Digging for Britain - Season 2

In the second episode of the series, Dr. Alice Roberts travels back to the Viking Age in Britain and visits excavations that are revealing a different side to these seafaring pirates from Scandinavia. She looks for signs of the earliest Viking settlers in the Outer Hebrides, and in Orkney-where Viking dominance outlasted anywhere else in Britain-she visits the excavation of a Viking chief's citadel and finds evidence of their way-of-life. There's an extraordinary collection of silver and gold that demonstrates the furthest reaches of the Vikings' trading empire and excavations in York-famously the capital of Viking England. This episode includes a fresh look at some of the most celebrated Viking finds, such as the fantastic Lewis Chessmen, which are currently the subject of major new research.

Dr. Alice Roberts travels back to the ages of Bronze and Iron to discover what kind of a place Britain was before the Romans invaded. With no written history, only archaeology can provide the clues. She uncovers a world that is complex, sophisticated-and a little strange. She examines the two Hebridean Bronze Age skeletons known as the Cladh Hallan Mummies: not only do they appear to have been mummified, new analysis has revealed they are made up of a jigsaw of different people. Then, in Norfolk, she gets her hands dirty helping pull up timber from a huge prehistoric monument that has been hidden in the mud for at least 2,000 years.