Meet the Ancestors episode 2
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00:30On a beach, bones in the sand tell a story
00:34of early Christian life, ancestral memories,
00:38and tribal conflict.
00:40♪♪
00:50♪♪
00:54Those bones were from a burial site
00:56in a remote part of Ireland,
00:58and I've been invited to join the archaeological investigation.
01:03Hello, Betty.
01:04Hello.
01:05You've finally made it.
01:06Yes.
01:07And on a glorious day as well.
01:08Absolutely, yes.
01:09So this is the site?
01:10This is it, yes.
01:11Okay, I'd love to have a look round.
01:12Do, yes.
01:13The archaeologist in charge of the dig is Betty O'Brien.
01:16She'd heard about the site after a local farmer
01:18discovered human bones while he was levelling sand dunes.
01:22What's going on over here then, Betty?
01:24Well, we're just...
01:25Oh, I see.
01:26I see.
01:27I see.
01:28What's going on over here then, Betty?
01:30Well, we're just finishing up the excavation
01:33of this particular grave.
01:35All the bones which have come out of it so far
01:38have been disturbed.
01:41The first clues to the age of the site
01:43were graves lined with slabs of stone.
01:45Betty thought that they must be part
01:47of an early Christian cemetery.
01:54Overlooking Donegal Bay on the west coast of Ireland,
01:57this place is wonderful.
01:59The cemetery nestles just behind the sand dunes
02:02and its position seems to be marked by a low circular mound.
02:06A further clue to the age of the site
02:08can be seen from Betty's plan.
02:10At the centre are the burials,
02:12but beyond these, revealed in a couple of trenches,
02:15is a layer of boulders, which Betty is very puzzled about.
02:19I'm beginning to think that they're cairn material.
02:22Now, it sounds absolutely weird,
02:24but I really do think they're cairn material
02:26because they're rising to the surface.
02:28We know they're not modern disturbance
02:30because there's roots growing through them.
02:32Yeah, so what, they've brought all these boulders from the beach,
02:35piled them all up here,
02:37so you started off thinking that it was what date?
02:40Early Christian, 7th, 8th century.
02:42You've got all sorts of other things as well.
02:44We've got other things appearing as well.
02:46We've got this cairn material which is beneath the burials,
02:49so it obviously is earlier,
02:51but how much earlier, we don't know at this stage.
02:54I'm here for a few days. Can I give you a hand?
02:56Please do. We'd be delighted to have a prehistorian.
02:59You'd never know what we might find.
03:03Betty soon put me to work on a patch of dark sand
03:06right in the centre of the site,
03:08which quickly turned out to be something rather unusual.
03:11..all over the place. Look at this.
03:15Oh, yeah, there's more coming up.
03:17There's more coming up just there.
03:19This is a bit unexpected, isn't it?
03:21Totally unexpected. What do you think?
03:23I mean, we've got these bits of cremated bone.
03:26Well, to me, it looks prehistoric,
03:28but that's maybe because I'm a prehistorian.
03:30This is supposed to be an early medieval site.
03:33If this is cremated, it's totally unexpected.
03:37I don't mind telling you.
03:39Just another complication.
03:41You really have to go away and think about it.
03:43Look at it further.
03:44What wonderful timing. I'm really glad we turned up now.
03:47You turned up at the right time, you did.
03:49In fact, that dark patch turned out to mark the position of a pit,
03:53and the pit contained a cremation burial.
03:56The discovery of these fragments of burnt human bone
03:59means that the site has probably been used as a burial ground
04:02for over 2,000 years.
04:07The next day, Betty had another job for me.
04:10Just appearing through the sand was the top of a skull,
04:13and I had to find where the rest of the skeleton was.
04:19The sand was easy to remove, and as the skull was revealed,
04:22it seemed to be intact and well-preserved.
04:25But was it male or female?
04:27Stacey, one of Betty's diggers, knew right away.
04:31Now, I think it's actually a woman, due to the rounded mandible here.
04:36Usually a man's mandible...
04:38That's the bottom part of the jaw. Exactly.
04:41It's more of a 90-degree angle, a sharper angle,
04:43whereas a woman's more rounded.
04:45So you think this is a woman? I think this is a woman.
04:49As the outline of the grave had become clear,
04:52I moved down to the feet.
04:54I think this is the most difficult bit of the skeleton to deal with.
04:59This is the feet.
05:01Legs coming down here,
05:04and it looks as if both the feet are very close together,
05:07maybe even bound together in some sort of a shroud.
05:10Probably like that.
05:12But what's happened as the bodies decayed?
05:14As the bodies decayed, all the tiny little toe bones
05:17have collapsed down on themselves,
05:19and so this ball here contains all of those little bones,
05:24which is the job that I've got to sort out.
05:29As the light began to fade, there was yet another surprise in store.
05:32This is still part of the pelvis, is it? Yeah.
05:36There we are. Now I haven't the faintest idea what it is.
05:47Next morning, Betty was very excited.
05:50Julian, I've been looking closely at that lump we took out yesterday,
05:53and do you know, I think it's wood. Wood? Yep.
05:56Have a look through there. You can actually see the fibres.
05:59And there seems to be a sand shadow, you know,
06:02building up underneath it. Yeah.
06:04Well, we knew it wasn't bone, didn't we? Absolutely.
06:07But, I mean, wood. Totally unexpected.
06:09Well, this is unbelievable. I mean, the bone, fine,
06:12but I never thought you'd find wood preserved in sand. Neither did I.
06:16And you know what? What?
06:18There's more of it down there where I've just been cleaning up.
06:21Oh, good! Let me have a look.
06:23Well, that's bone. That's the bit we took out yesterday.
06:26That's where it was.
06:28And all that down there by the side of the pelvis
06:31and the femur, that's all the same thing.
06:34So if it's wood, then what is it?
06:37It might be part of a plank, I think.
06:39But what's that doing there?
06:41Well, what we could have is a plank-lined grave,
06:44and this is really good, because for this period,
06:47we just don't have plank-lined graves in Ireland.
06:50I mean, we don't know of them. Yeah.
06:52So if we do, we've got a first. A first? A first. Brilliant!
06:55Yes!
07:00When I came here, it was to see an early Christian burial site
07:04dating back maybe 1,200 or 1,400 years.
07:07But as the sites progressed, so much more has emerged
07:10that it now looks as if those Christian burials
07:13may belong to a family using an ancestral burial ground
07:16that may date back perhaps into prehistoric times.
07:19To me, it emphasises what's so exciting about archaeology,
07:22that no matter how well prepared you are,
07:24how much you might think you know the site,
07:26there are always going to be surprises.
07:32The next day, a team of geophysical surveyors arrived
07:35to investigate the structure of the ground beneath the site.
07:40We have solid rock which drops over a distance of a little over 2m
07:46to a depth of 50cm, and then with this...
07:49Betty was convinced that the cairn she had discovered
07:52was built on a natural rock outcrop.
07:54..a form of boulder clay or disintegrating rock.
07:59Leading the team of geophysicists was Martina,
08:02who is processing the first results of the survey.
08:05Hello there. Hello. How are you?
08:07Bet you're glad it's not raining, aren't you? Oh, absolutely.
08:10However, they were not what Betty was expecting.
08:13Have you got any results yet?
08:15Just very preliminary results.
08:17If we did have a rock outcrop,
08:19it should be coming in at this point on the lower levels.
08:22And it's not? It doesn't appear to be so far.
08:24Now, as I say, these have to be actually further processed,
08:27but, you know, you would see it at this point.
08:30So what you're actually saying is that we're looking at
08:33a monument which is built on sand.
08:35It's not a rock outcrop that has been augmented, as I thought.
08:38Yes, from the results that we've seen from the geophysics,
08:41it does look as if the monument was built on sand,
08:44and it appears to be wind-blown sand.
08:47But Martina had a surprise for Betty.
08:50Acting on a tip-off, she'd scanned an area
08:52just a few yards from the cemetery,
08:54where she'd come up with traces of something large and circular.
08:58Could this be the remains of another ancient structure?
09:01So what do you reckon that might be, then?
09:03I have no idea.
09:05Heavens only knows what it is.
09:07Isn't this place great? It gets better, isn't it?
09:09I have to wait with bated breath
09:11to see what sort of results they come up with.
09:14Oh, dear.
09:18This was a good time for Jane Brain to be here.
09:21She's an archaeological illustrator
09:23and an expert at reconstructing ancient landscapes.
09:26I wanted to know how the site and its surroundings
09:28might have looked 1,300 years ago,
09:30and now she had enough information to make a start.
09:33This looks very nice, Jane,
09:35but what's this got to do with the early Christian landscape?
09:38Well, it has more to do with the modern landscape at this stage,
09:41but that's where it has to begin.
09:43It has to start with what's there now.
09:46And then I'll take it home and change it.
09:50So this is the framework, what you can see now?
09:54Yes, it is, minus modern things like fences and so on.
09:57They're not here.
10:00While Jane got on with her painting,
10:02I went to have a closer look at that lake
10:04and found, to my surprise, that it was fresh water.
10:07Perhaps this is what drew people to live here.
10:10But there's more.
10:12I thought this lake was very strange when I first saw it,
10:15but somebody's just told me that it's known locally
10:18as the Lake of the Fair Women.
10:20It's also supposed to be bottomless, never dry up,
10:23and possibly include a load of treasure from a local abbey.
10:26So there's all sorts of legends attached to this whole area.
10:31My week at the dig was coming to an end,
10:33and it had been incredibly exciting.
10:35We'd found an ancient cairn with a prehistoric cremation at its centre
10:39and early Christians buried on top.
10:41So what did it all add up to?
10:43What we have here are a small group of people,
10:46probably a family, but I'm not sure yet,
10:49who are burying deliberately in an ancestral burial mound.
10:54They're establishing an ancestry for themselves.
10:58They're making a statement.
11:00So trying to lay claim to some land, maybe?
11:02Either that or trying to confirm claim to this particular land
11:06by establishing a connection with ancestors.
11:09But who were they?
11:11We don't know that at the moment,
11:13but there is a possibility that we can find out,
11:16because in Ireland we're very lucky that we do have early historic records.
11:21So if we get radiocarbon dates on these,
11:25which will give us an indication at least of the century they belong to,
11:29then there's a possibility that we might be able to link them in
11:33with a particular group of people.
11:35So when are you going to do this historical research then, Betty?
11:38When you give me a chance to finish the excavation.
11:41Right, OK.
11:43We'll go away and leave you alone then.
11:50Several weeks later, I had an appointment
11:52with a bone specialist at Trinity College, Dublin.
11:59The task of examining all the bones from the excavation
12:02was in the hands of Maura Delaney.
12:04But what about that wood I'd found?
12:06Have you had a chance to have a look at our piece of plank yet?
12:09I have, yes. This is it.
12:11It's dried out since the last time we saw it.
12:14Yes, well, I deliberately dried it out,
12:16because when I got it first, it was still damp.
12:20And this is what came up.
12:22A lot of our so-called brown fibre stuff turned out just to be clay and sand.
12:27I get the feeling you're trying to tell me something. Yes.
12:30I'm trying to tell you something you don't really want to hear,
12:34and that is that this is bone.
12:37Oh, no. I'm afraid so. It's not plank.
12:40It's not plank, no.
12:44Oh, well, out goes the idea of the first plank-lined grave
12:47to be found in Ireland.
12:51After that disappointment, I was even more deflated
12:54when I saw the female burial I'd helped to excavate.
12:57Most of her bones seemed to have crumbled to sand.
13:00Can you tell anything from what's left?
13:03Well, there are a couple of interesting features in the skull
13:07that I think are worth mentioning,
13:09and certainly one piece of pathology
13:12which would have affected the quality of life,
13:15and that is an inflammation in the left orbit.
13:19What's the left eye?
13:21That's the top of the left eye.
13:23You can see just here that there are the remains of little pits
13:28and a thickening of the bone here,
13:31and you can demonstrate that by holding the bone up to the light
13:34and you'll see that you can see the light through this orbit,
13:37but you can't see it through that one.
13:40Now, in this area here sits what's called the lacrimal gland,
13:46and it does sometimes get inflamed,
13:49and this appearance of inflammation
13:52is borne out by this very marked groove here.
13:56So that's not damage to the bone there?
13:59No, that's not damage to the bone.
14:01That is a natural phenomenon.
14:05Now, that indicates that the artery had enlarged
14:11and that there was a greater blood supply to this area.
14:15And is that something to do with this inflammation?
14:18Yes, if you get inflammation,
14:20you get an increase in the blood supply to that area.
14:23So this more or less confirms the appearance.
14:27So what effect would that inflammation have had on this wound?
14:31Well, for instance, if it was inflammation of the lacrimal gland,
14:35there would be a lot of pain in here above the left eye,
14:40and the white part of her eye might have had little red veins,
14:45as you would see with somebody with conjunctivitis.
14:48I suspect, I can't be sure,
14:50that the eyelid would have been swollen as well.
14:53Looking at the wear on her molars,
14:55Maura thought she would have been in her late 40s when she died.
14:59But what else could her teeth tell us?
15:01This is the left upper canine, and this is the left upper first.
15:07And if you put them together like that,
15:10you'll see that there's a tiny little notch there between them.
15:13What do you think could have caused that wear?
15:16Well, it was either a chip at some stage off the anatomy,
15:21or something that she did,
15:23pulling something between those two teeth, it could be.
15:26What sort of occupation could have caused this?
15:29She could have been drawing threads,
15:32she could have been, you know, biting them off.
15:36The only definite thing I would say
15:38is that it wasn't a very abrasive substance that she was using.
15:45Despite the terrible state of her teeth,
15:48despite the terrible state of her remains,
15:50I think that the woman from Donegal
15:52can still provide us with clues about the site.
15:54Her skull's going to be rebuilt,
15:56and we'll be able to see what she looks like.
15:58And her leg bones, sent for radiocarbon dating,
16:01should tell us fairly exactly when she was buried.
16:04We also want to know the date of that cremation pit,
16:07so that's going off for radiocarbon dating as well,
16:10and we hope that that's going to turn out
16:12somewhere in the prehistoric period.
16:18From Dublin, I was off to Belfast University
16:21with the bones from Donegal.
16:23At Belfast, they have one of the most accurate
16:26carbon-dating labs in the world,
16:28but all this chemistry will take about three months,
16:31which is good, because there's still lots to do.
16:38From Belfast, I headed back across the Irish Sea.
16:41I wanted to know if it could be proved scientifically
16:44that the groove in the tooth was a wear mark or not.
16:48In order to find out, I went to see forensic orthodontist
16:51David Whittaker at Cardiff Dental Hospital.
16:54What could he tell us about the tooth?
16:56It certainly looks as if there's been something going on.
17:02In his lab, the tooth was first coated with gold.
17:05This helps the scanning electron microscope
17:08to pick up minute surface details.
17:10The image of the tooth was then enlarged over time
17:13over 200 times.
17:17After all this gold plating,
17:19have you sorted out whether this is real wear or not?
17:22Yeah, I think we have, yeah.
17:24I must admit, I'm quite pleased with this.
17:27This is the biting edge along here,
17:30and we'd expect that to be continuous
17:32and sort of nicely rounded here.
17:34Yeah, there's quite a notch in it there.
17:36Yeah, there's a notch in the actual edge,
17:39but there's also, continuing up from that,
17:42this super-sorted area of wear there.
17:45And you can imagine...
17:46But is it wear?
17:47I think it is, yeah.
17:49Because when you get fracture,
17:51it's almost as if you've cleaved a diamond,
17:54and you get these kind of rather nice facets of polishing,
17:58whereas this is not like that.
18:00It's got exactly the shape of a, I don't know, a thread,
18:04a narrow thread or a little piece of leather
18:06or something like that.
18:08It's an occupational disease.
18:10The occupational function that this lady's been doing,
18:14what it is, I'm not certain,
18:16but she's been running or holding something
18:19between these two teeth.
18:21It's actually the lateral incisor and the central incisor here.
18:26It's quite a sensible place to hold things, actually.
18:29Great.
18:30I'm happy with that.
18:31So it was worth all this?
18:32Oh, it's always worth it, yeah.
18:35Now we've proved that the groove in the tooth
18:37resulted from wear,
18:39what sort of occupation could have caused it?
18:43It was time for a return trip to Ireland
18:45and a visit to the Ulster History Park,
18:47where another expert was waiting.
18:50All that spinning is, is twisting the fibres of the flax.
18:54Now, flax, it helps it to be damp,
18:58so nowadays people wet their fingers,
19:01but in early times people would have passed it
19:03through their lips or through their teeth.
19:10So does that actually work?
19:12Does it help to wet it as it goes through your mouth?
19:14It does, because there you see,
19:16that has gone through my mouth.
19:18It's much smoother, if you like.
19:20The dampness from going into the spittle
19:23helps the fibres of the flax to lie flat and it tightens it.
19:27But the skull from Donegal has got wear marks on its teeth
19:32and this is suggested as being somewhere
19:34where this woman pulled fibres through her teeth.
19:39That's just in the same place.
19:41I could have done it like that.
19:43Well, I'd never have believed it unless I'd seen it.
19:46There you are.
19:48And it would floss your teeth as you're doing it as well.
19:51Absolutely.
19:54While I was here,
19:55Betty wanted to show me a reconstruction of a ring fort,
19:58the sort of place in which early Christians would have lived.
20:01This was home to an early Christian woman.
20:04It's certainly cosy.
20:05I mean, my legs are roasted, but where are the pots and pans?
20:09I mean, I see lots of wooden vessels around,
20:12but weren't there any pots?
20:14No.
20:15In the early Christian period, the Irish didn't make pottery.
20:19If they didn't have pottery, what would they have cooked in?
20:23Probably a metal container, perhaps a cauldron or something,
20:27which would have lasted indefinitely.
20:30Used over and over again.
20:32But you'd eat out of wooden bowls
20:34and serve your food out of wooden troughs as well.
20:37Wooden containers, yes.
20:39You'd use them for all sorts of purposes.
20:41Yeah.
20:43In another roundhouse nearby,
20:45Betty had laid on a demonstration
20:47of how early Irish Christians prepared their dead for burial.
20:50We know from 7th-century literary sources
20:53that clerics, at any rate,
20:55were wrapped in linen, white linen winding sheets.
21:00So we're very lucky.
21:01We've got a volunteer here who is quite prepared
21:04to allow herself to be wrapped
21:06in what we think a winding sheet probably looked like.
21:10Hang on.
21:11With the skeleton we excavated,
21:13the feet were extremely close together,
21:15which means that they were actually wrapped.
21:18But in this period, we didn't have shroud pins,
21:21so we're just using a piece of flax thread
21:24to hold the shroud in place at this point.
21:27I remember how tightly together...
21:29They were really tightly together,
21:31so if they were tightly bound like this when the body decayed,
21:34they'd stay in this position.
21:36How do you feel?
21:38Erm, secure.
21:40Secure? You're not claustrophobic, are you?
21:42No. Good.
21:44Now, before burial,
21:45their face would have been covered with a cloth like this.
21:58MUSIC FADES
22:08Back on the road again,
22:10up and down the country in search of yet more answers.
22:13This time, I was heading to Manchester University
22:16in a meeting with Richard Neve.
22:18The first stage of facial reconstruction
22:21is the rebuilding of the skull,
22:23and Richard is an expert at this.
22:25But he wasn't happy with what he saw.
22:28This is going to be a nightmare.
22:31Absolute nightmare.
22:34There is always going to be a slight gap,
22:38and also there is a bit of a distortion on this bone.
22:43Richard's job is made much more difficult
22:45because the skull is so badly deformed.
22:49Using wax and tiny wooden props,
22:52the skull is painstakingly reassembled.
22:54You know, like we put the four struts across? Yeah.
22:59Wow, this has been a tussle, this one.
23:02It really has been a tussle.
23:05I think that's as good as we can expect to get it
23:08under the circumstances.
23:12From Manchester, it was off to London,
23:14where the facial reconstruction would really begin.
23:17The surface of the rebuilt skull is scanned by a laser beam,
23:20and the information is fed into a computer.
23:25Dr Robin Richards is in charge of the maxillofacial unit
23:28at University College.
23:30For Robin, the process of facial reconstruction
23:32is a routine procedure, but normally with living patients.
23:36So that's the image that the computer's captured?
23:39That's right, yes.
23:41And one of the things that becomes immediately apparent
23:44is the asymmetry in the face,
23:46and I think this is a result of the orientation
23:49of the skull in the ground when you found it.
23:52It's been squashed vertically.
23:54Lying on her side like this had caused her skull to distort
23:58from the pressure of the overlying sand.
24:00So could you correct this?
24:02Yes, I have pushed this part of the skull in
24:05and that part of the skull back out to make a more symmetric face.
24:08So you could do in the computer
24:10what Richard wasn't able to do with the solid bone?
24:13That's right, yes, yes.
24:15So having got a skull that you're happy with that is now symmetrical,
24:20what's the next stage on from that?
24:22Well, the next stage is to take a face
24:25and we will warp the shape of that face to match the skull.
24:31But where did you get this face from? Is that a person?
24:34The face you see now is the average of a number of people.
24:37So we have a nondescript face
24:39rather than a specific face that we're going to start from.
24:42So go on, I'm dying to see this.
24:44Show me what the face looks like.
24:46Well, here we are. That's the new face.
24:48That's a very distinctive face, isn't it?
24:52What fascinates me is how the shape of the skull has come through, hasn't it?
24:56The high cheekbones and the rather prominent upper lip.
25:01That's right, yes, yes.
25:07Well, this is what Robin's produced.
25:11At Jane's studio, it's time for the final stage of reconstruction.
25:15This is where artistic interpretation takes over from scientific procedure.
25:19I think the only real problem I'm going to have is with this eye,
25:22making sure that I get it to look...
25:24It's Jane's job to transform the computer printout
25:27into a convincing portrait.
25:29We know that she was middle-aged and had an eye infection,
25:32but what colour were her hair and eyes?
25:35What type of complexion did our Celtic ancestor have?
25:41While Jane was getting on with her work,
25:43it was back to Belfast for the final piece of the jigsaw.
25:46When did Our Lady die?
25:49Come on, don't keep us in suspense any longer.
25:51I'm sure you want to know what the dates are, don't you, Betty?
25:54Yes, please. And I do as well.
25:56You don't really want to know them now, do you?
25:58I do, I do.
25:59They date to 608 to 660 AD,
26:03at the 95% confidence level.
26:06That's exactly what... Seventh century!
26:08Thank you, God.
26:10And the charcoal date?
26:12400 to 50 BC.
26:15And that's, again, what you...
26:17Yep, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that narrows down
26:20to maybe first century BC, or thereabouts.
26:25That's fine. That's grand. It's Iron Age.
26:28Yep, which is what you expected, wasn't it?
26:30That's what I said. Yeah, all right.
26:32You were right.
26:39Six months ago, I helped to excavate her remains
26:42on the shore at Donegal.
26:44And since then, with the help of experts from all over the country,
26:47she's gone from being just a burial, a collection of bones,
26:51to a person, somebody that you can come face to face with.
26:55We know about her eye condition,
26:57about how sore and painful it must have been.
26:59And we can suggest the way in which she would have been dressed.
27:02As a Christian, she would have had a headdress,
27:04and this simple woolen cloak with its decorative border
27:07would have been held together with a beautiful brooch like this.
27:10So we can really start to build up a picture of how she would have looked.
27:17Now we know when she died,
27:19Betty has been able to discover from ancient Irish documents
27:22that she belonged to one of two clans,
27:24the Connell Coipri or the Connell Canard.
27:28This area of Ireland had long been fought over by rival clans,
27:32and by the act of her burial,
27:35wrapped in a simple shroud of white linen
27:38and laid with her head to the west,
27:40the Lady of the Sands joined her ancestors
27:43and helped her living relatives lay claim to this disputed land.
27:56Alice Roberts joins up with teams of archaeologists across the country,
28:01revealing remarkable finds,
28:03the fascinating world beneath our feet,
28:05in Digging for Britain on BBC iPlayer.