buried in it.
13:34Now, that's Gill and Brian's bungalow there, isn't it?
13:37Yes.
13:37I knew there were quite a lot of burials underneath that,
13:39but I didn't realise there was quite such a big cemetery.
13:42Yes, there's something like 85 burials now known,
13:45which makes it the second largest Saxon cemetery in Wiltshire.
13:49And it originates over this side, at least in terms of its discovery in the early 1960s,
13:54and then subsequent discoveries have come over in this direction.
13:58But what's particularly interesting is the way that the core of this cemetery,
14:02or at least what we think is the core,
14:04seems to be focusing on these earlier prehistoric burial features,
14:09the pond barrow and the bowl barrow defined by the ring ditch here.
14:13And this is something that you see occurring quite commonly in
14:16pagan Saxon cemeteries, this focusing onto earlier monuments in the landscape.
14:21I mean, that pond barrow then must lie just in the back garden of the garden next door,
14:26and that that is in the field just behind Gill and Brian's house, isn't it?
14:30Yes.
14:31But how do you know that the people buried in this cemetery are Saxons?
14:36Well, we don't know for sure that they're all necessarily Saxons.
14:40However, a number of the graves, the ones coloured red,
14:43have produced goods with the burials.
14:46So, I mean, you look at this object, for instance, this iron axe head.
14:51This is not an axe for chopping firewood.
14:53This is a weapon for throwing.
14:57And you can see here still the mineralised wood of the haft,
15:00this large iron rivet that would have held the haft in place.
15:03It's from a type of axe called a francisca,
15:07and it was used pretty well exclusively by the Franks,
15:10who settled in modern-day Belgium and northern France at the very end of the Roman period.
15:16So what's it doing here in Winterbourne Gunner?
15:19It's a very interesting question.
15:20I should think at this date we are looking at a franc actually buried in Winterbourne Gunner.
15:26So what's somebody like that doing here at that time?
15:29Well, this period, the middle of the 5th century, is a fascinating period.
15:32You've got the collapse of Roman rule, the Western Roman Empire.
15:36There's a lot of political and social turmoil going on.
15:39It's probably fairly insecure.
15:42And we know from sources elsewhere in the Roman Empire
15:46that communities were employing barbarian federates or mercenaries
15:51to come in and protect their estates and territories.
15:54And it is quite conceivable that this axe actually represents
15:58this activity going on in the Salisbury area.
16:01So what about the graves that haven't got any grave goods in them then?
16:05Who are they?
16:05Well, this is the fascinating aspect of cemeteries of this period,
16:09because I think more and more people have started to think
16:11that we are probably looking at cemeteries that include a strong local
16:15Romano-British population, along with a few graves of the new force,
16:21the political and military force that are coming into the country in association with them.
16:26So does that mean that the person we're looking at,
16:29the man from under the garage, who's not buried with anything,
16:31is he more likely to be a Brit then rather than a Saxon?
16:35Can't be definitive, but I think it's highly likely we are looking at a local.
16:41The question is, how can we tell if our man is a Saxon or a native Briton?
16:46Near Stroud in Gloucestershire, I found someone who might be able to help.
16:52Phyllis Jackson was a chiropodist for 50 years,
16:55so she's seen plenty of feet, but how can she tell the difference?
16:59By the structure of the different bones, they are very different.
17:09When you look at the British foot and you compare it with the Saxon foot,
17:15you can see that the whole structure of the British foot is strong, it's broader,
17:24and the toe bones, the midfoot has got a much greater strength.
17:29Now, with the Saxon foot, because of the strength of a tendon which runs under here,
17:38there's always a very, very steep groove, and frequently the outer part of the toe bones
17:46curls over, and I think it is in order to keep that tendon within its groove.
17:54And this one, you get...
17:57Yes, you see that's much less of a groove in there, isn't there?
18:02Look, I'm most intrigued. I want to know, if you can tell this difference,
18:06can you tell me whether a man from Winterbourne Gunner is a Saxon or a native Briton?
18:14Can we have a look at the bones?
18:16Yes, we'll have a look at the bones.
18:19In order to study the foot properly,
18:21Phyllis needs to arrange the bones in their correct anatomical order.
18:26So now you've got them together.
18:27Oh, I feel sure that that's not a Saxon foot.
18:30You have a very short protrusion from the back of the ankle bone to the end of the heel.
18:36This with both feet.
18:39And the actual bone structure is what I would call robust.
18:45I'm really pleased in some ways, because I know you shouldn't have preconceived ideas about
18:49what you want something to be, but I was convinced that this wasn't a Saxon,
18:54and it's nice that you've confirmed that.
18:56We ought to shake hands over it.
19:00Perhaps feet don't tell the whole story.
19:03So are there any other ways of discovering where our man from Winterbourne came from?
19:08Knowing the date when he died would be useful, and here science could help.
19:14At the nuclear accelerator labs in Oxford,
19:17Paul Pettit has been carbon dating a tiny fragment of our man's bone.
19:20Had he come up with an age?
19:23Indeed, and I think you'll find it's good news.
19:26The results indicate that our individual died somewhere between 340 and 550 AD.
19:35Well, I suppose that's what we expected, but can you narrow it down any more than that?
19:39We can't very much, but as you can see, there's a bit of a peak here in the earlier range.
19:45Fairly significantly taller than the others, so really I would say if I had to narrow it down,
19:51it's most likely our individual dates to somewhere about the first half of the 5th century AD.
19:58I mean, that is very early. That's a lot earlier than I would have expected.
20:03Because, I mean, that's really, you know,
20:05just after the lights have gone out on the Roman Empire, isn't it?
20:08Sub-Roman, yes, yes.
20:15This date means that our man was buried at a time that's often called the Dark Ages,
20:19mainly because we know so little about that time.
20:22But I do know that it was when there were lots of new people coming into this country, the Saxons.
20:36Back at Winterbourne Gunner, I'd arranged to meet Jane Bray, our series illustrator, up a crane.
20:44Jane's going to recreate the landscape of Saxon times,
20:47and we wanted to get a good view over the village, only it's a little windy today.
20:52Bloody hell, I wish it wasn't quite so windy, I must admit.
20:56It's swaying a little, isn't it? Anyway, I think this is just the right place because, look,
21:00down where the caravan is, that's where that Bronze Age round barrow was.
21:07Yeah, you can't see it anymore, it's completely flat,
21:09but at least that gives us a reference point for the barrow.
21:12Then there's a pond barrow, which obviously was a hollow.
21:15That actually goes into the garden, does it?
21:17That's in that back garden, just about beyond where that apple tree is.
21:20Can you see the apple tree?
21:21Yes, I can.
21:22So I think that the cemetery is along this ridge here,
21:27and it's obviously using those prehistoric barrows as a reference point, isn't it?
21:31Yes, it seems to be, yeah.
21:35If Jane's going to put a village in her reconstructed Saxon landscape,
21:38then she needs to know what it would have looked like.
21:41So off we went to the West Stowe Country Park near Bury St Edmunds,
21:44where a complete and authentic Saxon period village has been built.
21:51Park ranger Lance Alexander was on hand to greet us.
21:54Hello, Jane, all right?
21:55Hello.
21:55We want to know what a Saxon village looks like,
21:57so we thought this was the best place to come to.
21:58You've come to the right place, definitely.
22:00We've got some houses for you to look at.
22:01You've got a new one as well.
22:02Definitely, yeah. I'll take you to this one.
22:03This is a good one to see first off.
22:04Bye.
22:05So this is the most recent house you've built, isn't it?
22:06Yes, this is. This has taken the last four years to make.
22:10There's only a few of us work on each house. We take our time.
22:13So the houses are actually built on the site of the houses that were excavated here?
22:16Yeah. This is one family group of houses here,
22:19and each house stands where it once stood.
22:21Right.
22:22And we've built them in different ways.
22:23Because of the lack of evidence and how the wood was put together,
22:26or what the style was, we've tried different versions.
22:29Because we've got a lot of people who have been here for a long time,
22:31we've tried to make it look as authentic as possible.
22:33We've tried different versions,
22:35because we're never going to know exactly sure what they were like.
22:40While Jane got on with her drawing,
22:42I wanted to find out about the building techniques that the Saxons introduced.
22:47A Saxon house starts with a tree trunk.
22:51But the Saxon carpenters didn't have saws.
22:53How did they cut it?
22:56So the idea is that you're going to split this trunk from end to end
23:01just using the wooden wedges.
23:03Wooden wedges and a wooden mallet,
23:04so no metal tools are used in splitting the tree at all.
23:07I mean, I would have thought that was too fragile to actually go into a tree trunk.
23:11They have sharp edges.
23:23Now what I'm waiting for is to see this whole tree trunk just split right across this end.
23:33That was brilliant.
23:49The only cutting tools Saxons used were axes,
23:52but their woodworking skills were amazing.
23:55I mean, this seems a remarkably small axe for the job you're doing, is it?
24:00I think it is, from my point of view.
24:02My experience in the past has always been with very large, quite large modern axes,
24:05and they tend to slice through very quickly,
24:07whereas this is more like a little hatchet,
24:10but this is the sort of thing that the Saxons are supposed to have used on quite large timbers.
24:15There's lots of pictures of these sort of things, and they have been found in digs, I believe.
24:21Axes were used to make floors,
24:25walls,
24:28doors,
24:30and even wooden nails.
24:35But which of all these different sorts of houses
24:37would our man from Winterbourne gonna have lived in?
24:46Now this house is very spacious.
24:48I mean, there's room in here for an entire family, not only to sleep,
24:52but to work and cook and eat and live together.
24:55Now if I was a Saxon and I lived in this village, this is the house I'd like to live in.
24:59I'd like to live in a house like this.
25:09In Manchester, Caroline was making progress with the face.
25:14We're very nearly at the finished muscle stage all over the face.
25:22And seeing how lopsided he is,
25:24to the right-hand side of the face,
25:26that would be the tip of the nose there.
25:29And the mouth is wider on this side of the face than on this side of the face,
25:36so slightly off centre.
25:40Back at the Bushnells, the garage was nearly finished.
25:43I'd brought the reconstructed head and James landscape
25:46and was really looking forward to seeing Jill and Brian's reaction.
25:50Well, I can't wait.
25:51It's nearly Christmas, so this is going to be an early Christmas present.
25:54All right then, just for you.
25:56Now he's made of terracotta, so this is why he's this rather pink in colour,
26:00but there he is.
26:03Gosh.
26:05Oh, he's not a bit like I expected, no.
26:07What did you expect?
26:08I thought he'd be a rugged warrior type sort of person,
26:12and he's not.
26:13He's quite a gentle looking person, isn't he?
26:17Now there's always been this question about whether he was a Saxon or a Briton.
26:21Now somebody looked at his foot bones and suggested that he was a Briton,
26:26and then we had a radiocarbon date then.
26:29Oh, do you mean to tell me that he was a Briton after all and not a Saxon?
26:33Oh, we'll have to call him Arthur then and not Egbert instead.
26:37You'll have to call him what?
26:38Arthur, not Egbert.
26:41He decided he was going to be called Egbert if he was a Saxon, wasn't he?
26:43Yes.
26:45Now I remember that he said that you had quite a strong image of what
26:49it would have looked like at the time that the burial ground was being used.
26:52Oh, absolutely, yes.
26:53A little party of very sad people walking up the lane possibly.
26:57So is this what you thought?
27:01Yes, absolutely.
27:04Isn't that incredible?
27:06So these are the individual burials here,
27:09and this is the one here that lay underneath the garage.
27:12It's just about to be buried,
27:14and as the funeral procession has went its way up from the village.
27:17And then, obviously, within this same area,
27:20you've got the barrows.
27:21There's the pond barrow over here and the bowl barrow that were found.
27:26Very ancient.
27:27And then there's the village down at the bottom of the valley.
27:30Yes.
27:30Just sort of sitting quite close to the river.
27:33Isn't that brilliant?
27:34That is just what I thought.
27:35Captured that very well.
27:46So who was he?
27:59A Saxon mercenary or a British farmer?
28:02He certainly doesn't seem to have been built for fighting,
28:04and nobody gave him any weapons to take to the next world.
28:08But he and his companions chose their burial place with great care.
28:11They wanted to lie next to those ancient burial mounds,
28:14old beyond imagination,
28:15that symbolized ancestral claims to the land.
28:19Jill and Brian chose this spot too,
28:21but little did they realize as they started to build their house
28:24that they too would end up living with the ancestors.
28:34Alice Roberts joins up with teams of archaeologists across the country,
28:38revealing remarkable finds,
28:40the fascinating world beneath our feet,
28:43in Digging for Britain on BBC iPlayer.