Heroes' Hill (Full Episode) | S16 EP3 | Time Team (Knockdhu, Co Antrim)

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:06]This has to be one of the most spectacular locations we've ever been to on time team. This is not due, a magnificent promonry overlooking the coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. I can hardly see my hand in front of my face at the moment and the wind's practically blowing me off the hill. But once the fog lifts, you'll see spectacular views of the Mull of Kintire behind me and the coast of Scotland way over there. Better still, you'll see this one of the most impressive and mysterious prehistoric monuments [music] in the whole of Ireland. We're about to embark on a three-day quest into prehistory to discover what happened on top of this hill.

[00:01:06]We're on a remote site here, 20 mi north of Belfast.

[00:01:11]Nodu is a vast headland that towers over the Antrim coast. And on its summit is this. A giant prehistoric earthwork of man-made banks and ditches. But it's never been excavated before, so no one knows what it was for, who built it, or when.

[00:01:32]Finding out is going to be an enormous challenge. For a start, it takes us half an hour by tractor just to get up here.

[00:01:40]And once on top, you're battered by the fierce winds and rain.

[00:01:45]Hey, >> but undaunted, we're going to attack it head on with a team of archaeologists from Queens University Belfast. Provided we don't get lost in the fog.

[00:01:56]>> That wall is now bank up there. Is it Phil? The bad news is you've got two site supervisors this time. You've got Francis and Philillip. Philillip, what exactly is this?

[00:02:06]>> Um, it's a proator for Tony. sues of earthworks, three banks running for a distance of about 300 m uh cutting off this promontory from the rest of the upland ant plateau.

[00:02:18]>> What do the words prot actually mean?

[00:02:20]>> It's a term that archaeologists use to describe a wide variety of monuments that effectively are all defined by being located on proatorries which conventionally are interpreted as being defensive.

[00:02:31]>> I think Philillip's flailing a bit. I don't think it means much at all. I think it just means some sort of earthwork stuck on a pointy out bit.

[00:02:39]>> Well, actually, Tony, I mean, they're a very important class of sight, particularly in this part of Ireland.

[00:02:45]>> Oh, this one isn't unique.

[00:02:46]>> No, no, no. There are about eight known around here, but the thing is they're always in very spectacular places. I mean, you can't really appreciate it today. Although, I don't know. The cloud's lifting, but I mean, look, this place would dominate the sealer.

[00:02:59]>> So, how are we going to dig it?

[00:03:01]>> Well, I think we we simply grab the bull by the horns. We put a trench right across these three ramp parts, dig down and see what's there.

[00:03:08]>> You see, the point is if we can do that, then we can actually get down into the bottom of the ditch, we should be able to get some dating evidence which will resolve just how old it is. But more importantly, you'll be able to reconstruct a very impressive bank. So that if anybody approaching the site when it was actually being occupied, it would have been a a very impressive site.

[00:03:28]Very impressive is putting it mildly because it takes you a while just to appreciate the scale of this thing. The earthwork runs the length of three football pitches. By anyone's reckoning, it's colossal.

[00:03:41]So, it's all the more surprising [music] that this place is an enigma. These banks and ditches look like they were built to defend the promonary, [music] but some of our archaeologists aren't so sure. And anyway, what on earth could have been up here to defend? It's just as well we've got Japizz on hand to tell us where to dig.

[00:03:59]>> I don't think we can do anything.

[00:04:00]>> What's up, John?

[00:04:03]>> Well, we came here, we'd got lots of plans when we were in the office. We're going to do a series of radar transexs across the ditch and rampart system.

[00:04:11]>> Now, we actually get here, I mean, forget the weather, that's nothing. But just we can't actually do anything.

[00:04:16]>> Why?

[00:04:17]>> Well, we've got a wheeled cart system.

[00:04:19]We cannot drag it down a slope like that across a ditch and back up the other side. It just physically won't go. Well, you are man or moisture.

[00:04:27]>> It's not nothing to do with me. It's the cart. I mean, we might be able to go along the line of the the ditches and the ramp parts, but then again, dragging it through this is not easy.

[00:04:37]>> Often we wind you up at the beginning of a program, but you really are brass off now, aren't you?

[00:04:42]>> Well, I'm more frustrated than anything.

[00:04:44]I mean, having made all the effort to come up here, um, yeah, it's not good.

[00:04:54]While John throws his geohysical toys out of the pram, Francis is launching into action.

[00:05:01]>> Yeah, I'm not happy going into that here. We can take some of this black off, but let's leave that. We'll do that by hand.

[00:05:08]>> It's late morning on day one, and we're opening our first trench here. A 10 m long slice [music] right across the ditch and bank system of our prehistoric earthwork.

[00:05:20]We're looking for evidence of how it was constructed and finds like bits of pottery. Basically, anything that might hint at what this earthwork was for and why people went to the trouble of building it here in the first place.

[00:05:33]Both of which at the moment are a complete mystery.

[00:05:37]But there could be an important clue down in the valley below. It's this mine. And it's rich in one of the most highly prized materials in prehistory, flint.

[00:05:48]Look at all this. Look, masses of it.

[00:05:50]>> It's brilliant, isn't it?

[00:05:52]>> Feels like a kid in a toy shop.

[00:05:54]>> Here, Tony, have a look at this. This is where we should find stuff. In this this loose, rubly scree stuff.

[00:06:00]>> Are these man-made flakes?

[00:06:03]>> Yeah, I'm just finding them.

[00:06:05]>> Yeah.

[00:06:06]>> Get away.

[00:06:07]>> I did just back there. Don't sound so surprised, are they?

[00:06:12]>> Well, they are.

[00:06:13]>> Oh, good.

[00:06:13]>> That's why I am so surprised. Well, in that case then you won't need any intuition about that one.

[00:06:20]>> No, that's where someone has waloped it probably with a hammer stone. And that's called the bulb of percussion.

[00:06:27]>> Well done. You're almost becoming as addicted to flints as I am. You really are.

[00:06:32]>> No, I'm really not. [laughter] >> How do we know how old this flint working is, Phil?

[00:06:40]>> Because of these, Tony.

[00:06:43]When we get these lumps of flint which have actually had a whole series of flakes systematically knocked off of them, this has got to be somebody working this stuff either in the stone age or in the early or late bronze age. This bit is a core. It's a waste of thumb. You throw it away.

[00:07:01]>> So, could our defended site up on no dou have been connected with this flint mine and prehistoric tool making?

[00:07:11]We get arrowheads out of this sort of stuff easily. Shave with that.

[00:07:17]>> If we find flint tools up on the promonary, then that could be crucial evidence, especially if we can date them because the earthwork could have been built at any time between the Neolithic or late stone age and the Bronze Age.

[00:07:30]That's a mere 3,000 years of prehistory.

[00:07:34]Anything [music] we can do to narrow it down will be vital. It's at times like this we all look to GeFizz to find us some targets.

[00:07:44]Except John appears to have had a tiny hiccup.

[00:07:48]>> The basic problem is we're sat on a a big outcrop of bassalt.

[00:07:52]>> That's the stuff that the Giants causeway is made out of.

[00:07:54]>> It's that sort of thing. It's all volcanic and it's very very magnetic.

[00:07:58]When we're doing this sort of survey work, normally rubbish pits, ditches, um, hearves and so on, they'll give responses, say five, 10 units in strength. Here, the bassalt, that's giving readings of hundreds, if not thousands of units. So, it totally swamps all the magnetic picture.

[00:08:17]>> So, why are you having a look here?

[00:08:20]>> Well, Francis thinks there might be a building platform. It's just possible we might get walls projecting above the bassalt. And so we can see them through the turf, but it's a long stretch.

[00:08:31]>> If it wasn't hard enough that we're digging on top of a small mountain, it now turns out that this small mountain is also a giant magnet. Brilliant.

[00:08:41]But isolated as it may appear, our site wasn't in the middle of nowhere. It seems the entire landscape surrounding it is stuffed with prehistoric monuments.

[00:08:51]>> Well, the whole area is really an archaeological site. The land here is like a story book. It just tells the whole history of human settlement in Ireland. And all these fields have house sites and burial ks of different periods.

[00:09:06]>> What other prehistoric sites have you got sort of immediately close to here?

[00:09:10]>> Well, right down at the sea, we have a series of Neolithic houses, great big wooden houses the size of a modern bungalow.

[00:09:17]>> Wow.

[00:09:18]>> Filled with uh you know, round bottom pottery bowls, flint arrow heads, scrapers, all the tools of domestic living. And and you get do you get large Neolithic burial tombs, burial chambers and so on?

[00:09:30]>> Yes. Uh we find them dotted around the landscape, tombs where people would have been cremated and buried. In fact, the last day we were up here, we found a 5,000-y old tomb in a field boundary that we hadn't seen in a landscape we know very well.

[00:09:44]>> Fantastic. Yes. But while everything around here seems to be Neolithic or late stone age, that doesn't necessarily mean our sight is too.

[00:09:56]In fact, while John's geopizz has been sending him off in all directions, Francis has zoomed in on evidence for much later activity up on this hill.

[00:10:05]>> We are standing, I think, in the middle of a Bronze Age roundhouse or roundhouse. Anyhow, >> now all I can see is a load of tusks that look exactly the same as the tussks everywhere else.

[00:10:16]>> Ah, but look, if you come here, look, there's a slight bank goes all the way around here. I'm on the top of the wall now. And I come off the wall and it's running beside me here. Come around here and look, there's the doorway facing due south. Then the wall resumes here and comes back. So nice little roundhouse.

[00:10:36]You see, when it's pointed out to you, it's as plain as a nose on your face.

[00:10:40]>> Well, I must admit, it is fairly clear round there, isn't it? I've only been doing archaeology 16 years.

[00:10:46]>> Well, there you go.

[00:10:46]>> Duh. [laughter] >> How are we going to dig it?

[00:10:50]>> Well, what we'll do is is we'll divide it into into four and we'll take out opposing quadrants. We'll go straight through the doorway. We'll find out what's going on in the middle and we'll get a sample of the walls as well.

[00:11:01]Do you know I think that that is the most optimistic statement that I've heard so far today. Get on with it then, mate. [laughter] So, we're opening our second trench to find traces of a roundhouse. Typically, a wooden framed turf covered building with a hearth in the middle.

[00:11:20]If Francis is right, then this will be our first evidence of people actually living on this exposed promonry. It could also explain why [music] the defensive ditches and banks were here.

[00:11:32]And back in Trench 1, we're starting to see the first intriguing signs of how that earthwork was originally built.

[00:11:39]>> Well, it looks as though we're now getting to the base of this man-made bank. You see these dark lines running across the bank there.

[00:11:47]>> Yeah, >> we think those are actually evidence of turfs that have been used to construct the bank. And then on the other side, it really just drops away vertically into really quite a large ditch.

[00:11:58]>> Francis, if this actually was a fort with attackers out there and defenders in there, how would it have worked as a defense?

[00:12:06]>> Well, I think the key to that is the number of ditches and banks. So, first of all, any attacker's got to struggle through that ditch, which would be full of water. Then you come over here, Tony, and look, you're rising up again.

[00:12:20]Then maybe you've got a palisade here.

[00:12:23]And then look, you've got a heck of a deep ditch over there.

[00:12:26]>> Jim, the other large earthworks that there are in Ireland, are they very similar to this?

[00:12:31]>> They have a certain basic format to them, uh, that makes them clearly, you know, defensive. Uh, one of the things they'll normally have is very large ditches, but they're going to be V-shaped. They're going to be deep V-shaped. We call them ankle breakers because they're so difficult to get out of once you've got inside.

[00:12:48]>> And you haven't got that here. No, you don't. And this is why this site is providing certain problems of interpretation. Uh you can't simply throw the word hill for at this even though it's on top of a of a hill or promontory.

[00:13:00]>> So this was defensive. It's just that there was something else going on, but we don't know what it was.

[00:13:06]>> That's absolutely right.

[00:13:08]>> So we all sort of agree it was definitely defensive and it certainly looks it. Even though according to Jim, [music] it's somehow not as defensive as the other hill forts in Ireland. But what could have been here on this huge site to defend?

[00:13:24]Well, perhaps we're about to find out because out on the promonry, Ian's radar has just found an intriguing hump.

[00:13:32]There's a distinct dip here, single lines >> in comparison to a hump which you've got actually there. So, you've got the hump going up and a dip coming down. And obviously this is a a definite feature and it corresponds with this hump.

[00:13:47]>> So I mean you've got a mound and then a pit underneath it.

[00:13:51]>> Yeah.

[00:13:51]>> I mean could that pit be a grave and the mound be a barrow or can?

[00:13:55]>> Could be. I mean I can't tell what's inside there apart from saying that material there is the same as that material there.

[00:14:02]>> What do you reckon it is for them?

[00:14:03]>> Um well I think it could suddenly potentially be a burial under a can or a barrier as you say. I think we certainly have to uh investigate it.

[00:14:12]>> If the dip on [music] Ian's radar is a grave, then maybe the promonry was at least partly a place for the dead. A prehistoric cemetery. On the other hand, Phil spent the afternoon trying to prove people were living up here, too.

[00:14:26]>> Phil, this is where you were looking for some kind of bronze age roundhouse, isn't it? How have you got on?

[00:14:31]>> We've got it, Tony. I mean, I can't be absolutely certain that it's bronze age, but we've certainly got the roundhouse.

[00:14:37]Look, we've got this tumble of stones.

[00:14:38]It spreads round in a big arc coming round here in this quadrant of the roundhouse. I think this is probably where the wall has actually fallen down the slope. So, we've got our roundhouse.

[00:14:50]Crucially, we've got some finds. Look at that lot. That is all work flint.

[00:14:55]>> Oh, there's a lot of these in there.

[00:14:57]>> There must be at least 10 or 20 pieces there. And we've actually got one here that's been retouched into a tool. Look, somebody's chipped off that flint there and retouched that into a little scraper. And all this work, Flynn, is coming from the floor of the hut.

[00:15:10]>> Great. Our first tool. So, we think we've got evidence of people living here. We think we know what they did with their dead. But who were they and when were they around? We need dating evidence. Hopefully, we'll get that tomorrow.

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[00:15:52]Beginning of day two here at NOCD in Northern Ireland. And as you can see, it's been raining all night, and the trenches have filled up with water. The 4x4s can't get up here anymore. Look at the state of that trench there. The tractor got stuck in the mud. We've all had to walk up half a mile of this carrying our equipment before we can even start. But it's been all worthwhile, so the archaeologists tell me, because we found this incredible system of prehistoric defensive ditches.

[00:16:20]Not only that, we've also got a prehistoric roundhouse complete with evidence of the people who lived in it. Although I keep getting confused, Francis, because I think of this as the whole roundhouse, but in fact, it's only a quarter of it, isn't it?

[00:16:33]>> Yes. You can see the walls going on the outside there, round back behind us, right round there, and then that's the doorway.

[00:16:39]>> What's the significance of this find for you?

[00:16:42]>> Well, what's really exciting about it is this is a proper house. This is a permanent dwelling for people. And we've got the debris they left behind them on the floor in the form of flints.

[00:16:52]>> What do we do with it now?

[00:16:54]>> Well, we we've got to define those walls and then I think we'll extend in this direction to see how it's been set back into the hillside.

[00:17:02]>> What else are we going to do? What are your other targets?

[00:17:04]>> Well, do you remember yesterday at the end of the day we discovered this barrerow, this this can on the other side of the hill. Now, I think that is crucially important.

[00:17:13]>> So, does that mean there might be a burial in it?

[00:17:16]>> I hope so, Tony. I mean, the radar looked very much like there was one. And of course, that's important because, okay, we got the living, but we've also got the dead. We've got their ancestors.

[00:17:25]So, that adds to the importance of this place.

[00:17:28]>> We're really starting to be able to tell the story of this place, aren't we?

[00:17:30]>> Oh, this place is beginning to harm me.

[00:17:32]Yeah.

[00:17:33]>> Except that after last night's torrential rain, it's also turned into a quagmire.

[00:17:39]It's causing us one or two minor technical problems.

[00:17:44]Unless we want to excavate in snorkels and flippers, first we're going to have to bail out the trenches.

[00:17:52]But faffing around with pumps is really frustrating. This site's huge. And if we're going to understand it, we're going to need all the time we can get.

[00:18:04]Over there, just in front of our fines tent is the system of ditches. And over that rise there is the prehistoric roundhouse. But here like the third point on a triangle looking actually rather like the 18th hole on a golf course is this rise here. And when we looked at it in the geophys it was really tantalizing. It seemed as though there was something cut by human hands with a stone slab on top of it. Jackie, you saw that geophys, didn't you?

[00:18:33]>> I did. Even I understood this one. I think >> what was it you made of it?

[00:18:36]>> Well, the thing that immediately sprang to mind to me was a stone line kiss. So you've got a stone lined box in here in which you'd make a burial and then you built a mound over the top of it. Would it make sense for one to be here?

[00:18:48]>> Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there are quite a lot of these in the area and you're talking early Bronze Age, probably around 2,200 BC >> and it's absolutely classic location because you're on a downward slope looking over a big vista, which is exactly where you'd expect to find something like that.

[00:19:02]>> What are you going to do with it now?

[00:19:03]>> Well, we're going to start by quadranting. So, we're going to take one quarter out, see what we've got there, and then we'll work from there on. It would be a beautiful place to be buried.

[00:19:11]You can't see it now because of all of this fog, but it is exquisite, isn't it?

[00:19:14]>> It's It's lovely. Absolutely lovely.

[00:19:17]>> It's [music] 10:45 on day two, and we're opening a third trench here to excavate the mound with a dip underneath it that we picked up on the radar yesterday.

[00:19:28]If this is a stone lined grave, it'll give us a pretty accurate date for this part of the site.

[00:19:36]As I understand it, Rexia, >> if these are post holes, we could be looking at a palisade that's made up of like one large one and then lots of little almost stake like post holes in between.

[00:19:54]>> Back in trench one, there's been a breakthrough. We found the first evidence that the earthwork was fortified.

[00:20:01]>> This looks pretty convincing. This is a huge one here. M >> you've got one at the top.

[00:20:06]>> Yeah.

[00:20:06]>> And then we've got lots of kind of smaller tentative ones, don't we?

[00:20:10]>> Yeah. I mean, this this could be one here.

[00:20:13]>> Um >> bit further down.

[00:20:15]>> This could be one here. And then an interesting one down here, which at the moment, actually, can you see that orange there?

[00:20:22]>> That could be some burned clay. There's actually charcoal fleck in it. And from past studies on on these things, they're um often a good indicator for actual post holes. These post holes could have been used for the sharpened wooden stakes of a palisade built on top of the earthwork to defend whatever was up here.

[00:20:43]And there's now more evidence for that in trench 3 because what we thought was a grave for the dead actually turns out to be a place for the living.

[00:20:52]>> What it looks like we have is that looks to be a foundation trench associated with a roundhouse. Ah yeah, you can see there is this dark stripe across here and they're lovely sort of packing stones really rammed in there to make a good foundation.

[00:21:09]>> So the whole the roundhouse sort of goes up slope here and I believe there are another two potential roundouses just a bit further up.

[00:21:16]>> But the fact is that if you open up this little area and you inadvertently stumble upon a roundhouse, you don't know it's here. I mean, if we don't know that this one's here, how many more round houses are there? The whole hillside could be smothered in roundouses.

[00:21:34]>> We've now confirmed not one but two round houses that Phil believes could be part of a much bigger settlement, and Stuart's already started finding signs of it right across the promon.

[00:21:47]>> When you start to look at these slopes closely, what you can see are very distinctive roundhouse platforms, some of them with banks. We've got one one over there, but round this null, I've now got it's uh about six on this slope here. There's another two just over the crest and another possible one over there. I've been over the the entire proentry. I'm convinced at the moment we've only got a very small number of them. Yeah. Okay. But I mean, yesterday we didn't know that there were any up here. Now we're saying, "Oh, we only know about 10." I mean, I think that's incredibly exciting. Now, that's why I brought you these poles. All right.

[00:22:26]Because you can't really see them as tusks of grass. So, could you take these poles and put them on the tops of the walls, right? And then get Henry with his clever gadgetry to plot them all in.

[00:22:39]>> Okay.

[00:22:40]>> Yeah.

[00:22:40]>> And I'll come back and see if you've done it properly.

[00:22:42]>> Oh, thank you very much. [laughter] While Stuart starts plotting our newly discovered houses back in trench one, we're beginning to appreciate what a colossal endeavor constructing the earthwork must have been.

[00:23:00]>> Ian, this enormous lump of bassold here.

[00:23:03]I mean, it's vast. Did that come out of a ditch?

[00:23:05]>> Yep. Came out the bottom down there.

[00:23:08]>> So, I mean, the bottom part of a ditch is rock cut, is it?

[00:23:11]>> Yeah. It's just below the water line here.

[00:23:14]There's a rock face.

[00:23:16]>> The amount of effort, the amount of labor that's gone into cutting this ditch, it's mindboggling, isn't it?

[00:23:22]>> Yeah. Well, you consider they probably didn't have metal tools. They did it all with wooden spades and antler picks.

[00:23:27]This is seriously organized stuff, isn't it?

[00:23:29]>> Yeah. It must have taken a lot of people. I mean, you're talking days, weeks, months to build something that's 300 m long. It's huge. It makes you wonder why they put all the effort into constructing these ditches and banks. I mean, it must have been because they were protecting something over there on the headland. I mean, that was their community. This says how great we are. I think it's as much of that as it is to do with defense.

[00:23:56]So, we're now convinced this earthwork was built [music] to protect the people living on the promonry behind it. And we think they may have been rather special because a fort like this was a clear display of their power and wealth to the outside world.

[00:24:11]And it was a world that nodu was surprisingly close to because the prehistoric people living here didn't confine themselves to the Antrim coast.

[00:24:21]They also had links with communities from across the Irish Sea shown by these intriguing tools from local museums.

[00:24:30]>> There's plenty of evidence that this highquality antim flint was actually traveling across the sea to Scotland.

[00:24:35]>> How do we know that? Ah, well, there's things like this fantastic horde uh that was found in 1990 by a school boy and it's got five readyto-use flint axe heads.

[00:24:46]>> And where were they found?

[00:24:47]>> They're found at Campbell Town here. You see, just across Yeah, absolutely.

[00:24:51]>> Where are these ones from?

[00:24:52]>> Well, now that's another part of the story. So, it wasn't just stuff going from Ireland to Britain. You get stuff coming back from Britain to Ireland. So, these two are from Great Langel in the Lake District. Uh again, it's a site where they were knocking out tens of thousands of these things.

[00:25:07]>> So these ones here, these started out in the Lake District and they were found here.

[00:25:11]>> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's uh what nearly hundred have been found in Ireland now.

[00:25:16]>> If trading was going on, >> do you think they'd also have been what you might call cultural exchanges, ideas crossing, and people crossing?

[00:25:24]>> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. They were intermaring. They were related to each other. We know this because they were using the same kind of pottery. There were sharing designs and also the the the tombs that they were building, these big megalithic tombs, they were exactly the same on other either side either side of the channel.

[00:25:39]>> It's funny, isn't it? Because when you climb to the top of that hill, you imagine that that prehistoric community was really isolated, but you're saying that it's actually got connections with places hundreds of miles away.

[00:25:50]>> Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:25:53]>> Back on site, our hamlet has become a village. But Stuart's got a puzzle. He thinks he's now found a staggering 14 round houses, but they're not all the same.

[00:26:03]>> You see, they're all separated. They're kind of detached.

[00:26:06]>> So, this might have a different function.

[00:26:07]>> Well, I still think it's probably a house, but it it it may even be a different chronological date to that group over there. And this one, as well as the big bank around it, it's also got a raised interior, which makes this one very different to all the others. So, it'd be worth putting in a trench in here just to see see what this one is.

[00:26:27]And provided they don't get lost in the fog, we might find someone [music] to dig it because this is turning into a battle with the elements.

[00:26:36]The road leading up here is now a sea of mud. And unfortunately, our tractor can't swim.

[00:26:43]There's only one thing for it. We'll have to excavate it.

[00:26:50]It's midafter afternoon day two. It's getting absolutely ridiculous. But I left the tent, which I think is over there about 7 minutes ago, looking for Phil's trench. I can't find it. I've passed two groups of people who were also looking for trenches, which they hadn't been able to find either.

[00:27:09]I've started shouting for him, but the problem is he's actually a bit deaf, so everyone else keeps answering and I go blundering off in the wrong direction.

[00:27:19]Uh oh, I'll find him sometime, I suppose.

[00:27:25]While we stumble around on the promonry down in the incident room, Henry's got a major find. He thinks he's found the entrance onto the whole site, cutting through the earthwork at the furthest end.

[00:27:36]>> You see the actual entrance coming through. You see the outer bank breaking that and coming up into the into the inner bank.

[00:27:41]>> So playing with the the geophysics on that. So that's magnetic data.

[00:27:48]Perhaps more impressively, you can just see the break in it with the big blue line.

[00:27:53]If this was the entrance, then digging here could be key to understanding the site. But first, I need to catch up with Phil.

[00:28:03]Phil. Phil.

[00:28:06]This is quite bizarre. This is Phil strange and he's not here. Phil >> I think that gets away from any interference from the house. So, >> Phil, what are you doing over here? No wonder I was confused. I thought you were supposed to be working on the uh roundhouse trench.

[00:28:25]>> Well, I was, but then he told me that I needed to be deployed over here.

[00:28:33]>> Yeah.

[00:28:34]>> And I'm about to be uh educated as to why I'm digging here. [laughter] What exactly? Why am I stripping out this piece of tour? Well, look, we've got superbly preserved houses here, but we always look at houses. People are obsessed with buildings whereas in actual fact most people spend most of their day outside the house in something like a garden.

[00:28:57]>> A garden here like croissants and ders and stuff.

[00:29:01]>> No, not croissants and ders. Um, uh, wheat, you know, I mean crops, oats, I thought that sort of thing. You look along that string up there, you can see it's been cut back. The ground has been leveled off.

[00:29:14]>> It comes up here.

[00:29:15]>> Yeah. to about here. There's a break, a slope. And then over to that side there is a higher terrace. So there's another garden here, right?

[00:29:25]>> Are you happy with that? You're looking a little tacit.

[00:29:27]>> Well, no, no. I mean, we'll dig it and find out.

[00:29:31]>> Forgetting the garden for one moment.

[00:29:34]Have you finished the circle trench?

[00:29:37]>> No, Tony. That's why we've got excavators still there. But we have actually started to really get our head around what's going on in here. We do have the back wall coming around there.

[00:29:49]It is swinging around here. We've got a really well preserved roundhouse about 9 m in diameter.

[00:29:55]>> What do you think that big post hole might be for?

[00:29:57]>> Well, maybe to support something in the roof, but equally it could be something related to a hearth here. There was the traces of of of charcoal in the center here, which is where you'd expect the hearth to be. And of course, we do have at the back here what looks like possibly a a gully. So you can imagine that there's this water cascading down the hill. And this ditch is here to deflect the water around the roundhouse.

[00:30:24]Well, I don't know about Francis's theory. If I lived here, I'd never leave the house. [laughter] >> With drainage ditches to keep it dry and proper stone [music] foundations for the walls, this house was built to last.

[00:30:38]Although the very fact that people were living up here at all shows how determined they must have been. [music] And having confirmed this roundhouse, now Francis wants to find the allotment next door. So he's extending trench 2 here.

[00:30:53]>> John, I gather you've got some clever results from the geopizz.

[00:30:58]>> Yeah, we've done the magnetics here now and we've got three really clear responses. Look, let me come down and show you. Over at the earthwork, John's picked up a mysterious row of features slap bang in the middle of the entrance.

[00:31:12]>> The first one's there, second about here, and the third at this point here.

[00:31:19]I mean, they could be large pits with timbers in them that have burnt down. I mean, they might just be boulders that have been placed here. You know, we've got the problems with the bassalt. It could just be a geological effect. I don't think that's very likely, John, because they're going so precisely down the center of the entrance way. I mean, I think these could be some some some ceremonial blocking of the entrance way.

[00:31:41]I think it's potentially very exciting and very important, and we must dig them now.

[00:31:47]>> Oh, Francis can be so masterful. So, we're opening our fourth trench here to investigate the entrance through the earthwork. It's the end of day two.

[00:31:57]We're still lost in the fog and still baffled by the archaeology. But we've also found extraordinary evidence of a prehistoric community living up here, even if we still don't know when.

[00:32:10]For me, the problem with all this fog today is that I've got no clear picture of the site. I've just been blundering around, stumbling across archaeologists in trenches who are either very depressed or very excited. But what is this place for? How does it work? Well, for me, the fogs lifted, Tony, because I could never understand why they put all the effort into these huge defenses when they were seeming to defend nothing over there.

[00:32:35]>> Sure.

[00:32:35]>> Well, what now is apparent is that that was a major settlement, somewhere very important and somewhere to be proud of.

[00:32:42]Now, the way into settlements is always the most important part. So, that's why I've taken you here. Look down there.

[00:32:50]>> You think that this is actually the entrance into the whole settlement? I'm convinced of it, Tony. And I'm very excited because at the bottom there, there's paving and that's potentially prehistoric.

[00:33:01]>> Bronze Age.

[00:33:02]>> Well, it could be, Tony. Yes.

[00:33:04]>> If what you've got there is a Bronze Age street, how important is that?

[00:33:08]>> It's incredibly important, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[00:33:12]>> Have we got a Bronze Age street? We'll find out tomorrow.

[00:33:17]>> If you'd like to see more episodes like this, you can make it happen. Our new target is to reach 15,000 worldwide supporters on Patreon by the end of 2025.

[00:33:28]This will enable us to continue expanding the Time Team world. Enjoy front row seats for the greatest show on Earth and under it.

[00:33:43]Beginning of day three. And look, I really mean look. This is not only your first opportunity to see this spectacular view. It's virtually our first time as well. You can just about make out over there. And along there is the coast of Scotland. Just seeing all that has really lifted the archaeologists.

[00:34:04]Yesterday we started to excavate what we thought was a can here somewhere to bury the dead, but it soon became clear it was actually the exact opposite of that.

[00:34:14]It's a house for the living with some really good evidence in it. But Jackie, if this is a house, what's this great slope of stone do?

[00:34:22]>> What it's been put here for is to create revetting or stabilization for this house platform that we've got here. And if you look that dark feature there with all the stones in it, that's a foundation trench for the house which you can see going around the outside.

[00:34:38]>> I see. So the house itself starts there.

[00:34:40]All that's just engineering.

[00:34:42]>> That's just engineering to stabilize it.

[00:34:43]to stop it slipping off down slopes.

[00:34:45]Now, we extended this trench into the middle, which is where we hoped to find a hearth. And lo and behold, we have this beautiful hard baked path material here, which you can see running around this edge here. And even better, what we've got from there are bits of burnt animal bone and bits of burnt flint. So, it's obviously been a domestic building.

[00:35:04]They've been cooking in here. And we can use that burnt bone to get a radioarbon date for this house. Although in truth, Francis, we haven't got all that much burnt stuff, have we?

[00:35:13]>> You don't need much now, Tony. For a really accurate radiocarbon date nowadays, it's what, 2 g? Something like that.

[00:35:19]>> Although the big story for me is actually not this house. It's the fact that not content with this one and Phil's one over on the other side of the ridge. You want us to excavate a third house as well? Why? I want to put a trench in another house in this group um to get more dating material. But more importantly, that house is very peculiar.

[00:35:41]>> Well, it's not flat, but in the middle was a little bump. And you know, I can't understand what that is.

[00:35:48]>> Could it be a burial?

[00:35:49]>> It could be. It could be a little burial placed there when they abandoned the house. Or it could be a burial from the word go. I don't know. But it's really intriguing.

[00:36:00]>> Well, maybe. But the burial that was promised yesterday turned out to be a roundhouse.

[00:36:05]Still, I suppose we'd better give Francis the benefit of the doubt. So, at 10:30 on our final day, we're opening a fifth [music] trench here.

[00:36:19]Back at the earthwork, careful scraping has paid dividends. Ian's discovered that layers of soil were piled up on top of each other, perhaps over centuries, to form one of the banks.

[00:36:31]What you seem to have is literally a dump of material on top of this which is an old ground surface. So this isn't a rampart as such. This is where they've been cleaning the ditch out and they've thrown the material outside to make this bank.

[00:36:45]>> Right. And then to make the the purpose of a counter scar bank is to make even more of an obstacle of a ditch behind it.

[00:36:52]>> Make the ditch deeper by raising the banks beside it.

[00:36:54]>> Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, actually, this is rather good because it does give us evidence that they were strengthening the defenses >> or they were maintaining them.

[00:37:03]>> Yeah.

[00:37:03]>> I mean, it's not just a one-off event one day, one week, one month. They're coming back several times year after year to build this bank up, clean out the ditch, maintain it.

[00:37:12]>> So, it's not just a simple one-off event.

[00:37:14]>> No, >> no, that's smashing.

[00:37:17][music] >> We're convinced the earthwork was being strengthened year after year to defend the [music] people living in the village behind it. But who were they and what were they defending themselves against?

[00:37:28]Big [music] questions for the last day.

[00:37:33]>> Still got some odd bits of flint here.

[00:37:36]>> Back at the roundhouse in trench three, we've had another small breakthrough.

[00:37:40]God, that's enormous.

[00:37:42]>> Just ease that out.

[00:37:44]>> Oh, wow.

[00:37:45]>> Oh, look at that.

[00:37:46]>> Even I would recognize that. Isn't that gorgeous?

[00:37:50]>> Is that That's That's actually a touched up edge around there, isn't it? That's hand weight.

[00:37:54]>> So that's going to be a scraper. That is the best piece we've had. And that is a real tool.

[00:37:59]>> Yeah, >> that's great. But we're still desperate for a date. Something a solitary scraper can't give us. We need results over at the entrance way in trench 4. Yesterday, late afternoon, Francis and I were walking up here in the thick fog towards what we thought was some kind of ancient gateway. And we were saying how spectacular it must have looked up here to prehistoric people. Except, of course, we couldn't see anything. But we can now. Mind you, this isn't the only spectacular thing up here, is it, Francis?

[00:38:30]>> No, it isn't, Tony. I mean, I think we've been turning our back on the most important part of the site because we've been obsessed with those houses and things. And fair enough, but this would have been the sort of ceremonial center of the site. This was the only major entrance into it. And you came from that direction. And then these earthworks focus you around this corner. Everything is designed to focus people around here and into the entrance way. Tracy, that scatter of stones along there. Do you reckon that actually is some kind of roadway?

[00:39:06]>> I don't think there can be any doubt about it now, Tony. It's really nice.

[00:39:09]You've got these large stones here.

[00:39:11]They're running along the edge. They seem to form curb line to the edge of this road. And in areas where it's undulating, they've put these smaller stones in. Basically, they formed a really nice hard flat platform for a road surface to come through.

[00:39:25]>> Couldn't this just be 17th century or whatever?

[00:39:27]>> No. The only thing we've got in the surface of this so far has been flint flakes. Work flint. I think we've got to be looking at an early date and could well be Bronze Age.

[00:39:37]>> Fantastic.

[00:39:39]Finally, we're getting close to dating our site with sometime in the Bronze Age, roughly 4,000 years ago, looking most likely. And what an impressive [music] site this entrance must have been, probably with a guard house controlling access to the village beyond.

[00:39:58]Now, the thing is, Tony, you'd have walked on this roadway. We don't know how far it extends. I mean, if you're heading towards the houses over here, you come into the interior right now. If you look up on the left up here on the skyline, there are some lumps and bumps.

[00:40:14]Now, I think they could well turn out to be cans where the ancestors were buried overlooking the houses and overlooking the gateway.

[00:40:22]>> So, you come in through this spectacular entrance with that amazing view behind you. You come up here, the first thing that you see is the ancestors and beyond it, you've got a view out to the sea.

[00:40:34]>> You've got it.

[00:40:35]the sea. Perhaps the single biggest clue to what happened on this hill has been staring us in the face all the time. We know that people in Antrim were exchanging stone tools with communities on the other side. We found plenty of worked flints in our roundhouses, probably from the mine at the foot of the hill.

[00:40:56]So, could trade across the sea explain who these people were and why they were here >> in the Bronze Age? Don't forget that people had already been navigating these waters for thousands of years and they would have had those skills passed on from father to son.

[00:41:10]>> How would they actually physically know where they were going across these waters?

[00:41:14]>> This isn't rocket science. It's coastal navigation and uh it's so fortunate in this area where Scotland is only 15 miles away from Northern Ireland. Most days you can see one headland from another.

[00:41:26]>> What sort of boats would they actually use for this for this journey? They certainly had dugout canoes or log boats. And uh I found one uh about 30 miles south of here. This boat was found on the seabed and it was dated to 5,500 years ago. In that form, it wouldn't really have sailed. It would have needed an outrigger.

[00:41:47]>> Oh, to stabilize.

[00:41:48]>> Think how fast that would have been. A long narrow boat would go so quickly.

[00:41:52]>> Um you know, don't think of them as very backward people getting around slowly.

[00:41:56]They got about very nicely. Thank you.

[00:42:00]The fact is that 5 a half thousand years ago, these prehistoric people were more confident at finding their way across the sea than across the land, crafting dugout canoes [music] from tree trunks to navigate the ocean.

[00:42:15]Yesterday afternoon, we'd extended trench 2 [music] here to see if we had a vegetable garden or farmard next door to Phil's roundhouse. It isn't either, but something far more exciting. Well, we're making progress, Francis. We've got the potting shed or it's another roundhouse.

[00:42:33]>> No.

[00:42:34]>> And I think it is another roundhouse.

[00:42:36]Firstly, we had loads and loads of work flint in there. Secondly, we've got this stone work here, which is just like that uh roundhouse over there. Bit of a giveaway. And then when you start to look, you can see that it comes round in a perfect circle and then returns down here. And round.

[00:42:55]>> There. Hold it. Hold it. But I mean, you're about to hit that house.

[00:42:58]>> No. No. You're not actually going to hit it. They are just very close. You've got one wall of one house there and one wall of one house there. They are separated by that much.

[00:43:10]Right. So, I mean, I would imagine that house is probably later than that house, wouldn't you?

[00:43:17]>> Those houses cannot be that close and be standing at the same time. It's impossible. They must be separate buildings at different periods.

[00:43:26]>> But I mean, this is fascinating, Phil, because I mean, you know, we're getting phases in the big ditch system and we're now getting phases in the settlement.

[00:43:35]It's all sort of coming together.

[00:43:36]>> Well, exactly. By phasing, it just shows just how much we can stretch the length of the time that people have been living up here.

[00:43:45]>> Meanwhile, the bad news in Trench 5 is that there's no sign of a burial.

[00:43:51]But guess what? It's another roundhouse.

[00:43:54]Better still, every time Stuart thinks he's found another one, he turns out to be right. [music] Round houses are now popping up all over this prot. There's the four we've now excavated. Stuart's counted [music] 18 others, and there could be more. It's a small town.

[00:44:12]But when was it here? To prove it was Bronze Age, it's vital we get radiocarbon dates for our trenches.

[00:44:20]Except that we didn't [music] get any.

[00:44:22]Sadly, all our samples were too small.

[00:44:25]But who needs science when you've got a couple of flint obsessed anoraxs at hand? [laughter] >> But there's quite a lot of stuff um from the different trenches. It's it, you know, by and large it seems to be fairly similar from trench to trench.

[00:44:39]>> Well, that's right. I mean, it's not only is it rubbishnapping, it's it's consistently rubbishnapping all the way across the site. And look what they done. This one here that that is that is abysmal. Bang bang and the Oh, that will do. But at the end of the day, you could live with this.

[00:44:58]>> Mhm.

[00:44:59]>> And I mean, there they are.

[00:45:01]>> They are in the bronze age, >> but they are so totally reliant on flinch still.

[00:45:06]>> Yeah, >> absolutely.

[00:45:07]>> Well, you know, there's plenty of it around. That's the thing.

[00:45:10]>> I mean, I suppose really puts you in mind as well what we were having at dinner time. There we were using our disposable cutlery. Plastic disposable cutlery. This is the ultimate bronze a disposable cutlery at it. [laughter] >> Lucky for us they chucked them away.

[00:45:24]>> Basically the quality of flint working declined as flint was replaced by metal.

[00:45:29]These specimens from across our site are so shabby we can finally be certain that our round houses and the people living in them are bronze age. And so is the earthwork which radiocarbon dating showed was built during the middle bronze age [music] roughly 4,000 years ago.

[00:45:47]>> If you come up this way, you see as you start rising on the cliff where you first thing you see are these cliffs themselves are hugely dramatic.

[00:45:54]>> Henry's really on form. He's made a further discovery. He's found the pathway that prehistoric people would have followed to reach our site. You're impressed.

[00:46:03]>> As you rise up a bit further, you come around on the edge of the cliffs following this sort of clifftop path.

[00:46:08]You come to see our site in profile. At that point, the site is dramatic. And then as you keep on going around, that's where the entrance to the site is right on that edge. That route gives you a very sort of dramatic almost processional route route to the site.

[00:46:25]It's 5:00 [music] and our 3-day battle against the elements is over. At times we've scarcely been able to find our way in all the rain and fog. But considering what we've found, it's been worth it.

[00:46:38]Because what we do know is that a major Bronze Age community lived up here that until now no one knew it even existed.

[00:46:47]We think that people reached this place by following a processional path that ran from the coast below up and round the clifftop. When they [music] arrived, they were met by this giant defensive earthwork that protected the settlement behind it, but also demonstrated the power of the people living here. You went through a grand entrance into [music] a village of at least 150 people who survived up on this exposed hilltop with little more than flint tools.

[00:47:18]But who were they? Well, Francis has scoured the depths of his bronze-agged imagination and come up with a slightly left field theory.

[00:47:26]>> Now, this was a time when people were farmers, yes. But you've also got to bear in mind that the Bronze Age is the very beginnings of the Irish Celtic tradition, you know, the the heroic age.

[00:47:38]And we know from the Ster cycle, which is one of the earliest accounts of prehistoric life, that people attached great importance to cattle raiding.

[00:47:48]These raids were organized. All the young men of the village went out and they went across to the neighboring tribes land and they pinched their cattle. And then you got to imagine that they drove them back along the ceremonial way. And then they take them in through the main entrance and there all the old men, all the wives, all the children, all the members of the community up here. They welcome them in to harass and cheers. They then slaughtered the animals and there was terrific ceremonial feasting.

[00:48:16]>> That's what I like about archaeology.

[00:48:18]this fantastic, vivid, compelling story straight out of the archaeologist's imagination.

[00:48:24][laughter] [music] >> [music] >> Join Time Team on Patreon to access exclusive 3D models, master classes, and behindthe-scenes insights.