Time Team

Bodmin Moor, Cornwall - In the Shadow of the Tor (14x13)

Uitzenddatum: Apr 08, 2007

In The Shadow Of The Tor. The Team descend on the bleak, beautiful landscape of Bodmin Moor to face one their biggest challenges yet. The dig aims to date a possible Bronze Age village of stone houses. But alongside the village is a vast and mysterious 300-metre-long stone structure. It's likely to be much older than Bronze Age but no one knows what it might have been. Could it be the biggest burial mound in England? The diggers battle appalling weather to unearth archaeological relics that take them back 7,000 years, when Stone Age man stopped hunting and gathering and settled down to farm the land. In a makeshift lab another investigation is underway involving test tubes and microscopes. By analysing the soil and the remains of tiny bugs, the scientists begin to build up a picture of a once lush, forested expanse, while also seeking to unravel how Bodmin Moor changed from a land of milk and honey into the windswept landscape it is today. Meanwhile, out in the water-logged trenches the diggers unearth much needed evidence of some of the earliest settlements in the country. And the 300-metre-long pile of stones proves to be much more significant than any of the archaeologists had dared hope for: a monument unique in British archaeology.