Unearthing the Time Team
Time Team: Unearthing the Roman Invasion is a newly published (May 2012) boxed set of three DVDs, which brings together 12 related episodes of the outrageously successful British reality TV series. Since 1994, the Channel 4 Time Team program has documented the archaeological investigations of a group of professional and amateur archaeologists and historians at sites around the UK, covering archaeological periods from the Paleolithic through World War II. Each episode features actor and writer Tony Robinson (best known as Baldric in the Blackadder series) as chief enthusiast and cheeky gadfly. In each episode, a varying crew of archaeologists and historians visits a new archaeological site. For three days, the intrepid crew braves inclement weather and unknown archaeology to identify the condition and cultural components of each site.
That's right – I said three days. According to popular legend, the idea for the program arose from a conversation that archaeologist Mick Aston had with Tony Robinson in the 1980s, in which Aston boasted that he could assess any archaeological site in the space of three days. The program is now in its 19th season, and there are untold numbers of archaeological reports that have come out of the investigations, all published By Wessex Archaeology, who also provide one of the leading characters (and I use that word advisedly), field archaeologist Phil Harding.
Unearthing the Roman Invasion
Tony Robinson, Mick Aston and Guy de la Bédoyère, members of the Time Team in 2007
Guy de la BédoyèreUnearthing the Roman Invasion is a selection of 12 episodes on Roman sites – military posts and the associated civilian communities, villas, bronze workshops, cemeteries, hotels or way stations, coin hoards, shops, and temples and temple complexes – throughout the UK. The archaeologists use remote sensing techniques, field survey, backhoes, trowels, pickaxes and historical research to open a window into an astonishingly wide variety of sites.
During each program, small finds are cleaned and catalogued; buildings are identified, mapped and given computerized reconstructions; and reenactments and experimental archaeology explore a range of Roman cultural events, from the lives of slaves and orators to the processes involved in making horseshoes, frescoes and mosaics and, from Tony Robinson's expression, what appears to be a nasty-tasting ale.
The topics introduced in the episodes include archaeological ethics, sacred springs, payroll accounting, customs, Samian pottery, bronze metallurgy, the relationships between the Romans and the Iron Age natives, the impact of Christianization, literacy, slavery, taxation and the control of Roman roads: really when you think about it, after watching nearly 600 minutes of Time Team programs, I think I could easily pass my A Levels.
Where In The World?
Sites included in the collection are from many different seasons of Time Team and cover the entire Roman occupation of Britain, beginning in the first century AD when Julius Caesar first invaded Britain, through the fifth century AD, during the last gasp of the Roman Empire.
The 12 sites investigated include a first century villa in Tockenham, Wiltshire; a military cemetery in Birdoswald near Hadrian's Wall; a Roman temple and part of the Watling roadway in Greenwich Park, London; a defensive wall in Lincolnshire; a mansio (hotel or way station) on the Roman Road at Alfodean in Sussex; a vicus, a community of civilians supporting the second century Vinovia Fort in Binchester; a bronze workshop in Wickenby; a villa at Coberly in the Cotswolds; a temple complex at Friars Walk near St. Albans; a row of shops in Caerwent, Wales; a coin hoard in the Roman town of Cunetio; and the town of High Ham in Somerset Fields, where Roman mosaics identified in the 19th century were rediscovered.
Pros and Cons
One benefit to seeing the entire range of sites from a cross-section of the 19 seasons of Time Team is watching the participants age and change. Along the way, there is a lot of good-natured sparring, exhibiting tensions between archaeology and ancient history, as differing interpretations and interests clash in an entertaining and downright friendly way. Let's go to the pub! they cry: that makes you wish you could go with them.
Besides Robinson, Time Team members include professional archaeologists and historians from a wide range of British universities and societies, including Mick Aston, Stewart Ainsworth, John Gater, Carenza Lewis, Helen Geake, Francis Pryor, Margaret Cox, Phil Harding, David S. Neil, Matt Williams and Guy de la Bédoyère, among many others whose names I did not catch. Biographies are provided on the first DVD for the current members, and I understand why that's the way it worked out, but I would have liked to see more.
While American professional audiences may find the lack of screening, the somewhat cavalier treatment of the dead, and the offhand reference to "uninteresting post-medieval" cultural material, there is no denying that Robinson and his crew make archaeology and ancient history amazingly accessible to the viewer. Rather than being simply the dead dry stuff of serious archaeological research, the episodes are enormously educational, setting events and people of Roman history into an approachable context.
American archaeologist Kent Flannery famously said, archaeology is the most fun you can have with your pants on: the DVD collection Time Team: Unearthing the Roman Invasion reflects that in spades. Pun intended.
