Time Team S15-E03 5000 Tons of Stone, Hamsterley, County Durham 

Time team are like old friends, I love listening to them even for background

I almost choked on my tea and crumpets when Francis said -"This is massive defense!" instead of -"This is ritual!" Nice to see him with his feet on the ground for once. 😁

"First time for everything" says Phil to Sir Tony!!! Love Phil.

I love the drawings by Victor Ambrus.

I cant describe how happy I was when archaeologists found the oldest Viking longhouse in Iceland in the valley 4 km from my childhood home. And the biggest by faaaar. yayyyyyy

'This excitement is almost defined by the lack of anything exciting~!' That's treasure right there~~

You know you've watched too much Time Team when you dream about digging in the dirt and using words like, "in situ". (I even like the intro music.)

Anyone else always get goosebumps hearing that theme tune?

I have no scientific knowledge to say something about the validity of the discussions. But I do like those videos because it's a very interesting way to bring academic research and history back to the day. It's like they're doing this in a place anyone could reach and be part of, without sensational sound track trying to transform the work into a science fiction movie. In spite of being posted 6 years ago, Congrats.

I find this series educational and soothing.

I love the time team episodes. Thank you for posting them

I can't help but think of this site as a bank, a cattle bank. It would have taken a huge community effort to build, and while few of the farmers might have lived within its walls, perhaps these few were entrusted with caring for others livestock in the colder months when grazing was sparse.

I wish they had delved into that mysterious wall more. We’ve never seen anything so insanely big (for its period) in the series. At best they claimed it was a fortified settlement, but the size of the wall is downright monstrous. I just don’t get that. IIRC it wasn’t even a settlement so much as a family group.They did say the people who built it weren’t the people who lived in it, which also is perplexing. This episode is going to drive me crazy LOL

I like Tony in these later seasons better than the early seasons.

So grateful these episodes are now available on RU-vid! This enclosure is obviously a product of the Stone Age. Ha-ha-ha-ha! LOL

Holy Crap i live about 2 minutes drive from the site. how the hell did i not know they were in my area haha

Thanks for posting

thank you for uplaoding these timeteams ,

Stewart again has the best answer: essentially a fortified farmstead. For once Dr. Pryor admitted he was speculating! (I also find him annoying but when he stops fantasizing he shows how scholarly he actually can be.) Even though the enclosure is over-built, why could it not have been some sort of local fighting or just plain paranoia (I like the suggestion that someone was a cattle thief) that caused the stone wall to be excessively large. It could even have been the place where successive farmers dumped their field stones, which would account for some of the rubble. Or even, since they were speculating, someone just enjoyed dry stone walling as a winter pastime.

What nobody appears to take into account is many of the stones and timbers would have probably been cannibalised over the centuries for building elsewhere. This could have been a project started and not finished. It all seems to elaborate for an enclosure for a few people and some livestock.

6:29 Bring on Frank the Farmer. They should have made him a permanent member of the team. To those commenters who believe this is a sheep pen, go to 3:54 (the old black and white photo) and look at it for a minute or so, then tell me that's a sheep pen. Then go to 13:17 (the aerial view) and look at the gate, apparently located so close "behind" the natural water-course, and tell me that's not defensive. It's a mighty awkward place for day-to-day entry and exit of sheep. A local leader in unsettled times (immediate post-Roman?) could have convinced his people to gather all the stones from all their fields as a final refuge for all the people and their livestock. They may have built on earlier remains. But some of the stones have been worked and placed in such a way as to indicate more than a simple sheep pen. The fact that it may have been built quickly and used only in emergency may explain why there are so few identifiable remains. This site reminds me (on a much smaller scale) of the late Mycenaean site of Gla. Also, someone should look for a well within the wall.

Whatever it is, it's here: 54°41'32.9"N 1°50'25.3"W

😊love the time team

Antique dung is not cherished enough. Everyone should have iron-age dung at home. 🤣 I love TT. You learn about everything.

Gorse. Gorrrrrrrrrse. A very woody word. Not tinny at all.

Dry stone walls! Around 1970 I was 30 years old, working a 40 hour week and carrying 12 units in a local collage. School was Mon through Thur and on Friday my wife and I would go to the local public quarry and get a pick up full of stones. On Saturday we worked on a decorative stone retaining wall beside a path from our house down to the pasture. The wall was about 50 feet long and over 5 feet tall, not much but over. It was two or more stones thick voids were filled with chips and mud. This was in Oregon and we worked in the rain. Now, let's talk about what a 'Family' is. A family 2000 years ago would, by today's standards, might be called a 'tribe'. A head of household would have his or her descendants, his or her younger brothers and sisters and their families. This would be somewhere between 25 and 200 people. If they lived around the area as farmers/ sheepherders and everybody helped (after work and on the weekends? :-) ) I think that a hell of a wall could be built in a few generations. Remember that every square inch of ground covered by a rock can not grow whatever these farmers were growing so moving these rocks somewhere would be high on their to-do list. In this episode 2 or 3 people built a mall sample wall 3 or 4 feet wide by 4 or 5 feet long by 3 or 4 feet high and they did it in way less than 3 days. My vast knowledge of neolithic and iron age digging is completely contained in Time Team and a few hundred issues of Nat-Geo.

Thanks for the upload

NOW BREATHING ERRATICALLY ,, i just read that Mick aston passed away in 2013 aged 66 :( thats no age to die at in the noughties, i hope it was quick and painless ,, RIP MICHEAL ASTON ( and sandwell boy :) ) i was quite enamoured by him and his hippie attitude :)

I hope they have a massage therapist on site for their backs ugh makes mine hurt just watching! this is a very popular, long running series. I watch other countries would follow suite, like Italy, Greece, USA, and great places in the middle east!! etc etc

Episodes with Professor Taylor are not my favorites. While Professor Taylor is extremely knowledgeable, he seems to have in his mind, a concrete (pardon the pun) preconception of a site's purpose BEFORE a spade of dirt is removed. He then sends the team off on one of his flights of fancy wasting a lot of time in an effort to "prove" his concept even with the flimsiest of evidence. Mick is always a good counter-balance to Francis as Mick keeps his opinion from influencing a dig and waits for evidence to turn up. When Francis is questioned about whether he found evidence for one of his "conclusions" @ 42:23 usually he ends an episode with "um well ah, no...no, we didn't" and will claim the evidence "was plowed away"..

I still think it's too elaborate to be a farmstead. So much effort must have gone into building the walls.

@17:57 Mick interrupts Phil in mid "actually" 😂

For such a massive fortified farm in the iron age, they probably kept a Unicorn there. During the Dark Age im pretty sure it was a Hog farm owned by local Baron.

I'm descended from Hodgekin (or Hodgkin). The name comes from Hode or Hodge, which coincidentally, is the birth surname of King Richard I. Later through history the name, by adaptation, became Hotchkiss.

I love this team. So funny

I think the ridge and furrow destroyed anything that was inside the enclosure

Music panning at about 6:00 is perfect.

What is the Time Team music? Love the show...iconic in so many ways.

Snooping around hamsterley on google earth. Found interesting markings in a nearby field. 54*40’47” N. 1*49’00” W. Get Phil, Tony, Francis and John together! 🤣

Could it have been just a huge sheep holding pen, and the "guard house" maybe just a shepherds shelter?

I wish Stewart would have guessed at the sources of so many rocks. To what distance from exterior were areas largely rock-clear compared to neighboring areas? Did geophys show rock concentration of interior, that is, how much from there in the walls? Any nearby quarries, anything debris area to indicate working of surfaces. Maybe this was discounted, or studied since?

I'm picking the wrong episodes but I'm still waiting for one solid conclusion, or a drawing !

Me thinks it is a big stone pen for cattle sheep for a village full of people !!!😁

Possibly the reason there was no evidence was they were an old family that was a thorn in the Roman side. The surrounding hill could be an earthwork. Like a make shift siege tower to take the fort. After it was raised, the family was probably "memory holed" to keep the locals from rallying.

The OCD in me wants to pick up all of those rocks and rebuild the walls. Is that too much to ask?

Ironically my Gerbil acts very Hamsterley

Seems like an awfully massive undertaking for a cattle pen for one family. 5m thick walls? 100 man years? Hmm.

i bought a pick like phil for gardening

I really dig archaeology Faye Simpson is cute as a button

It was used to keep horses or cattle in

One does wonder if Francis Pryor, and his theories of "Round Houses" (Iron Age Structures, usually an extended family residence), which would be constructed of wood and thatch, both biodegradable.) fails - it's because it was "plowed away". No farmer in their right mind would risk their plow animals, or plows, in such stony soil.

Victorian tourist attraction

i think it was a giant hog farm to feed the roman soldiers.

This is one of those rare Time Teams when I can't buy any of the conclusions. No evidence of anything specific to the iron age but they call it iron age and show images of round houses they did not find, rectangular structures (possibly) so we will say a building and an animal pen so maybe dark age. Basically, they have a lot of stones which probably built an enclosure with very wide and high dry stone walls (maybe packed with clay at some time). Forget the defensive gate since it is not a defensive site with higher ground around it. They have stones in a wall which could have been built between the prehistoric time and 1760 when it first shows up on a map. I think they knew that going in. Very frustrating results.

MIck's the man.

Looks like a prison camp, hence the lack of artifacts. I've worked on a couple of US Civil War prison camps as a North American archaeologist.

Indefensible ,you've heard of thebow and arrow ?

I guessed it was a cattle pen when they said the large flat stone held a gate. I winced when that one women was eating dirt samples, I thought probably manure.lol

❤

the lady eating mud seemed to look as if she soiled herself

What's interesting is Its Ironage 🤔

I've always wondered if places like this weren't official meeting places for robbers or smugglers. It could have been built up over generations.

Music @ 13.17 sounds like Ultravox

Hmm. Iron age feature with changes made in the dark age. Is it Camelot?

There are A LOT of stones, omg lol

never mind it might be scripted, their voices, speech and body language, use of the arms and hands and facial expressions, a pleasure to watch. even if the z would find nothing. and come out empty handed. that it will be NOT, one can be assured by -the third day and we are nearly done-...

Daft episode. Either vital shots were left on the editing room floor, or that's the craziest conclusion since someone decided the pyramids were build by aliens.

The real question is, where did Phil go to on day 3?

A likely story ...

Could it be a place to keep animas overnight?

35:53 what was the point of that shot lol

Wheres the metal detectors. I think the 1920's guy took any artifacts.

The massive five foot deep and nine feet high walls may have been accomplished by a hundred Roman soldiers within. One of the purpose of Roman outposts was to train and get new recruits or conscripts into shape. Perhaps they kept their horses and weapons inside and camped, outside. Perhaps officers camped inside. Soldiers would not leave as much domestic finds as a village. It was a large area to dig. Think there is proof of life somewhere in there. The river may hold some clues, and the path between.

It could be a place that was built but never occupied

Was here Nov 2019

Its a iron-age Nobelmans family home, or a rich persons family farm... And it was maybe only habit for a short period of time.

I think they go a little overboard for the camera sometimes, like tasting the dirt.wtf

Who is professor Taylor?

Whats it taste like ? Emma " Sheep Shit , but well digested '"

No castle me thinks but, perhaps the drystone wall is the remains of a Saxon cattle enclosure for cattle rustling. This would have been the location for holding the stock to take off to a market. I have read books based on historical events and cattle rustling and slave trading was a well known occurrence in the dark ages I believe. To me that would explain the guard - house and strong structure. For the construction I am not necessarily sure but I was brought up on a New Zealand high-country farm and I remember my father using a sled drawn by a draught horse to move stumps, rocks and timber in general; I am imagining them using much the same method but maybe 4 or 5 sleds drawn by a couple of draught horses or even bullocks. Eion Tought

Turist trap

These people do not understand that loves have been invented. It protects youtr hands from the roughness.

As much as I love Tony, ironically he is holding a styrofoam cup that will never decompose and give future archeologist something to find.

First aired March 16, 2008.

No bones? No pottery? Did these people not slaughter, cook & eat? If it was a cattle enclosure which I don't believe there would have been evidence & why a guardhouse? For animals ..no. A frustrating dig & I'm not happy with their conclusion.

13:57 glorious!

Archeoguessolgy. Lol ;)

I can't understand why they didn't notice it's an Iron age palace.

End in, end out wall. We could say its an E-I-E-I wall. "Old MacDonald built a wall, E-I-E-I..." Sorry, I'll stop now.

conclusion: It's a sheep pen.

did that women really just eat a clump of dirt?

I wonder what the Doomsday Book says about this area?

I bet Emma's favourite possession is a nailbrush!

I think these stones are just naturally occurring, no way ancient humans could have done this with only basic machines.

I don't buy this one. Guess it lies as an eternal mystery. This structure is way too heavy duty to be the residence for an 'extended family'. Maybe that's what it ended up being used as- but that would've taken quite some manpower to construct. And as they pointed out- it's not even that defensible. Where's time travel when you need it? ☮️

phil got himself a cute, young, blonde partner didnt he?

i swear these guys show holes in the ground with nothing i can tell is anything and they call it archaeology. Im sure it is, im just too color blind and daft to see it. It doesn't stop me from watching as many of the episodes as i can.

A Yank?

42:08 & Emma puts it in her mouth, yuck.

The digs of Time Team always seem too short to bring an absolute conclusion and a more definite picture of the areas they dig in. While I can understand the time constraints involved in digging an area where construction is going to take place; it seems sad that more time is not taken in areas such as Hamsterley. I am also sad that these locations will continue falling into ruin when if they were better investigated measures could be taken to preserve them properly for future generations. More and more of history is being lost. These constructions are every bit as important as Khufo's Pyramid.