Accessible Archeology (Time Team)

Member Name: whiteroseuk

Product:	Time Team
Date:	20/12/08 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: entertaining and educational

Disadvantages: not for you if you don't like history

I have always had an interest in History, bt I feel I owe my interest in Archeology entirely to the programme Time Team. It is a programme which has been broadcast on Channel 4 and repeated frequently on various Discovery channels. It has been going for over 10 years now, in the same format, which shows how successful it is.

The programme is presented by Tony Robinson (the actor who played Baldrick in the comedy series Blackadder) and he sets the team a challenge, usually in the form of questions, that they set out to answer in three days.

The team mainly consists of

Professor Mick Aston who was staff tutor in archeology at Bristol University and on retiring became an emeritus professor there, he is also an honorary visiting professor at the University of Exeter and the University of Durham.

Phil Harding a field archeologist with Wessex Archeology.

Carenza Lewis is now based at the University of Cambridge but Carenza also worked as a field archeologist for Wessex. She has connections with English Heritage.

Stewart Ainsworth is an archeological surveyor, so is termed the Time Team's 'lumps and bumps man'. He is a senior investigator and project manager for English Heritage.

Victor Ambrus is the Team's Illustrator, and is a fello of the Royal Society of Arts, He brings to life the past with his illustrations of the sites as they would have been in the past.

There are many other members to the team, as various experts are brought in due to their expertise in a particular area, but these are the ones that have been in most of the series, through many years, and are familiar faces to anyone who watches the programme regularly.

Often viewers who know of a site which may have some archeological interest write in, and the time time then go to investigate. They cover a huge range of sites, from prehistoric, to more recent happenings, but whatever the site the team have three days in which to uncover it's secrets, and this has drawn criticism from many mainstream archeologists. Purists cringe when they see the time team start a site with mechanical diggers, but they have to move quickly because of the time restraints. This occasionally can cause conflict within the team, as Tony as the presenter wants to present the most interesting spectacle for the television audience, whereas the archeologists on the team know that archeology is destructive, and if they dig a very important site, they do not have the time to give it the care and attention it really deserves, so they prefer to perhaps dig a small area, and do it properly rather than sklimp over a larger trench, but this means that small items might be missed.

Over the years, the team has used new technology to help them locate the best places to dig, such as magnetic resonating imagery, and geophysics. This in effect can give the team an idea of what they may find underneath the ground, even before they start digging. Sometimes it can be misleading, as something that has nothing to do with archeology might be giving a reading, but they never know until they dig.

Whatever period of history interest you, the Time team will have covered it in one of their programmes, from prehistoric gravel pits, where they uncovered mammoth remains, through the stone age, to Roman times, through medieval monasteries and castles, into the industrial age, and even as far as the last century, digging for crashed World War II aircraft.

What I love is that the programme doesn't just document the archeology as it happens, it explains it too, putting things into context and using amazing graphics, with Victor's illustrations and the latest computer graphics to show how what has been found would have related to it's surroundings. They also attempt experimental archeology too, trying to recreate something that they have found using the methods that would have been available at the time.

With the great characters in the team, the fascinating history, Time Team is both an entertaining and educational programme.

Summary: A successful format, makes for an interesting programme