Time Team Digs - A History Of Britain

Over the last ten years Time Team have dug lots of Bronze Age sites. We’ve uncovered everything from burial mounds and grave goods to elaborate track ways and entire communities. It’s a fantastic picture, far richer than the one we’ve previously had. But after a decade of amazing finds in the fields and back gardens of rural and urban Britain, we’ve decided it’s time to re-examine what we’ve learnt. So now, we bring you the best of our discoveries in Time Team digs the Bronze Age.

If schoolboy history is to be believed, Iron Age Britain was full of woad-painted men and women running around spearing each other at every opportunity. Well we found that the Iron Age Brits were at times a bloodthirsty lot, and over the last ten years we’ve been surprised, amazed and occasionally shocked by what we’ve uncovered. But have we fundamentally changed that school history book image? See what you think as we enjoy a fresh look at the best of those discoveries in Time Team digs the Iron Age.

If I asked you what the Romans did to Britain I guess you come up with quite a list. They built our first highways and cities. They introduced a legal system, bureaucracy, taxes. On the positive side, they improved our cooking and threw in the creature comforts of central heating and wine. But above all, in unifying the country under one administration, they joined Britain to a European empire. As we’ve dug our way around this early version of Britain, we’ve had some unique insights into the Romanisation of the island. We’ve been able to throw new light on how the Roman army operated and how the natives reacted. Join us as Time Team digs the Roman invasion.

When the Romans invaded Britain in 43AD, they quickly won over most of the local tribal chiefs. And in return for support from the native Britons, they introduced them to the good life, Roman style. By the time the occupation had lasted a couple of hundred years, Roman Britain had turned into a pretty fancy and desirable place. If you believed the myth that this was the Siberia of the empire, you'll think again by the end of this programme, as we return to the best of our Roman sites in Time Team digs the Romans.

After the Romans left Britain early in the fifth century, waves of other invaders moved in. Jutes, Angles, Saxon, Vikings and Norsemen, all left their mark during a turbulent period of British history. There's all the more fascinating for being so difficult to unpick. Without archaeology, we'd have precious little idea of what was going on during this period at all. So all Time Team Saxon and Viking sites have been puzzling, exciting and fortunately, very revealing. What we've uncovered of Saxon and Viking Britain have shed extraordinary new light on the time we refer to as the Dark Ages.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, England was a prosperous place. You can see evidence of the growing population and rising wealth in the development of our towns and cities. But, it was also a country of war, famine and social unrest. This isn't just the time of Cressy and Agincourt, but also of the Black Death and the peasant revolt. This week we investigate triumph and tragedy as Time Team digs in Medieval England.

From the end of the Middle Ages onwards, British archaeology presents us with a staggering mass of detail about our development from island states to world power. Archaeology can reveal the details of events spanning centuries, years, months or even days. Time Team's encountered them all as we've dug our way into modern Britain. This is Greenwich Park in London, which like most London parks, only exists because it used to be a royal hunting ground. An hour upstream, is the biggest deer park of them all, Richmond. And there, on the river bank, once stood a great palace, of which there's now very little left. And that's where we begin our archaeological quest for Modern Britain.

Right, think of an important historical date. Have you thought of one? Was it 1066, the date of the Battle of Hastings which kicked off the Norman conquest? I thought it might be. The fact that this date is so burnt into our minds shows that somehow we believe that this country changed overnight at that time. From being some Anglo-Saxon Celtic place to being sort of French. But what impact did the Norman invasion actually have? Did everything change just like that? Time Team's dug loads of sites from that period and now, we've put the best of them together to see if we can answer those questions.