Time Team America: Fort Raleigh
This week, the much-anticipated Time Team America begins its premiere season on PBS, five weeks over the summer during which public television viewers will get a first-hand look at high-tech archaeology in the United States.
The first program, airing the evening of Wednesday July 8th (8 pm EDT, check local listings), features ongoing investigations at Fort Raleigh, North Carolina, the site of the first English colony in the American continents. The site is perhaps more famously known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, and its legend about Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas, and the mysterious disappearance of the colony has inspired untold numbers of American children into learning about the past.
Time Team and Fort Raleigh
Time Team America's hour long video on Fort Raleigh documents three days of excavations, assisted by geophysical survey. The test area is located at an area of the island that had been identified as containing historic artifacts of the right age about 10 years ago. Two large trenches are excavated over the three days in this area, opened using a backhoe to strip off the wind-blown sand believed to have been deposited on the area after the American Revolution. Backhoe stripping is a perfectly legitimate technique, which I suspect will surprise some viewers; its good and bad points aren't described here, but someday I might get to that.
The video does a good job of presenting the story, cramming an enormous quantity of information into an hour. Discussions of the site and excavation progress are held between the members of Time Team America and First Colony Foundation members Nick Luccketti and Eric Klingelhofer. Historical information about the site comes from historian Karen Kupperman, Jim Holt of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the iconic historical archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume, who excavated at Fort Raleigh in 1991. The current five-year-long project of excavations are being run by the First Colony Foundation, assisted by members from Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown, two important historic colonial sites.
I like that there is considerable amount of discussion given over to recreating the colony, both with drawings and discussion of the context for both the colonist and local Native American situation. Tiny fragments of artifacts discovered during the dig are also described and the whole vessels recreated, which is a nice feature.
I have one minor bone to pick: I'm a bit confused about what exact geophysical survey method is being used. There are several that it could be, but I personally don't know enough about the various techniques to recognize this particular method. Geophysicist Meg Watters does a great job of explaining how the methodology works at the ground beneath the surface, but a name for the method would have been nice. It may be simply too arcane an issue to fit into the short amount of time and dense information within the program. (As an aside, I would love an illustrated list of these methods, so if anybody knows if such a thing exists, or would be willing to work with me to get one together, please drop me a line).
On the Website The PBS website for Time Team America's visit to Fort Raleigh has a slew of great resources: TTA member Julie Schlabitsky writes about what it's like to meet Ivor Noel Hume; Eric Deetz describes how to section a posthole; and of course you can see the video itself in its entirety. And they provide an update for the ongoing research at Fort Raleigh. What they haven't got is a bibliography, which I've assembled because that's just the kind of a girl I am.
Bottom Line I thoroughly enjoyed the video, and am thrilled to see this fabulous opportunity to showcase archaeology with all its warts and glories; the website contains lots more information, and all in all, I'm glad to see that Time Team America is off to such an auspicious start.
More Information
Time Team America digging team leader Chelsea Rose and digging team member Jeff Brown carefully sift through the soil as they excavate at Fort Raleigh National Park on Roanoke Island. In addition to searching for artifacts, they are looking for subtle differences in soil texture that would indicate decayed wooden structures built by Roanoke’s legendary lost colonists. Photo by Crystal Street
Comments
“what exact geophysical survey method is being used”
The TTA web site says they used Ground Penetrating Radar and Magnetometry.
http://www.pbs.org/opb/timeteam/sites/ft_raleigh/incidentroom.php
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Time Team America
This is what i originally wrote to PBS.
I think this program is quite interesting and has potential, and I have watched two of the series so far. But I have been doing archaeology in Oregon and Washington for 30 years, and most of the “Time Team America” presentation is just not reality or even close to what your publicity has suggested.
You have all these Time Team America “experts” who contribute nothing, say nothing, and do nothing. Its so obvious to anyone that has done archaeology, that all these “experts” regardless of their credentials, are planted.
Chelsea Rose, as attractive as she is, is just shown kneeling in a previously excavated Clovis floor. She contributed nothing, she said nothing, she did nothing. The same is true of your “expert” Julie Schablitsky. Her comment about the difficult field conditions during the recent Clovis series. . .”I’m hot!!” really says it all. She contributed nothing, she said nothing, she did nothing.
If you want reality, why not show and interview the people who are actually doing all the hard work No archaeology project I have ever worked on required more than the project director and perhaps a crew leader. The last thing we need are Time Team America “experts” standing around watching everyone else do the difficult work.
All of your Time Team America “experts” just ask questions of the true experts that are intimately involved in the project in question. So why pay all these “experts” that contribute so little. The artist is no different. No one has the money to pay for an artist to sit around and do speculative drawings of mammoths or historic fort palisades based on so littler evidence. For anyone in the profession who does measured drawings of things in context. the presence of your artist is ridiculous. Its not reality. The ground penetrating radar segments are rather silly as well.
None of my comments are things your general audience would particularly notice or probably care about. My suggestion is just do something like the History Detectives, where one or two people go about the business of reporting. Leave all these Time Team America “experts” at home. Same some money. They are really not contributing.
I love your blog Kris – just found it but I will certainly return.
I just had to comment on Robert Wenger’s comment, because I think he has misunderstood the whole concept of the show and what it intends to do. I’ve been following the original Time Team for many years and have watched every single episode (even the complete live ones – it’s true – even the parts where nothing happens). What Robert Wenger does with his comment is just to make critics based on a total misinterpretation of both the idea behind the show and what it tries to do.
When Mick Taylor, Mick Aston and Tony Robinson sat down all those years ago with an idea to make a show about archaeology for the public, they had to find a way to make it professional enough to be believed and entertaining enough for the viewers to stay with the show. It never was their intention to take over an existing dig or to do a complete dig. Ongoing projects always got 2 really big problems – time and money and they don’t have enough of either. What Time Team has been able to do is to bring in experts and equipment those projects never would have been able to afford to and to answer some few vital questions and at the same time give the project public exposure. At the same time there are many unanswered questions that has never even been looked at, and the team can go in evaluate the situation and be a good indication on what to expect from future digs or if the area should be protected or not.
I just find it so frustrating that there always are those who have to complain and bicker about everything without even sitting back and thinking it through first. It is so little constructive and only helps in destroying what others are trying to achieve.
Enough said …
Yngve Hauge
Non-archaeologist even though I know alot about it by now
I just have to correct myself as I see now that I mentioned that mysterious Mick Taylor guy – of course I meant Tim Taylor. Sorry about that …
– Yngve