Digging for Britain
Digging for Britain is a documentary on BBC4. A small island with a big history. Professor Alice Roberts reveals the fascinating world hidden beneath our feet, showcasing the latest finds of dedicated archaeologists. The program has been available since 2024. A total of 32 episodes have been broadcast, most recently in January 2025.
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Digging for Britain
Exploring Britain’s islands: a 5,000-year-old Neolithic tomb, an international effort to save a WWI warship, and a Neanderthal hunting ground off Jersey’s coast.
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A quarryman makes the discovery of a set of very large footprints, and a chance find reveals a spectacular Roman villa with mosaics and a sauna
Extraordinary digs from the south - a Romani encampment in the New Forest, a convict’s burial ground, discovery of a civil war mansion and London’s best-preserved Roman cemetery.
In the west of Britain, there's one of the largest Roman buildings ever discovered in Britain, an Iron Age chariot is saved, and evidence is found of the transatlantic slave trade in Devon.
Gold is found at a bishop’s palace, a Roman crime is uncovered, detectorists unearth a staggering bronze age haul, and ancient DNA solves a medieval mystery.
The most incredible grave goods ever found on Digging for Britain, a strange Roman sarcophagus filled with plaster and an intriguing medieval coin hoard.
Series 7
Alice Roberts follows archaeologists as they excavate Iron Age Britain’s most spectacular grave – a Yorkshire chariot burial.
Series 8
How a lobster led archaeologists to the discovery of an 8,000-year-old neolithic settlement. And Naoise Mac Sweeney visits a construction site as it gives up the secrets of its Elizabethan past.
More than is expected is found in the remains of a house thought to be the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey. Plus the graveyard of a Victorian workhouse sheds new light on the Great Famine of 1845.
Archaeological discoveries with Professor Alice Roberts. In the Cotswolds, a secret location, which appears to be a high-status Anglo Saxon cemetery, gives up a very precious and fragile artefact.
Series 7
This year’s best archaeological finds from the east of the UK: a monument as old as Stonehenge, a dig at the site of Britain’s first tank battle and some disturbing Roman burials.
Alice Roberts shares archaeological discoveries from the west of the UK, including the biggest maritime excavation since the Mary Rose, a Roman bath house and a German camp.
Alice Roberts celebrates the biggest and best archaeological discoveries of 2018 from the north of the UK.
Series 6
Alice Roberts reveals the story of the Roman cavalry. As she sets off across Hadrian's Wall on their trail, re-enactors recreate a cavalry tournament.
Archaeologists find Roman objects abandoned during a British rebellion, traces of the lost Iona monastery, and a weapons hoard belonging to a wealthy Bronze Age warrior.
The best in British archaeology. Finds include Roman letters that reveal what London was like, an East India ship packed with silver, and evidence of Julius Caesar in Britain.
The best in British archaeology. Finds in the west include the camp from which the Vikings invaded, Iron Age gold and evidence that people lived inside our henge monuments.
Series 10
In Scotland and the north of England, Alice investigates an Ice Age camp, the mystery of a medieval skeleton and the earliest evidence of salt making in Britain.
Travelling east, Alice discovers a Roman barn conversion, unearths a Tudor fort and finds intricately carved 10,000-year-old weapons.
Alice Roberts reveals a Dutch ship sunk by the English, a Cornish Roman fort and a 5,000-year-old Neolithic monument.