A series of six Chronicle programmes about the application of scientific research to the problems of solving the secrets of prehistory.
5: The House the Picts Built
In 1970, Anna Ritchie , an archaeologist from Edinburgh, was asked by the Department of the Environment to excavate a long low mound at Buckquoy in the Orkneys that was being eaten away by the sea. She expected to find a Viking longship buried there. Instead she found six ancient houses on top of each other. The fourth of these turned out to have been built by one of the most mysterious peoples of Britain's past, the Picts.
Chronicle tells the story of how, clue by clue, this house produced both a new picture of what happened when the Picts first met the Vikings 1,200 years ago, and also led on to the eventual excavation of some even older buildings that were not only the oldest standing houses in Britain but in the whole of North West Europe.
Written and introduced by ANNA RITCHIE
Narrator GARY WATSON
Producer PAUL JOHNSTONE