Unearthing Anglo-Saxon Secrets: What Happened After Roman Britain?

[00:00:10]What happened when Roman Britain came to an end?

[00:00:16]When nearly four centuries of imperial control drew to a close, was it a time of violence, chaos, or was change more gradual?

[00:00:37]Two years ago, an extraordinary excavation took place on this quiet hillside in Buckinghamshire. It's thrown remarkable new light on a little understood period of our history that's all too often written off as the Dark Ages. Now, for the first time, we can reveal in detail what was discovered here and what it tells us about what was going on 1,500 years ago.

[00:01:09]We're going to dig deep into this mysterious period of history, trying to sift the archaeological facts from the myth.

[00:01:18]And I get the chance to get up close with everything from ancient swords, shields, and jewelry.

[00:01:29]Evidence of violence. An iron object. If you look at it, it's actually embedded in the spine. But also, some of the finest objects ever found from this forgotten time.

[00:01:52]The HS2 rail project is cutting a line through England from London to Birmingham.

[00:01:59]It's a line through time, revealing historic discoveries along the route.

[00:02:04]As the engineers prepare to build the high-speed railway, teams of archaeologists have been scouring the route in advance.

[00:02:12]Seeking out and preserving every scrap of historical evidence they can find, from circular Bronze Age henges to Roman roads and hidden medieval churches.

[00:02:28]But one of the most important and surprising discoveries has been here in rural Buckinghamshire, where the Chiltern Hills meet the Vale of Aylesbury.

[00:02:40]The HS2 rail line is going to go right through this valley, past the town of Wendover just over that ridge, from London to Birmingham. But when the archaeologists first arrived on this site and started to conduct their survey, there was no suggestion of what they'd eventually find.

[00:03:00]The first survey used geophysical techniques to scan beneath the surface for disturbances in the soil, clues to possible human-made features.

[00:03:10]But the early assessment only showed a few ancient trackways.

[00:03:14]But then a few trial pits were dug to check out the site.

[00:03:19]Gradually, an extraordinary story started to appear. Tantalizing glimpses of burials.

[00:03:25]They rarely show up on geophysical surveys, but the early dig showed bones and hints of metal.

[00:03:35]Teams of archaeologists move in, using metal detectors as tools to help locate likely burial sites for excavation.

[00:03:42]>> Got a large ferrous signal here.

[00:03:45]>> Okay.

[00:03:46]>> Which I pinpointed.

[00:03:48]>> Tents are put over the locations to protect them from the weather. Almost immediately things get interesting. The detectors identify locations of metal objects before the digging begins in earnest.

[00:04:03]Digging carefully down, Matt painstakingly reveals an iron object.

[00:04:09]A spearhead.

[00:04:10]>> We haven't actually found any skeleton, any bones yet, but what we have found is a gorgeous spearhead. Right there. So, that one will be the tip, basically. You see that is one edge of it, and that's where the wood would have socketed into it. What's really odd is that it's a spearhead without a body at the moment.

[00:04:29]We haven't reached the bottom of the grave yet.

[00:04:31]So, what we're going to do is I'm going to clean it all up, and then hopefully we find a head.

[00:04:39]>> Excavating over the next day reveals the skeleton of the person who was buried with the spearhead, placed by their left shoulder.

[00:04:47]>> Well, we've got a body, which is nice.

[00:04:49]It's a bit of a meat lump.

[00:04:51]So, going along with the spearhead, we've got this shield boss, which would be if you picture a shield, it'd be the middle bit, the iron bit, and it's kind of a bit for bashing, basically. It's a bit unusual cuz it's got a little bit of a a pokey out bit there, which is more effective for bashing, I guess. As well as that, we've got these two metal objects here, which we think might be knives.

[00:05:20]Apparently, with Saxons, it's a it's good to have two knives on the go at once. Uh one for kind of fighting, one for whatever else you need to do, eating, whatever.

[00:05:34]>> Across the site, more burials are emerging.

[00:05:37]All in early Anglo-Saxon style.

[00:05:43]And many of them are revealing weaponry, including the remains of several more lavishly decorated shields.

[00:05:50]And more spear heads.

[00:05:55]As each grave is excavated a picture is emerging of what seems to be a group of wealthy people with valuable Anglo-Saxon artifacts from the 5th and 6th centuries AD.

[00:06:06]The era immediately after Roman rule.

[00:06:10]Traditionally, the Romans are portrayed literally packing up and leaving Britain in 410 AD.

[00:06:15]Historians now think it was far more complicated with a mix of interacting cultures, particularly in this early phase.

[00:06:22]A time that is short on historic evidence.

[00:06:26]The written record for this period is incredibly thin. We have a few contemporary references and then a little bit more written over a century later.

[00:06:36]We get the legendary names like Arthur and Vortigern, but the picture that emerges is one of shifting times, uncertainty in the post-Roman period. And the arrival of Europeans in Britain.

[00:06:49]People who were going to change the course of British history.

[00:06:56]The lack of written records means that the physical objects from this time are incredibly useful to help interpret this little understood period.

[00:07:05]After being recorded on site the finds are being moved to archaeological headquarters for further assessment.

[00:07:13]I've come to this secret location in Cardiff where the objects are undergoing their initial evaluation.

[00:07:22]Let's go inside and check them out.

[00:07:39]Assessing the finds is Yoen McCarthy.

[00:07:42]All right, Eoin. What have we got here?

[00:07:44]>> Okay. So, here we have a selection of weapons from the site.

[00:07:49]Uh obviously here on this side we have a couple of spearheads.

[00:07:52]>> Vicious looking spearheads, right?

[00:07:53]>> Yes, indeed.

[00:07:55]>> And what a state of preservation. I mean, you can see that that sort of They leave nothing to the imagination.

[00:08:01]Can I pick this evil looking one up here?

[00:08:03]>> Yeah, indeed. Yeah, that's a pretty robust.

[00:08:06]>> And what is the What is the width mean on that? Is that Is that Is that a just to make it look nice or is that a more effective injury?

[00:08:13]>> Yeah, it's definitely creates more effective injuries. As as the blade widens, obviously that's going to open a larger wound, which is going to mean more bleeding. It's going to be very very nasty injury indeed.

[00:08:23]>> Wow.

[00:08:24]>> As well as spears, many burials, male and female, adults, and even some children, include Anglo-Saxon style knife.

[00:08:32]Known as a seax.

[00:08:35]>> So, here we have a seax. And a seax is essentially a really big knife. Uh now, it could have been used as a weapon.

[00:08:42]There are theories that it may have had more of a practical use, as sort of a hunting knife as well.

[00:08:47]Uh but um in combat, you can see how effective it would be. If you're in the press of uh of close combat >> and all the packing in.

[00:08:56]>> Yeah. Yeah. Then it's going to be a lot more effective to use a shorter weapon to get into somebody's ribs or the groins, some nasty area like that, cause somebody some horrible damage.

[00:09:06]>> Cuz you can't wave your sword around cuz you're all you're all tied up.

[00:09:09]>> You're in a shield wall, you think everything's going fine, and you look down and someone just stuck one of those into your thigh.

[00:09:16]>> One remarkable discovery on site brings home the potential for violence in the early Anglo-Saxon world.

[00:09:24]>> Well, this is an exciting burial, the 30th so far.

[00:09:27]Um much like the other burials, it's aligned to a specific set of cardinal points.

[00:09:34]This one is northwest-southeast, and like all our other burials its head is either in the southern part or the western part.

[00:09:41]However, unusually, [music] the burial is flexed. Now, most of our burials are supine extended on their back with their legs sticking out down to the bottom of the of the burial.

[00:09:51]These legs are are bent slightly, >> [music] >> flexed.

[00:09:56]You'll notice that there is a lovely copper alloy disc brooch down there.

[00:10:00]And if you see the staining on the bone just towards me, that's also was the location of another copper alloy object which has degraded completely and left the staining on the bone. So, much like the other burials we've got [music] these two disc brooches, probably forming clasps for a cloak.

[00:10:15]But, what makes this burial [music] very, very interesting? You'll notice towards the base of the spine an iron object. If you look at it, it's actually [music] embedded in the spine, a notch in the spine. So, when we remove it, you'll see the notch in [music] it.

[00:10:28]Whether it was cause of death is another We don't know for certain yet, although chances are [music] it is.

[00:10:34]This is the most curious of the burials so far, not the richest in grave goods, [music] but this particular event This is a a singular event that we've actually got in the archaeological record. [music] >> It's very rare to find a burial like this. A body laid in the ground with some care, but with the sharp spearhead still sticking into it.

[00:10:58]Back at headquarters in Cardiff, the bones of this unfortunate victim have had an initial assessment by the osteologist Rose Calis.

[00:11:07]>> So, we can, um, estimate age at death.

[00:11:09]We used a suite of methodologies. Um, the most commonly used is the, um, is tooth wear, um, um, and tooth eruption. And also, we can look at the auricular surface, which is a morphology of this area of the pelvis, and the morphology, um, the bone degrades through time, so you can get an age from that. So, this particular individual we've managed to age to 17 to 25 years of age.

[00:11:33]>> A young man?

[00:11:34]>> A young man, yes. Yeah.

[00:11:36]>> Rose's examination has found out more about the gruesome wound this sharp iron spear or seax caused in the young man.

[00:11:45]>> That was embedded into the body of the spine.

[00:11:48]Um and that projection we can estimate that this particular person was stabbed um from the left side from the front rather than the back. And it may it was very deep because it actually penetrated and embedded into the spine and then it he was it was left in and he was buried.

[00:12:04]>> That is terrible. He was stabbed in the stomach. It went in so hard it hit his spine. It's always so exciting archaeology where you where you get a glimpse into a particular second even though it happened 1,500 years ago. And that Well, that's it.

[00:12:17]>> Absolutely. Um and this is the only um evidence of a sharp force trauma within the whole cemetery.

[00:12:24]>> That seems really important because our perception of this period is that every night life was nasty, brutish, and short. Everyone's stabbing each other the whole time.

[00:12:33]>> Well, this is the only individual within this cemetery um that has evidence for sharp force trauma. Um so there's nothing to suggest that this group of people were in constant conflict with each other.

[00:12:54]>> As well as spears, many of the graves excavated including the metal fittings from wooden shields, particularly the central iron shield boss.

[00:13:03]So, this is a think of male almost certainly in this case a warrior burial uh because of the very large [music] spear up to the top right.

[00:13:13]And also the ubiquitous knife that we all find on pretty much all the burials we have with the handle just there under the forearm. The two hands are below the thigh.

[00:13:22]The shield on top of the thigh. And you can see that this itself was a weapon.

[00:13:26]So, [music] and this would do some serious damage.

[00:13:31]>> But they're vicious cuz they're not just defensive on a shield. That those could you could use those to smack into someone, can't >> Yes, yeah, yes. So, they have offensive qualities. Obviously, this one has a very nasty-looking spike on it, which could obviously do somebody some damage.

[00:13:43]But they're also very versatile as well.

[00:13:45]So, they obviously protect your hand, um but this shield bosses like these have a flat disk on this protrusion here, and that could be used to hook down an enemy's shield or sword if you can catch their blade or the rim of their shield on it. Uh it can actually be used that way as well.

[00:14:04]>> And the decoration on that is beautiful.

[00:14:06]>> Yes, yeah. They This one has some lovely silver fittings on it. And uh there is evidence to suggest that the Anglo-Saxons really did like decorating their shields, and they believed that it perhaps by decorating them that it added to the protective qualities of the shield.

[00:14:21]>> Across the site, 15 burials were found with spears and seven with shields.

[00:14:27]But only a single burial had one of these.

[00:14:30]>> So, this is really really exciting find on site. Um this is actually the first sword we have on the site despite the number of burials. So, what we have here is a spatha sword, and during the Anglo-Saxon period, this was used as kind of the slash and bash sword of the infantryman.

[00:14:48]And the preservation is it's really really fantastic. So, as you can see here, the blade is kept in shape really nicely, and we even have bits here of the scabbard left behind.

[00:15:00]And then you can see here up at the hilt, and this may have been covered in either leather or bone.

[00:15:06]And we actually see an amber bead was found just about this position, actually, with the hilt. Um it could be that this was a form of decoration, and would have dangled using some kind of cording along it, and add a bit of personalization to this weapon.

[00:15:21]>> Lifting this magnificent sword the soil has been the highlight of Victoria's archaeological career.

[00:15:27]>> It's great and it's terrifying cuz until you find it, you can kind of go about your day blissfully unaware. But as soon as you do uncover something of such national importance like this, you have this sudden custodianship for this heritage that it's your responsibility not only to get it out okay, but to ensure that it's going actually be preserved and conserved for future generations.

[00:15:55]>> Back at archaeological HQ, there's a remarkable tool that lets me see just how the sword looked before it was lifted from the burial.

[00:16:03]Hi Louie.

[00:16:03]>> Hi Dan, how are you doing?

[00:16:04]>> Good. So what are we looking at here?

[00:16:06]>> Right. We are going to show you some photogrammetry models of some of the burials that we found. So this is >> Uh super accurate.

[00:16:13]>> Yeah, it's it's built up from photographic imagery and then basically we we drop it into a 3D model and so you can zoom in, out, uh and see all aspects. The one individual, skeleton 83, you see under his left side >> Look at that sword.

[00:16:28]>> profile of the sword as we found it.

[00:16:30]>> And that's one of the the few swords you found on site?

[00:16:33]>> Uh it's the only >> Only one?

[00:16:35]>> long sword or or proper sword. The other one to a slightly shorter sort of seax style.

[00:16:40]>> Well, fascinating to know exactly why he's buried with a sword when the others aren't. That's amazing. What a great tool to be able to um so that you can revisit the grave site years after it's actually been uh disturbed and the bones collected.

[00:16:55]>> The technology is incredibly useful to understand the site.

[00:16:59]But I really want to take an up-close look at this remarkable weapon for myself.

[00:17:04]>> Wow.

[00:17:05]It's >> Look at this.

[00:17:06]>> I do have this.

[00:17:08]>> Wow.

[00:17:09]Oh, that is a beauty, isn't it? Look at >> Yes, it is indeed.

[00:17:12]>> Oh my goodness.

[00:17:13]>> Yeah, this beautiful Anglo-Saxon sword.

[00:17:15]Obviously, there's uh still a bit of muck on it here, but it's it's still in a a fairly good state of preservation.

[00:17:21]>> And then you've got the grip would have been wood, but that's that's rotted away.

[00:17:25]>> Yes, the grip would have probably been of some perishable material, maybe wood, maybe bone, something like that. So, unfortunately, it hasn't survived in this case. Many swords, especially for the early Anglo-Saxons, may have been given as gifts. We know from Anglo-Saxon literature, like Beowulf, how important gift-giving was to the relationship between a lord and his retainer.

[00:17:46]>> So, it does show that they are that they are indeed a a status weapon, a status symbol.

[00:17:51]>> So, mate, can I try and see what the weight is?

[00:17:52]>> Yes, yeah, if we if we're gentle with it, we can just pick it up a little bit.

[00:17:55]>> go.

[00:17:57]Amazing.

[00:17:59]It's got a lot of uh a lot of weight to it, isn't there? I mean, it's it's a you might It's obviously a cutting weapon, but it can break, you know, it can break a limb if you hit someone with it.

[00:18:06]>> Yes, yes, quite easily.

[00:18:08]>> And only one found at the site. I mean, that's tempting to think therefore that the people that were bearing these bodies, they were they were keeping the swords back maybe for themselves.

[00:18:16]>> Yeah, the kids might be like, "Well, I'm keeping dad's sword, so but he can have his old spear."

[00:18:20]>> Exactly.

[00:18:25]>> The sword was almost certainly made of pattern-welded iron.

[00:18:29]A finely crafted object of lethal practical beauty.

[00:18:35]But as the excavation continues and more and more burials are uncovered, a different picture starts to emerge on site.

[00:18:42]Not just weapons, but the beautiful and useful possessions of people who've lived relatively stable, wealthy lives.

[00:18:52]It would be wrong to think this excavation is all about violence and weaponry.

[00:18:59]That this era is one of warlords, invading Saxons, Arthurian Britons trying to hold them back. Violence, darkness, of the restraining, guiding hand of the Roman Empire being [music] taken away and being replaced by anarchy. I think that interpretation suited an earlier generation of historians, one who saw the British Empire's role in the world as positive. Talked about the civilizing influence of the imperial power. But now we've come to think about empire very differently. And we think about this period differently as well. It's no longer the dark ages, but the early medieval or early middle ages.

[00:19:41]The early medieval period certainly saw people on the move across Europe as the Western Roman Empire disintegrated.

[00:19:48]The slender written records talk of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes crossing the seas from northern Europe.

[00:19:56]They describe invasion and the arrival of mercenaries in the 5th century.

[00:20:00]But there's much debate about how large and violent an incoming this really was.

[00:20:07]However, the archaeology shows how they brought a new style of objects to Britain.

[00:20:15]On site, more and more objects of exceptional beauty discovered.

[00:20:20]Bodies buried festooned in bead necklaces.

[00:20:25]Gorgeous brooches.

[00:20:27]Toiletry sets.

[00:20:30]And beautiful spiral silver rings.

[00:20:35]You can really start to get an idea of how these people looked when they were alive and dressed in their finery.

[00:20:41]The Thegns of Mercia are living history group who specialize in this early Anglo-Saxon era.

[00:20:48]Including the clothes of wealthy women as worn by Julia.

[00:20:52]>> I'm dressed as a Sith with a 6th century noblewoman. This is a florid cruciform long brooch um that pins my cloak together.

[00:21:01]Um and then underneath these are also one of my more recent pieces. Um these are Baltic amber.

[00:21:08]Um, again, the original finds um had much chunkier pieces of amber on them.

[00:21:12]They've got Roman recycled blue glass, some polychrome glass beads, and some melon beads as well, which I really like. They're like my favorite pieces.

[00:21:21]This is my new ring. Um, originally found in Bideford on Avon, a grave.

[00:21:26]Silver spiral.

[00:21:28]I have my little um toiletry set.

[00:21:33]Some nail clippers, an ear spoon, and a sharp thing to get the dirt from under your nails.

[00:21:39]And I've got my uh square small long brooches.

[00:21:44]Uh they they're really important, actually. The cut of my dress my dress isn't tailored at all. So, um it it's held together by my belt and my brooches. Um, but it's really awkward to put together. It takes a few pairs of hands. But, essentially, they hold the whole thing together.

[00:21:59]Um, not the comfiest things. They do dig in a little bit, but, you know, fashion.

[00:22:03]>> [laughter] >> 6th century fashion.

[00:22:08]>> Nearly everyone buried at the Wendover cemetery was fully clothed in their best items.

[00:22:13]But, it wasn't only things that were made to be worn that were found in the excavations.

[00:22:19]The archaeologists have also turned up some beautifully crafted objects, including small wooden containers shaped like small decorated buckets.

[00:22:31]>> Yeah. Well, what we what we think we've got is that there's a a wooden vessel that's been reinforced with these bronze bands around it. And you can see there's one there, and that's got the the rim on it. We've had other ones in some of the other burials with fewer sort of rings around them. So, I think this is this is on the the fancier end of ones that we've we've had here. Just here, this is the skull just kind of starting to come up here. And then they've all been on the the left side of the of the skull.

[00:23:04]They're all in the same position.

[00:23:07]>> For the time being, the ceremonial purpose of these wooden containers is a mystery, but some objects have clearer uses, including one of the most exceptional finds at the site.

[00:23:17]>> We have an amazing object, the second of its type found in Britain as a whole vessel.

[00:23:23]The other being in the British Museum.

[00:23:24]It's a beautiful cone-shaped beaker and it is extraordinary fortunate for it to survive cuz this site has been See, the grave is very shallow and it's been plowed quite heavily, so there are a lot of plow scars and this, fortunately, has survived the ravages of time.

[00:23:41]So, again, it's a the site that keeps on giving and that every single grave could be is very different. This is the first of this type of beaker that we've got here. We may find more. So, it's a it's a a very high-status drinking vessel.

[00:23:54]So, and and it's made of glass.

[00:23:56]Made locally. Now, transporting glass across lands, across whatever this is, is a a fragile business at best. So, that unless you have these large trade networks, glass tends to have very short trade runs. We know that glass was manufactured at this time in certain parts of Britain, Dinas Powys in South Wales being a famous example where they found glass workings.

[00:24:17]So, this would have been made not necessarily local local, but certainly in Britain.

[00:24:30]>> Back at base, Yonas had the chance [music] to get a closer look at this amazing cone beaker.

[00:24:35]>> Here we have a Kemston style glass beaker. And now, this is an Anglo-Saxon find.

[00:24:42]Um and it's it is very delicate indeed.

[00:24:45]Um but it is very beautiful and it is an example of a a a kind of high-status object that would be used for feasting, drinking some nice imported wine or perhaps mead. A lot of the glass objects that were made by the Anglo-Saxons were also made with recycled glass, often imported from the continent. There would be centers where old glass vessels would be smashed down into tiny little cubes we called cullet, and then they would be sold on and many of them would arrive in Anglo-Saxon England where they would be melted down by artisans and made into new objects like this. It's giving me a very different flavor for interior design in the early medieval period. I mean, it would be the Obviously, these are high-status these are wealthy people, but their houses would have been filled with the kind of beautiful objects that we would think of as as having in our houses, too.

[00:25:31]>> These spectacular objects tell a story of new styles coming to Britain after Roman rule and a relatively wealthy group of people who made their homes here on the edge of a hill in what is now Buckinghamshire.

[00:25:45]It's been an exceptional opportunity for the lead archaeologist of the HS2 digs on this section of the line, Dr. Rachel Wood.

[00:25:53]>> Rachel, how would you summarize who was buried at this site and over how many decades?

[00:26:01]>> So, from the objects, we can see it covered basically the 5th and 6th centuries AD. So, we don't know precisely, but it's around a couple of hundred years of burial here. It's not that many people, so 141 people over a couple of hundred years is is not that many. So, it's not the whole population and we can also see from the objects that it's it's the wealthier or higher status end of the population that's been buried there.

[00:26:27]>> This is 200 years of the kind of elite of society being buried in one place and you just you guys stumbled across it. That must be the dream of any archaeologist.

[00:26:35]>> Absolutely. It's it's so interesting and we would have been so excited to find one grave with one decorated pot in it and yet we had 141 individuals with almost all of them having at least one amazing knife or, you know, most people had large collections of beads with them and pottery vessels or a bucket or one of the glass vessels or something. Yeah, we really, really were utterly astounded with it. The amount of information that we will be able to get from the the further work and the further study that can be done on the objects and the people themselves is immense. I would say this is probably one of the most important Anglo-Saxon discoveries since Sutton Hoo or the Staffordshire hoard.

[00:27:23]>> One particular grave on the site gives an idea of the range of objects these people knew from Roman times deep into the Anglo-Saxon period.

[00:27:33]>> We have a supine extended burial, [music] much like all the others we've had so far.

[00:27:38]And with it is a a variety of very interesting grave goods.

[00:27:41]The most obvious you can see is the glass bowl there, which has survived fully intact [music] except, of course, the weight of soil on top of it has cracked it.

[00:27:50]>> Glass objects themselves are unusual burials. In late Roman burials, they occur more frequently [music] than than not. However, if it was early Saxon, that would be very unusual. So, it's it glass itself was a high status object.

[00:28:03]Was it imported from a long, long way away in the late Roman period.

[00:28:08]>> This person was buried with plenty of fine clothing and jewelry. It all makes for an array of objects from across several centuries carefully placed with a single burial.

[00:28:20]Back in Cardiff, the glass bowl has been reassembled in the lab.

[00:28:24]>> This bowl, this is actually late Roman in origin. Yes, it is.

[00:28:29]We believe this bowl originates around circa 400 AD, just about the time the Romans were leaving Britain. And this is so interesting because it was found in an Anglo-Saxon grave. And not just any Anglo-Saxon grave as well. We also found something else in that grave.

[00:28:47]What we have here, we have some silver objects and there's two possibilities with these objects. We call them scutiform discs.

[00:28:57]It means they're shaped like shields. As you can see, this is much like the shield bosses that we've seen from these sites. And if I take these tweezers here and and turn it over, you can see it has a handle.

[00:29:12]>> A handle, exactly.

[00:29:13]>> Yes, now and there's two possibilities. One is that they were all part of a necklace.

[00:29:18]Now, we have these necklace with scutiform discs and they are generally a lot later than the kind of stuff we've been finding here, more towards late 6th, early 7th century kind of period. And if that's the case, then having a late Roman glass bowl and quite a late early Anglo-Saxon object in the same grave implies that this bowl may have been curated for a very long time. Either that or it was traded from abroad at a slightly later date.

[00:29:49]>> So, it's a survi- it's a survivor, I guess.

[00:29:50]>> Yes, very much so, very much so.

[00:29:52]>> It survived a lot longer than it would in my house.

[00:29:55]>> So, the glass bowl and silver discs were probably made up to 200 years apart.

[00:30:01]And yet they were carefully buried with the same person.

[00:30:04]There's much work still to do. Carbon dating, chemical analysis to find out where these people came from, perhaps DNA to see if they're family groups.

[00:30:15]But we do already know a huge amount about this special site.

[00:30:19]There are 141 burials in 138 grave cuts buried in the 5th, 6th, and possibly 7th centuries AD.

[00:30:29]Over three-quarters of them were buried with objects, many exquisite, from fine swords to rare glass wear and jewelry.

[00:30:37]Apart from a few objects preserved carefully from Roman times, the artifacts show a clear Anglo-Saxon style made both in Britain and on the continent.

[00:31:01]To complete the picture, I'm visiting Oxford to meet Professor of Anglo-Saxon archaeology Helena Hamerow.

[00:31:10]>> The terrible reputation is based on a very small number of written sources that describe the centuries as absolutely apocalyptic. The end of everything, the end of of the Roman world, and you know, disaster afterwards. But what we're seeing from the archaeology, which is really quite abundant now and growing all the time, is that you know, there's a much more gradual transformation that's taking place. And then in some parts of the country, Roman ways of doing things actually continued up to a point, you know, right through the 5th century. So, we shouldn't think of it in terms of this catastrophic collapse of everything in the first half of the 5th century. So, we've started to realize that it it really wasn't like that. And you know, things did change, ways of doing did change in the 5th and especially the 6th centuries.

[00:31:54]So, migration clearly played a role, but it cannot explain everything. And it's I think we can be quite confident that the majority of the people living in, let's call it lowland Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries, were descendants of the people who'd always lived here. But amongst them was a substantial a substantial minority people whose forebears did come from the other side of the North Sea.

[00:32:18]>> So, I'm obviously a product of of centuries of writing about states that that has made me think that a good state is one with a kind of powerful central authority and armed forces and borders.

[00:32:30]Do you think this evidence these people were living in a different kind of world where those where the lack of those things didn't just mean constant Hobbesian nightmarish anarchy.

[00:32:39]>> Yeah, absolutely. Because after all, you know, the tax collectors have gone. You know, suddenly you're not having to produce these huge surpluses to to to pay to pay to the empire.

[00:32:50]You know, you are essentially talking about broadly being self-sufficient communities who are doing it for themselves.

[00:32:58]You know, there aren't really even kings.

[00:33:00]>> Obviously we're biased towards burials cuz that's often what we find, I guess.

[00:33:04]But but the big question is what does the archaeology tell us? How does it fill in those gaps?

[00:33:09]>> Well, in in the 5th and 6th centuries, you know, the majority of people were buried clothes. So they're they're buried with any durable kind of dress fittings that they might have been wearing at the time. And then in addition to any dress fittings, you've got grave goods. So might be a pot, might be some weaponry, might be a glass drinking vessel, all sorts of things associated with the kinds of activities that people regarded as really important. You know, being equipped for warfare if you were an adult male.

[00:33:42]You know, feasting, drinking, all those sorts of things if you were, you know, at the top of the tree.

[00:33:49]That kind of thing, having access to rare imported goods, you know, gold, glass, you know, garnets, those sorts of things that came from far away and showed that your family was well connected. Those kinds of objects were incredibly important in communicating the position of a particular family or kin group within the wider community. So the decision to bury somebody with a sword or a glass drinking vessel was probably not a religious statement. It was probably a statement about that person's identity within a wider family group.

[00:34:26]And we tend to think now that you know, the head of the family, male, female heads of a family would be buried really ostentatiously with lots of stuff. And then kind of second cousin twice removed would not have so much.

[00:34:39]>> It strikes me it's quite interesting.

[00:34:40]This site seems to be quite high status people.

[00:34:43]Do you think it could be a sort of cross-section of community or do you think it is an elite place?

[00:34:48]>> Well, it does have a lot of stuff. Um and I wonder whether that's something to do with where it's located. And it's located at quite a nodal, quite a strategic position. So, they have been in a very good location to access goods traveling through say from the southeast, from Kent, through London, up towards the upper Thames Valley. All the good stuff really is coming from across the channel. The gold, the garnets, the coins, the glass vessels, they're coming from the Frankish world and beyond. So, you want to get your hands on that sort of stuff. It's prestigious. It It symbolizes your success, the position of your family. And that cemetery is located in a very good position to be able to access that sort of stuff. It seems to have been quite a prosperous community right through the whole period with, you know, more or less ready access to pretty good stuff. I mean, there are cemeteries where you you wouldn't get a fraction of that. So, this looks very much like an ancestral cemetery established in the 5th century, maybe even the first half of the 5th century.

[00:35:53]Some of the finds are very early.

[00:35:54]And it carried on in use potentially right through into the 7th. So, it is an ancestral cemetery and and that's quite uh that's relatively common in England in this period. So, you have these quite large ancestral cemeteries um which then in the conversion period, in many cases, not always, but in many cases are then replaced. They're abandoned and replaced often by somewhat smaller cemeteries elsewhere. So, this looks as though it probably went out of use roundabout the early 7th century.

[00:36:29]>> Well over a thousand years ago, this site was forgotten.

[00:36:33]Seems so surprising given the importance attached to it by the people who were buried here in all their finery. People who knew a much wider world than this little valley. They knew Germany, the North Sea, Britain, and they chose to be buried here with all their wealth and objects that they accumulated at points along that journey through life.

[00:36:53]Then, the ever-changing nature of British history meant that new elites, new rulers moved in. And obviously for them, this place had none of that magic.

[00:37:03]And it was lost until archaeologists so recently rediscovered it.

[00:37:12]>> As the post-excavation work continues in the lab, this remarkable, unexpected discovery will continue to take us closer to one of the most misunderstood and fascinating periods in history.