Time Team

2008

Channel Four Television

Acorn Media Australia

R4

One of the more interesting happenings in DVDs in the last five years or so has been the tremendous rise in interest in documentaries. Is it because the viewers are becoming better educated? Is it that they are getting older and want something a little more cerebral than the latest Bruce Willis shootemup? The older-style David Attenborough docos seem to have taken a back seat too. Animals fornicating on the Serengeti plains have been replaced by a wider range of content. The French, particularly, seem to have opened up a new market with their many excellent docos on European history and archaeology. The British were not left behind either. Time Team is an archaeology-based program that covers most of Britain’s early history and the people who built it, conquered it or died trying. The series has been running since 1994 and shows no sign of losing its viewers’ interest.

Combining education with academia is not an easy task. The show succeeds because the leading academics all have the knack of explaining a complex subject in laymens’ terms. They can show you a coin or an excavated building and put it into context for you. You feel that you understand more about the history of Britain and you pick up some archaeology techniques along the way. I can best describe it as they treat you like a new student and take the time to teach you. A good archaeology story is also a bit like a good detective story as you develop the final story from the clues.

The presenter is Tony Robinson, well known from the Black Adder comedy series and the amazing Worst Jobs documentary series. He leaps about the digs like an hyperactive active little gnome, calling on each digger to explain what they have found and show us what it means.

The rest of the team (the real workers) are Dr Mick Aston, an unassuming fatherly type. Phil Harding is a farmer’s son who looks more like a farmer’s scarecrow with his scruffy looks and clothes. He is a practical field archaeologist who first came onto the show to demonstrate flint knapping and seems to have just stayed on. His hats are famous.

Raksha Dave is fairly new to the team and seems to spend most of each show at the bottom of a hole she is digging. Stewart Ainsworth is the physics man. His team investigates the “lumps and bumps” of a prospective site and prepares for the fieldwork. His biggest problem is the diggers who seem to delight in finding that the archaeology is different to his interpretations. Helen Geake is another regular. She holds a PhD but is still prepared to get her hands dirty. To this core group are added many specialists in the field being investigated.

It is also good to see how involved the team becomes with local archaeological groups and even whole villages. I well remember one episode where investigating an ancient village layout involved dismantling fences and sheds, digging large holes in beautifully trimmed lawns, tearing up the village green and other acts of wholesale vandalism. The entire village joined in enthusiastically.

The show is helped by great overlayed graphics. Watching a castle rise from a row of stones in the ground is quite an experience in CGI. An interesting sideline is the recreation of some of the techniques used by the ancient metalworkers, potters and cooks. This experimental archaeology tests and tries to recreate the early theories and techniques, sometimes with surprising results.

In this four-DVD set we have thirteen of the more significant shows from past series, covering a tremendous range of history. The digs range from Neolithic to World War II, with tantalising titles like “The Naughty Nuns of Northampton” and “Keeping Up With The Georgians”. Many of the three-day digs are critically important as the diggers try to keep ahead of the developers or the climate. The episode “Bodies in the Dunes” dealt with a Neolithic and Bronze Age village and burial site in a beach sandhill that was being rapidly eroded by the wind action of storms..

There are many cases of the unexpected. “Street of the Dead” discovered an entire village attached to a Roman fort, far bigger in extent than suspected. Historians knew it must be there, but no one had any idea how huge the site really was.

The set is complemented by extras like biographies of the team members, details of archaeological tools and a timeline.

If you want something different to watch and if you would like a bit of mind stimulation as well, I recommend this series.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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