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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.
Details of other Time Team digs on prehistoric sites, together with information on everything from prehistoric cooking to cannibalism and human sacrifice, can be found on our Prehistoric Britain pages. And when you've browsed the pages, why not try our Time Trial quiz to see how much you know?
Watched the programme, browsed the web pages? Now try our quick quiz to see how you get on.
What were the stone tools found at South Perrott made of?
Flint
Chert
Chalk
Which of these is another name for flint?
Black gold
Black chert
Black chalk
In which kinds of rock are flints not found?
Igneous
Sedimentary
Metamorphic
Which of the following was not commonly used in ancient times to make stone tools similar to those made with flint?
Obsidian
Jasper
Granite
Flint formed mainly from the mineral remains of what invertebrates?
Sponges
Molluscs
Coral
What disease is a potential hazard of flint knapping?
Silicosis
Tuberculosis
Cystic fibrosis
Answers here.
Local metal detectorists discovered a scattering of brooches and low denomination Roman coins on a hill-top field near South Perrott, Dorset. Working with Miles Russell, of Bournemouth University, Time Team brought in its resources to uncover a Roman temple, only to find an undiscovered prehistoric site.
Geophysical survey of the field established that there was no discernible evidence for the double-walled rectilinear features expected. Fieldwalking across the same area found no Roman pottery but did turn up more coins dating from the second to fourth centuries AD.
Excavation over a concentration of previously discovered coins revealed a curving ditch. Alongside this ditch a series of small scoops were discovered with single Roman coins buried at the bottom, indicative of veneration.
Open area excavation revealed an oval, short long barrow. Finds from the circuit ditch included bone, burnt wood, Late Neolithic flint and chert tools, and pottery dating to the Early Bronze Age. Small quarries were found outside the ditch circuit. Postholes in the bottom of the ditch and burnt daub indicated that a palisade, with wattle and daub fencing, might have surrounded the monument.
Landscape analysis revealed that, while there were Bronze-Age barrows on the surrounding hilltops, this site, secluded by three rivers and lines of visibility, was more typical of a Neolithic monument. It was also on the line of a probable Roman ridge way. A story had been uncovered, then, of people in the Roman period venerating a Neolithic monument, which had continued in use into the early Bronze Age.
Time Team has a regular crew of qualified archaeologists who dig the sites for each programme. The Team is also backed up at each site by local archaeologists. In addition to bringing invaluable local knowledge to the excavations, they can also usually be seen getting their hands dirty as they wield their trowels in some of the trenches.
Of course not everything on an archaeological dig is excavated by hand; and viewers often wonder how Time Team can bring a huge mechanical digger onto a site to remove the upper layers without damaging the fragile archaeology underneath. It's important to bear in mind that a careful assessment of the site will have been carried out before any machines (or indeed trowels) are used.
First, the geophysics surveys help to pinpoint where any archaeological remains might be. If the site looks particularly complicated a test pit may be dug to determine the underlying stratigraphy and find out how deep any remains are. Once the team has a good idea of what to expect, a mechanical digger may be brought in to remove the topsoil.
This is done using a flat bucket without any metal teeth. Usually, unless it is known for certain that any remains lie deep below the surface, this will be used to gently scrape back the surface a few centimetres at a time. Ian Powlesland, one of Time Team's regular diggers, has many years' experience using mechanical diggers on archaeological sites, but whoever uses the machine is closely observed by an archaeologist, who stops the digger the instant anything is uncovered. Once the archaeological layers are reached the mechanical digger is removed and the familiar hand digging process of mattocking, shovelling and trowelling begins.
The digging continues whatever the weather, which can bake the ground as hard as concrete during a heatwave or turn it into muddy slush during rain. 'The worst thing can be the wind, it just knocks you out. By lunch time you can feel as if you've done a full day's work, it just drains you down,' says site supervisor Kerry Ely. 'Add a bit of rain and it just gets better.'
The diggers generally work from 8.30am to around 6pm – or until it's dark if the site demands it. They get only a short 30-minute lunch break – though with restaurant-quality food from the on-site catering crew – and have sandwiches and tea brought around to the trenches twice a day, which is better than on any normal excavation.
'When it gets to 6pm and we break for the day it's the best' continues Kerry. 'Of course the worst bit is starting digging again at 8.30 the next morning. Some of the crew can look a bit fragile from the night before.'
Ros Ereira, cameo producer.
Sadly, this cameo was not used in the programme. This was not because it was not successful, because it was. Rather it was because when I was thinking about what we should do in this programme, along with everyone else I was under the impression that we were going to be digging up a Roman temple. So I set about arranging a cameo all about the making of perfumes and incenses for use in Roman temples. Unfortunately for the cameo (but very excitingly for the programme) we didn't find a Roman temple but a prehistoric site instead – which meant that our lovely Roman perfumes and incenses didn't end up illustrating the site as well as we would have hoped . . .
Nonetheless, Sally did a wonderful job, and the results were beautiful. I still have a bottle of Roman perfume at home for use when the occasion arises! I'm sure Sally will appear on a future programme. On this show, though, you see Phil knapping flint tools instead – which he enjoys so much it's always nice to give him the chance to do it!
Sally Pointer, ancient perfumer.
Fragrant offerings
Archaeology often turns out to be more complicated than it first appears, and this was the case when I was invited to explore the fragrant offerings that may have been used at the site of a possible Roman temple.
Based on known information about Roman ritual we decided these offerings may have been of incense and fragrant oils or perfume, and attempted a reconstruction of a complex incense and a valuable perfume. We don't know to what extent the use of these products in Britain may have matched their use elsewhere in the Roman empire, but we did try to balance British ingredients such as sedge roots and pine resin with exotic imports such as frankincense, which we know was being used in Britain during the Roman period.
Incense
Incense is a commodity that we know was widely used, but for which very few recipes survive. Carenza and I experimented with a rich and exotic recipe based on descriptions of kyphi, which was originally an important Egyptian incense that gradually became known in secular Roman writings as the centuries passed. This used a thick paste of raisins and honey into which ground resins and herbs were mixed until we could shape the mixture into sticky pellets that would be smouldered on lit charcoal to provide a dense fragrant smoke.
Perfume
Perfume is much easier to document in the Roman period. Several writers wrote about it and one, Dioscorides, even provided recipes. We chose to attempt one of the most complex and expensive scents that he recorded.
Megalion is an oil-based perfume that involves boiling sweet flag root in olive oil for up to ten days and nights to prepare it for the other ingredients. We only had a few hours, so we had to keep a careful eye on the oil to make sure we didn't singe it on the fire. Spices such as cinnamon and cassia are familiar kitchen flavours today, but they were extremely expensive during the Roman period. This recipe used quantities of these, together with myrrh resin and burnt pine resin, to create a rich, spicy perfume that would have been worn by rich Romans as well as making a suitable offering to the gods.
We had intended to offer samples of these reconstructed perfumes as a kind of libation to the site. However, as the dig progressed it became clear that although there was Roman activity on the site there was actually a much more extensive earlier site just below the scattered Roman deposits and that the Roman remains were not the big story here. So, although we completed our reconstructions it was decided not to use the footage after all. Even so, we were able to give a number of the diggers and visitors a chance to try out these ancient scents and the trenches certainly smelt nice when we were cooking up all the ingredients!
Make your own incense
This is a simplified version of the incense that we made. It is based on a type of incense known to have been used in the ancient world and uses ingredients that you should be able to get fairly easily.
Ingredients:
1 tsp honey
6-8 raisins
2 inch piece of cinnamon bark or quills
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp myrrh resin
1 tsp frankincense resin
A few drops wine (optional)
Start by grinding the honey and raisins to a thick paste using a pestle and mortar. Next, grind up the coriander, cinnamon, frankincense and myrrh to a powder. Mash these into the raisin and honey paste, adding a drop or two of wine if needed until you get a thick dough that you can handle easily. Make little pellets or balls of this and put them on a plate to dry out a little.
When you want to use your incense, light a charcoal disk, put it on a heatproof surface and leave it until it glows. Carefully place an incense pellet on top and you should get a rich, spicy smoke that lasts for some time, filling the air with scent. The original recipes for this type of incense use a lot more ingredients than listed here, but this is a good introduction if you haven't made incense before.
You can find out more about the recipes that we used and experiments with ancient perfumes and cosmetics on Sally Pointer's website: http://www.sallypointer.com.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
From Sickles to Circles: Britain and Ireland at the time of Stonehenge edited by Alex Gibson and Alison Sheridan (Tempus, 2005) paperback £30
Drawing on the expertise of more than 20 leading Neolithic and Bronze-Age scholars, the rich and complex variety of Neolithic Britain and Ireland is reflected in studies that range from megaliths, Scottish passage-graves and chambered cairns in Orkney to hostilities in early Neolithic Ireland and flintwork in Northern Ireland. The Bronze-Age section includes wide-ranging reviews of Beaker burials, Bronze-Age artefacts and Bronze-Age chronologies.
Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans by Francis Pryor (Perennial, 2004) paperback £9.99
An authoritative and radical rethinking of the whole of British history before the coming of the Romans, based on remarkable new archaeological finds. So many extraordinary archaeological discoveries (many of them involving the author) have been made in the last 30 years that our whole understanding of British prehistory needs to be updated. So far only the specialists have twigged on to these developments; now, for the first time, Francis Pryor broadcasts them to a much wider, general audience.
Neolithic Britain and Ireland by Caroline Malone (Tempus, 2001) paperback £10.75
Well-illustrated guide covering how Neolithic people lived off the land; domestic settlements; causewayed enclosures; burials and tombs; monumental landscapes (including henges and circles); artefacts, technology and craftsmen; and the 'neolithic achievement' in developing the new skills and customs that led to 'new levels of social complexity'.
Prehistoric Settlements by Robert Bewley (Tempus, 2003) paperback £17.99
This book traces the variety and development of prehistoric settlements in Britain through 8,000 years, from the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic to the tribes of the Iron Age in the years before the Roman invasion. Examining key sites such as Star Carr, Bodmin Moor, the Dartmoor reaves, and hillforts and farmsteads, Bewley concentrates on two central themes: the close relationship between the individual settlement site and the wider landscape; and the ways in which archaeologists discover, interpret, and reinterpret prehistoric settlements.
The Significance of Monuments by Richard Bradley (Routledge, 1998)
The author traces the history of Neolithic and Bronze-Age burial mounds, henges, stone circles and barrows since their first appearance 6,000 years or more ago. He provides insights into what they might have meant to and their role in the lives of prehistoric people in Europe.
Understanding the Neolithic by Julian Thomas (Routledge, 1999) paperback £22.99
Julian Thomas presents a sometimes controversial investigation of the period 4000-2200 BC. Whilst examining the archaeological evidence of the period, the book challenges the assumptions and prejudices that have shaped archaeologists' accounts of the distant past and presents fresh interpretations informed by social theory, anthropology and other disciplines.
Farmers in Prehistoric Britain by Francis Pryor (Tempus, 1998) hardback £18.99
Wearing both his hats as archaeologist and farmer, Pryor has produced an empathic work on the life and methods of prehistoric farmers. Often what survives is just a few cropmarks, but this work brings what is now obscure into vivid reality.
What were the stone tools found at South Perrott made of?
Chert
Which of these is another name for flint?
Black chert
In which kinds of rock are flints not found?
Igneous
Which of the following was not commonly used in ancient times to make stone tools similar to those made with flint?
Granite
Flint formed mainly from the mineral remains of what invertebrates?
Sponges
What disease is a potential hazard of flint knapping?
Silicosis