Unusual carved stonework, and a huge quantity of 11th to 13th-century pottery and some high-status finds brought Time Team on a hunt for a Norman house or hunting lodge in this former royal forest.
when i was young, i wanted to be an archaeologist, but never achieved it. if i had met someone like Mike Aston back in those days, i daresay my life may have turned out much different than it has.
@@rachelpatten8889 the most interesting person on this show. I started to watch time team for the mosaics and then I watched them all to see what Phil would do next. I have not rewatched a Time Team since I found true love.
How embarrassing for Gordon's Lodge School! I'm sure there were many red faces after Day One! And, Victor, being the champ that he is, he made the changes as the changes became known. I really enjoyed this episode. It was one of true discovery and top-notch archaeological sleuthing. Phil on horseback was an added treat! Gosh, I miss Time Team!!!!!! Robin Bush, the greatest historical researcher of Time Team, undoubtedly would have provided much needed background info on this dig. RIP, Robin.
As an English peasant farmer's son. I'm really pleased to see speculation about the importance of pigs in the medieval period. Leaving aside modern squeamishness about meat, the old saying that 'the only thing you can't use on a pig is it's squeal' is so true. When (as a medieval or later) farmer, you are desperate for protein to feed your family, pigs (and goats) are reliable in turning rubbish that would starve a cow or a sheep into meat. Both animals deserve more attention in looking at the medieval period. Now, I advise my American friends watching this to cover your eyes, but pig intestine (as your friends down south will tell you) is chit(ter)ling. a juicy form of ham: everything inside and out of the pig is edible. And yes, pig meat would need some curing before smoking, but I imagine Time Team can't take in everything in three days...
You can use a pigs squeal. For hunting predators ofcourse. Tie a pig to a stake ontop of spiked wood and hide in a bush and wait for the predator to show up for lunch. Yeah it is torture to the poor pig but it works and you would need to be a monster to do it.
Try visiting rural Spain or Portugal. Not much has changed regarding pigs. Where do the snobs think their Jamon Iberico and Serrano comes from? Matanzas, where the family pig is slaughtered and Everything is used, from the blood to the ears. I came across across a little shack like this about 25 years ago in Andalucia. In mid kill. As you say these things are not for the faint hearted, but if you eat meat you should own it and eat from nose to tail Some parts that people squirm at are actually wonderful if cooked properly. Here the intestines (chitterlings) tend to be used a sausage skins.They get washed in local streams! I have always said that archeaoligists need to look at what is preserved Now, to find out what happened Then! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D1HtaAXpxxA.html Doesn't this fit?
That's why Southern barbecue is pork. When one barbecues, one does *not* use charcoal or a grill you store in your garage -- unless you've got a danged big garage. And don't even talk about gas grills. Barbecue is made by slow-cooking meat over a wood fire. Type of meat and sauce are up for debate. I favor North Carolina-style barbecue sauce. If anyone gives you a sauce that is ketchup-based, it ain't NC style. Period. That is vinegar based, from one end of the state to the other, except for an area near SC, where it's mustard-based. And that stuff's good, too. But yeah -- real barbecue takes hours, not minutes, because you're generally using the less-than-prime cuts. When people talk about barbecuing steaks, I think, "Lordy, why on earth would you do a thing like that?"
So refreshing to see Everyone of These Experts Understanding & Respecting Mick is the Director. No Carenza to Argue Back and getting the ok from Mick for what they wish to do. He is very good at listening to them, and it all runs so smoothly with him at the helm.
War horses were bred off shire horse that were particularly aggressive eventually building big nasty warhorse lines is how I heard it but that could be way off.
I found it very interesting about the size of the horses ridden by the Norman knights. There was a description given of Lord Rolo who made a deal with the Frankish King to guard the French coast from marauding vikings in exchange for a section of Northern territory which eventually became Normandy. It was said that Lord Rolo was so huge that he could not fit on a horse which forced him to walk everywhere. Today this would give the impression that he was a giant, however the information given in this edition does rather bring him down in size.
I think one of the things to remember is that the average male height back then was 5'5" to 5'8". A 12 to 14 hand pony/horse is not going to be as small as one thinks. Phil is about 6' or more if I remember right. Tony would have been a better example of the total height while sitting on the pony. As far as Rollo being brought down to size, not necessarily. Remember the Norseman were considered tall by the Mainland Europeans of the time. 5'6"-5'9"+. Which would put me (5'9")in the upper height range. Yet my older brother would be very tall at 6'3". Small horse, tall man = you will walk.
@@iaenmor thanks for the well thought out and intelligent comment. I have also since learned that the Normans were incredible horsemen and used very effective battle tactics at the Battle of Hastings. Apparently when they went to Franck they swopped their boats for horses and were quite fierce riders. I wonder if that is quite true though? The label of pirate has so stuck to them that it hides the fact that they came from an advanced society which was apart from their marine prowess land based. I am sure that they were very well versed in the art of horse riding and horseback warfare. I have seen documentaries on how they had a very unique method of kiting out their mounts for the intricacies of maneuvering their weapons without causing harm to the horses. What do you think about that? I look forward to hearing from you.
@@KOOLBadger Yip. It is fascinating just how relevant history is to today's world. I find so many hints to the origins of our own culture. This is more exciting to me that the latest block buster movie. It has been a while since I watched the Time Team series. I have actually watched it a few times over the years, and I have scheduled it for my next viewing. Presently I am going through Dame Agatha Christies works again.
@@iaenmor Hi there, I know this is a very late comment but I have just listened to a man Mr. Bartlett and he said that Norsemen did not mind the label of Viking so much, but they really hated other labels which were given to them that were much more derogatory and undignified. These labels were given by the religious clerical class and described them in horrible and dehumanizing ways. But then again, they really did horrible things to the Monasteries where so much wealth was so poorly protected by monks and not soldiers.
Here we are in the 12th Season and I don't remember having seen the same artisan twice. Hector Cole is making a horse bit in the 12th Century manner, and I'm beginning to wonder how many people in England are busy hammering and weaving, living the 12th Century life. Do they hum little Gregorian Chant ditties? Use leeches? It might be interesting to investigate this sub-culture of Medieval English living in the 21st Century. I get a lot of stick for 'living in the 60s', but Ol' Hector has me beat by a mile! Not a knock... I'm surprised at how many people are doing this at a high degree of craftsmanship.
Michael Melen - in North America and parts of Europe there is a group called The society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) that re-create a huge timeline of history. Many of them take it quite seriously. Members are often university students or researchers who share their knowledge with the other members of the SCA at gatherings called an Ithra - it is usually a weekend of classes on a variety of subjects which cover all aspects of life and times of the eras covered by the society (I forget what years, exactly - perhaps 600 to 1600 AD). I used to belong and found it fascinating, to say the least. We attended a large gathering of a couple of hundred people and it was a magical experience to walk along the “road” in the “village”, in the dark, with only a lantern for light, and hear the subtle sounds of music drifting over the “village” as we strolled beneath the starry sky. No electric anything, no phones or stereos. It is a most peaceful feeling, living as people did back then. If you ever see a sign with SCA on it and an arrow - follow it and immerse yourself in a different time and place. You don’t even have to have the proper “garb” - there is usually a collection of outfits at the “gate” which you can borrow while you visit the event. If you prefer to dress yourself, then as long as you make an attempt at wearing something resembling period garb, you will be fine. It’s a lot of fun. You may find it’s something you would like to participate in. Just google SCA and you are sure to find a group near you. 👵🏻🐾💕🇨🇦
So glad I discovered this show (as late in the game as it is), but I keep wishing Tony would turn to the camera at some point and say, "(Someone)'s got a cunning plan."
When an archeologist says he's weighing a "bag of pot", it doesn't quite mean the same thing as when we say it here in the states, now does it? Or, "going potty" for that matter. That by itself can mean different things. I love this show!
Given the lack of durability offered by clay cooking pots, the invention of cast iron pots and pans must have been a Godsend to early cooks. And they’re practically indestructible when properly made, outliving many individuals and in fact serving for generations, so you won’t find many in archeological digs!
The TT (pottery ?) expert said that a standard medieval cooking pot lasted about a week??!?!! I had no idea! - Peasants must have gone broke buying cooking pots (or spent a considerable amount of their time making their own pottery). - It’s now much clearer to me why so much of the dating of sites on TT relies on finding pottery shards. I’ve watched about 25 episodes of TT so far and this episode is the first I recall noting the detail about the short life of cooking pots.
Helen Mary Geake FSA is a British archaeologist and small finds specialist. She was one of the key members of Channel 4's long-running archaeology series Time Team. Wikipedia Born: July 23, 1967, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom Spouse: Angus Wainwright Grandparents: Sir Ivor Cuthbert Proctor-Beauchamp, 8th Baronet, Jessie Elizabeth Nesbitt, Caroline Muriel Densham, Frank Henry Geake Books: The Use of Grave-goods in Conversion-period England, C.600-c.850 Great-grandparents: Lilian Elizabeth Hazlerigg, William Edward Geake, Frank Densham, Montagu Proctor-Beauchamp, Elizabeth Mary Lucas Education: University of York, University College London
🤣🤪😱 lol...funny. I still think the school salted the finds to get them up there. Every school needs advertisements. What better way. Like the episode of that homeowner and his son who had an amusement park of a sacred pool, old norman wall , statues, ring of stones...all phony. Esp the European sword found buried on top of 20 year old barbed wire. Ya gotta love a great hoax..
I love stories of great hoaxes revealed. The very people the origins craftsmen would have expected to make their own great things making copies of theirs
As George Bernard Shaw said: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." Illustrating that truism is the pronunciation by Matt Williams at time-mark 46:25 (as it appear on 26 Apr. '22). Specifically, he describes the location of a round oven or fire-place as "unique," pronouncing it not as " you - neek' " but, rather, pronouncing it with a soft or short vowel sound on the final syllable ( "i" ), namely, " you - nick' ." (Note: American punctuation used herein with the periods placed INside the quotation marks -- even though I think that the British system of punctuation of placing the period outside the quotation marks makes more sense). Thanks Matt Williams and TT . . . and YOU for reading this comment.
@@tripleransom4349 Exactly. The bit was hitting the backs of the teeth in front of it, which is extremely annoying for a horse. The bit fit him well, but the bridle didn't.
@Dr. Douglas Wilde : Because they are far more numerous and therefore far more important than their very few oppressors, and that's just for starters. But I think if you *actually* wanted to know the answers to this question, you wouldn't be waiting around for someone in youtube comments to answer. As we can see this one took 3 months. It *seems* that you have your biases firmly grounded against spiritual/humanist reasons, witch is sad if you are not at the very least a humanist. But that is your right. Ironically because humanists have fought and died for your rights for centuries.
Aylbdr Madison Almost nothing is left from these people; they didn’t pass on their genes. The middle and upper classes passed in their genes at much higher rates, the vast majority of genes in an average modern person came from aristocracy. Tons of genetic studies. Look them up. I’m not making a judgment call, just stating a widely known fact in scientific circles that almost always shocks the modern viewer. Of course this says nothing about worth; the genes that were passed were done so on the backs of the genes that were not, due to poor health, living conditions and child mortality. But, as Darwin would say....
(Jonathan would be a great Host!) I like Jonathan, he's not just another handsime face, he really is a great personality, quite intelligent, well studied in his field, and ... "Why is it he isn't Hosting the "New Time Team"? He has the high energy and quick witt that is the Winning Value the Public loves.
This was good even if the main point they made was to stay skeptical of your interpretations. Jonathan Foyle was perfect because he's not too proud to "eat his hat" (as he said in an earlier episode). It was interesting to see how hard two people had to work to find the documents Robin Bush seemed to always effortlessly produce from the air.
"Seemed...effortlessly" is the operative words. This is a different era far from major cities or castles with little documentation existing. Not much to find.
While watching a show, Who Do You Think You Are there was an episode where some people poached dears in one of these royal hunting places and they were condemned to death. Then Britten was trying to build up a new colony in the New World, the america's. So the two convicted men were sent to America as servants for a number of years. They eventually got their freedom.
*Spoiler Alert!* This one I nailed from the get-go, the first description of the wall and design. (a Farm, with structure to house and manage Animals/Meat: a Smoke House and Feed Shed.)
Phil is far too big to be a realistic Norman knight. Tony would be about the size you need. I estimate him to be about (5' 5" -- 5' 7"). If so, he was probably slightly above the mean height for the period among all men. Tony on the horse would be a far better proportion to the pony, but Phil is having so much fun, I'd hate to cut it.
When you consider that the average height was only just above 5 feet during the medieval era, a 12 hand height pony isn't that strange. Plus, they hadn't started to breed horses for size back then.
What's your source for this? I've never seen or heard of any evidence for such tiny people in the 12th century or any other period in European history.
@@Ijusthopeitsquick There are suits of armour from the period that are still around today that show how tall the men who wore them were. Also, while nobles might have had heights closer to 20th-century people because they didn't lack food, the vast majority of people were peasants, and they always had a serious lack of food. So while there were still a few tall people, most were very short, which is why the average was 5 feet.
@@DragonFae16 Suits of plate armour were not used in the 12th century, and you can't determine leg length or height from scraps of mail. What 12th century armour are you referring to?
@@DragonFae16 The 12th century is the period we are concerned with here. The average height of adult males in the early middle ages was about 5 feet, 8 inches. There was a loss of 2,5 inches in the 17th and 18th century, before rising again in the 20th century to the current average of about 5 feet 9.5 inches. Again, I'd like to know where your data comes from. Inuits? Pygmies?
I can't make up my mind whether I want Phil, or I want to BE Phil, or possibly both. His enthusiasm is the most attractive thing in the fuckin world tbqh
We've already seen the Norman cavalry re-enactors in a previous episode. When you see lots of this non-archeology shtick you know they didn't find anything.
Or, they were expecting a high-status manor in relation to the strife between king and barons of that era, and having the bit from the previous dig, had prepared to illustrate the knights and hunting activity of that time. So they showed that anyway, because they sure didn't show anything of what the vilains would've been doing in their porquerie. That said, I thought punishment for poaching could be death. Clever lords to prefer money over killing their forced laborers.
Horsemen were not terrifying to foot soldiers , who were trained to maintain formation Harold's army was not beaten by William's cavalry but by a ruse that the enemy was running away , causing them to break ranks to pursue whence the Normans turned and slew them .
If no one knows what is there, how do you know .....it was abandoned quickly? Strange the crop marks showed a ring, not the building inside. .... excuse me....does this pony make my Knight look big?
There are two things that strike me about archaeological pursuits : they dig in substances that are millions and billions of years old to marvel at finds that may be 100's to 1000's of years old and they clump various ages of finds and are mystified if certain facets of finds don't jibe with previous knowledge . They assume all the peoples of the past blindly followed a pattern of habits learned during their times . Like they were zombies following beliefs and lore without any individual initiative . However I love the series !
I have just one question, before you smoke meat you first have to cure it. Where were they curing the meat they were smoking? And where were they salting the meat unsuitable for smoking? For the latter, they would have used wooden barrels.
Your statement is incorrect. Meat does NOT have to be cured with salt before smoking. Ever heard of jerky? Just one easy example. Just because we don't eat smoked meat in our modern European tradition doesn't mean it wasn't common 800 years ago.
Pork must be cured. I don't know of any other meat that "must be cured". One of the ways of dehydrating meat is to use a salt brine when there is no refrigeration. An example of this is the packed meat brought on board ships back before motors and refrigeration -- about 4,000 years of canoes, sailing boats and ships.
Brigid is hot. Only part of Time Team I can think of that would improve it is having Brigid and Phil in the same trench, senior archeologist and Junior together. One of the episodes they were and they were discussing a find and Phil explained his point to her after she said what she thought... ofcourse Phil was right then as the camera was leaving he tapped her hard hat with his trowel for a I told you so and she laughed heartily. They worked good together.
Not sure at all, and I don't think we're qualified to judge. The finds were very contradictory, and that outfit certainly had nowhere near the means of TT to work out what the thing could really be. They don't seem to have made any gaffes as far as preservation, recording, destruction go.
Is this THE Funkosaurus that discovered that complete new dinosaur? It should have been named after you. I was so disappointed that the friggin' paleontologist robbed you. Cheers...if you're not, you have a great handle.
Critical point = all archeologists aren’t equally qualified. Poor students of these two chaps didn’t have very good teachers. Huge difference in wall construction between a pig shed and a manorial building.
Well i watched this before and some things not mentioned in this is if you think about raising 1,000 pigs back then, you couldn't go to the store and buy pig feed, so they had to be free ranged, I wouldn't say this was a hunting woods, i bet it was more of a place to raise and feed the pigs for the king you had to have people on horses to drive the pigs out of the woods so you could corral and butcher and process them and the reason its away from other settlements, i don't know if anyone had been to a pig farm? but the smell is very bad now imagine that times 1,000 pigs
just once i wish Tony would say geophysICS, that last tiny little syllable is not hard to say, and it doesnt really show respect for the people that do that job.
The stone head came from St Peters church (nothing really left of this but some evidence of walls most of it was pillaged) located in a field accessable via foot path a little distance away nr little linford.
Sometimes Tony strikes me as an elitist because he’s disappointed that the building is a peasants hovel, like the peasants weren’t the backbone of the economy, the Plague proved that. Peasants mattered!
I know Tony likes to present himself as a "man for the underdog", with socialist views. However, he is constantly looking for "high status" wealthy people living on the sites. A bit contradictory Tony!
Donna Perez It's really all done for show. 'High status', nobles, aristocrats, money, power et al gets the viewers attention, much more so than talking about simple, ordinary peasants.
+Robert Braiden Agreed, along with the fact that 'higher status' (PC for 'rich') people, besides being proportionally less common, tend to leave behind artifacts that survive such as dressed stone or big buildings. Archaic 'lower status' people tended to live in dwellings made of organic and more transient materials such as waddle and daub and wood that leave behind little more than discoloured soil. I love that fact that over the last 40-50 years more historians and archeologists have concentrated on the lives of the work-a-day people. The people who quarried the stone, who carved it and dressed it, and built the structures that were paid for by the 'higher status' folks. I have no doubt that they decorated their homes too. But carved or whittled wood, painted daub, etc. just don't survive.
+Donna Perez Right so if you have a building that looks large and well-built and made by someone who had a bit of cash, he has to pretend it was a cheap little peasant house because *even acknowledging* that rich people existed is a treacherous act against his class. A perfect example of letting politics warp the truth, don't you think?.
kha sab Nope, that's not what I mean at all. My statement was not meant for just this episode. He repeatedly does this. Here's a few examples off the top of my head.. (these are not exact quotes, however) In the Turkdean Revisited episode he says things like, 'I don't know why we care about a barn when we have this amazing villa to explore. In the Aston Ayre episode, He is obviously disappointed that the Solar is not "very salubrious" (his actual words) and more than once he complains that they are looking for "cow sheds" and outbuildings. In the episode about High Worsall, the deserted medieval village, even though they have several trenches open, he hounds Mick Aston to look for the Manor House. He's visibly angry when they start by looking in the more damaged areas of the village, and calls the archaeologists 'anal retentive'. Throughout the series, during his monologues he talks of being more interested in the lives of the every day people. However, when things are found, his most ardent excitement is reserved for the high status finds. Phil and Mick try very hard to show him the significance of the mundane and everyday items and he frequently will agree with them at the moment. Then when it's just his voice-over narration he will say something that proves that he still disagrees with them. I understand that he is aware that most of the audience will care more about the high status things, and it makes for good television. I think his personal reactions show that he cares more about high society than he actually wants to. I hope you understand what I meant by my statement now. I was not implying that liking high status things is wrong, just that he tries so hard to say that he doesn't care about them but his actions reveal that he cares more than he says he does. I should have left the word socialist out of my original comment. I did not mean to reference politics at all. Please forgive me for that!
Donna Perez My remark is still pertinent. He is involved in archaeology not politics. Manor houses etc are much more interesting than piggeries and barns, at lest to the average person, and a lot more rare. Also you are *entirely* misreading him when you say " _he hounds Mick Aston to look for the Manor House. He's visibly angry when they start by looking in the more damaged areas of the village, and calls the archaeologists 'anal retentive'_ " He certainly *isn't* visibly angry, that's just a silly thing to say. He's a professional doing a job filming and presenting a TV series not some random fanatic nutcase. Nor does he 'hound' Aston to do anything - silly choice of words. he asks questions that the audience might ask *so that the archaeologists can furnish answers*. Calling them 'anally retentive' was a bit of normal ribbing that goes on all the time - joking, and they clearly took it as joking- as it was meant. Finally, I don't see how you could have keep his political views out of your comment; that was your whole point.
Peasant: a poor smallholder or agricultural labourer of low social status (chiefly in historical use or with reference to subsistence farming in poorer countries). Hovel: a small squalid or simply constructed dwelling. Is that not true? That's exactly what they were.
