Digging for Britain.S12E03.Island Treasures (2025, Documentary)

In this episode, we make a special journey to some of the most exciting archaeological digs on Britain’s spectacular islands. Alice joins a team of archaeologists in Orkney, investigating a tomb as old as the great pyramids in Egypt. The team reveal burial chambers crammed full of whole skeletons, buried nearly 5,000 years ago.

Next, the discovery of a historically important warship 50 miles off the coast of the Isles of Scilly sparks an international effort to preserve and save the wreck. The USS Jacob Jones was the first US ship sunk by enemy action during World War I. So, a dedicated team of archaeologists work with the Ministry of Defence to raise and recover the symbolically important ship’s bell, whilst historian Yasmin Khan investigates exactly what happened on the tragic day when the ship was sunk.

Two miles offshore in Jersey, a team of archaeologists investigate an intertidal reef known as the Violet Bank - a hidden landscape of jagged rocks and shallow pools, only accessible at the extremely low spring tides twice a month.

Much further north, in the middle of the treacherous North Sea, we join a team of archaeologists on the Shetland islands, excavating one of the most inaccessible archaeological sites in the whole of Britain - a 38-metre-high rocky headland jutting out into the sea. Precariously balanced on the very top are mysterious traces of an ancient settlement, thought to be either an isolated Christian monastery or a Viking stronghold. And finally, a team of archaeologists make some incredible discoveries about life inside a mysterious Iron Age tower, known as a broch.