1 00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:04,760 Right across Britain, 2 00:00:04,760 --> 00:00:07,880 archaeologists are unearthing the relics of ancient lives. 3 00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:13,920 But so much of modern archaeology is what happens after excavation. 4 00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:19,400 Today, forensic analysis and cutting-edge science, 5 00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:23,400 as well as brand-new finds, are overturning what we once thought 6 00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:26,800 about entire eras of our ancient history. 7 00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:31,720 I'm Julian Richards and over the years, I've been lucky enough 8 00:00:31,720 --> 00:00:35,160 to have taken part in some of our most important digs. 9 00:00:35,160 --> 00:00:36,760 You've not? 10 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:38,520 A lead coffin?! 11 00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:44,760 Now, I'm going back to some of my favourites to discover 12 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,720 the very latest stories of our most ancient ancestors. 13 00:01:05,840 --> 00:01:11,560 The Neolithic, the new Stone Age, is an ancient and mysterious time. 14 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,600 An era that in Britain began more than 6,000 years ago. 15 00:01:23,240 --> 00:01:27,240 It marked a change from hunting and gathering to farming. 16 00:01:28,800 --> 00:01:33,000 And gave rise to some of the greatest monuments of our ancient past. 17 00:01:36,520 --> 00:01:39,120 But for all these highly visible monuments, 18 00:01:39,120 --> 00:01:43,560 new discoveries from this time, especially burials, are rare. 19 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:47,880 So when they do turn up, archaeologists like me get very excited 20 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,760 because the tiniest of clues, the smallest bit of evidence, 21 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:54,840 can change our understanding of an entire age. 22 00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:00,160 Two discoveries made over a decade ago 23 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:02,720 were windows into this remarkable time. 24 00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:09,520 One dig in Dorset unearthed remains so well preserved 25 00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:13,480 that we were able to reveal the lives of an entire Stone Age family. 26 00:02:15,920 --> 00:02:18,120 Now, more than a decade after the dig, 27 00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:21,320 neuroscience is helping us to understand their world 28 00:02:21,320 --> 00:02:23,480 in unprecedented detail. 29 00:02:25,360 --> 00:02:28,120 They can start talking about who she would have known, 30 00:02:28,120 --> 00:02:31,880 what politics was going on in the area when she was alive. 31 00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:35,720 A second burial in the far north, on Orkney, 32 00:02:35,720 --> 00:02:37,960 presented a far greater challenge. 33 00:02:39,680 --> 00:02:42,480 Here, only decayed fragments of bone had survived. 34 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:49,720 But now, a brand-new study of ancient human remains found right across Orkney 35 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:53,000 has changed how we think people were treating their dead. 36 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:57,440 These are just a couple of the more unusual things that we found. 37 00:02:57,440 --> 00:02:59,960 So has that been drilled? Quite possibly. 38 00:03:01,720 --> 00:03:05,600 What's clear from both these burials is that archaeology doesn't end 39 00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:07,480 when we put away our travels. 40 00:03:07,480 --> 00:03:09,720 In fact, it's just the beginning. 41 00:03:09,720 --> 00:03:13,240 Over the last 10 years, how we view the position of these sites 42 00:03:13,240 --> 00:03:16,840 and the history of the Neolithic has changed quite radically. 43 00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:19,120 And the key has been new science. 44 00:03:19,120 --> 00:03:20,960 Put quite simply, 45 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:24,440 there's been a revolution in our understanding of Neolithic Britain. 46 00:03:32,880 --> 00:03:35,200 The counties of Wiltshire and Dorset 47 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:38,120 are fabulously rich in Neolithic monuments. 48 00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:44,040 This landscape is unique in the world. 49 00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:48,120 And this is where I both live and study. 50 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:51,960 But having worked here for over 30 years, 51 00:03:51,960 --> 00:03:54,920 I know that any new burials from this time are rare. 52 00:03:54,920 --> 00:04:00,360 So when, in 1997, a new site came up in Dorset, I was pretty excited. 53 00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:03,720 But what I didn't know at the time was that this discovery 54 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:07,240 was going to influence archaeology for the whole of the next decade. 55 00:04:09,320 --> 00:04:14,920 Let me take you back nearly 16 years to the burial of an ancient family. 56 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:17,280 One of my most special digs. 57 00:04:19,240 --> 00:04:23,400 Back in 1997, I got to the excavations when they were well under way. 58 00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:26,240 The site was discovered by Martin Green, 59 00:04:26,240 --> 00:04:29,720 a local farmer turned archaeologist. 60 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:34,240 I started trowelling away, removing small, loose chalk 61 00:04:34,240 --> 00:04:37,680 until I got down to this level and this is much larger, blocky chalk 62 00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:39,800 that you can see there now. 63 00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:44,320 And then I decided to lift this loose block here 64 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:48,400 and it revealed a hole underneath and I looked in there 65 00:04:48,400 --> 00:04:51,240 and, "Wow! There's a skill in there." 66 00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:55,320 Does it look pretty well preserved? It looks very well preserved. 67 00:04:55,320 --> 00:04:58,280 Do you think this might be a family grave? It's possible. 68 00:04:58,280 --> 00:05:01,560 We've obviously got two individuals here but the question at this 69 00:05:01,560 --> 00:05:05,640 stage is, are these just skulls or are they parts of complete skeletons? 70 00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:08,120 We are yet to discover that. 71 00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:15,120 At the centre of the site was a huge circular hollow 72 00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:17,040 in which the burials were hidden. 73 00:05:19,880 --> 00:05:23,160 Surrounding it was an outer ring of large pits. 74 00:05:23,160 --> 00:05:26,600 And the wider setting made it even more fascinating. 75 00:05:29,480 --> 00:05:33,600 From the air, I could see that the burial site lay right on the edge 76 00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:37,040 of an important Neolithic monument, the Dorset Cursus, 77 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:41,280 a strange, elongated earthwork that runs for six miles 78 00:05:41,280 --> 00:05:43,240 right across the landscape. 79 00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:49,480 Today, the Cursus can only just been made out, stretching into the 80 00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:53,560 distance, barely visible against the backdrop of ploughed fields. 81 00:05:57,080 --> 00:06:00,080 But in the Neolithic, it would have looked quite different. 82 00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:03,640 The chalk embankments that marked out its edges, 83 00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:06,920 cutting white lines across the landscape. 84 00:06:09,440 --> 00:06:13,160 A new discovery within sight of this enigmatic construction 85 00:06:13,160 --> 00:06:15,600 was a very significant find. 86 00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:18,400 And this one was wonderfully well preserved. 87 00:06:20,720 --> 00:06:22,880 As more chalk was removed, 88 00:06:22,880 --> 00:06:27,240 it became obvious that the pit contained more than just skulls. 89 00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:30,640 Cripes! Well, here they are. I mean, this is... 90 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:32,920 I've never seen anything like this before. 91 00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:35,440 They are crammed in, aren't they? Yes. 92 00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:38,480 By the time bone specialist Jackie McKinlay arrived, 93 00:06:38,480 --> 00:06:42,320 Martin had uncovered four complete skeletons. 94 00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:52,560 One was an adult woman. But three were young children. 95 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:54,760 They've still got some of their milk teeth. 96 00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:57,600 These are still deciduous teeth along here. 97 00:06:57,600 --> 00:07:00,880 This is one of the permanent teeth. 98 00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:05,320 The first one to erupt is the first permanent molar. 99 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:08,080 That's just about starting to erupt there. 100 00:07:08,080 --> 00:07:13,280 So he's a bit younger than I thought at first. Yeah. 101 00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:20,240 It's very odd seeing graves emptied. 102 00:07:20,240 --> 00:07:25,200 This seems a bit stranger because we know so little 103 00:07:25,200 --> 00:07:28,800 of the circumstances in which the bodies were put in the pit. 104 00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:32,640 The fact that it's turned out to be three children, 105 00:07:32,640 --> 00:07:35,800 I find quite disturbing really. 106 00:07:35,800 --> 00:07:39,040 When you see the first milk teeth 107 00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:43,840 and things like that, it really brings it home how old they were. 108 00:07:45,120 --> 00:07:47,360 It makes you wonder how they died. 109 00:07:51,040 --> 00:07:55,120 Samples of bone were taken to the Oxford radiocarbon dating lab, 110 00:07:55,120 --> 00:07:57,400 where Paul Petitt was able to determine 111 00:07:57,400 --> 00:08:00,560 just when these people lived. 112 00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:07,320 What we have first is a range that is going to be the age Cranborne Woman 113 00:08:07,320 --> 00:08:12,120 and that age is roughly 3,500 to 3,100 BC. 114 00:08:12,120 --> 00:08:15,920 Within this range, what age is she most likely to be? 115 00:08:15,920 --> 00:08:19,480 I suppose if I was a gambling man, I would put my money on her real age 116 00:08:19,480 --> 00:08:23,760 being somewhere around 3,300 to 3,400 BC. 117 00:08:25,280 --> 00:08:32,520 So she's something between 5,300 5,400 years old. She is. 118 00:08:34,400 --> 00:08:37,320 So she's definitely Neolithic. Definitely Neolithic. 119 00:08:39,280 --> 00:08:41,880 Radiocarbon dating revealed that these people 120 00:08:41,880 --> 00:08:43,840 lived in the early Neolithic. 121 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:50,560 An era that gave rise to some of the greatest monuments of our ancient past. 122 00:08:58,640 --> 00:09:01,068 Today, nearly 16 years after the discovery 123 00:09:01,083 --> 00:09:03,430 of Cranborne Woman and the three children, 124 00:09:03,440 --> 00:09:07,040 they still remain in the care of farmer Martin Green. 125 00:09:08,760 --> 00:09:13,000 Martin has his own private museum, housed in an old chicken shed 126 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:16,360 just a couple of miles from the burial site. 127 00:09:16,360 --> 00:09:19,560 Hello, Martin. Hi, Julian. Rubber gloves. How unpleasant! 128 00:09:19,560 --> 00:09:23,600 I know you found some amazing stuff on your farm but do you think 129 00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:26,960 this was one of the most exciting sites that you ever found? 130 00:09:26,960 --> 00:09:28,720 By far the most exciting. 131 00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:31,239 When I first saw the site from an aerial photograph, 132 00:09:31,264 --> 00:09:32,760 it was a Eureka moment, really. 133 00:09:32,760 --> 00:09:36,000 I thought, this is an extraordinary Neolithic site of some kind. 134 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:39,360 Have you got all of the burials here then? Yes, they are all here. 135 00:09:39,360 --> 00:09:43,080 They're boxes just behind us on these shelves. Right. 136 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:47,440 That was the thing that really got to me about this burial group 137 00:09:47,440 --> 00:09:51,200 was the fact that we had these tiny bones of children in the pit. 138 00:09:51,200 --> 00:09:54,160 That's right. It is a very poignant discovery. 139 00:09:54,160 --> 00:09:56,520 There is part of the skull 140 00:09:56,520 --> 00:10:01,240 and I think in here there are some of the teeth, the milk teeth in fact. 141 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:05,680 We know that in a subsistence farming economy like in the Neolithic, 142 00:10:05,680 --> 00:10:08,320 there were going to be a lot of infants deaths, 143 00:10:08,320 --> 00:10:11,640 but to actually find them like this is very poignant. 144 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:15,040 So you look after all these burials here. 145 00:10:15,040 --> 00:10:18,320 How do you feel about having them here, having them close to you? 146 00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:21,360 Obviously, it's quite a responsibility but I'm a farmer. 147 00:10:21,360 --> 00:10:24,320 I have farmed here all my life. My family did before me. 148 00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:26,200 These Neolithic people were farmers. 149 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:28,920 So I think it is a way of understanding the landscape 150 00:10:28,920 --> 00:10:32,040 and how people I've used it over thousands of years. 151 00:10:32,040 --> 00:10:36,040 I think it's a continuation of telling that story. 152 00:10:41,920 --> 00:10:44,720 The excavation site has been returned to agriculture. 153 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:50,720 But of course, without the human remains that our ancestors intended to rest here. 154 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:56,280 Well, according to the GPS, 155 00:10:56,280 --> 00:11:00,960 I am right in the middle of the site now. 156 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:03,160 Nothing to see. 157 00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:06,000 It's all rather featureless but then one field in Dorset 158 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:08,480 can look very much like another field in Dorset. 159 00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:13,000 There is no trace of the drama of the dig 160 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:17,480 and certainly nothing to suggest that this was once a family grave. 161 00:11:17,480 --> 00:11:19,895 I know some people really get quite uneasy 162 00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:22,640 about the whole idea of digging up human remains. 163 00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:24,920 I don't have a problem with it, personally, 164 00:11:24,920 --> 00:11:27,920 provided it's done with great care and respect. 165 00:11:27,920 --> 00:11:29,720 What I do feel very strongly about 166 00:11:29,745 --> 00:11:31,920 is that once we've excavated these remains, 167 00:11:31,920 --> 00:11:34,320 then we ought to be able to keep them. 168 00:11:34,320 --> 00:11:36,160 We ought to be able to look after them 169 00:11:36,160 --> 00:11:38,400 so that we can study them in the future 170 00:11:38,400 --> 00:11:42,160 because science is developing all the time and there are things we can do now 171 00:11:42,160 --> 00:11:45,280 that we couldn't do 10 years ago and it's always going to develop. 172 00:11:45,280 --> 00:11:47,240 If we rebury those remains, 173 00:11:47,240 --> 00:11:50,640 then we've actually denied ourselves the opportunity of doing that. 174 00:11:50,640 --> 00:11:55,400 We've actually denied the possibility of those ancestors telling their story. 175 00:11:59,640 --> 00:12:02,680 Back in 1997, with the remains conserved, 176 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:06,520 bone expert Jackie McKinlay was able to assess them properly. 177 00:12:07,840 --> 00:12:10,160 And then we've got the other two juveniles. 178 00:12:10,160 --> 00:12:13,680 This is the youngest one, which was the one that was curled up on its back. 179 00:12:13,680 --> 00:12:16,200 The woman was about 30-years-old. 180 00:12:16,200 --> 00:12:19,480 And the children aged about 10, nine and five, 181 00:12:19,480 --> 00:12:22,400 all shared the same medical condition. 182 00:12:23,720 --> 00:12:26,960 There is a condition called cribra orbitalia. 183 00:12:26,960 --> 00:12:32,160 Now, this is something you get in the eye sockets. 184 00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:36,880 Can you see in there? It's not easy to see. 185 00:12:38,400 --> 00:12:42,200 Just in the top of the orbit there, there is pitting. Oh, yes. 186 00:12:43,200 --> 00:12:46,480 Can you see the little pits that are in there? 187 00:12:46,480 --> 00:12:49,400 All three of the juveniles have that condition. 188 00:12:49,400 --> 00:12:54,840 That is believed to be due to iron deficiency, anaemia. 189 00:12:54,840 --> 00:12:58,560 But this was not something that would have killed them. 190 00:12:58,560 --> 00:13:03,400 So with no hint of how they died, attention turned to their identity. 191 00:13:05,880 --> 00:13:09,560 Christine Flaherty extracted ancient DNA to determine 192 00:13:09,560 --> 00:13:13,680 the sex of the children and to investigate if they were related. 193 00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:22,760 So here I've got the sexing results. Now, we knew the adult was a female. 194 00:13:22,760 --> 00:13:25,000 She was around 30 years of age. 195 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:29,800 I found out that the oldest child was a girl. 196 00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:31,480 She was around 10-years-old. 197 00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:36,720 The middle child, the nine-year-old, turned out to be a boy. 198 00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:42,280 And the youngest child, the five-year-old, was another girl. 199 00:13:42,280 --> 00:13:45,200 So there were two girls and a boy. 200 00:13:46,920 --> 00:13:49,800 Now, having worked out what sex they are, 201 00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:53,480 what I want to know is are any of them hers? Is she the mother? 202 00:13:53,480 --> 00:13:57,480 OK, here we've got the DNA kinship results for the burials. 203 00:13:57,480 --> 00:14:00,600 Up here, we've got the adult, the woman. 204 00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:03,800 Next, we've got the oldest child, the girl. 205 00:14:03,800 --> 00:14:05,960 The middle child is the boy. 206 00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:08,600 And the youngest child, who is the little girl. 207 00:14:08,600 --> 00:14:11,880 This graph shows the DNA markers for each of them 208 00:14:11,880 --> 00:14:15,960 and if any of the markers match, there's a good chance of kinship. 209 00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:18,920 So here we see that the youngest child, the little girl, 210 00:14:18,920 --> 00:14:21,400 shares one of the markers with the adult. 211 00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:27,720 So this little girl could certainly be the child of the woman. 212 00:14:27,720 --> 00:14:32,080 Now, the other two children don't share any of the markers with the woman 213 00:14:32,080 --> 00:14:34,600 and certainly the boy could not be her son 214 00:14:34,600 --> 00:14:38,280 because neither of these match either of her markers. 215 00:14:38,280 --> 00:14:41,680 But it's interesting because the boy and the oldest girl 216 00:14:41,680 --> 00:14:45,200 share the same marker and they could possibly be siblings. 217 00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:46,840 That's incredible. 218 00:14:46,840 --> 00:14:49,920 What had emerged was completely unexpected. 219 00:14:51,200 --> 00:14:55,240 It appeared that only one of the children belonged to the woman. 220 00:14:55,240 --> 00:14:58,480 The other two might have been related to each other 221 00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:01,240 but not to our mother or her daughter. 222 00:15:07,600 --> 00:15:10,120 By scanning the skull of Cranborne Woman, 223 00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:13,000 facial reconstruction experts were able to show us 224 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:16,080 what the leader of this unusual family might have looked like. 225 00:15:22,520 --> 00:15:24,800 Here at last, was our mysterious woman. 226 00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:28,720 But in 1997, 227 00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:32,480 all our discoveries had only lead to more intriguing questions. 228 00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:38,240 Just what was she doing with the three children? 229 00:15:38,240 --> 00:15:40,400 And how did they all come to be buried 230 00:15:40,400 --> 00:15:42,840 in one of Britain's most sacred places... 231 00:15:44,600 --> 00:15:46,920 ..next, to the Dorset Cursus? 232 00:15:54,280 --> 00:15:56,920 Without carbon dating or DNA analysis, 233 00:15:56,920 --> 00:16:00,360 we would still have been making guesses about our group's identity. 234 00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:05,680 But there was one more scientific technique we wanted to use. 235 00:16:05,680 --> 00:16:11,800 A technique that was back then brand-new and largely untested, 236 00:16:11,800 --> 00:16:14,680 but that had the potential to uncover the story 237 00:16:14,680 --> 00:16:16,640 of how our group came together. 238 00:16:19,120 --> 00:16:22,320 As an archaeologist, I am staggered by what we can discover today 239 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,240 that we wouldn't have thought was possible a generation ago. 240 00:16:25,240 --> 00:16:28,240 But to me, one particular analytical technique 241 00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:31,560 has got a very special place - isotope analysis. 242 00:16:31,560 --> 00:16:34,440 Because it's a technique that make the ancestors promoted 243 00:16:34,440 --> 00:16:36,680 and in some ways pioneered. 244 00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:39,600 It has since gone on to be hugely important in discovering 245 00:16:39,600 --> 00:16:42,320 the movement and migration of ancient peoples. 246 00:16:45,920 --> 00:16:49,400 Isotope analysis begins with thin slices of teeth. 247 00:16:52,200 --> 00:16:53,800 Within the enamel, 248 00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:57,400 there's an atomic signature that can be linked to specific parts 249 00:16:57,400 --> 00:17:01,480 of the country, allowing us to track a person's movements over time. 250 00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:04,760 So which tooth are you going to take? 251 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:12,240 In 1997, the scientist we turned to was a PhD student called Janet Montgomery. 252 00:17:13,280 --> 00:17:16,080 There was nobody in Britain that had done this before. 253 00:17:16,080 --> 00:17:19,560 The lab where I did it had done it on rocks, for example, metals, 254 00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:23,800 which was what you would use strontium and lead to provenance. 255 00:17:23,800 --> 00:17:27,000 You could do with that but they had never done teeth, 256 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:29,560 so we had to develop the method and get it to work. 257 00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:33,000 When you started though, did you know where you were going 258 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:36,560 to get the samples from that you needed to carry out this analysis? 259 00:17:36,560 --> 00:17:38,760 It was actually difficult. 260 00:17:40,800 --> 00:17:44,480 I approached several places and requested samples 261 00:17:44,480 --> 00:17:50,040 and I was turned down because they said we don't believe this works. 262 00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:53,760 Prove it works and come back and show us some data and evidence 263 00:17:53,760 --> 00:17:57,960 and we might think again. So I was a bit stuck, really. 264 00:17:57,960 --> 00:17:59,880 I was having difficulty. 265 00:17:59,880 --> 00:18:04,800 But then you came along with Meet The Ancestors, with samples. 266 00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:10,320 At last, in 1997, Janet was able to test her new technique. 267 00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:14,840 This is a level you would expect from the chalk. 268 00:18:14,840 --> 00:18:18,640 The signature you would expect from the chalk down here. Yes. 269 00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:22,360 Now, the adult female has a very different signature 270 00:18:22,360 --> 00:18:24,120 from the chalk geology. 271 00:18:24,120 --> 00:18:28,680 It's a signature which corresponds to what we would find in the Mendips, 272 00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:32,040 which is about 80 kilometres to the north. 273 00:18:33,360 --> 00:18:38,280 The isotope analysis revealed a surprising series of journeys. 274 00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:43,280 Our woman had not been born on the Dorset chalk, but in the Mendips. 275 00:18:43,280 --> 00:18:46,720 As an adult, she moved 80 kilometres south to Cranborne, 276 00:18:46,720 --> 00:18:50,360 where she picked up two children, neither hers, 277 00:18:50,360 --> 00:18:52,600 and returned to the Mendips. 278 00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:56,760 Here, she had a daughter of her own and later all four of them 279 00:18:56,760 --> 00:19:01,440 returned to Cranborne, where they died and were buried together. 280 00:19:02,760 --> 00:19:05,200 Janet's work had an immediate impact. 281 00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:08,080 As soon as it went out on the television, I had people 282 00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:10,080 e-mailing me, ringing up, saying, 283 00:19:10,080 --> 00:19:14,160 "Would you like to do this on my site or my cemetery?" 284 00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:16,360 So then it was fine. 285 00:19:16,360 --> 00:19:19,320 I had a choice of sites. 286 00:19:19,320 --> 00:19:23,120 I feel quite proud. You should. 287 00:19:23,120 --> 00:19:26,800 Meet The Ancestors was an important part of this. 288 00:19:26,800 --> 00:19:30,040 Now, it has become a fairly routine application in a lot 289 00:19:30,040 --> 00:19:34,320 of archaeology case studies and on the television. 290 00:19:35,680 --> 00:19:39,280 But yes, Meet The Ancestors was instrumental in helping me 291 00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:41,840 get the technique established in Britain. 292 00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:47,600 At last, we had a clear picture. 293 00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:51,840 From their origin in the Mendips, our woman, 294 00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:54,760 the group's leader, travelled more than once to what would 295 00:19:54,760 --> 00:19:58,920 become her final resting place, next to the Dorset Cursus. 296 00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:05,160 But it wasn't only people who were drawn to this place. 297 00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:12,200 Back in 1997, Martin showed me a collection of objects 298 00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:14,120 from all over the country. 299 00:20:16,320 --> 00:20:18,440 This area here, close to the farm, 300 00:20:18,440 --> 00:20:21,800 we get exotic items, like these stone axes for instance. 301 00:20:21,800 --> 00:20:25,560 These are made of rocks which have been imported a considerable distance. 302 00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:28,360 That one, for instance, is from North Wales. 303 00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:31,280 What about this one? That one is from Cornwall. 304 00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:33,440 The other one is from South Wales. 305 00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:36,080 These must have been prized possessions for somebody, 306 00:20:36,080 --> 00:20:39,480 if the rocks have been brought all that distance. Very much so, yes. 307 00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:41,417 We often find them in pits in the ground 308 00:20:41,442 --> 00:20:44,000 where they have been very deposited with other objects. 309 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:46,640 Decorated pottery and fine flint tools. That's right. 310 00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:50,480 It's all close to this great monument which we know is the Dorset Cursus, 311 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:52,560 which we can see on this plan. 312 00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:56,760 It crosses this area for a distance of six miles and all these exotic 313 00:20:56,760 --> 00:21:01,520 materials are found very close to it, either within it or just outside. 314 00:21:01,520 --> 00:21:04,950 So that's the magnet, is it? That's what's drawn all of these objects? 315 00:21:04,975 --> 00:21:06,424 Yes, that is the focal point. 316 00:21:09,120 --> 00:21:14,000 Ever since that dig nearly 16 years ago, I've been intrigued. 317 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:16,880 What sort of a world did this woman live in? 318 00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:19,800 And to what extent was her burial connected with that massive 319 00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:22,520 Neolithic earthwork that we call the Dorset Cursus? 320 00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:27,280 It's always been clear to me that to understand more about her, 321 00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:30,160 we need to get to grips with this place. 322 00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:33,840 And the challenge has always been that Cursus monuments are amongst 323 00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:37,480 the most enigmatic structures in the whole of prehistory. 324 00:21:44,120 --> 00:21:47,560 Environmental archaeologist, Mike Allen, has spent years taking 325 00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:51,240 hundreds of soil samples from sites around the Dorset Curses. 326 00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:00,625 The results of his analysis have shattered 327 00:22:00,650 --> 00:22:03,160 what we used to believe about the ancient landscape 328 00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:06,800 and perhaps the function of the Cursus itself. 329 00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:15,120 The key to all of this groundbreaking work is the humble snail. 330 00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:24,400 What we are trying to do is, amongst all this mess of small chalk pieces, 331 00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:27,920 is to tease out the hundreds of thousands of fragments of shell 332 00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:32,680 and amongst them there are elements that are identifiable and quantifiable. 333 00:22:32,680 --> 00:22:37,160 And by looking at them carefully, their shape and their morphology 334 00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:39,160 and the way they curl and twist, 335 00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:41,840 we can actually identify them to species. 336 00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:43,840 Then we can quantify them and count them. 337 00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:48,600 Each individual snail lives in a different habitat. 338 00:22:48,600 --> 00:22:50,320 Some of them like moist conditions. 339 00:22:50,320 --> 00:22:53,031 Some like loose leaf litter where they can burrow into it 340 00:22:53,056 --> 00:22:54,640 and they might have food in there. 341 00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:57,240 Some are more tolerant of open and very dry conditions 342 00:22:57,240 --> 00:22:59,480 and their shell stops them from drying out. 343 00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:01,717 So we can actually start teasing out 344 00:23:01,742 --> 00:23:04,720 what type of environment they might have lived in. 345 00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:08,320 Hundreds of thousands of ancient snail shells later, 346 00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:11,960 Mike is able to reach a remarkable conclusion about our burial site. 347 00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:16,320 A decade ago, we thought the landscape in the Neolithic 348 00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,600 was one of dense, heavy woodland. 349 00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,440 Now, we understand that actually the woodland never really existed there. 350 00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:24,920 It was always a natural open landscape. 351 00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:28,600 Admittedly, there would have been trees in it but it wasn't a dense woodland. 352 00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:31,440 Because it was an open landscape, it encouraged animals, 353 00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:35,040 fresh fruits and berries, and that's why people came to it. 354 00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:38,760 People found it as a magical landscape, a special place. 355 00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:41,240 That's why Cranborne site is where it is. 356 00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:47,880 The Neolithic landscape we had imagined almost 16 years ago has now changed. 357 00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:53,640 And with it, the site of our burial, right next to the Dorset Cursus. 358 00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:59,400 Previously, we'd assumed it was a monument crashing across the landscape, 359 00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:02,880 crashing across an open landscape and was perhaps a processional way. 360 00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:06,160 Looking at the snails from a number of different points on there, 361 00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:09,640 it now looks like one side of it faced an open landscape 362 00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:12,760 and the west side faced a more wooded landscape. 363 00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,080 So perhaps it wasn't a processional way but more of a boundary 364 00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:20,520 between a dark wooded landscape and an open, natural landscape. 365 00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,120 An open, grazed and lived in landscape. 366 00:24:23,120 --> 00:24:26,880 So we might almost be seeing it as a boundary between life and death. 367 00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:30,280 Between a lived in landscape and a landscape of death 368 00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:32,080 and a landscape of the ancestors. 369 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:38,200 This is the Dorset Cursus today. 370 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:40,520 Its old earthworks barely visible 371 00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,840 after more than 5,000 years of erosion. 372 00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:46,120 But it still staggers me the scale of this monument 373 00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:49,360 because it extends way beyond the horizon up there to the north 374 00:24:49,360 --> 00:24:52,920 and then stretches across this lovely rolling landscape 375 00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:54,800 way beyond the horizon to the south. 376 00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,280 But of course, it wouldn't have looked like this when it was first built 377 00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,600 and the clue is down here in this chalk pit. 378 00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:03,320 Chalk, it's white. 379 00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:06,880 So when it was first built, these banks and ditches would have gleamed, 380 00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:09,120 luminous streaks across the landscape, 381 00:25:09,120 --> 00:25:12,000 and of course, highly visible from our burial site, 382 00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,920 which is only a few hundred yards in that direction. 383 00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:24,000 Way back, nearly 16 years ago, when we excavated Cranborne Woman, 384 00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,480 we knew that there had to be some connection 385 00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:28,520 to this great Neolithic monument. 386 00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:32,200 But what the Cursus looked like, the landscape that it ran through, 387 00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:35,480 the very environment that was inhabited by Cranborne Woman 388 00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:39,120 and her rather unusual family, frustratingly, 389 00:25:39,120 --> 00:25:42,040 all this remained almost a complete unknown. 390 00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:44,440 But today, thanks to a meticulous study 391 00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:47,360 of vast numbers of tiny snail shells like these, 392 00:25:47,360 --> 00:25:52,520 we are beginning to paint a vivid picture of this landscape over 5,000 years ago. 393 00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:57,080 On one side there was dark, forbidding woodland. 394 00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:59,200 On the other, there was open space. 395 00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,400 It had always been an open landscape. 396 00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,160 So maybe the Cursus acted as a boundary 397 00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:11,240 between a dark and dangerous world and one that was lighter and safer. 398 00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,040 And as well as snails, the very latest scientific work 399 00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:21,840 is tying our Cranborne group even more closely to this great monument. 400 00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,480 Not just in distance but also in time. 401 00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:41,720 This is Hambledon Hill, 402 00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,600 just a few miles from the Dorset Cursus and our burial site. 403 00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:47,320 During the Neolithic, 404 00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:50,680 it was one of the most significant settlements in the area. 405 00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:54,320 Hi, Julian. Hello, Alex. How nice to see you. Nice to see you too. 406 00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:57,160 For Alex Bayliss, from English Heritage, 407 00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:00,600 new carbon dating techniques can now paint a detailed 408 00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:04,320 picture of how our Cranborne group fitted in, 409 00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,880 not just to a landscape, but to a society. 410 00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:11,280 Now, look, when we looked at that burial, 411 00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:16,320 the Neolithic chronology was reasonable, wasn't it? Or was it? 412 00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:19,480 It was in the phase of the splodge. 413 00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,120 It was really rather vague. 414 00:27:22,120 --> 00:27:24,120 If you think of Cranborne Lady, 415 00:27:24,120 --> 00:27:29,960 she's got a radiocarbon date of between 3,500 and 3,100 BC. 416 00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:33,600 So that's an era of 400 years. 417 00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,240 So it was very vague. 418 00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:40,040 The whole of the chronology of the Neolithic was like that. 419 00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:43,440 So what's changed now then? What's changed over the last 10 years? 420 00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:47,040 Well, we have got much more precision. 421 00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,000 We have got new mathematical techniques that allow us to 422 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:54,080 put the radiocarbon dating together with the archaeological information. 423 00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:57,720 So if you have the radiocarbon on its own, it's really vague. 424 00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:00,840 But if you can refine it with the archaeological information, 425 00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:02,880 A is earlier than B, something like that, 426 00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:06,040 then you can get much more precision and I can start 427 00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:09,760 talking about what happened in Cranborne Lady's lifetime. 428 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:15,840 Hambledon Hill lies 12 miles west of our burial site. 429 00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:20,680 Years of excavations have unearthed evidence that the people 430 00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:24,320 who lived here in the Neolithic built huge defences, 431 00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:28,640 seemingly, to protect themselves against the people from Cranborne. 432 00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,080 That rampart, it's all facing this way, 433 00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:38,560 it's all about dominating, keeping out the folks over there, 434 00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:42,000 keeping out Cranbourne Lady. 435 00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:46,360 Cranborne Lady has a 35% chance 436 00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:50,720 of having witnessed this construction event. 437 00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:56,760 But it's not very friendly towards the people from Cranborne, is it? 438 00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,480 No. She probably didn't build it. A barrier across here. 439 00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:05,600 Having closed off Hambledon, they now build the Dorset Cursus. Right. 440 00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:09,880 So our woman from Cranborne, she knows about the Dorset Cursus. 441 00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:13,800 Probably. She has a 45% chance of having witnessed 442 00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:16,800 the construction of the Dorset Cursus. 443 00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:19,120 That's fascinating. This is her world. 444 00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:23,000 That precision. I'm very impressed with all this. 445 00:29:24,080 --> 00:29:27,160 This level of accuracy offers a completely new perspective 446 00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:29,240 to an age before writing. 447 00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:33,560 The 'pre' might have to come out of prehistory. Oh, no. 448 00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,400 I still like being a pre-historian. Oh, well. 449 00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:38,017 You'll let me be one, will you? 450 00:29:38,042 --> 00:29:40,544 For a few more years. That's very kind of you! 451 00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:51,520 Up until quite recently, our woman and the children 452 00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,320 had actually lain buried in a chalk field in Dorset for thousands of years 453 00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:58,560 and there are some who would argue they should still be there 454 00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,560 or at least if they were excavated that they should have been reburied. 455 00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:05,800 But just think what these rare remains have given us - 456 00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:10,240 insights into the lives they lead, glimpses into their ancient world. 457 00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:15,880 16 years ago, the stunning preservation of the Cranborne remains 458 00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:18,960 allowed us to use cutting-edge science 459 00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,760 to tell a story of a woman and three small children. 460 00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:30,000 Their lives, their relationships and even details of their travels. 461 00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:37,120 But in the time since the dig, science has discovered 462 00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:39,720 far more about the environment of the Dorset Cursus. 463 00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:43,760 And incredibly, 464 00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:47,800 how Cranborne Woman might even have been involved in its construction. 465 00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,240 But Wiltshire and Dorset don't contain 466 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,280 the only famous Neolithic landscapes in Britain. 467 00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:06,280 In the far north, 468 00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:10,400 Orkney is home to a dazzling array of Stone Age monuments. 469 00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:18,200 And in 1998, I was called out to a site where a local dairy farmer 470 00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,880 had stumbled across an untouched Neolithic tomb 471 00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,920 just outside the main town of Kirkwall. 472 00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,920 The discovery of a new sealed burial site was big news. 473 00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:43,080 And the team of archaeologists were joined by experts from across the country. 474 00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:47,360 Even two members of the Strathclyde Police forensic team. 475 00:31:57,680 --> 00:31:59,840 What's the tent for? 476 00:31:59,840 --> 00:32:03,560 We're used to using this type of tent at outdoor crime scenes. 477 00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,800 It protects the body and the surroundings from the elements 478 00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:10,000 and I think in this area it's going to be very important 479 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,280 to protect the tomb as soon as it's open. 480 00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:18,160 With the tent in place, it was finally time to take the covers off the tomb. 481 00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:21,120 Lean it up against that. 482 00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,080 But unlike the Dorset dig, 483 00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,120 this was one excavation that didn't go smoothly. 484 00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:29,240 Oh, no! 485 00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,080 An archaeologist's worst nightmare. 486 00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:36,160 Modern soil and water contaminating the once sealed chamber. 487 00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:42,800 It was going to take a bit of ingenuity to see past the blockage. 488 00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:45,120 But fortunately, I'd come prepared. 489 00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:49,760 As I manoeuvred the camera into the tomb, 490 00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,120 Jennette and lead archaeologist, Beverly Ballin Smith, 491 00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:55,760 watched for any signs of human remains. 492 00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:01,960 The tomb had laid undisturbed 493 00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,080 ever since it was sealed over 5,000 years ago. 494 00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:07,400 There's a bone! There's a human bone! 495 00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,240 In fact, there was more than one, 496 00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:17,080 as we all found out that evening when Beverley showed us 497 00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:19,440 what had excited her so much. 498 00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,680 You can clearly see we've got one skull here. 499 00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:27,280 It's got a little dent in the top, hasn't it? And the brow ridges. 500 00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:32,080 We've got a second skull which seems to be lying on its side 501 00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:35,960 because there is an eye socket. We've got a nose bone. 502 00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:40,560 It looks to be in good condition but we can't tell really here 503 00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,960 whether that's a male or female skeleton or skull. 504 00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:47,000 No, not from here. It's not lying as a skeleton, is it? 505 00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:51,800 Or two skeletons. It's a collection of bones. Yes. 506 00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,080 The camera had also revealed the structure of the tomb. 507 00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,080 There were still some dark recesses we hadn't seen 508 00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:01,760 but we knew that the tomb was circular 509 00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,560 and divided into three compartments. 510 00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:07,280 One had bone in, one was empty 511 00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:11,840 and the third, full of soil from the collapse, was an unknown quantity. 512 00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,720 Every time I return to Orkney, I get a real buzz of excitement. 513 00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:24,640 Just like home in Dorset, 514 00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:27,720 the Neolithic is written all over its landscape. 515 00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:38,720 This is a World Heritage Site and the preservation of Neolithic 516 00:34:38,720 --> 00:34:42,600 monuments in such an unspoiled setting is simply stunning. 517 00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:46,480 The Stones of Stenness, 518 00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:49,400 the Ring of Brodgar 519 00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:51,640 and Maeshowe. 520 00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,520 All breathtaking relics of our distant past. 521 00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:02,800 This is though the first time in over 15 years 522 00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,520 that I've been back to the dig site, to the Crantit tomb. 523 00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:09,360 So there's a special air of anticipation. 524 00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:19,240 Coming back here really does bring back the excitement of that original 525 00:35:19,240 --> 00:35:22,680 discovery but actually, it still doesn't look like very much, does it? 526 00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:26,760 This is the thing. When you compare it to all the other monuments in Orkney, 527 00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:30,480 their are great standing stones and everything you can see, this is hidden. 528 00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:32,960 But I think that is why it was so exciting 529 00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,200 because of the promise of what might lie under the ground. 530 00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,560 What we hoped for in here were remains that had been hidden away 531 00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:41,480 and buried for thousands of years. 532 00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:44,920 But actually, getting to those remains 533 00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,520 proved a bit more difficult than we thought. 534 00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:53,240 A few days into the dig, 535 00:35:53,240 --> 00:35:56,560 and the archaeologists were still struggling. 536 00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:58,320 Don't stand there. 537 00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,240 If the slab fell in, it would crush any bones beneath it. 538 00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,800 The tomb needed shoring up to prevent it collapsing completely. 539 00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,720 Sometimes, stones are resin, that's all. 540 00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:23,840 Fortunately, Joffy Hill, one of the diggers, was also a builder. 541 00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:30,120 There is a wonderful structure of a wooden tape. What is it doing? 542 00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:31,920 This is insurance. 543 00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,200 If it decides to suddenly collapse, 544 00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:39,720 we will catch it before it goes down on what is our primary deposit. 545 00:36:39,720 --> 00:36:41,800 The skulls on the bottom. 546 00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,320 Wooden supports in place, 547 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:48,120 it was time to get those precious bones out. 548 00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:50,040 Feet first. Feet first. 549 00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:58,960 Overalls weren't just to keep clothes clean 550 00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:03,520 but were intended to prevent any further contamination of the ancient bones. 551 00:37:06,240 --> 00:37:10,480 With the rickety structure holding up the tomb, Beverly went in. 552 00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:23,320 I suppose this is the moment we've all been waiting for. 553 00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,960 We're getting our first glimpse of the bones as they come out of the tomb. 554 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:31,120 It has to be said, from what I've seen so far, they are not in very good condition. 555 00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:33,840 Each fragment was examined and recorded. 556 00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:37,160 The left lambdoid... Well, both lambdoid sutures. 557 00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:42,240 Compared to the incredibly preserved Dorset remains, 558 00:37:42,240 --> 00:37:44,640 these had suffered badly in the soil. 559 00:37:45,720 --> 00:37:50,160 Very close to each other. This is just like sponge cake. 560 00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,680 In fact, it's worse. It's worse than sponge cake. 561 00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,840 The remaining bones were literally falling to bits 562 00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:00,600 as soon as they were touched. 563 00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:08,440 The larger pieces, two skulls, 564 00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:13,760 were so soft that Beverly had to make every move slowly and gently. 565 00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,880 I think I would have the shovel back once Julie has processed. 566 00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,480 How do you feel now they're out? I want to find out a bit more now. 567 00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:46,920 I'm keen. 568 00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:51,320 It would seem that the skulls were placed on top of the pile of bones. 569 00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,280 Or in this case, slightly to one side. 570 00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:57,640 But why two skulls and only, what would appear to me 571 00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,360 to be only one lot of bones, I don't know? 572 00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:06,880 Today, more than 15 years after the dig, 573 00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:10,240 the Crantit remains are kept in the Orkney Museum. 574 00:39:10,240 --> 00:39:13,760 Sometimes, it can be quite an emotional moment 575 00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:17,400 coming face-to-face with remains that you helped dig up years ago 576 00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:21,560 and that awareness that it's people, your ancestors from the past. 577 00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:24,280 But it's quite difficult to do it 578 00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:28,520 when all that's left of an individual is this. 579 00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:30,160 This is a person. 580 00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:33,680 This is a person's life but it's just a few fragments of bone 581 00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:36,280 that were squashed into the floor of the tomb. 582 00:39:37,480 --> 00:39:41,760 Our sense of disappointment was increased by the fact that 583 00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:46,320 the best preserved bone of all 584 00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:48,720 was this skull. 585 00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:53,720 The bones of the face, 586 00:39:53,720 --> 00:39:56,720 which are really what gives somebody that sense of being human 587 00:39:56,720 --> 00:40:01,040 and provide the clues to the person, they're all gone. 588 00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:04,280 They are fragile bones and they've disappeared completely. 589 00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:08,720 So that was the best that we can expect from the tomb. 590 00:40:08,720 --> 00:40:10,800 That was the best that came out of it. 591 00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:15,040 So, as I say, that just compounded 592 00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:18,360 our sense of disappointment, I suppose. 593 00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:24,200 Our two Neolithic burials could not have been more contrasting. 594 00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:29,760 The perfectly preserved skeletons from Cranborne. 595 00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:35,880 And the soft, unpromising fragments of bone from Orkney. 596 00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:42,760 While science had revealed the lives of the Dorset burials, 597 00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:48,280 and given us an entirely new picture of Neolithic life in the South, 598 00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:52,160 on Orkney, it seemed that scientists would need to draw on every 599 00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:56,960 ounce of ingenuity to be able to say anything at all about these remains. 600 00:40:58,240 --> 00:41:01,600 But even in this case, with such terrible bone preservation, 601 00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:04,640 science has been able to paint a detailed picture of the people 602 00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:06,600 who were buried in that tomb. 603 00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:09,720 Over the last decade, this study and others like it 604 00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:13,360 have changed our thinking about the way the dead were treated, 605 00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:17,080 not only at Crantit, but right the way across Neolithic Orkney. 606 00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:24,920 In 1998, just a few weeks after the excavation, bone specialist 607 00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:28,280 Julia Roberts took her first proper look at the Orkney remains. 608 00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:31,000 That has been compressed by the wet soil. 609 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:33,720 The fragments of four separate skulls revealed, 610 00:41:33,720 --> 00:41:38,200 like Cranborne, a mixed group of adults and children. 611 00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:40,560 Fortunately, we have some teeth. 612 00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:45,200 We've got these two developing first and second molars here. 613 00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:50,120 We can tell they are developing crowns, not just teeth, 614 00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:52,440 where the root has rotted away. 615 00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,880 The actual surface of the crown hasn't developed properly yet. 616 00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:59,680 This gives us an age of somewhere between four and six years. 617 00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:03,760 Four to six? Yes. So it's quite young. 618 00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,800 We've also got here... This is actually a wisdom tooth. 619 00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,440 This is likely to go with the other individual, 620 00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:16,560 giving it an age of probably around 15. 621 00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:18,960 This is the best preserved of all of them. 622 00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,680 How much can you tell about that? 623 00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:23,960 Judging from the bit of skull that we have here, 624 00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,880 the top of the skull and forehead looks quite female in shape. 625 00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:33,040 Many of the remains were missing, including most of the larger bones. 626 00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:39,600 We've got the left hand and foot, left kneecap, right leg, 627 00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,440 left pelvis and right arm. 628 00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:45,320 So we've actually got bits from all over the body. 629 00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:47,520 We also have part of the pelvis. 630 00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:51,320 The fragment of pelvis confirmed we were dealing with a woman 631 00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,440 and the teeth suggested her age. 632 00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:56,040 We have got some of the teeth surviving, 633 00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:59,920 although they are in very poor condition. and also they've got wear on the bottom. 634 00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:03,874 They've got quite heavy wear, so that suggests 635 00:43:03,899 --> 00:43:06,840 that she was probably aged over 30. 636 00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,320 So in the one chamber, you've got an adult woman, 637 00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:15,760 an adolescent child and a child of about four to six years old. 638 00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:18,360 Yes. That seems to be the case. 639 00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:22,320 You wonder whether it's her children, don't you? It's a possibility. 640 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,720 As they were buried in the same chamber. 641 00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:30,080 DNA analysis proved impossible on such decayed bone. 642 00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:31,960 But science was able to tell 643 00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:35,280 whether the two had ever contained more than these four bodies. 644 00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:42,320 Chemist John Duncan analysed tiny samples of soil from the tomb floor 645 00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:46,040 in order to determine how much bone had rotted away. 646 00:43:48,240 --> 00:43:50,960 You've got a nice range of colours here, John, anyway! 647 00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,180 These are the samples from the tomb at Crantit, are they? 648 00:43:54,195 --> 00:43:56,390 Yes. They are from the floor, the soil. 649 00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:58,486 I've been looking at chemical composition. 650 00:43:58,501 --> 00:44:00,950 What does the dark blue and the lighter blue mean? 651 00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:04,520 The darker the colour, the more phosphorus in the soil. 652 00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:08,080 Bone contains a lot of phosphate so if there is highly phosphate 653 00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:11,040 values in the soil, we can say that bone has been placed there. 654 00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:17,920 As expected, the dark colour indicates a high amount of phosphate, 655 00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:24,000 which this back row are from beneath where we found the bone during the excavation. 656 00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:26,920 The light blue, not much bone. 657 00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:32,560 So would you expect that the high levels were going to be where the ball was? Yes. 658 00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:34,760 We did expect that and that is what we found. 659 00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:38,270 What about that chamber at the back where there weren't any bones at all? 660 00:44:38,295 --> 00:44:39,440 What has that shown up? 661 00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:42,280 From the samples, there were no bones present. 662 00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:45,080 So you think that was a completely empty chamber? Yes. 663 00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:47,320 That's really interesting, isn't it? 664 00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:51,240 And what about the other chamber where the soil had collapsed in on it? 665 00:44:51,240 --> 00:44:57,240 The floor of the tomb still showed that there was no other bone present. Right. 666 00:44:57,240 --> 00:45:02,400 So they really are just restricted to those two side chambers. Yes. 667 00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:05,960 Nothing in the passage, nothing in the middle and nothing at the back. 668 00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:07,240 No. 669 00:45:07,240 --> 00:45:12,080 Even more surprising, these results also showed that natural decay 670 00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:15,000 couldn't account for all of the missing bone. 671 00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:19,600 It still seems incredible that our bone expert was able to tell 672 00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:22,920 so much about these bones, that this for example was 673 00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:28,880 part of the pelvis of a woman and that these teeth were children's 674 00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:32,120 and even down to the fact that we can tell what age the children were. 675 00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:38,520 But John's phosphate analysis had provided us with even more information. 676 00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:42,000 What it told us was that we couldn't explain away the missing bones 677 00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:44,760 by suggesting they had all simply rotted away. 678 00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,440 Of course, we knew that the skeletons were incomplete 679 00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:52,800 but now we knew that either some bones had been taken out of the tomb 680 00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:56,560 or that those people weren't whole when they were put in. 681 00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:58,760 We had a real mystery on our hands. 682 00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:05,200 5,000 years is a huge span of time. 683 00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:10,000 The sophisticated planning of Neolithic tombs in Orkney 684 00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,800 bears testament to the existence of a complex system of beliefs. 685 00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:21,160 But at times, understanding those beliefs seems almost impossible. 686 00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:29,200 When we find evidence of ancient people, it's very natural 687 00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:32,320 to speculate about how they might have lived their lives, 688 00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:35,760 and if we have their burials, on what they might have believed in. 689 00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:39,880 But this is where it gets a little bit tricky for archaeologists 690 00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:43,960 because given the nature of the scientific evidence that we are working with, 691 00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:48,920 how much can we say with certainty and how much is speculation? 692 00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:50,960 No more than informed guesswork. 693 00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:58,400 How much could future archaeologists say about our lives today 694 00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:02,360 by looking at our remains thousands of years in the future? 695 00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:06,720 If you look at a Christian churchyard, 696 00:47:06,720 --> 00:47:09,480 there are some things that are immediately obvious. 697 00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:11,560 All the graves face in the same direction. 698 00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,400 They are in nice, orderly rows. There's a neatness here. 699 00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:18,840 All things that point to a unified system of belief 700 00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:22,560 and the hope perhaps that the dead would be allowed to rest in peace. 701 00:47:23,880 --> 00:47:27,040 But life and death in the Neolithic were very different. 702 00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:28,800 Things changed quite radically, 703 00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:32,120 not only from place to place, but also through time. 704 00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:37,960 Ever since 1998, the missing skulls 705 00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,640 and long bones from the Crantit tomb have intrigued me. 706 00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:46,693 In the years since the dig, however, 707 00:47:46,718 --> 00:47:49,360 archaeologists Rebecca Crozier and Dave Lawrence 708 00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,760 have carried out major re-examinations 709 00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:55,160 of the remains found at two other important Orkney tombs - 710 00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:58,160 Quanterness and the Tomb of the Eagles. 711 00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:07,840 Between 2006 and 2008, they set out to determine 712 00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:11,040 whether excarnation was taking place - 713 00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:14,800 the practice of leaving the dead out to decay before burial. 714 00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,880 Now, I've brought Rebecca and Dave to Crantit to see whether this 715 00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:23,240 could explain why so many bones were missing from our tomb. 716 00:48:24,720 --> 00:48:28,840 The remains in here, if you remember, were really fragmentary. 717 00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:31,960 I think if I was back in Dorset one explanation for there being 718 00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:36,520 so little in here would probably be something to do with excarnation. 719 00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:39,560 You take a corpse and lay it out somewhere, 720 00:48:39,560 --> 00:48:42,240 maybe on a platform, and the elements, 721 00:48:42,240 --> 00:48:44,036 which you've got plenty of up here, 722 00:48:44,061 --> 00:48:46,680 and carrion birds and things come and carry bits off 723 00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:51,240 and then eventually the body has turned into a nice clean skeleton 724 00:48:51,240 --> 00:48:54,600 and you take the bones and place them into a tomb. 725 00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:58,640 But I'm not sure you think that this is what's going on here. Is that right, Dave? 726 00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:01,480 The Tomb of the Eagles is one of these iconic sites 727 00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:04,400 because it produced such a huge quantity of human remains 728 00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:06,960 and it was always said that excarnation had been 729 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:10,040 practised on that site because the bones exhibited 730 00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:13,600 signs of weathering from exposure to the elements, just as you've said. 731 00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:16,320 But it turns out that almost all these signs of weathering 732 00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:20,240 are actually pathological legions from the diseases that these people had. 733 00:49:20,240 --> 00:49:23,400 Variously - cancer, periodontal disease 734 00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:28,680 or even trauma where they've had blows to the head. 735 00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:30,481 All these things were misinterpreted 736 00:49:30,496 --> 00:49:33,030 when the first study was done as signs of weathering. 737 00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:35,960 That was used to support this idea of excarnation. 738 00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:38,056 So there isn't any evidence for that at all? 739 00:49:38,081 --> 00:49:39,920 There is no evidence for it whatsoever. 740 00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:43,600 That whole idea of excarnation for that site is totally undermined. 741 00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:46,808 And Rebecca, you have looked at Quanterness, 742 00:49:46,833 --> 00:49:49,160 which is another big assemblage. 743 00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:52,800 Is there any evidence for this right of excarnation? 744 00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:56,680 Again, if something has been excarnated, you expect 745 00:49:56,680 --> 00:50:00,160 just to find long bones and skulls because those are the easy ones. 746 00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:02,200 They are the big, recognisable bits. Yes. 747 00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:05,480 They are the easy ones to recover and it's quite obvious 748 00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:08,920 and we know of sites where that happens in the other parts of the world. 749 00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:12,118 But at Quanterness, what you find is a huge number 750 00:50:12,143 --> 00:50:14,640 of very small bones like your fingertips 751 00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:21,440 and that strongly suggests that bodies were complete inside the tomb. 752 00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:25,680 I suppose if you left the body out and it rotted away, then those are 753 00:50:25,680 --> 00:50:29,000 the tiny bones that would be missing if you collected the bigger bits. 754 00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:31,080 That's really interesting 755 00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:35,400 because I remember that even though the bones here were very badly preserved, 756 00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:37,360 we did have one or two of those tiny bones. 757 00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:41,680 The fact they are in the tomb would strongly suggest that's where they started. 758 00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:49,680 So it now seems likely that the remains were complete 759 00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:52,120 when they were placed in the tomb, 760 00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:55,080 which left one last possibility - 761 00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:58,520 that some of the bones had been taken away. 762 00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:02,320 And Rebecca has found startling new evidence that the dead might 763 00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:04,320 not have been left in peace. 764 00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:13,360 These are just a couple of the more unusual things that we've found. 765 00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:16,280 So, this is an ulna. 766 00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:19,160 This is a left ulna bone, so it's your forearm. 767 00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:20,720 That's not a natural hole. 768 00:51:20,720 --> 00:51:23,040 That's not a natural hole, no. 769 00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:24,840 So has that been drilled? 770 00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:28,640 Quite possibly. I'll show you another one. 771 00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:32,120 So you might think one in 10,500. 772 00:51:32,120 --> 00:51:34,560 This is from your chest bone. 773 00:51:34,560 --> 00:51:38,080 So your sternum. 774 00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:40,400 And this is another drill hole. 775 00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:45,440 So this one is actually the same size as the one I just showed you. 776 00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:46,880 Right. 777 00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:48,920 OK, so that's just it very close up. 778 00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:51,440 So they're drilling holes in human bones. 779 00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:54,680 Some people suggested, you know, this could be excavation damage, 780 00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:57,120 so when we look at it under the microscope, you can 781 00:51:57,120 --> 00:51:59,880 see the colouration in the bone is all the same, 782 00:51:59,880 --> 00:52:02,800 which suggests it's all weathered down in the same way. 783 00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:06,120 New damage would show up as white and be very obvious. 784 00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:10,880 So I've also done some experimental work with pig bones, 785 00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:13,920 which I rotted down, in my garden. 786 00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:16,280 As you do. As you do. 787 00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:19,840 And I drilled it with a replica flint tool 788 00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:23,280 and it produces the most amazing drill hole 789 00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:26,680 very, very quickly and it's actually quite easy to do. 790 00:52:26,680 --> 00:52:31,320 Why they were doing that or what that means, I don't know, but 791 00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:36,960 it certainly suggests people have been in there and modified bone. 792 00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:39,640 The way the Neolithic people treated their dead, 793 00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:41,280 it's all a bit strange, isn't it? 794 00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:44,480 It's a very far cry from the way we treat the dead today, 795 00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:47,520 because it's all very sanitised today, isn't it? 796 00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:51,440 Somebody dies and they're taken away and they're removed from us, 797 00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:55,520 whereas these people seem to have had the dead in amongst them as part 798 00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:57,600 of their community and to have been doing 799 00:52:57,600 --> 00:52:59,400 some very strange things with them. 800 00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:01,800 Not something that would be attractive to us now 801 00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:05,840 and not something that we can even really relate to at the moment, 802 00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,600 just because we're so distant from everything. 803 00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:13,920 The new evidence suggests that people might have removed 804 00:53:13,920 --> 00:53:16,240 bones for ritual use. 805 00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:24,040 It's almost impossible to imagine what it must have been like 806 00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:26,080 to climb into these cramped tombs 807 00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:28,560 and commune with the ancestors in this way. 808 00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:35,240 Especially since the dead remained a powerful 809 00:53:35,240 --> 00:53:38,160 force in the world of the living. 810 00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:54,320 The Orkney story is still developing. 811 00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:57,680 In fact, despite the wealth of monuments here, 812 00:53:57,680 --> 00:54:00,560 still more are being discovered. 813 00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:06,280 Up here in Orkney, the Holy Grail is to find a tomb that is 814 00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:09,800 so well preserved that it can provide us with all of the tiny, 815 00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:13,520 little details about life and death in the Neolithic. 816 00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:16,360 It looks as if that might finally have happened. 817 00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:25,880 In 2010, Hamish Mowatt discovered a 5,000-year-old Neolithic 818 00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:29,440 burial site in his car park. 819 00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,400 It's come to be known as the Banks Tomb. 820 00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:37,480 So I basically just dug a hole and found that there was a space, 821 00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:42,480 six foot wide. Pushed the wire in and it was six foot wide, six foot long. 822 00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:45,560 And then I pushed the wire down and it was three foot deep. 823 00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:49,120 So when I pulled the stones and rocks out, 824 00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,160 I could shine the torch in and I could see the rock face, 825 00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:55,160 straight rock face, just like concrete, it was. 826 00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:56,640 Cut straight as a die. 827 00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:59,680 Then I got the camera shoved in this hole and then 828 00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:03,040 when I panned the camera down into the water, 829 00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:06,560 I could see that there was a white object with two little holes, 830 00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:10,280 which I presumed was a human skull looking at me. 831 00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:14,560 So, when I looked again - I briefly looked away from the monitor 832 00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:16,200 at that point, because I was quite, 833 00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:18,120 "Am I seeing..." Not what you expected. 834 00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:21,040 You know, "Is this what I think it is?" And I looked again, 835 00:55:21,040 --> 00:55:25,000 it was in about ten, 12 inches of water and the water was murky, 836 00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:28,040 so you couldn't really see the object, but it was white. 837 00:55:28,040 --> 00:55:30,640 So I got a little pump that afternoon, 838 00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:33,600 pumped the water out, got the camera in again. 839 00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:36,080 And yes, there was a human skull. 840 00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:38,600 What's the condition of the bone like? 841 00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:41,760 They're not broken or nothing, they're black in colour, 842 00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:44,360 but they're really pristine condition. 843 00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:48,800 In 2011, the first chamber yielded human remains. 844 00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,400 And with the damp conditions inside the tomb, 845 00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:54,600 the hope was that soft tissue might have survived. 846 00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:59,000 Unfortunately, only bones were discovered. 847 00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:04,280 But there are still another five chambers to be explored. 848 00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:08,520 So the Banks Tomb could be the one that ends debate on Neolithic 849 00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:11,480 burial ritual once and for all. 850 00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:15,360 Or, it might just present us with yet more mysteries. 851 00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:17,320 One thing is certain - 852 00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:21,080 science will play a major part in unlocking 853 00:56:21,080 --> 00:56:24,200 whatever secrets it does hold. 854 00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:27,400 It's tantalising to think what science will give us, 855 00:56:27,400 --> 00:56:30,160 because, like all Neolithic sites, 856 00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:33,440 the revelations will continue long after the dig is over. 857 00:56:36,280 --> 00:56:38,480 Those remains that have been recovered 858 00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:41,080 so far are just beginning to be analysed. 859 00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:45,680 Each ounce of soil is sieved with painstaking care, 860 00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:47,720 because the smallest fragments 861 00:56:47,720 --> 00:56:50,920 can yield the most significant clues. 862 00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:57,200 We've seen that the tiniest bones can unravel 863 00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,000 the mysteries of burial practice, 864 00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:04,640 that teeth can tell us the story of an individual's life 865 00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:06,640 and that fragments of snail shell can 866 00:57:06,640 --> 00:57:10,200 transform our understanding of entire landscapes. 867 00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,240 Exploring the Neolithic can be incredibly challenging, 868 00:57:15,240 --> 00:57:18,600 trying to understand the lives and beliefs of such a remote time, 869 00:57:18,600 --> 00:57:23,280 but when the results do come, then the rewards can be fantastic. 870 00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:26,720 We still excavate the same remains - the flints, the bones, 871 00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:30,160 the pottery - that archaeologists have dug up for centuries. 872 00:57:30,160 --> 00:57:32,200 But today, science has opened up 873 00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:35,280 so many new windows into the Neolithic world. 874 00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:37,920 So much has changed in the last ten years. 875 00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:42,920 That's why it's been so fascinating to return to these two burial sites, 876 00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:45,800 because, through them, we've been able to paint a far more 877 00:57:45,800 --> 00:57:48,880 vivid picture of life and death in the Neolithic, 878 00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:52,760 of a world where these two weren't as separate as they are today, 879 00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:56,200 where the ancestors were a constant presence. 880 00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:58,480 And just think how much will have changed 881 00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:00,680 if I come back in another ten years.