Digging for Britain - Season 1

Dr. Alice Roberts continues her journey through archaeology with amazing finds from prehistory. Her journey takes her from Orkney to Devon, by land, sea, and air.

In Norfolk, flint tools unearthed this year push the earliest human occupation back by 200,000 years, to around a million years ago. While in Orkney, an early farm yields glimpses of our ancestors' earliest religious beliefs and customs-cattle skulls buried within building walls and tiny household goddesses.

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. There's a remarkable community project in a shopping center in Sittingbourne where people are curating the grave goods of their own ancestors. And there are treasures that make her wonder just how dark the Dark Ages really were.

In the final episode of the series, Dr. Alice Roberts goes in search of the Tudor Age, a time that saw momentous changes across all aspects of British life. Along the way, Alice visits excavations at Shakespeare's first theater in London's Shoreditch, where the bard began his career and where Romeo and Juliet was first performed. She goes on to join a team sifting through Shakespeare's rubbish at his last home in Stratford-Upon-Avon and finds revealing clues about his carefulness with money! Then, in a remote corner of Wales, Alice meets a team of archaeologists uncovering the brutal realities of Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, a conflict that would change the very fabric of Britain. On the muddy banks of the Thames Alice discovers the rich history of a forgotten royal palace, which was home to the Tudor Kings and Queens. And she learns about a mysterious Tudor shipwreck, which dates from this age of exploration and trade.