The puzzle of Pickett's Farm

A series of finds by metal detectorists of Roman brooches and small-denomination Roman coins in a hilltop field near South Perrott, in Dorset, resulted in Time Team being called in by the landowner. Further encouraged by what, at first sight, had appeared to be fragments of Roman tile and other building material, the Team assembled its best Roman experts in the expectation that they were most likely looking at the site of a Roman temple.

It didn't take the experts long, however, to start pouring cold water on this theory. The tile and other building material turned out not to be Roman after all; the pottery discovered during field walking was all medieval; and although additional Roman coins were uncovered as the trenches went in, there was no sign of any buildings, Roman or otherwise.

But something had been going on in this field. What was it?

Gradually the trenches revealed their contents – and they told a very different story from a very different period. It seemed that the Team had stumbled on a prehistoric burial site dating back into the Neolithic period. Remarkably, it was still being treated as a place worthy of veneration right into Roman times, which explained the presence of the coins and brooches, which had been deliberately buried there in small pits as offerings to the gods of the day.

Time Trail

One person, at least, was delighted that Time Team turned up a Neolithic site rather than the expected Roman one. For Phil Harding, the discovery of some immaculate scrapers and other stone tools, made around 5,000 years ago from the local chert (the equivalent of flint in the geology of the area), opened a window onto his favourite period in human history – and gave him the chance to put his tool-making skills to the test as he made copies of some of the implements found on the site. It meant that the pre-arranged cameo of Roman incense and perfume making didn't make it into the programme, but no one was going to begrudge Phil his sheer delight in the unexpected discoveries.

This was the second time in the 2005 series that Time Team found itself excavating a Neolithic site. The first was at Northborough, near Peterborough, where cropmarks identified from an aerial photograph led the Team to uncover a Neolithic causewayed enclosure.

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