Digging up History

Digging up History

Documentaries about archaeology.

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Digging up History
  • 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 ...

  • Inside Windsor Castle: The State Rooms

    Windsor Castle has a legendary connection to the British monarchy: the longest-serving royal palace in the whole of Europe. Ever since the days of William the Conqueror, the Castle has dominated this strategic point on the banks of the Thames, overlooking west London. Over the next 1,000 years ki...

  • Walking with Cavemen

    1 season

    Professor Robert Winston meets Lucy, the first upright ape, and follows her ancestors on the three-million-year journey to civilisation. Broadcast in 2003, Walking with Cavemen combined special effects with the latest scientific theories, to show us what it really means to be human.

  • The Untold Story of the Unknown Warrior

    The First World War was a conflict like nothing the World had ever known. More than 700,000 men mobilised in the UK would die during the conflict. Roughly 250,000 of those would have no known grave. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior became a place where all those people who were denied a grave to v...

  • Rome’s Disaster: The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

    2 seasons

    Tristan Hughes investigates one of Rome’s greatest disasters, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

    The Battle of the Teutoburg forest stopped Roman expansion in its tracks. It’s a story of betrayal, of one man’s vehement desire to liberate his people from Roman rule and the brutal, bloody length...

  • Lost City of Gaul: Unearthing Bibracte

    In the heart of the French region of Burgundy, deep in a forest, lies a hidden city that had been dormant for 2,000 years. It’s called Bibracte, the most important oppidum in all of Gaul. That is where the Aedui, a Gallic tribe allied to the Romans, once built a fortified city on top of a mountai...

  • 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...

  • 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.

  • The History of Westminster Abbey

    Sir David Cannadine shows Dan around the iconic Westminster Abbey, in the heart of London. With an unrivalled arrange of monuments - ranging from grand royal tombs to the grave of The Unknown Warrior - and spectacular architecture spanning nearly 1,000 years, join the two historians as they explo...

  • The Copper Scroll: Dead Sea Scrolls Mystery

    The Dead Sea Scrolls regularly rank amongst the most significant archaeological discoveries of recent decades. Over 900 papyrus documents, discovered in caves near the site of Qumran, that date to the century before Jesus and include the oldest surviving manuscripts from the Hebrew Bible.

    But am...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • The Unheard Tapes of Bomber Command

    Over 55,500 men died flying with Bomber Command during World War Two; more than the number who serve in the Royal Air Force today. Flying at night over occupied Europe and battling German night fighters, anti-aircraft fire and mid-air collisions, they showed astonishing courage and resilience in ...

  • The National Trust: Reimagining Our Past

    Here at History Hit, we love exploring the historic sites managed by the National Trust. In this special film we participate in a major National Trust event, the first Octavia Hill lecture, delivered by renowned art historian and museum director, Neil McGregor. Neil delves into two magnificent ho...

  • Prehistoric Ireland

    1 season

    Tristan Hughes travels to Ireland to delve into the mysteries and myths of prehistoric Ireland.

    In the first episode, History Hit’s Ancients expert Tristan Hughes travels to Ireland to delve into the mysteries of Newgrange and its surrounding tombs — exploring the secrets of Stone Age Ireland. A...

  • The Pursuit of Endurance: On the Shoulders of Shackleton

    In the heart of the Antarctic, nine adventurers are about to live an extraordinary story. They come from very different backgrounds, but one thing brings them together: a passion for adventure and testing the limits.

    Their goal: to follow in the footsteps of one of the greatest legends of the go...

  • The Treasure in the Tin Cup: Artefacts and Archive from Auschwitz

    In the Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, Nazis systematically murdered some 6 million European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, around two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe were killed. Jews were part of a larger group that included anyone the Nazis considered to be ‘Untermenschen’, o...

  • Uncovering The Bayeux Tapestry

    One of the world's most famous and well-preserved pieces of medieval embroidery, the 70-metre-wide Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, culminating in the Battle of ...

  • Google Questions - Life In The Middle Ages

    What did medieval people eat? Were medieval knights jacked? Why was medieval torture so cruel? Medieval historian and co-host of the Gone Medieval Podcast Matt Lewis answers Google's most searched questions about the medieval world.

  • Bignor Roman Villa

    West Sussex has its fair share of stunning Roman sites: Fishbourne Roman Palace, Stane Street, the Novium, the list goes on. But one of the region's star Roman attractions has to be Bignor Roman Villa. Situated deep in the heart of the Sussex countryside Bignor is home to some of the most impress...

  • 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 Uniform of the British Army

    The British Army is one of the world’s most experienced fighting forces. From Blenheim to Waterloo, from Balaclava to the Somme, it has played its part in the history’s most bloody conflicts. But as these troops executed Herculean tasks in the worlds harshest terrains, what were they wearing? How...

  • 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 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...