Meet the Ancestors episode 6
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00:49On a windswept Air Force base in Suffolk,
00:51where fighter planes scream overhead,
00:53an ancient warrior has been found.
00:56But he wasn't alone.
00:58♪
01:05For the past few weeks, a group of archaeologists
01:07have been quietly digging away behind these wire fences.
01:10They've just found something really spectacular,
01:12and they've decided to let us in on their secret.
01:19The excavation is taking place
01:20on the US Air Force base at Lakenheath,
01:22where security is very tight.
01:25I've never been given a military escort to a dig before,
01:29but eventually I was handed over to archaeologist Joe Carruth.
01:34Hi, Joe. Hi.
01:35Joe, I want you to meet Julian Richards.
01:37Hello. This is Joe Carruth, the archaeologist in charge of the site.
01:40And I'll turn it over to you, she'll show you everything we have.
01:42Right, let's go then.
01:47Underneath an old baseball field, where new dormitories are to be built,
01:51the Suffolk Archaeological Unit have discovered
01:53over 160 graves.
01:55But there was one in particular that Joe wanted to show me.
01:59As you can see here, we've got a warrior and his horse.
02:03The man's on this side, and he's buried in a coffin,
02:07with his spear up at the top corner, his shield,
02:10which is the big lump of metal on his chest, that's his shield boss.
02:14And it would have been a wooden shield, a circular wooden shield,
02:17and the wood's all rotted away.
02:18Down this side, that you can just see, is his sword.
02:21An iron sword's laid in there.
02:23That's a warrior, isn't it? That is.
02:25Somebody who's got a sword, a spear, a shield and a horse.
02:29I mean, there's no question, is there? That's right. That's it, yeah.
02:33The man and horse were buried together in Saxon times,
02:36over 1,300 years ago.
02:38The horse, sacrificed to accompany his master to the afterlife.
02:43Green stains on the horse's skull mark where bronze fittings
02:46from the bridle were found, and quickly removed for conservation.
02:50Jo hopes that more lie beneath it.
02:53In other cases where we've seen horse burials,
02:56the harness hasn't been in position on the horse,
02:58so although we've known that they wore harnesses,
03:00we didn't know how they were fitting them,
03:02because the straps would be leather, and they've gone,
03:04so all you're left with are the little pieces of metal.
03:06Now we're going to actually know how the pieces of metal fit
03:09in relation to each other, so it's incredibly exciting.
03:12You couldn't hope for anything better than this, could you?
03:14No, this is absolutely brilliant. It's the best thing we could have had.
03:21The airbase is like a small American town,
03:24where over 10,000 people live and work.
03:27The discovery of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery caused quite a stir.
03:31This is very exciting.
03:32This is absolutely wonderful.
03:33It's really gripped everybody on the base, hasn't it?
03:35Oh, it has. I mean, I think probably the whole world
03:38has probably heard about this now.
03:39I mean, who would have thought in our own backyard
03:41the site of modern-day warriors was also the site of ancient warriors?
03:45It's incredible.
03:47Archaeologists need to assess the state of the bones and artefacts
03:50in order to decide how best they can be removed.
03:56A closer look at the corroded sword,
03:58which was placed at the warrior's side,
04:00shows that it's fused to his arm bone.
04:02The finds from the grave are so important
04:05that the British Museum sent its specialists to help.
04:12To ensure that vital evidence is not lost when the sword is lifted,
04:15it's first wrapped in aluminium foil
04:18and then encased in sheets of a flexible resin
04:21which hardens like rock in daylight,
04:23giving off toxic fumes in the process.
04:34The same method is used to lift the horse's skull
04:37together with the soil that lies underneath it.
04:39Only when it's back in the British Museum laboratory
04:42will they find out whether there are more of the delicate harness fittings.
04:53All the bones in the grave are in remarkable condition.
04:58Even the warrior's ribs and the fragile bones of his spine
05:02could be removed intact.
05:13Finally, with great care, the skull is lifted
05:17and we see the first clues to the face of our ancestor.
05:31The warrior's grave was the largest in the cemetery
05:34and would have been marked by a low earth mound.
05:37But surrounding it, Joe has found smaller graves,
05:40We've got a cluster of child graves all around the horse burial.
05:45We've got an infant in here.
05:47Some, their graves cut into chalk, contained well-preserved skeletons.
05:51But in those that were dug into the more acidic sand,
05:54often only the faint outlines of the bones could be made out.
05:57And the ribs coming across, you can just see in here.
06:00And then we've got a bit of the upper leg here.
06:02But some of the tiny graves contained unusual finds.
06:05But isn't that a spear?
06:07It is a spear, and that's a knife as well.
06:10This is the third child grave that we've had with weapons.
06:14I think this is the smallest, and it's a bit bizarre, really.
06:18I don't know what it means.
06:20That child can't be more than, what, three, four, maybe?
06:24Yeah.
06:25It seems so incongruous to have a little grave
06:28and these great big grown-up weapons in it.
06:32Until today, my impression of the man in the grave with the horse
06:36and the weapons was of somebody who was, you know, a warrior,
06:39a tough guy, really.
06:40But finding out that his grave is surrounded by the graves
06:43of lots of children, it's softened the way I think about him.
06:47I find it quite comforting, really,
06:49to think that he might have looked after the children in death
06:53and then, you know, died.
06:55It's a bit of a shock.
06:57It's comforting, really, to think that he might have looked after
07:00the children in death, as presumably he did in life.
07:04He was their protector.
07:08The pathologist's report told us that the warrior was a robust man
07:11of 5ft 10 and in his early 30s.
07:15Unfortunately, there are no clues, no signs of injury or illness
07:19to suggest how or why he died.
07:22Though his death will remain a mystery,
07:24I wanted to know what he looked like.
07:28Small box.
07:29Might be a small box, but it's a fairly large skull.
07:33I took the skull to University College London,
07:36where Robin Richards will reconstruct the warrior's face.
07:46A laser beam scans the skull, feeding data into a computer
07:50to produce an accurate three-dimensional image.
07:53So there's his skull.
07:55Yes.
07:56Robin plots points to show where skin and tissue depths are known
08:00and wraps an average face around the skull.
08:03Can I have a look? Yes.
08:04See what the average face looks like.
08:06What I'm starting from looks like that.
08:09Same sort of age, same sex.
08:13Yeah.
08:14So what happens when you put that face over the Saxon skull?
08:20You get a face that looks like this.
08:25The jaw's sort of squared up, hasn't it, really?
08:30I think it does possibly. Can you go back to the skull?
08:33See, I sort of had the impression that the skull
08:35had got quite a point to the chin.
08:37Yeah.
08:39Let's go back to the face, then.
08:42Is it that square across the face?
08:44No, it's not, actually.
08:45You're right, that point to the chin is actually there.
08:48Yeah.
08:49Yeah. Oh, sorry.
08:52In her studio,
08:53archaeological illustrator Jane Brain begins work
08:56on the warrior's portrait.
09:00Although the warrior's skeleton didn't reveal much,
09:03the horse's bones were a different story.
09:07I went to Bury St Edmunds,
09:08where I met animal bones specialist Terry O'Connor.
09:12Unfortunately, the horse's head was still being excavated
09:15at the British Museum, but there was still plenty to find out.
09:19Was it a very big horse?
09:20For a Saxon horse, this is towards the top end of the size range,
09:24but compared with modern horses, it's a big pony, really.
09:28Around 14 hands.
09:29Looking at the state of maturity of the skeleton,
09:32it's just reached skeletal maturity.
09:35Now, given that it appears to be a male horse,
09:38we think that would put it around maybe five years old,
09:41but that would be give or take a year.
09:43So this isn't some old nag that was just killed
09:45and put in the grave, is it?
09:46No, this is a fine animal, pretty much in its prime,
09:48though, in fact, with a couple of points on the skeleton
09:51showing evidence of injury
09:52and the development of some bone pathology.
09:55One bit, in fact, is right in front of you here on this radius.
09:58If we rather delicately lift that off.
10:01Down here at the wrist end, the distal end of the bone,
10:05can you see there's a raised area here
10:08of roughened, rather spongy-looking bone.
10:11Now, extra bits of bone where there shouldn't be any bone
10:14are always a bit of an enigma, you know,
10:16because a lot of different things can cause the skeleton
10:19to sprout a bit of extra bone here or there.
10:21And I think the most likely bet,
10:23given the condition of that new bone and given its position,
10:26is this horse has had a really deep bruise.
10:28It's up on the forefoot where there's not much soft tissue
10:31between the skin and the bone.
10:33It's a very vulnerable area.
10:34If bruising like that causes bleeding
10:37between the surface of the bone and the thin layer of tissue,
10:40very often the blood clot will actually ossify.
10:43The skeleton basically reacts to having that blood clot
10:46against its surface, turns into a lump of bone.
10:48I think that's what we've got there.
10:50It doesn't seem to have affected the joint itself,
10:52so there's probably very little effect on joint movement.
10:54And it wouldn't have made the horse lame or anything like that?
10:56That probably wouldn't.
10:58The other pathology that we've picked up on one of the back feet,
11:01on the other hand, may well have done.
11:05Right, well, let's look at the first and second phalanges,
11:08the first and second bones of the toe.
11:10In this case, they're normal.
11:12You can see you've got a nice, smooth, even joint surface there
11:15with no extra bone or lipping of the joint at all.
11:19Right.
11:20Put that one down and let's compare that with this foot
11:23where the difference is fairly startling.
11:26It's a real mess, isn't it?
11:28It's in a dreadful state, yes.
11:30It's crumbly.
11:31There's new bone formation here actually making something of a lip,
11:34a very abrupt margin to the joint,
11:36but also the joint surface itself, particularly on the second phalanx,
11:39is rather sort of scooped out.
11:41In fact, in places, it's beginning to break down altogether.
11:44It's losing its compact surface and you've got this pitting,
11:47very uneven pitting here,
11:49which in fact matches very nicely across the two sides of the joint.
11:53So that's very nice.
11:55Not for the horse, though.
11:57We would loosely describe that as arthritis.
12:01Would this have made the horse lame then?
12:03Yes, that joint would not have been moving properly.
12:05Moving to some extent, otherwise that degree of abrasion wouldn't have happened.
12:08So it's still moving, but given the amount of new bone formation
12:11that's gone on around the joint, it certainly wasn't moving normally.
12:14In fact, that joint in the live animal's leg
12:17would probably have looked quite expanded and uncomfortable,
12:20and it probably limped rather on that foot.
12:25In order for Jane to do a really accurate reconstruction
12:27of the warrior and his horse, there are two things that we need.
12:30The first is a horse.
12:34Meet Jim.
12:36He's just the right type and just the right height.
12:39The other thing we need, of course, is the warrior,
12:41and guess who's exactly the same height as he is.
12:44Hello there.
12:46You want to be a Saxon horse?
12:48OK, here we go. Just look up for me.
12:50That's great.
12:53Meet Jim.
12:55He's lovely.
12:57He's apparently exactly the right size and the right type of horse.
13:00Right, so he's about 14.3, is he?
13:02Yeah, and he's got a nice shaggy mane and plenty of tail.
13:05Yeah, it looks as though his tail's been trimmed a bit.
13:08Perhaps slightly hairier fetlocks down here.
13:12Are you talking about me or the horse?
13:14Well, I wouldn't like to say, really.
13:17So I think this should be a good basis for you to start with.
13:20It's a very good starting point. Excellent, yeah.
13:25In order to get on with her reconstruction,
13:27Jane went to the British Museum
13:29and found artifacts from the warrior's grave.
13:34Conservator Fleur Shearman
13:36showed her what lay on the other side of the horse's head.
13:39More beautiful bridal fittings
13:41and traces of the leather straps that linked them.
13:44So here's the skull with the vertebrae of the neck coming down here.
13:48And here are the main fittings.
13:50The leather strap comes down here, down here,
13:54and perhaps joins onto this one here,
13:56which is behind the bit, and then the bit area is here.
14:04It's very useful for me to come and do this.
14:07One never looks at anything so intensely as when you're drawing.
14:11I mean, you really look very, very closely at things,
14:14and you also begin to get an understanding
14:17of the structure of things when you're drawing them too.
14:20And that should feed into my finished reconstruction.
14:23It should have a much better understanding
14:25than if I was simply working from photographs,
14:27or even other people's drawings.
14:29You get a real three-dimensional sense of what's going on,
14:32and I think that's very important.
14:35And here it comes.
14:38The next job for Fleur is to remove the delicate fittings
14:41for cleaning and restoration.
14:47Here's the cruciform coming, I think.
14:51There we are.
14:55The weapons buried with the warrior are also in Fleur's care.
14:59The massive iron shield boss was held in place with silver-plated rivets.
15:07Gently cleaning with formic acid
15:09restores the silver to its original splendour.
15:13The restored rivets give a real sense of how the shield would have looked.
15:18The central piece reveals some ancient scratch marks.
15:21Could these be battle scars?
15:28The warrior's sword is barely recognisable as a weapon,
15:31but inside this massive flaking rust are clues to how it was made.
15:35X-rays of the sword blade reveal faint diagonal lines
15:38forming a chevron pattern.
15:44The chevrons show that the sword is pattern-welded,
15:47forged from many strips of iron by a master swordsmith
15:50whose skills were lost over 900 years ago.
15:53Or were they?
15:57This is a piece of iron.
15:59I went to Malmsbury to visit Hector Cole.
16:02Hector is a modern iron worker
16:04who's volunteered to reconstruct our warrior's sword.
16:07He'll attempt it using traditional methods, something never done before.
16:17There's always a place for a warrior's sword.
16:20It's a place where the sword is made.
16:22It's a place where the sword is made.
16:24It's a place where the sword is made.
16:27There's always a place for a swordsmith's apprentice.
16:35Way!
16:36That was a nice, gentle one, wasn't it?
16:38Yes! It's hard work, isn't it?
16:40Oh, yes.
16:41This is where a good strike is worth his weight in gold.
16:44And you can see the way that the metal's moving,
16:47that it's quite plastic,
16:48and it's a lovely feeling under the hammer, isn't it?
16:51I didn't realise it would move quite so much.
16:53This is wrought iron.
16:54You can't get anything better.
17:00The sword has a very complex structure.
17:03At its centre is a soft iron core.
17:07Bars of twisted iron give it the distinctive chevron design.
17:11And welded to the outside are cutting edges of carbon steel.
17:25When heated to a red glow,
17:27the bars that go to make up the chevron pattern
17:30can be carefully twisted to form an even spiral.
17:42Each bar contains 16 separate strips of iron.
17:46So how many of those bars have you got to make?
17:48Six.
17:49Six of them.
17:50That will give me the pattern for both sides of the blade.
17:54Hector now has to fire-weld the bars together,
17:57three for each side of the blade,
17:59and hopes that each hammer blow will flatten the pattern
18:02without distorting it.
18:04It's a highly skilled process.
18:08I can just see a hint of the chevron pattern.
18:11See them coming up?
18:24The final bits to be added to the sword are the carbon steel cutting edges.
18:32Steel has to be extremely hot to weld,
18:35but if the fire is too hot, the steel will burn away.
18:38The difference is only a matter of a few degrees,
18:41but it takes years of experience to gauge the temperature
18:43just by the colour and feel of the metal.
18:47Now this is starting to look more like a sword,
18:50but the constant hammering has dulled the blade's surface
18:53and the pattern seems to have disappeared completely.
18:57Hector was surprised to find out how much iron was lost in making the sword.
19:01It took six kilos of iron to make a sword weighing only one and a half.
19:07After 334 separate heatings,
19:10the blank, the bar and the carbon steel,
19:13After 334 separate heatings,
19:15the blank, the basic shape of the blade, is finally ready.
19:18Has it turned out OK?
19:20There are one or two flaws in it,
19:22but I'd have been very surprised if I didn't have any flaws in,
19:25but they are, as far as I'm concerned, acceptable.
19:28We'll see when it's all cleaned up.
19:30That's the real test, is it?
19:32Yep.
19:35The work that's gone into making this sword
19:37is, to me, one of the most amazing processes that I've ever seen.
19:40And it's no wonder there are so many legends about blacksmiths in the past.
19:44There are no less than 79 different strips of metal
19:48woven into this one blade,
19:50and I can hardly wait to see what it looks like
19:52when it's all cleaned up and polished.
19:56And now, the moment of truth.
19:59Organic acid is used to reveal the pattern.
20:02It emerges as if by magic.
20:05You can see the hard cutting edges down there, look.
20:08Coming along as well.
20:11And as we come through, we start to get this pattern.
20:14I didn't think it would come up that quickly.
20:17It's gorgeous, isn't it? All so sinuous and swirling.
20:20It's a lovely pattern, that.
20:22You're pleased with it, are you?
20:23I'm very pleased with it, yes, it is.
20:25It's a beautiful pattern, this, yes.
20:28But is it what you expected?
20:30It is not what I expected.
20:32We should, in theory, have a chevron pattern,
20:35but who wants an ordinary common or garden chevron
20:38when you can have this one, which is far more beautiful.
20:44The original handle would have been made of white cow horn,
20:47but because of a shortage due to BSE,
20:49we've had to use Indian buffalo horn.
21:05That's what we're getting there.
21:16What's it feel like, then?
21:20Cool, that's a...
21:22It's a hefty blade.
21:23It's a weighty blade, isn't it?
21:25If you built that down on someone, the momentum behind it would...
21:29But holding it out like that,
21:32you'd have to have a strong sword arm, wouldn't you?
21:34Yes.
21:36It's a fantastic blade, Hector, but it's not the colour I expected.
21:39I think I thought it would be shinier somehow.
21:42Well, it's a debatable point as to what colour they were finished.
21:47I think they were finished like this,
21:49because this, this colour, if you like,
21:52brings out the pattern more, and that's what they were looking for.
21:56That's what made the sword what it was.
22:03The horse's head is now back in Bury St Edmund's,
22:06and Terry O'Connor can hopefully tell us how the horse was sacrificed.
22:11It's great now, it's out of its cocoon of plaster, isn't it?
22:14Yes, especially from this side.
22:16This is the side that was invisible when we saw it at the museum,
22:19and now we can get a good look at this massive depressed fracture here.
22:23So is that actually what killed the horse, then?
22:26I doubt that was the case.
22:28So is that actually what killed the horse, then?
22:31I doubt that would have been immediately lethal,
22:34even though it's done quite a lot of damage.
22:36It's actually a little too far forward.
22:38If you really wanted to kill a horse with a blunt instrument injury
22:41to the front of the head, you'd want to aim for the brain.
22:44In fact, most of that damage is to the air sinuses in the frontal bone.
22:49It's probably just caused a little brain damage, but not a lot.
22:52If that stunned it, then how was it killed?
22:55Well, one of the things I've been looking for on the bones
22:58is any sign of other violence done to the horse to try and kill it,
23:01because there are several examples in the German literature
23:04of horse burials of this sort of a period,
23:06some of which show this sort of injury to the skull, a stunning injury,
23:10but also show knife cuts across the ventral surface.
23:13So basically those horses seem to have had their throats cut,
23:16cut furthermore with such force
23:18that the knife's got right through all the soft tissue
23:21and has actually nicked the backbone, effectively.
23:24Have you found marks like this on this one?
23:26No. No.
23:28I've been looking very carefully at all the appropriate places along the neck
23:32and, in fact, on the hyoid bones from under the jaw here as well
23:35for any trace of knife cuts, and there's none.
23:38It doesn't mean that this horse didn't have its throat cut.
23:41It merely means that it wasn't done with sufficient force and clumsiness
23:44to have actually touched the bones, and I think the probability has to be,
23:48given that that would only really have stunned it,
23:50that something else was done then to finish it off,
23:53but the obvious thing is opening up an artery
23:55and allowing loss of blood actually to kill the animal.
23:58Nasty, but effective.
24:06Seeing the beauty of the bridal fittings, decorated with gold and silver,
24:10it's hard to believe that they've been in the ground for nearly 1,400 years.
24:24MUSIC
24:34Saxon specialist Angela Kerr-Evans can now reveal
24:37how the decorative pieces were arranged on the horse's bridal.
24:40Well, then we have one of these very, very beautiful quatrefoil fittings,
24:45which fastens over the junction of the cheek strap and the nose band.
24:51I thought there were four of these, though.
24:53Yeah, there are, yes. There's one here and there's another one up here.
24:57Oh, right.
24:58And then there are two on the other side of the horse.
25:00Yeah. So where do those wonderful things go, then?
25:03Well, this one actually fits on a separate strap, loose.
25:10It dangles. It's just a decorative dangler.
25:12So it hangs down the side of the horse's head
25:15and it's got this extraordinary face on it
25:18with what looked like ears rising from it or horns or something like that.
25:23It looks like an owl to me.
25:25I don't think it's an owl.
25:27It has been suggested that it is a long-eared owl or something like that.
25:32No, I think it's a face with some kind of decorative headgear on it.
25:37On the horse's brow, we have another gilt bronze fitting,
25:46exactly the same as the one that was on the cheek piece,
25:49except it has these lugs from which some central pendant would have hung.
25:56That's the one with the big dent in it, isn't it?
25:59This is the bent one.
26:00And if you actually look at it very, very closely,
26:02you can actually see what looks like a glancing blow on the gilding.
26:05So it does look as though it caught the full blow of the poleaxe
26:09when the horse was stunned.
26:12And then it's possible that the pendant fitting flew off,
26:17but we're not sure about that yet.
26:21Finally, I wanted to show Jane's illustrations to Joe Carruth,
26:24one of the first archaeologists to glimpse the warrior in his horse.
26:30Oh, that's him, is it?
26:32Yes.
26:33Oh, he's handsome, isn't he?
26:35He's got a very sort of square, solid face, hasn't he?
26:38But his skull was very chunky, wasn't it?
26:40Very sort of masculine.
26:42Yes, he looks like a nice person, doesn't he?
26:44Yes, very confident and strong, though.
26:47So that's the warrior.
26:50That's the portrait.
26:52But then, of course, we've got him.
26:55Oh!
26:57Oh, this is the harness?
26:59Yes.
27:00Oh, the harness is fantastic.
27:01The whole lot.
27:02Yes.
27:04Is this how you imagined they might look?
27:07Although you think, when you're looking at the skeletons,
27:09that you can see them as human beings,
27:11actually it's only when you see something like this
27:14you realise how difficult it is to actually imagine it.
27:17You see it sort of lying in the ground,
27:20whereas looking at it like this, this has really brought it to life.
27:23Now I feel I can put what we've seen in the ground to, you know,
27:27give it some form.
27:29I mean, I thought I'd done that before,
27:31but seeing this I realise I hadn't really got a picture of him.
27:351,400 years ago, this man was the ultimate warrior,
27:39and it was a time when your position in society wasn't inherited but earned.
27:43And he took to his grave all the symbols of that strength and power,
27:47his shield, his spear, his magnificent sword,
27:50and his trusty horse, sacrificed to lie beside its master.
27:54But he wasn't just a warrior.
27:56He lay surrounded by the graves of tiny children.
27:59He'd been their guardian and their leader in life,
28:02and now he led them into the next world.
28:32.