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00:00this week we're in the heart of London we faced our camp at Southwark Cathedral whilst I'm here
00:09on the banks of the River Thames over the next hour with our team of expert archaeologists and
00:17local mudlarkers we'll be exploring the river shoreline they're lovely find they're so personal
00:23and we'll be telling the stories of people who've called London home throughout the ages welcome to
00:29digging for treasure
00:30hello we're down here looks lovely doesn't it Southwark Cathedral let's head inside hopefully
00:57they're waiting for us and we can say hello everybody oh there we go let's do a few
01:04introductions we have with us the first lady of archaeology Raksha Dave great to see you lovely to see you Dan
01:10we're excited about this on the head honcho of the British Museum portable antiquity scheme is in the
01:16house Professor Michael Lewis thank you very much for inviting me it's lovely to have you Michael and
01:22also London's finest let's say hello to our history hunters this week the mudlarkers great see you guys
01:29thank you for being here it's a slightly different feel isn't it this week it is a different feel we're
01:33looking for liquid history we're on the bank of the river right now Michaela is on the north shore of the
01:39times hi Dan look at this we're mudlarking I've never done it before sounds fun and it is fun it's sort
01:47of like metal detecting on the banks of the river but without a metal detector so only using eyes but
01:54lots of things to think about first of all you need to have a license all our mudlarkers have got their
01:59three-year license that they've applied for from the portal authorities and also the big thing to think
02:04about is the tides it's a very tidal river and look where high tide goes all the way to that mark so
02:10you don't want to be caught out I do not want to be swimming out of here so there's only a small
02:16window of opportunity to look for gems but we are finding some and Joe here has found something she's
02:23pretty chuffed with aren't you yeah let's have a look what is it it is a bone Roman gaming counter how
02:29on earth did you find this amongst all these pebbles and stones well I was lucky it was this
02:34way up so the pattern sort of stood out which made it a lot easier to spot obviously been doing this
02:40for a while yeah I found a couple of these before so I've got my eye in for them and what would it have
02:46been useful something like a chess game yeah very similar to a chess game definitely okay so I'm going
02:51to give you a challenge if you can find all the other counters then I'll give you a game of chess a bit
02:56later this is London it's got to be one of the best cities in the world it's exciting it's vibrant
03:07it's full of energy and people have lived here for millennia this city has seen it all invasions
03:16from the Romans the Anglo-Saxons the Normans suffered famine plagues fire and war the one constant
03:26throughout the years the River Thames where relics of this city's ancient past reach out through the
03:33mud just waiting to be plucked into the present they're lovely five they're so personal we're at
03:40the oldest crossing point of the River Thames at what was for many centuries the only entrance to
03:46the City of London we could find anything from any era Victorian pipes a sword from the Middle Ages
03:53or something like this this perfectly preserved 17th century apothecary bottle I'd like to think
04:03that somebody popped into the shop nearby pick this up for one of their illnesses drank the contents and
04:09toss it over the side I guess we'll never know it's brilliant it's a really nice one it's quite nicely
04:18decorated each time the tide falls away it reveals hidden histories now this is obviously very different
04:26to any of the sites we've been to before but it's really exciting because if our mudlockers don't find
04:33whatever might have been washed up today then the tide comes in and takes it back out to the river
04:39possibly never to be seen again but they have found some remarkable things take a look at this now this
04:45is a 15th century pewter badge worn during the war of the roses when the Lancastrians and the Yorkists were
04:54fighting for the crown it's tiny and someone has managed to spot that just by using their eyes what
05:03secrets are hiding in this glorious mud what stories are waiting to be told as you've seen we are right
05:11in the middle of it for today's program let's have a little look across the Thames you can see the Tower of
05:16London can you spot the little gold monument just over the other side of the river that's Pudding Lane
05:21where the great fire started in the 17th century and actually construction on St Paul's Cathedral
05:25started nine years after that great fire in 1675 a few miles down the river you get yourself to the
05:32House of Parliament Westminster they've had a busy few weeks there and we're also right next to the
05:36modern the Shard is 200 yards away from us and Borough Market is just the other side of Southwark
05:42Cathedral as well as building our Thames timeline over the course of the program we also have all
05:48this on the way we're going to travel to Gloucestershire to meet two friends who made not one but two
05:53life-changing discoveries just ten months apart we'll look at the history behind mudlarkers and why
05:59people have been drawn to the shoreline over the centuries and we'll meet a fossil hunting couple who
06:05unearthed a find of rare marine creatures in rural England now Michaela has already mentioned
06:12on the program there are specific rules and regulations about mudlarking we've done a lot
06:16of metal detecting in the first three shows of this series if you want any information about that or mudlarking
06:22which you're going to see today all that info is available on our social media shall we get a
06:27first check-in on the timeline let's find out what's happening Raksha thanks and our table of
06:32chronology is really filling up we've almost got about 6,000 years I'd say so Michael you're the head of
06:38the portable antiquity scheme of the British Museum what we looking to find today well I think we're
06:44going to find objects all through history right from prehistory to the modern day and in fact
06:48already on the table we're getting objects from that period here we're in what would have been
06:53parts of Roman London so I'd be surprised if we don't get a few Roman objects again it kind of
06:58grows in the medieval period so I would expect as well that we're going to get quite a lot of medieval and
07:03later objects as well so they're probably the two main periods that are going to flag up quite a lot in our
07:08finds I mean we're in quite a key area aren't we on our river because it's the first Roman bridge
07:13that spans across there but also before that we obviously have an earlier passing place for
07:18prehistoric people as well it's possible to get a lot of early stuff as well and we're going to see
07:23that yeah right so what have you got under your macro at the moment because this is quite exciting
07:27isn't it yeah so what we've got here is a coin and which is actually Norwegian and what's interesting
07:32about this coin is the date because if I turn it around just slightly you can see at the top there
07:371666 1666 so we have the great plague and the great fire of London in that very year Norwegian
07:46though I guess that means that because it's such a busy poor London back in the day we're going to
07:52get lots of denominations of different coins from around the world certainly getting that in 17th
07:56century expect that in the earlier period as well so it's a thriving city and with contacts across
08:03Europe and the known world essentially I can't imagine somebody would be very happy losing their
08:07change over that bridge but what are these amazing things that we have on this board so for example
08:12we have this gorgeous chain mail is it from a suit of armour from a knight well we associate chain
08:20mail don't we with kind of knights and fighting like that I suspect this is a bit later unfortunately
08:26so you know maybe we're not going to get from a big battle that was fought in London or just a duel
08:30perhaps between two nights but instead this could be just from somebody's glove who was working in
08:35a trade maybe like butchery or something similar to protect their hands so they're probably wearing
08:40kind of chain mail gloves later on them than we might expect sometimes breaking the romance there
08:46Michael but I really love this Neolithic flint tool absolutely gorgeous well I mean as you can see it fits
08:55really nicely in the hand it's a multi-purpose tool perhaps so I'm not sure exactly what it was used
09:01for this object is probably dating at least 4,000 years old so it's a pretty old object and the oldest
09:07object we've got on the table so far Flora come in and join us thanks for being with us on Digging for
09:12Treasure give us an idea what have you got here in your hand something you found on the banks of the
09:15Thames yes so these are tenter hooks probably 17th 18th century something like that they were used to dry
09:22cloth in a process called fulling which was a way of softening cloth after it was woven so the cloth
09:29would be soaked in an ammonia like solution usually stale urine lovely thank you for that floor then
09:36sort of rinsed in some water conveniently located near the river which is probably where we find so
09:41many of these and that sort of agitated drying process is where we get the phrase to be on tenter
09:45hook yes so you then there would be a little rack with a lot of these on the cloth would be hung on
09:50it to dry very slowly it's an impressive fine isn't it Michael yeah but after what Flora said
09:54about them I don't want to touch them understandable but what Flora has brought in which I think is is
09:59pretty amazing as well is this piece of Roman pottery and what I like about it is the fact that
10:04it's burnt because you know maybe this is associated with the Bodicean revolt perhaps in London where
10:09London was was burnt to the ground by Bodicea's army taking on the Romans which takes us Flora if
10:15that's right right back to the first century which is an amazing thing for you to found on the river
10:19it's pretty cool it's it reminds you that London is just an old city that's been destroyed and rebuilt
10:26a number of times and it remembers that history as well doesn't it Michael because if you go down to
10:29Westminster now there's a famous statue of Boudicca and her daughters right there yeah and I love that
10:34statue because Boudicca like me she's from Norfolk wasn't that last week yeah we've moved on from
10:38Norfolk but we can tell you that from the Queen of the Iceni tribe to the Queen of the River Thames because
10:42Michaela is still out there has the tide come in yet Michaela down the tide is coming in I'm
10:48keeping my eyes on that time I don't want to get wet feet so we haven't got long but this is Lara
10:53she's a celebrated mudlarker who seems to have found a ridiculous amount of things in the short
10:59time that you've had now talk me through it well we're searching against the tide we've got to got to
11:04hurry up with this stuff um I've got about a thousand years I think of history here well I'd like
11:10someone to look at that I think it might be anglo-saxon I'm not quite sure this is definitely
11:15medieval it's a beautiful slashed and stabbed jug handle it would have been a great big jug sitting
11:21on a tavern table filled with ale this is an 18th century bottom of a bottle so it would have been
11:26one of these lovely globular bottles called an onion bottle because it was shaped like an onion and it
11:32would have held rum or wine it's a sort of bottle that a pirate might have drunk out of it'll probably
11:37chucked from one of the taverns above us I mean there's always been pubs haven't there on the
11:42tent absolutely but you know nothing changes people are still doing it you know what about all of these
11:46how on earth did you find all of these I spend a lot of time kneeling and staring at mud you get
11:52your eye in you start to look for perfect circles and straight lines and if you look at this there's
11:57lots of perfect circles and straight lines in there and that's what stands out amongst all the natural
12:01sort of wobbly shapes there's something that you want me to take up to look look in the macro lens what's
12:06that it's this little tiny coin here Laura you're having a laugh you didn't really find that did
12:11you I mean how did you see that there again it's nearly a perfect circle but it's it's the writing
12:17on coins that stands out for me that's the writing yeah yes the writing my goodness well I'll take that
12:23up to have a closer look at it but I'm really impressed with what you found I'm particularly
12:27impressed with your eyesight I'm gonna leave you to have another look see what else you can thank you
12:32and get this amazing selection and we'll see you after the break where we meet two guys their
12:39friends their detectors that have found not one but two amazing ancient hordes in a matter of months
12:47I know lucky we'll see you in a minute
12:50welcome back if you've just joined us you're watching digging for treasure and that is the
13:03beautiful Southwark Cathedral the home of Christian worship for something like a thousand years and our
13:07Thames timeline is building up very nicely inside so come in with us Raksha and Michael are here and
13:13uh what have you got for us guys well the table of chronology is oh Dan I mean you've got Michaela's
13:18coin haven't you that she found on the Thames foreshore can you tell us what it is yeah this is
13:23lovely little coin this is a rose farthing you can tell it's a it's called a rose farthing because
13:27it's got a little rose with a crown on it if you flip it over you can see on the other side not that
13:32clearly but it has the name of the monarch Charles the first and there you can see his crown as well
13:37so lovely find that let's go and pop that on our timeline where does that go Raksha it goes
13:41here just by this other coin here but there is a couple of objects I'm really excited at I could
13:48see that this is a group of Roman intaglio but I want to look at this tiny one okay because I can't
13:52actually see what's on there Michael can you pop that under so we can have a big grand reveal
13:57absolutely gorgeous here you can see an image of a fish on it that's fantastic isn't it so this
14:04object is a gemstone that's from a Roman ring they're sometimes used a bit later on in the medieval
14:10period again for rings sometimes we see them in seal matrices but it's a beautifully crafted object
14:15the thing that I really love about this object is the craftsmanship the work that's gone into that
14:20is absolutely tiny how did they do that absolutely stunning I know you love the story around this
14:26sort of thing so it's the question isn't it who dropped it might they've been going on one of those
14:30first crossings over the Thames you were talking about earlier well that's the thing this is what you've
14:33got to think about you've got to visualize where we are we're kind of like more situated in kind of
14:39the suburbia end of Roman London the main drag is actually in the city just over the bridge so you
14:44can imagine can't you somebody picking up the intaglio might have come from the continent they
14:49wandered over and then the thing pops out of their ring it's a truly tragic story well whoever you are
14:55we're very thankful let's find out what else we've got on the river Michaela what have you got for us
14:59Dan we found loads of things it's quite remarkable just how much you can find in the very short window
15:08of opportunity that we've had ladies ladies do you want to stand up show me your finds this is good
15:14Fran I like that this what is it so that's a piece of post medieval bowl probably the base made of
15:21terracotta quite a large substantial thing maybe for somebody's pottage in the morning
15:26it's a chunky fine it's a gorgeous find it's a really nice nice size and Susan you've got various
15:32things in here but I like this what is that that's a lovely example of a beauty through decay so that's
15:38probably the base of some kind of Georgian bottle you can tell by the thickness and it's covered with
15:44lovely Thames iridescent what gives it that nice color I think it's the mark and the bacteria from
15:50the Thames react moving on and here we've got what's a common Thames fine but really nice and
15:56these are 14th to 18th century handmade pins and at that time everybody was pinned into their clothing
16:03whether you were Queen Elizabeth the first or or a poor person and the phrase pin money actually
16:09originates from this time when men gave their wives and partners money to go out and buy pins
16:14good finds ladies if you want to carry on sit before the tide comes in because it is coming
16:20in fast now but you can see this mud larking it it's fun it's it's interesting it's very satisfying when
16:26you find stuff but just imagine how satisfying it is when you find an ancient horde and then just
16:32imagine how satisfying it would be if you found two within a matter of months let's go my name is Mark
16:45I've been metal detecting since I was 12 years old I'm 57 now so quite a long time I'm also called Mark
16:52some poor dog lost that we've been detecting together now for 30 years right which end are you going up I'll
17:00go out the top I got a new permission and we walked up one side of the field and we both looked at one
17:06another and said oh this looks interesting interesting contours and shapes in the landscape and then we
17:12started to make finds a Roman coin came up you want to go down that way yeah and then we go a little bit
17:20further and find a piece of Roman greyware pottery we're on a Roman site I got a signal basically which
17:33was the perfect signal but I was also getting it probably sort of six to eight inches off the floor
17:38which tends to indicate something quite large so I started digging down and there was a huge bit of
17:46pottery and I think you know we could be on something here and eventually I said it's not
17:50under this piece of pot Marcus in it you said oh it's a hoard and I said something like don't be
17:57stupid here and then literally I looked and I thought yeah it is a hoard that was the worst week of my
18:05life knowing that the archaeologists weren't going to excavate it for seven days this pot is where we
18:12got those loose coins from very proud I was really buzzing the site where we found a hoard was obviously
18:26of archaeological interest so we did a survey of the area where certain things were revealed on the
18:34geophys lines and what appeared to be walls the farmer came up didn't he came up in his truck and
18:43I was chatting to his wife and she said you haven't found a hoard for ages I literally I turned round and
18:49went to an area that I'd been on before and find it straight away I had a very thin neck on it which
18:59was damaged and unfortunately when I lifted it or fortunately the neck sort of dropped away a little
19:06bit didn't it a little reveal of what was in it yeah which was rather nice it would be good if it was
19:13just full of rare coins wouldn't it yeah those are still at the British Museum being cleaned and catalogued
19:21it's a very odd thing really you find it and then you might not see it for probably two years three
19:30years later who knows we will see it one day what an amazing discovery and I'm joined by the finders
19:38Mark and Mark I mean how did you feel when you discovered that absolutely fantastic amazing it was a
19:45bit of a shock as well it's just like we're also joined by Ian Richardson he's the senior treasure
19:51registrar at the British Museum do you have an update for us you've only found the coin hoard
19:56fairly recently so it's at the British Museum but still waiting to be unpicked the coins are still
20:01inside as you know you can see inside the top you can see the glint of some silver coins they're called
20:08silicoire that dates to about 380 but in use up through the end of the Roman occupation of Britain
20:14past 410 AD so once the coins are extracted and catalogued it may be that we find out that some
20:20of them date to a bit later and the interpretation is that the hoard was deposited after the traditional
20:26end of the Roman Empire in Britain which is really exciting because this is a site of significant
20:31occupation we're learning a huge amount about it and it's all through you guys having found it so
20:35really exciting stuff so the treasure is the information but also do you think it'll be deemed as
20:41treasure because we're talking about coins here you have to have two or more precious metal coins
20:46found together that are more than 300 years old from what we can see already even without taking
20:51them out I think that's going to be the case so it's pretty safe to say that our recommendation
20:55to the coroner who's going to make the final determination that whether or not it meets the
20:59legal criteria for treasure is that this does meet that definition so this is going to be treasure
21:02well congratulations mark and mark how'd you feel about that brilliant great excellent news we just
21:08got to find the next one now absolutely brilliant news what do you think about that then Dan well if
21:16anyone can find it I'm sure the two marks are up to the job Sean has joined us here alongside Michael
21:21Sean has brought in some finds from the Thames your friend Caroline has found and Michael you've got
21:25one under the the macro already and it looks amazing what is that yeah I mean this is such a beautiful
21:30object this is a bead from a rosary and as you can see on one side here you've got a woman's face a
21:36medieval woman's face but if you turn her around I mean look at this this is a bit kind of quite scary
21:42really yeah so you get this kind of um this death skull on the other side it's a bit of a shock when
21:47you see that beautiful woman but um these objects would have been a reminder really of our
21:51mortality um in essence so you know they'd be reminding people as they prayed that they're not
21:56on this world forever and age-wise for that we'd date this one to about 1450 to 1550 and you've
22:03also brought in a pilgrim badge and amazingly for two halves one was found three years ago and this
22:09section was found two weeks ago that that is incredibly rare isn't it yeah that is I mean
22:12that's just amazing that they found you know the other parts being found essentially so this is a
22:16pilgrim badge as you say of St Thomas of Beckett so this badge would have been made for pilgrims
22:21traveling to Canterbury so they would have gone to Canterbury bought one of these badges where he died of
22:25where he died of course where he died he was he was martyred there in in 1170 and then they would
22:31have touched these badges on the relics of St Thomas itself and then the badge itself would be imbued
22:37with the kind of properties of that saint so for example if you were ill or you're worried about
22:41your own mortality um you'd have kept this badge with you I love that so it's been to Canterbury come
22:45back here and then been found in two pieces and there's still a head out there somewhere so Thomas
22:49Beckett's head is in the Thames somewhere we think that is correct and we are still searching for it
22:53the hunt continues and Sean I know you've got a license for doing this as does everyone else who's
22:58with us here today and if you'd like to know any more information about mudlarking or metal detecting
23:02and doing it responsibly it's all available on our social media it really is tick-tock time with the
23:09tides down here on the Thames you can see the tides coming in but we're still finding some amazing stuff
23:16now I like these a few of our mudlarkers have found some of these and they're basically lead
23:23cloth seals look at those and they really do tell a story because these would have been put on
23:30material that was about to be bought and it would prove that the material was of quality it had been
23:36weighed and that it had the tacks added to it some of them are quite interesting look they've got patterns
23:42on so I think we need to take them up to the hub and get them properly looked at which will also help
23:47us date them so we're learning down here about what history we can find out through mudlarking but
23:53what about the history of mudlarking well we'll find out more about that after the break so we'll see
23:59you in just a minute welcome back to digging for treasure we're in southwark cathedral on the banks
24:10of the river thames today and look at this our timeline is building up beautifully some fascinating
24:15artifacts on there michael we've spoken about some of them we'll go through some of them a bit more
24:19later in the program but we've also had some videos in from some of our viewers this week
24:22let's have a look here is dawn hi my name's dawn i've been metal detecting about eight years and
24:28i'm from rochdale i do come to shropshire quite often and i come here because the history dates
24:32right back to roman days and i know that because last year i was lucky enough to find a beautiful
24:38roman silver i know this is quite old i think i know the emperor but i'd love to know a little bit
24:44more about it can you help me out please i love dawn's passion can you help her out michael yeah
24:49definitely i mean she's dead right this is uh roman denari of the emperor trajan so a lovely find that
24:56she's made that great and the important thing is to do what dawn has done and to register that with
24:59the portable antiquity scheme which we're going to do with everything we found on the thames today
25:03because that helps to build that comprehensive picture the most comprehensive picture of the past
25:07that we've ever had and details are available on our social media well hello i've come up i've been
25:13pushed away by the tide i've brought lara hello lara i love you to you
25:16fabulous mudlarkers that have found some great finds and these are the ones i really found
25:21interesting because there were so many of them basically um but we wanted you to have a look
25:26at a couple of them take your pick okay well these two look particularly interesting because they've got
25:30something on them where some of the others are kind of less clear i guess so this one i think is is
25:36probably from the the late part of the the medieval period i don't know anything much about it
25:40because the inscription is sort of warm but we've got one here that's really nice because it has this
25:45depiction of a lion probably looking at 18th century ish for for this one maybe maybe a bit later
25:50so cloth seals are really important because they tell us a lot about the the textile trade particularly
25:56in the medieval period but but going later wool would have been manufactured in britain big
26:01manufacturing area um traded um to the continent particularly the low countries where they would
26:07have produced different textiles and exported them to other places but they would have sometimes come
26:11back to london to be dyed and maybe to other places as well i was surprised to find so many of them
26:16well that you found so many of them yeah well the dyers work next to the river for the for the for the
26:22water and you can imagine with the bolts of cloth ripping off the seals and maybe throwing them away
26:26into the river now i presume that people mudlock on other rivers not just the thames yeah technically you
26:31can mudlock on any river rivers have always been busy for trade and travel also a useful place to throw
26:37things away but of course london is the best place because of our tides and because of 2000 years
26:42past history mudlocking has actually become very popular recently although people have been looking
26:48for things on the shoreline here in the thames for hundreds of years although in the past not
26:53necessarily for historical artifacts so to find out more about mudlocking and its history last week we
26:59went on a stroll at the river bank with lara we're on the river thames and it's low tide which means we
27:17can get down onto the foreshore and we can start to look for history we're looking for the things that
27:21people have lost and dropped and thrown away over the centuries straight away i can pick up this piece
27:32of coal it would have fallen off a collier boat it might have come down from newcastle it was powering
27:38the industrial city in the 19th century but this is the sort of thing that the original mudlarks would
27:44have been looking for these are the sort of things they could have washed and sold just for a few pennies
27:49and that could have been everything they needed just to keep them out of the workhouse for one more
27:54night i've been doing this 20 years so you learn to work out where things are likely to wash up
28:05because the river sorts things by size and weight and it tends to wash all the small metal things together
28:12i've just seen a button and some pins which is great and that's probably
28:18sort of mid-19th century and these handmade pins they date from around 1400 to the start of the
28:25industrial revolution when they started to make them with machines i always like to think of them
28:30as a little work of art i think there's probably always been river scavengers in london as long as
28:37there's been people desperate enough to live off what they can find in the river for the very first time
28:42that the word mudlark was used was the end of the 18th century in a book that was written about policing
28:49the river and they described the mudlarks as criminals as the people who would be scavenging
28:55around the hulls of ships looking for the bladders of rum and the packets of spices that were thrown off
29:01the ships by other criminals
29:08so fast forward to the 20th century and a man called ivanl hume comes along and he is an archaeologist
29:13who recognizes the importance of stuff that's found out of context because everything we find on the
29:20foreshore isn't really in a layer it's just a big sort of mushed up mass of stuff the thames is just a big
29:27washing machine of history archaeologists didn't really see the importance of it but ivanl hume did
29:32and from then onwards it's gained more mass popularity um and oh i've just seen something
29:39here hang on a minute it's a clay pipe and it's just starting to poke out of the mud here
29:48we're going to pull this out carefully and hope that it's complete and it isn't broken
29:53these are really easy to date you date them by the size and the shape now the very early ones are tiny
29:59tiny because tobacco was expensive so the pipes were much smaller this one is 17th century so this
30:07probably dates from around the time of the great fire and of course the fire of london would have
30:11ranged along this part of the river front here and you can imagine somebody sitting in a tavern by a fire
30:18with a nice long stem puffing away on their pipe perhaps somebody runs in and tells them the news
30:23that london's burning i think i'm probably a bit addicted to mudlocking actually you really get
30:35a hit when you find something it's that moment you bend down and you pick something up and you're
30:39you literally travel through time and probably my favorite thing is is a little tiny
30:43uh tudor child's shoe you can see the little impressions of the previous owner's footprint
30:50their heel and their toes and the little creases they are the ghosts of the past they list as they
30:56have this impression of history and that's that's treasure for me
31:06how fascinating to hear the origination story of the mudlarkers but lara i think you've got a board of
31:12fashion here these are some of the items you've found on the thames foreshore you've got this
31:17beautiful little shoe how old is that this little shoe dates from the 1500s so it's 16th century
31:24um it's a child's shoe so it probably would have fitted my son when he was about five and when i
31:31pulled it out of the mud you could see the imprint of the little owner's toes and heel still in the
31:37leather i mean we'll never know how somebody lost it perhaps he was running across the mud and it pulled
31:41off but it is this sort of connection with history i almost felt like i was reaching out and holding
31:45hands with the little owner i mean that's what i love about london mud is that it's anaerobic which
31:51means that the oxygen doesn't act on fabric or textile and it doesn't happen to degrade it or or start
31:59that decaying process so what we have are these beautiful perfect items of fashion from the past you
32:06can actually touch it and see what people were wearing what about these though they're not like
32:10duff clay pipes don't they they do they're actually made of the same clay as clay pipes this lovely white
32:16clay and they're wig curlers they date yeah they date from the 17th 18th century how very dangerous
32:23liaisons terribly that's big giant hair i love it when people have those big boofy bonkers wigs it was a
32:30fashion that came from france came back with the uh the king charles ii from france when he returned
32:35from exile and it it just got a bit crazy into the 18th century and they would take these they'd steep
32:41them in hot water they'd wrap the hair in them and then they'd um sometimes even put them into a pie
32:47put a casing on top of the pie and take it to the public bakeries so that the curls could be steamed
32:53into the wig you can imagine the smell oh pretty yucky but it's a bit like the modern equivalent isn't
32:59it of having your your hair setting curlers at the salon i love it it is hair pie not for everyone
33:05hair pie i don't fancy that back to you dan and michaela i feel like i learned a lot there i'm glad
33:11we've got hair dryers these days that's all i'm saying don't want to put my hair in a pie does make
33:14me feel a little bit ill um i've got to show you this this is the oldest artifact we've featured
33:20across the entire series 10 000 years old found by steve on the banks of the thames i think it's
33:25worth a round of applause for steve ancient history michael can you tell us a bit more
33:32about it what exactly is it so this is a mesolithic hand axe sometimes called a thames picked it's it's
33:37lovely um object you've got some of the original cortex they obviously um made from flint you can
33:42see how it's crafted probably at the time people could have made these fairly quickly actually
33:47it's a beautiful um object and like you say of terrific age so a lovely find yeah it really is it
33:53feels nice too doesn't it imagine the damage though that that could have done and i want you to have
33:57a look at this which was found by jamie on the foreshore that we were mudlarking at so it's obviously
34:03a bit of pottery but can you tell us more about it yeah so this looks like it's a piece of roman
34:07tile but obviously what's interesting about it is the fact that it's got a a paw print on it now the
34:11jury's out a little bit on this whether this is a cat um or a dog paw print but i'll go cat i'm going
34:18cat i'm cat are you cat jamie jamie thinks it's a cat as well all right everyone's going with a cat
34:23okay so at the time these would have been laid out um to dry and then of course they'd be prone
34:29to kind of animals kind of walking over them so i really like it because there's this sort of
34:32interaction between the humans creating stuff and then animals of course interfering with that process
34:37so it's it's great isn't it so i guess the question is was it a roman cat or a roaming cat
34:42oh no that's made me feel as ill as the hair pie anyway stay with us please do stay with us
34:48after the break we'll be meeting a couple of fossil hunters that have found proof of rare sea creatures
34:54guess where cotswolds i know extraordinary see you in a minute
35:06welcome back to digging for treasure and we really have found an awful lot of treasure this
35:11week haven't been a fantastic variety of things we've got here yeah thousands of years on the
35:16timeline it's been a brilliant day so far we've got some more things to show you and you've got a
35:21smile on your face mike you like this don't you yeah i really do like this this is a piece of um
35:26victorian jewelry perhaps um part of a bracelet you've got kind of the holes on the side where
35:31perhaps it was sort of strung together this is made it seems of a french jet which is a glass
35:36imitating um and proper jet and in the victorian period black jewelry was really popular for
35:42mourning got a lovely um design on it as well of a flower motif really nicely executed so i like this
35:48object and found by joe give us a wave joe what i find extraordinary is it it's so beautifully kept
35:53it hasn't sort of eroded has it the preservation of a lot of these objects is probably better than
35:57you'd expect if it was found on arable land and michael you talked about the popularity of of black
36:01jewelry and that was largely down to queen victoria was it was very much a fashion trendsetter
36:06yes that's right so during the victorian period particularly when victoria was in in mourning
36:10she was wearing black all the time and it seems to be that you know a lot of the population kind of
36:15took that on that idea of wearing black jewelry so there's a lot of victorian um black objects
36:21um particularly dress accessories should we put it on our timeline where where does it go then sort
36:26of i think nearer the end here what about that yeah and look at that i mean we've got things that are
36:31decades old to thousands of years old but imagine what it's like to find something a hundred million
36:38years old which is exactly what a couple of fossil hunters found on an extraordinary prehistoric site
36:46i'm sally hollingworth and i'm neville hollingworth we met in 2015 in a event called dino zone so we
36:57actually met under a gorgasaurus skeleton you mentioned that you wanted to find a dinosaur didn't you so
37:03i said to sally well you can come out on one of my field trips that's how we ended up in our fossil
37:09adventures you don't have to go to the frozen waste of siberia or to the dinosaur lands in utah
37:17you've got the most incredible finds in the uk under your feet under your feet yeah exactly
37:26it was the christmas of lockdown where there's about five days between christmas and new year you
37:31could go and visit family and get out of the house and everything so yeah we decided to come and look for
37:36fossils we came out to this site the rain had washed out some things out on the bottom of the quarry and
37:44we saw some quite incredible fossils it was like a beautiful bouquet of flowers appearing on this slab
37:51of gray rock i'd never seen anything like it never seen anything like it so we lifted three or four more
38:00slabs and every single one of them was covered in amazing marine fossils we'd stumbled across something
38:08it wasn't just locally amazing it was nationally and then internationally famous because of the
38:14quality and the preservation and the sheer abundance of what was here and so we got in touch with the
38:20natural history museum in london my name's tim ewan i'm a curator and paleontologist at the natural
38:27history museum in london how i felt when i first saw the photos from sally and neville it was absolutely
38:33astounding so to find one of these animals preserved whole you're normally having a really good day
38:40fossil hunting the fact that they had maybe 20 or 30 already indicated to me that there was a real
38:46treasure trove of scientifically important specimens here each slab that i lifted had more fossils on it
38:54than i ever would have imagined the preservation was incredible because they'd been encapsulated
39:00in this soft mud so that's really sad for them isn't it but good for us yeah yeah
39:10so i'm just going to um gently remove some of the clay the soft sediment from this slab and hopefully
39:17that starts revealing what's on the slab then
39:19these little marine creatures on here are quite beautiful you can see there's a little urchin there
39:25coming out parts of his shell there it's just amazing it's just amazing
39:31lean around lift yep there's the point of this starfish arm
39:40it's not every day you see 167 million year old starfish even if it is only his arm
39:45you can also see that this bit here is that this is part of the disc and you see it's all torn
39:52so it gives us an idea of uh really the current direction so when this animal was buried which
39:58way the water was flowing so it's uh really important and it tells like a nice little story
40:04uh about uh this this animal's uh last moments on earth 167 million years ago
40:10i'm just finding some more starfish let's have a look oh wow that is amazing oh yeah you have that
40:23is a beautiful starfish fossil you can just see the arm here that's curled round over the top part of
40:32of its body so and it died it went like this to cover up Sally so that's Sally
40:41second starfish so a beautiful find well done you that's awesome
40:49it's turned out to be a place that's unique in the world for this sort of
40:53collecting of this material and that is something that for me has been the real
40:58excitement about here it's a scientific discoveries that are being made and
41:03still to be made and the fact that you never know your luck you might get a
41:09fossil named after you
41:16what an incredible find it's made me feel a bit inadequate though because I don't
41:21know about you guys but I was chuffed that I cleaned my cupboards out during
41:25lockdown let alone found some rare fossils did a big jigsaw I was quite proud of
41:29that yeah well done well done something to be really proud of is our timeline
41:33because actually we've got 10,000 years of history right in front of us here on the
41:38sable London pulled a blinder didn't it certainly 10,000 years absolutely stunning
41:44so we've got everything from the Mesolithic Neolithic Roman Georgian all the
41:50way up to Victorian it's just mind-boggling I mean Michael what's your
41:55favorite find well one object we've not talked about but I'm really intrigued by
41:59is this little object here so this seems to be a sort of class or a fitting
42:04perhaps for a book maybe for a casket something like that probably dating to the
42:0817th 18th century something like that but what I'm really intrigued by is this
42:12design on it it harks back to an earlier period maybe a Celtic or Anglo-Saxon
42:17design so I really love this object it's beautiful and I'd love to know a
42:20little bit more about it requires more investigation Michael certainly does
42:24certainly does what about you Mikaela what do you like I'm going for something
42:26quite simple because it's made my imagination go wild as usual and it's
42:31these pins because I'm imagining all these Victorian ladies and all their
42:35finery with all pinned up and then they all fall out and they have to sort of keep
42:38pulling their skirts so the one artifact I want to pick which is the
42:46epitome of scratch-and-sliff London it's the lice comb it's got to be the
42:52lice comb what an itchy place yeah well you remember last week we had the animal
42:55bells that was how history sounded I'm going to go for how history smells which
42:59is this over here which is found by Ed give us a wave Ed there's Ed over there
43:02this is a perfume bottle and you can see there on the bottom there's the
43:05manufacturer's name Muson that's some gorgeous French lavender perfume dated about
43:111933 unopened in 80 years so you can imagine that would smell delicious I
43:17think it's probably gone off now it probably smells of cat's weed I'm unhappy
43:23with you and you know Raksha is not very happy with you because look at
43:26Michaela's t-shirt is that how you spell archaeology because I've got to be honest
43:32when I bought it I didn't notice but then when I looked it up this apparently is
43:36the alternative American spelling of archaeology so there you go no it's an
43:41abomination I know sorry sorry there are a few people we have to thank we've had
43:46such a great day at Salt Cathedral can we please say huge thank you to all our
43:49mudlarkers thank you so much for being brilliant and finding so much for our
43:53timeline also to our expert from the portable antiquity scheme professor
43:58Michael Lewis has been a huge part of today's show and to Ian and to Lara as well thank you so
44:04much Lara and I haven't mentioned Tom our producer Tom who's been working feverishly at
44:10the fines desk we've not spoken to him today he's worn his best shirt and everything Tom thank you so
44:14much and remember if you want to have a go at larking or detecting yourself please go to our social
44:20media pages where we can show you the where the rules and regulations are for your area but we
44:25really hope we have inspired you to get involved because it really is good fun and I've certainly
44:30learned so much over the four weeks sadly we've come to the end so that's it from us lot but we'll
44:36hopefully see you again from everyone here bye-bye
44:39he's back with another simply unmissable travelogue this time in the birthplace of civilisation
44:52michael palin into iraq is brand new tuesday at nine coming up dirty harry has the terrorists
44:58running scared starring clint eastwood action thriller the enforcer is next
45:03you