As a curtain-raiser for the 1998 series of Time Team, which started in January 1998, In this very first special, Tony and the team gather to celebrate the festive season with a look back over the last five years which has taken them on a journey from prehistoric Oxfordshire to the dawning of modern-age technology in victorian Britain. Over the years, viewers have flooded the series with queries as to what happened after Time Team finished their three-day investigations – were the sites further excavated, were finds available to see in museums and how did local people react to finding an important archaeological find on their doorstep? Time Team returns to a few key sites for updated reports and the Team members also remember their favourite moments and finds.

This pre-Christmas special offers a taster of what is coming up in the next series – and provides an update on previous Time Team digs. Presented by Tony Robinson from York's Barley Hall, where a Medieval Christmas celebration is in full swing, the show tells what has happened at many of the digs featured in the last series.

In the spring of 2050 BCE, a huge oak tree was felled and its stump upturned and half-buried on a site near to what is now Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk. The following year, a number of smaller oaks were felled and cut into 56 posts, which were arranged in a circle around the central stump. This Bronze-Age monument, hailed by some modern archaeologists as among the most exciting ever discovered, could have formed some kind of ceremonial site, perhaps with special astronomical or other significance. Alternatively, it has been proposed that it could have been a place of 'excarnation', where bodies were laid out after death to hasten the process of decomposition and speed the spirit on its way to the afterlife. Druids and modern-day pagans organised sit-in protests against English Heritage's decision to remove and preserve it. Time Team's Visit included the construction of a modern replica.

Looking at sites from three different periods, this Live dig's archaeological highs and lows are crammed into just 60 minutes in York where the team uncover three skeletons at a Roman cemetary (one being a Roman skeleton complete with hobnailed boots), a Viking 'tenement block' with a superb glass bead, unlike anything found in Britain before, a Viking's discarded leather shoe, and the major structures (pillars) of a medieval monastic hospital. But what does all the evidence show? Who were these people and how did they live?

Once upon a time there lived a great hero and king known as Arthur - and his story is well known. Or is it? A Time Team discovers, most of what we know about Arthur is myth, the creation of imaginative writers and artful propagandists. Time Team is on a quest, searching for the truth behind the myth, mystery and multi-million-pound industry which has grown up around Arthur – the alleged 'King of the Britons'.

In September 1999, a local farmer rediscovered a remarkable underground structure - a flight of 17 stone steps descending to a half-landing and a further 11 steps descending to a chamber - which had been almost consigned to the annals of local folklore. The Team travels to Orkney, where local farmer Douglas Paterson went, in search of the mysterious underground chamber, said to be lost on his land after its discovery some 50 years earlier. Time Team film the excavation of the site for this years Christmas documentary.

Coventry's first cathedral was thought to have been virtually obliterated by Henry VIII. But a great deal more has survived than expected. When Time Team went to Coventry in 1999, a high-status grave, discovered late on the third day could not be properly excavated. The following day, remains of a burial that had survived Henry VIII's destruction of the monastery in the 1530's were uncovered, The team went back to film the results.