Digging up History

Digging up History

Documentaries about archaeology.

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Digging up History
  • Fortress Britain: Ardoch Roman Fort

    Join Tristan Hughes in this short documentary as he explores the fascinating history of Ardoch Roman Fort in Scotland. Featuring historians Rebecca Jones and Andrew Tibbs.

  • The Roman Invasions: With Ray Mears

    1 season

    From 55 BC to the Claudian invasion almost a century later, join bushcraft and survival expert Ray Mears as he embarks on a journey to learn more about the Roman invasions of Britain.

  • George Washington: The First Battle

    Dan Snow goes to Pittsburgh to explore the extraordinary story of how an over-ambitious young George Washington fought for the British and helped to fire the shots that started the Seven Years War, the world’s first global conflict.

  • Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh

    Tutankhamun, 'The Boy King' of Ancient Egypt, is one of history's most famous names. Though his short reign proved fairly-insignificant, his legacy lives on thanks to Howard Carter's discovery of his magnificent tomb in 1922. Now, as the centenary of Carter's discovery creeps ever nearer, many of...

  • The Scottish Massacre: Unearthing the Secrets of Glencoe

    Join historian Dan Snow as he journeys to Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands to examine an astonishing new archaeological discovery: a hoard of coins likely hidden during one of the most shocking episodes in British history - the Glencoe Massacre.

    At 5am on 13th February 1692, 38 members of the ...

  • Timewatch: The Crusaders' Lost Fort

    In 1178 Christians and Muslims were on the brink of total war. The blood-drenched conquest of Jerusalem by the First Crusaders had enraged Islam, and their Kurdish warlord Saladin. This clash of titans is one of the great untold battle stories of the period, with the Muslim attackers laying siege...

  • Archaeologist Spies of World War One

    Archaeologists excavated the ancient past during peacetime, but in war they had a different mission - to play a vital role in modern military intelligence. Historian of archaeology Dr Amara Thornton explores a network of archaeologist-spies, codebreaking, mapping and running agents, and with expe...

  • Tutankhamun: A Century of Discovery

    On November 4th 1922 a breathless archaeologist, who had spent his life working in Egypt, wrote a hurried diary entry: “First steps of Tomb Found”. This was the very moment that Howard Carter found the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun.

    In this very special film, shot in Egypt and England, Dan...

  • Snow on the Road

    1 season

    Dan Snow hits the road, visiting Britain's best historical sites.

  • Ancient Britain: With Ray Mears

    1 season

    Britain is an island where history is well and truly part of the landscape and an island where human feet have walked for a million years. We are constantly making groundbreaking archaeological discoveries that are helping us to better understand the way in which our distant ancestors lived.

    Joi...

  • Hunt for the U-576

    A team of maritime archaeologists descends 700 feet off the coast of North Carolina in search of the U-576, a German submarine that went down in a historic 1942 battle, possibly trapping 45 Nazi sailors inside.

  • Pompeii: The Discovery

    Dan Snow tells the incredible story of how Pompeii was discovered.

  • Mary Anning: The Forgotten Fossil Hunter

    Born in Lyme Regis in 1799, Mary Anning was a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector who's story continues to inspire so many scientists to this day. In this documentary Dr Anjana Khatwa, Dr Liz Hide, David Tucker and Anya Pearson explore Anning's life and legacy.

  • The Military Maps of George III

    Though perhaps better-remembered today for his late-reign madness and the slight issue of losing the Thirteen Colonies, King George III was also one of the world's greatest collectors of military maps. Preserved in excellent condition within Windsor Castle, these highly-detailed maps cover a rang...

  • Into the Valley of the Kings

    Dan Snow ventures into Egypt's Valley of the Kings to explore its rediscovery.

  • The Sharp End: Testing Front Line Weapons

    1 season

  • Endurance: Rediscovered

    It was one of the last great lost shipwrecks of history - Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance. But now, incredibly, it has been rediscovered - over a century after it sank beneath the ice in freezing Antarctic waters.

    Organised by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, the expedition to locate the...

  • The Story of Egyptology

    Egyptologist Dr Chris Naunton explores the story of how Ancient Egypt was rediscovered, and how its incredible sites and treasures were gradually decoded. Starting with the earliest travelers who ventured inside the pyramids, Chris traces how this curiosity exploded into Egyptomania in the 18th ...

  • Lost Worlds: Hands on Prehistory

    1 season

    Prehistory, the longest period in humanity's past - but the one we know least about.

    Archaeology can help give us a glimpse into what life might have been like for the people living during this period. But the artefacts and other evidence of past human activity often throw up more questions than...

  • Shackleton: The Story of Endurance

    Part 1 of 3.

    Explorers called it the 'Great White Silence', an inhospitable continent of rock, ice and snow on which no human has stepped until just over 100 years ago. Girdled by an ocean packed with shifting ice and beyond that, the roughest oceans on the planet with waves as tall as apartment...

  • Finding the Lost Battlefield of Brunanburh

    The Battle of Brunanburh was one of the bloodiest and biggest battles of early medieval history. Fought 1100 years ago, Athelstan - the king of the English - opposed a coalition of Irish, Scots, Northumbrians and Vikings and won a decisive victory. The enemy shield wall was penetrated. Their troo...

  • Swordfish: World War II's Surprising Aircraft and the Raid that Changed History

    Dan Snow flies on a mission to explore one of the most daring and dangerous aerial attacks of World War 2

    On 11th November 1940, 21 antiquated Swordfish aircraft took off from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. They were embarking on one of the most extraordinary raids of the Second World Wa...

  • A Tudor Discovery - Thomas Cromwell’s Prayer Book

    History Hit digs deep into a fascinating new discovery that has grabbed the attention of historians across the world.

    Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb explores what is being called the most exciting Tudor find ‘in a generation’ as curators at Hever Castle identify a bejewelled, gilded prayer book, tuc...

  • The First Britons

    If the words British history conjure up images of Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Boudica, Mary Seacole, The Beatles and the Blitz, you’re squinting at a small spec of the history of humanity of these Isles. Even if you go back to the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, or even further to the Iron Age ...