The Time Team Specials - 51 to current
| 56 - Greatest discoveries | 57 - Rediscovering Ancient Britain | 58 - Trial And Error | 59 - Twenty Years Of Time Team |
First broadcast on Channel 4: 08th May 2011. |
Tony Robinson and Mick Aston dig out the best bits of over 200 Time Team episodes to tell the story of how our domestic lives have changed over 10 millennia.
Until about 10,000 years ago our ancestors moved from site to site setting up house where they could find food and water. Then everything changed. People realised they could control the land, stay put and build more permanent and more comfortable houses.
Tony and Mick reveal how those very first houses evolved into what we know today, and find out how settling down changed the way we live.
River Thames, London. |
First broadcast on Channel 4: 10th November 2011. |
Nowadays, London's East End is synonymous with the 2012 Olympic Games. Cutting-edge engineering and design have transformed the Olympic Park. But 150 years ago, the world was watching for a very different reason, although the spectacle on display was as high-tech as anything on offer today.
The East End was once home to the most advanced shipbuilding industry - and best workers and shipyards - in the world.
A century and a half ago, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain's most famous engineer, was about to launch a ship five times bigger than any that had ever been built before, the most revolutionary vessel the world had ever seen: the SS Great Eastern.
Pioneering the transition from sail to steam and timber to iron, Brunel and East London's ship builders created vessels that were bigger, faster and tougher than ever before.
But this launch was a disaster. Brunel went from hero to laughing stock overnight as his leviathan stuck on the slipway. Brunel died not long after.
Today archaeologists are scouring the banks of the Thames to discover why launching such a big vessel proved a complete disaster. Examining the slipways, they hope to discover what went wrong and how it affected shipbuilding in London for ever.
Tony Robinson joins them in their quest to solve the puzzle. But he and the team also explore some of the extraordinary successes of this long-gone industry and a time when the East End led the world.
New Place, Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshire. |
First broadcast on Channel 4: 11th March 2012. |
Tony and the Team join a group of archaeologists as they dig the site of William Shakespeare's house, New Place, in Stratford on Avon.
There's little of it above ground now, but records show it was Tudor Stratford's biggest private home, with up to 20 rooms and a dozen servants. However, in 1702, New Place was demolished to make way for a grand Georgian pile. That Georgian house sat right on the street, so for the last hundred years or more, it's been assumed that was also the site of New Place.
But a recently discovered document casts doubt on that theory. And with the site now accessible, the archaeologists aim to show for the first time not only where Shakespeare really did live with his family but also how grand his house was. And that raises two intriguing questions about Shakespeare: why did he want such a grand home? And where on earth did he get the money from?
First broadcast on Channel 4: 22nd April 2012. |
In July 2009, amateur metal detectorist Terry Herbert found an Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard worth over £3 million in a Staffordshire field. Now, with the initial phase of the post-excavation process nearing completion, archaeologists are beginning to unlock the secrets of the hoard.
After further digging and carefully unpicking the jumble of finds, experts from Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent Museums have realised there were over 3500 objects buried in this small area with the gold alone weighing 11 pounds.
Thanks to their painstaking restoration work and application of the latest scientific techniques, they can understand the function of these objects, begin to explain how and why they came to be here, and pinpoint the origins of the hoard's raw materials.
The gold itself was analysed by scientists at the British Museum, where a technique known as 'X-ray fluorescence' revealed it to be equivalent to 18 carats.
Set into the gold are 3000 individual garnets, ranging in colour from ruby red to deep purple and pink. No garnets were mined in Britain in Anglo-Saxon times, so these must have come from further afield. Top gemstone experts based at the Louvre in Paris analysed the stones in a particle-accelerator beneath the museum.
The information the museum experts have extracted is changing our understanding of the so-called 'Dark Ages'. The evidence points to the existence of a large and wealthy elite warrior class, and reveals the remarkable skills of the Anglo-Saxon craftsmen who made these intricate treasures 13 centuries ago.
First broadcast on Channel 4: 29th April 2012. |
Tony Robinson investigates how burial customs have changed and evolved over thousands of years of British history.
Thanks to two decades of digging burial sites, Time Team can draw on extraordinary evidence from Neolithic bone caves, Bronze Age cemeteries, Roman mausoleums, jewellery-laden Anglo Saxon burials and even funeral pyres.
And with the help of resident experts Jackie McKinley and Francis Pryor, Tony explores how, from the flowers on the grave and the black veil to the wake after the funeral, the way we bury our dead is rooted in customs that go back thousands of years.
Some of the Team's most intensive digs have involved burials and the programme revisits many impressive sites, including one in the Outer Hebrides, one in the Peak District and a Roman fort near Hadrian's Wall.
First broadcast on Channel 4: 13th May 2012. |
With over 250 amazing sites and tens of thousands of finds to draw on, it's hardly surprising the Team find it hard to decide which has been their greatest discovery.
Revisiting digs that produced rare and fine jewellery, gold coins, huge and intricate mosaics - and some extraordinary archaeological fakery - Mick Aston, Phil Harding and Helen Geake defend and debate their choices for top honours. It's down to Tony Robinson to adjudicate.
First broadcast on Channel 4: 17th June 2012. |
For thousands of years, nomadic tribes roamed freely across Britain. But by 5000 BC they were starting to settle down, and a landmark of the south west - the Dorset Ridgeway - became a magnet for thousands.
For many experts, the Ridgeway is as important as Stonehenge in understanding the lives of our prehistoric ancestors. The ridge of high land running parallel with the coast between Weymouth and Dorchester has been an important place for people since the Neolithic period, from 4000 to 2000 BC.
There are no fewer than 1000 ancient monuments that record the history of the Ridgeway since that time, including baffling great henges that showcased unexplained rituals, at least one of which involves a giant stone penis; a town built on top of a massive Iron Age hill fort; and a deadly and terrifying Roman war machine.
Time Team investigate, and reveal how the latest scientific advances are shedding new light on the way our Stone Age ancestors lived. The extraordinary range of monuments on the ridgeway make it one of the richest archaeological sites in Britain, and Time Team's journey along its length is a journey through thousands of years of human occupation.
The Time Team Guide to Experimental Archaeology. |
First broadcast on Channel 4: 17th March 2013. |
Tony Robinson celebrates the more than 150 practical experiments and re-creations that he and the Team have conducted over 20 years in order to unlock the mysteries exposed by their digs.
Rebuilding - and even reliving - the past is a controversial area of archaeology. But it's one that Time Team has long championed, and one that has yielded some amazing results.
This programme revisits some of the programme's greatest hits, from recreating individual objects such as Stone Age axes, Roman pewter bowls, medieval pottery and a Stone Age sword that throws new light on the myth of King Arthur's Excalibur, to building an entire Iron Age house and a Roman machine that lifted water from a deep well.
The programme also revisits some of Time Team's forays into living history, from finding out what it felt like to be in Dad's Army to surviving 24 hours as a Victorian prisoner, in an attempt to see the past through our ancestors' eyes. Plus how a huge and - at times - contentious experiment for the programme finally solved the riddle of Seahenge.
First broadcast on Channel 4: 27th March 2013. |
In a special 20th anniversary celebration for the programme, Tony Robinson relives the best bits from more than 200 episodes, taking in major highlights such as digging up the garden of Buckingham Palace to reveal a crashed Spitfire and discovering the first stone circle to be found in Britain for 150 years.
There is a reminder of how the show grew from nervous beginnings in a Somerset field into attempting city-wide digs and promoting nationwide events in which thousands of people spent the weekend digging in their own back gardens.