Time Team

Elveden, Suffolk - In Search Of The Earliest Traces Of Mankind (7x6)

Air date: Feb 06, 2000

In search of the earliest traces of mankind. Mick Aston describes it as one of the oddest Time Team locations he's worked at. 'By day we'd be rooting about in this ancient clay and mud and looking for traces of our ancestors from 400,000 years ago, and then in the evening we'd all go back to this Center Park's holiday camp in the middle of the forest. Very strange.' Whether or not it was the oddest, it was certainly the oldest site that Time Team has ever excavated. It was also one of the rarest. Sites showing evidence of human activity dating back 400,000 years are so uncommon in this country that the only way that Time Team was able to become involved in investigating one was by joining an established British Museum excavation. Nick Ashton, a Palaeolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, was pleased to invite the Team to bring in their expertise and resources to help out on his ongoing project at Elveden, near Thetford in Suffolk.