Digging for Britain

Travelling east, Alice discovers a Roman barn conversion, unearths a Tudor fort and finds intricately carved 10,000-year-old weapons.

A gatehouse riddled with Civil War bullets, a unique Iron Age shield made from bark and Roman burials with pots where the heads should be.

Digs in southern England reveal a previously unknown Roman town, a Tudor ship buried beneath a quarry and evidence of Henry VIII’s financial under the Tower of London.

A new Roman town and hundreds of finds are discovered. The Cerne Giant finally gets a date, and a World War II air crash mystery is laid to rest.

The best archaeology from the north of Britain, including Scotland’s oldest railway, one of the best-preserved Norman castles and an extraordinary find from a Neolithic tomb.

The astonishing discovery of a mosaic has art historians, archaeologists and Alice very excited as they slowly reveal its full beauty.

How a lobster led archaeologists to the discovery of an 8000-year-old neolithic settlement. And Naoise Mac Sweeney visits a construction site as it gives up the secrets of its Elizabethan past.

Archaeological discoveries with Professor Alice Roberts. In the Cotswolds, a secret location, which appears to be a high-status Anglo Saxon cemetery, gives up a very precious and fragile artefact.

Professor Alice Roberts explores this year’s most exciting archaeological finds from the East of Britain. Every new discovery was filmed by the archaeologists themselves giving us an unprecedented view of each excavation as it happens. In this episode, we join a team in Suffolk as they uncover an ancient lost monument as old as Stonehenge. We travel a little further East than usual to a WWI battlefield in France to explore one of Britain’s earliest and most disastrous tank battles, and then return to Suffolk as archaeologists try to make sense of some disturbing Roman burial practices. Also, one lucky metal detectorist chances upon a coin hoard that gives us insight into the effect the English civil war had on the lives of ordinary people. Our roving archaeologist, Raksha Dave goes behind the scenes at an archaeological lab in Brighton and follows an investigation into a lost medieval village.

Professor Alice Roberts celebrates the biggest and best archaeological discoveries of 2018 from the north of the UK. Each digging team has been filming its own excavations, giving us an unprecedented view of each excavation as it happens. Alice begins the programme with a prehistoric Pompeii at the Black Loch of Myrton. Uncovering incredibly preserved 2500-year-old houses, archaeologists are stepping back in time and glimpsing what life was really like in an Iron Age village. We follow archaeologists uncovering a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Lincolnshire full of spectacular and unusual grave goods. We go on the hunt for a lost Second World War reconnaissance Spitfire in Norway and piece together the story of its brave pilot. Deep in the vaults at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, we explore one of its greatest treasures, the Westness Brooch. We also head to the island of Rousay in Orkney, where archaeologists rescue a Neolithic tomb before it gets washed away and discover an incredible trace of our ancestors on a rare Pictish stone. In Salford, a major regeneration project is unearthing the largest jail in Georgian England and its radical approach to crime and punishment. Roving archaeologist, Raksha Dave gets privileged access behind the scenes in the conservation labs at Vindolanda Roman fort and discovers what really happens when the digging stops.

Alice discovers the well-preserved writing tablets, swords and domestic items left by Romans at Vindolanda during a time of British rebellion. On the Scottish island of Iona, there are traces of a long-lost monastery and pilgrimage site that was originally built by the legendary saint Columba, and has been compared to Jerusalem. In the east of Scotland, a weapons hoard belonging to a wealthy Bronze Age warrior is unearthed.

We discover the camp from which Vikings invaded Britain, and find groundbreaking new evidence that the world-famous Avebury stone circle isn't just a sacred site but a place where our ancestors lived and worked - a discovery that's also changing our understanding of neighbouring Stonehenge. In Staffordshire, the oldest Iron Age gold in Britain is unearthed - a set of beautiful gold torcs, mysteriously abandoned 2,500 years ago.

Finds include evidence of the first Roman siege in Britain and Scottish man-made islands.

Professor Alice Roberts explores the year's most exciting archaeological finds in the east of Britain. A team unearths a mass grave, divers search the Thames for clues to a 17th-century tragedy, and a metal detectorist makes the find of a lifetime.

Professor Alice Roberts and archaeologist Matt Williams present 2014's most outstanding archaeology. In the summer, archaeologists have been unearthing our history in hundreds of digs across Britain. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to uncover long lost treasures - retelling our story in a way only archaeology can. With unique access to some of the country's best digs, our teams have been self-shooting their excavations to make sure the audience is there for every moment of discovery. In this episode, we're in the west of Britain, and the archaeologists join us back in the Dorset Country Museum to look at the new finds and what they mean

Dr Alice Roberts discovers what kind of a place Britain was before the Romans invaded.

Looks at Roman Britannia, where finds include the thickening mystery of 97 baby skeletons.

The Anglo-Saxons - they divided our land and heralded the arrival of the Dark Ages. But were they really just barbarians? Dr Alice Roberts continues her journey through a year of archaeology, visiting the key sites that are throwing light on this most mysterious of periods. She visits the royal seat of power at Bamburgh, Northumbria and sees how the skeletons tell tales of violent death, but also of tenderness.

Roman finds include the mystery of 97 babies murdered by the Thames, a fabulous Roman coin hoard found in Somerset and a man buried on a layer of dead animals.