Time Team

After not seeing it for some time, I sat and watched Time Team tonight.

For those not at all familiar with the premise, it’s a show about archeology. Featuring some generally dorky and not necessarily photogenic English boffins, who dig for anything from a Spitfire that crashed nose first into a French field to Iron age settlements in Britain to early Industrial period factories to Roman forts in Holland. The one strange conceit is that it’s all done in three days. Oddly limiting. Sometimes they find something of great import and sometimes they hit a dry hole. Often they make hugely speculative surmises at the start based on some globs of colour from a geophysical scan. Periodically they have information based on finds from digs a century before, sometimes half millennia old maps, sometimes the owner stumbles on something while digging a new basement, or it’ll be knowledge that’s been known for generations. I’m always gob smacked when they can confidently say “oh yes that’s an early first century Roman olive oil jug” from a shard the size of a nickel. It’s a great education in European and especially British history, which has had an undeniably rich and tumultuous history dating back hundreds of thousands of years. From circular stone brochs on the coast of the Irish Sea to medieval villages wiped out by the plague to Bronze age mines (well, small pit mining), to Roman bath houses to Napoleonic war defences. I’m always amazed at how much soil covers a site that’s only a few centuries old. I’m completely stunned that springing for a haircut for some of the members wasn’t in the budget. And they could get a lot more done if Tony pitched in and actually did some digging.

(And that awesome British scenery of rolling green hills and stone walls and coppices of trees and woodlands. Hope I get to spend at least a few months of my life walking around in that landscape. Love where I live, but the terrain is so different and so appealing there. And the show also features women with nice breasts on their hands and knees in a muddy hole. And Dr. Faye Simpson too. Total cutey.)

I really wish they would devote more time to excavating sites, as in a multi part show if need be, or hope they pass it off to a local school or group enthusiasts who will continue to excavate, and do a revisit a few years later. Some of them really do deserve a more through inspection, not a cursory exploratory dig.


I think this was one of my favourite episodes. A roman barge had been found in a field in Holland. It had been sunk as a bulwark of sorts to help maintain a Roman fort road from washing out. In the intervening centuries the river changed course so much that it was far from any water when found. The tools at the 23 minute mark are especially cool.

And often they will do some great 3D renderings and videos of what the site might have looked like. Or they will get an archaic skill practitioner to demonstrate the making of an item germane to the show. Seeing a bronze axe being cast and actually used to chop down a tree is just great.

It’s been on, since 93 I think, and there are a whole bunch of variations, including a USA one.

So if you’re a dork like me, and you like history and archeology and can handle slightly eccentric old English gits, check it out. And let’s not forget, it’s also got the beautiful and smart Faye Simpson. Total honey bomb.

Here are some links, so you can check it out. It’s on on TVO here in Ontario, and PBS carries it in the States. Check your local listings. 

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team

http://www.timeteamdigital.com/