Time Team

Time Team's Guide to Burial (19x12)

: 29, 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.