it's unique [a]

spectacular and complex Stone barrier measuring 74 miles long

15 feet [5] and 10 feet wide

For 300 years it stood as the Roman Empire's most imposing Frontier

Hadrian's war is not only an amazing feat of [engineering], but so important

It's been given the status of a [world] [heritage] [site]

But it's also an incredible time capsule a window into the human parts

This is the immediate fingering. It's a lovely thing and I often wonder about the rao and [tree] lost it

Even something this small can tell us about a single person finished of Hadrian's wall

every single

piece of leather in this style is stamped with the names laid

You see if I purchase [Farley's] son of time

basically the sort of douchey of the day

almost

[2,000] years [later] the wall still stands

The men women and children who lived along it [to] vanished

But they've left [behind] many thousands of clues of what their lives were like

including an incredible collection of Handwritten letters

right Determines

[tell] you in great detail what they're doing? Who they are?

There's no comparison

Tonight time watch Journeys back through time to unlock the secrets of a lost world

Revealing a unique insight into a dreams war and the romans

Whose Empire dominated Europe for half a Millennia?

I want to travel along Hadrian's wall

It's a journey of 74 miles and almost 2,000 years that will take it some wonderful places

But even before the war was felt there was a line of force and the most amazing [of] them is in the land

These archaeologists are the latest in a long line

helping to piece together a picture of life in [Romans], written a

little object obviously

afternoon last thing

Do [you] [prefer] the Bronze belt?

Which goes on one of the other little objects with a from this area?

they've discovered the remains of nine Roman Forts built on top of each other and

dating from the 1st to the 4th Centuries ad

Well, this is one of the enormous outside wall posts from the stores builder which looks like it's symptom today was there the troops building

Hadrian's wall

reign without any

Faults on the wall itself at the time while it was being built it would have been a big mean [forest] [or] base somewhere

I mean if the build is actually stretching for over 35 [metres], so it's a substantial stores blue

Vindolanda Sport was part of the infrastructure for the building of Hadrian's were the most northerly frontier of the Roman Empire

But fools Hadrian, and why was he in britain?

Publius Alias Adrianna's was 41 when he came to power

117 Ad

He inherited an expanding empire that stretched from North [Africa] in the south to Newcastle in the North

He dreams in many ways a rather unusual [emperor] in that he took the strategic decision

No longer to Expand the Empire

Aggressively the way his [kinsman] and predecessor trajan had done he decided to consolidate him

along the Frontiers it already had and

his way of actually achieving this and if truth could control libyans was to go on a series of

prolong tours around the [Empire] to visit the Army's to maintain them around and

Generally be seen so they would know who their Paymaster doors

by

122 ad the Romans had established a huge Garrison in Britain?

expanding out from the southeast

But they never managed fully conquered the area north of [new] [course] in carmine

Adrian evidently decided that it was not going to be practical to try to conquer the whole of the island at least at that period

What he was going to have to do was to establish a fairly tightly defined line across the island marking

[roman] reckoning for country from areas which was still at least nominally?

independent

The only question was what Form would this new route take?

Adrian came to Britain in Ad

122 an ordered the construction of a war frontier right the way across the laws of the country

The sheer scale of it. I'm just outside Newcastle anymore this end

but actually this is where the war began an [existence] sighs down there in the river time and

Then it ran up through what's now Swamp M2

Shipyard with a bill the carpathian the ship that rescued the survivors from the titanic

And the first port along the wall is here

[Sega] [Deunan]

Hit them the terraced housing to the 1970s

Archaeologists have unearthed the ruins of this run's driving round [foot]

It was from here [that] Hadrian's wall headed West

This is what the war would have looked like

[courtesy] and the archaeologists at war's end have reconstructed it to its original height

And although no one's certain common sense suggests that donal wall is white the descents of the walk wave and Sim

protection for the Soldiers

It's when you stand next to the wall as it was when it was first built and it towers above you

But you realized the impact that it must have had marching across the landscape

And imagine the effect that it had of the locals their lands their farms divided by this incredible structure

Constance is just one of seventeen major faults will do on the wall

the [forks] at highly developed infrastructures each one home to several hundred people

In places Hadrian's wall crosses some wonderfully wild terrain

Even today this would be a major construction job, but the Romans built it nearly 2,000 years ago

we have to envisage an

area of Britain where the wasn't all that much stone building certainly new Monumental masonry

So it would have been a totally alien thing

It would be like a visitation from from another world, and it will be God's not

Not the least that the purposes of Hadrian's wall was to make a huge statement of power in the landscape of this province

This would have been a monument

Unprecedented not only in the Island, but really in the whole of the law empire

So how on Earth did they do it?

Well the roman

Stonemasons left behind some clues on this Rock-strewn hill at [Fallow] [field] quarry half a mile from the war

Today, it's very quiet and peaceful in Rural

But any two thousand years ago it been very different the whole hillside would have been swarming with Roman Masons

The Air would have been filled with the sound of hammer and chisel and a constant stream of wagons coming along to take away

the finished blocks of stone

The scale of what the romans did is incredible? They're quite away this entire hillside

And you can even see the way they worked these homes were [made] by Roman chisels

they got a [halfway] to try to split this block and then abandoned it [a]

[contrast] of the great wall of China for example which was built by slave labor Hadrian's walls built by the Soldiers [themselves]

Soldiers were trained in

Construction techniques some of them were very skilled Masons so they had all the skills within legions to build something even on this huge scale

Dr.. Peter Hill is a stonemason and an expert on the construction of Hadrian's wall

He spent years following the trail left behind by the romans, but if you look at this one here

This is now in three pieces

But it obviously

Is all one that's all the one when it came out you see by the way. It shapes all came out of one stone and

They simply lift see how it's 13 or 12

And they just that's a straight lift out of the day

Yes, straight. [leave] [up] [over] [here] [onto] [the] side yeah. I mean you [me] pick twice today

Among the ruins the archaeologists found Roman tools

These finds give an insight into how the masons shape the stones to go the warm

and incredibly the design and size [are] almost identical to the tools used by Stonemasons today, I

Could use aroma stone motions to all think innumerable ferns changeable

And they haven't changed in two thousand years and beginning [work] [some] [because] hamels have obtained

Further investigation by gluten [so] that the masons would have worked for about twenty minutes on each stone before it was placed in the ward

It calculates that they would have had to have done this 18 million times

And Peter is uncovered further evidence of how the Masons went about their work

We know how the romans lifted the big stones Bill?

and

Left us clues in the form of a hole here

There's a Lewis hall and into that goes [Lewis]

Right you've got to tapered legs here which go into this undercut hole on each side

right and then they are forced apart by the

Parallel leg goes between them

And then you simply push shackles

with a pin

Crane hook into there, and you lift, so you could lift a stone digitize

I stay on this side is three-quarters of a turn with that no problem at all right and

This isn't a Modern Louis which fits into a roman Louis hole we've got roman Lewis's of survived, so we know these

Basically the same tools tool and Clever Latvia Clever very clever

At the museum of antiquities in Newcastle there are even more clues

The archeologists have also discovered many of the names of the Roman Civil war

Welcome to our clay pen

Here we have with Mike all filing cabinets all the evidence for agents were always here

You've got a fair amount of stone wood she was a stone [Mikey]

And no one knows these Romans better than Lindsey Alison Jones

We have huge benefits on [Cajon's] wall in the Roman army like to record their achievements in stone

And a very good example is this

Stone here which came form our castle 38?

and this is the stone which actually tells us that it was Hadrian who built Hadrian's wall h a

[d] r [i] a n

It also tells us that the [2nd] legion your guster was involved in the building

But then it [actually] tells us the name of [the] governor at the time Paulus pretorius new posts

And that means we can pin down the start of the building Hadrian's wall

to ad 1 to 2 1 to 5

So if it hadn't been for [this] stone would not know that it was hatred that [should] [open] [or] absolutely

[I] [mean] before these inscriptions were found there was a huge rao called [newell] controversy when

Academics fought over whether it was septimus Severus or Hadrian

And it was inscriptions like this that proved the point that it was k giunti built Hadrian's wall

it was probably a really [zài] [a] very huge architectural limiters and so a

Hand without blueprint and they are Maga Rom with it

Following Hadrian's instructions the Soldiers built castles at every Milan on the wall

But in places the bureaucracy of the [emperor's] design raised some eyebrows amongst his men

right we're at [the] North Gate of Marcantel 37 just west of our stands for

Splendid Mark ethel Gateway [10] [foot] wise

Passageway big enough to get a large wagon through and you go through it

And you're on the edge of a cliff are you on the edge [of] a cliff?

It goes very steeply down was it well [who] gave may here not a lot?

Hadrian

From the wall. He said I want to get laid every mile and

So they built a date where every mile load how looking at the [path]?

What we [gave] just lay it off with every bill be a way

But it seems that in other places the design of all kept changing even as they built it

We neighbors because you can still see the advocates like here a brunton turret not far from Chester's fault

This is a good example [of] the romans not being quite as ruthlessly efficient

We might have thought because this is Brunton turret and as far as here

They build a wide wall 10 roman feet wide

But then they seem to change their mind because here they built a wide

Foundation 10 roman feet but the actual wall is much narrower, and that's how it carries on from this point onwards

They've started building

Personally I'd only been building for very long at all when somebody came along and said well hang on. We've changed our minds

See that terror [you've] built Rocky down

[germar] just you built knocking down. We're going to put forth on the landowners and every 10 miles so that reformed

Now sometimes it's wrong [work] or any staff

Maybe half finished and then [smashes] [Magner] soldiers just you know

This is the new plan [the] house laid out very well with the builders would it know exactly

Hadrian assigns

10,000 soldiers to his enormous

construction project each century of men was allocated their own sex with Walter building

And when they finished they carved an inscription proclaiming your achievement

And here we have one of these material stones

which gives us the name of the

Centurion in charge of that group of men his name is Kirk Ilya

[Sprocket] as you can see here and it also tells us that he was in the fifth cohort as well

[and] this might have been a few reasons one and it could have been in

Quality control, so that people could see which was a good [better] which was about this

But I think also the must have a little bonding element. There's a surprise Dunley speak together [as] a group of people

the

Inscriptions tell us about the people we know the names of individuals it

Humanizes Hadrian's wall it puts the people back into the archaeology

Patrons wall didn't just [appear] in the landscape it had to be planned it had to be

executed and

A lot of people would have bashed their souls or both of their legs while they were doing it a lot of people who lived

On it that was their home

we now know that the wall was built by the second the 6th and the 20th legions and

Several other auxiliary units are also named

But the Romans left behind much more than stone inscriptions

as the

archaeologists took

They began to uncover the most powerful and colorful insights the political and social life of Romans along the wall

ancient secrets revealed

That a very distinct line right here that are the burnt clay material [a] very thin

Play Arla

Nowhere tells us more about the romans than the fault at Vindolanda

The soil here is anaerobic which provides perfect conditions for preservation

Things are in such good condition here because the varied under the clay and the clay

Effectively seals out the object to get no oxygen and get no

Oxidization or very little to no rust effectively no rust means that things are in the same condition

But they were dropped in when you find them which is just wonderful

the finds recovered at Vindolanda provide us with a window into everyday [rome]

We know what tools they use?

How they cut leather

What they ate out?

the Birdie family been excavating here for three generations

Because of the special soil conditions objects that would normally not have survived have been found perfectly preserved

including thousands of artifacts made from leather

This is a fairly typical of [our] over roman marching boot. It's got this high upper and