Time Team Extra

Hello, and welcome to Time Team extra. I’m Robin Bush, and every week I’ll be in these magnificent surroundings to give you a little more, a little something extra that we haven’t had the time to include in Time Team, Channel Four’s award winning archaeological programme. As the team digs deeper into the archaeology, I’m going to try and delve similarly deeply into the history surrounding each site. Helping me this week, I’ve got Dr Simon Thurly, director of The Museum Of London

Hello, welcome to Time Team extra. I’m Robin Bush, and every week I’m going to try and bring you something extra to Channel Four’s award winning archaeological show, Time Team, something we haven’t quite managed to, to squeeze into the programme. I’m joined this week by Dr Francis Pryor, and he’d hate me for saying this but Francis is a bit of a living legend in archaeological circles because about fifteen years ago, he discovered some fascinating bits of wood near Peterborough. This became Flag Fenn, one of England’s most intriguing archaeological sites.

For centuries, this lonely headland on the northern most tip of Britain has been a sacred place. Last week Time Team came here to uncover a unique piece of Viking Britain. A series of small mounds which are all that remains of the graves of Viking warriors, who lived here a thousand years ago. Hello, and welcome to Time Team extra. I’m Robin Bush and each week, I’m going to tell you a bit more about the history surrounding the archaeological sites that Time Team are excavating during the current series. With me this week is Professor John Hunter of the University of Birmingham, who’s an expert on the history of Britain during the period of the Viking occupation. For last weeks programme, Time Team went to Sanday in the Orkneys, to investigate what we hoped would be a series of Viking burial mounds.

It was the locals in Monty Python's Life Of Brian who famously asked "What have the Romans ever done for us"? The answer is, quite a lot. Certainly, that's what Time Team found when we dug a Roman villa site at Turkdean in the Cotswolds last summer. Which, as i'm sure you'll agree if you ever saw last Sunday's programme turned out to be one of our most successful digs yet. Well, more of what the Romans did later, with my guest, Guy De La Bédoyère, historian and archaeologist. But I suppose the story really starts with the arrival of the Roman legions. Roman army invaded Britain in AD43, arriving on the south coast. Here and there particularly in Wales, they met with stiff resistance from the British tribes. In the south they conquered more easily, rapidly establishing dominance through a series of garison towns and roads. The pattern of their occupation was clearly seen from the air by Mick and Tony as they circled the Time Team site.

Welcome to the slightly less sun-drenched library of Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire and Time Team extra. My guest this week is Professor Richard Bradley of the University of Reading. Together, we hope to unravel some of the mysteries of the Beaker culture. If we’re ever dug up in 4000 years time, it’s interesting to speculate, what would be the fashion accessories of our day? The mobile phone perhaps or the Sony walkman. The Beaker period, it was this, a simple decorated beaker. This one’s a replica, but you can see the original in Disraeli’s Museum. The Beaker period began about 2500 BC and lasted about 600 years. In Europe this was the period known as the Copper Age, and in Britain, it coincided with the early Bronze Age period when metal was first being worked.

In the 14th century Shropshire was one of the wildest counties in England. Poverty, famine and war with the Welsh were constant threats. A key to stability lay with local landowners, some of whom prospered in the face of adversity, some of whom didn’t. This is the home of one powerful medieval family who lost the battle to survive. In last Sunday’s Time Team we came here to find out why. Hello, and welcome to Time Team extra. I’m Robin Bush and each week I’ll be here to put Time Team’s current programmes into some form of historical perspective. In this weeks programme, Time Team visited a medieval manor house at Aston Eyre in Shropshire, where the archaeologists tried to work out when the many different phases of the buildings had been put up. Historian Paul Stamper, had the job of relating the changes to the buildings with the various owners of Aston Eyre through the Middle Ages. To digest our finds and help us put them in a broader context is Professor Ronald Hutton from the University of Bristol. But let’s begin with the first challenge of last Sunday’s Time Team, which was to work out how to do archaeology on buildings that’s are still above ground floor level.

Cathedral Hill at Downpatrick is one of Ireland’s most sacred sites and has a rich history stretching back as far as the fifth century, when it’s thought that Saint Patrick founded the first church here. But how much of that important history still survives under the ground? In last Sunday’s programme Time Team were offered the rare opportunity to find out. I’m Robin Bush and welcome again to Time Team extra. The programme which I’m delighted to say gives us a chance to look in more depth at the background history associated with last Sunday’s Time Team programme. Joining me today is Dr Peter Harbison of the Royal Irish Academy who of course was with us on that dig. He’s an expert on the early church in Ireland. I thought we’d start this weeks programme with something you didn’t get to see on Sunday. And this is it, the letter of permission from the Bishop, without which we couldn’t even put a spade in the ground. This is the faculty as they call it, and it’s a beautiful thing isn’t it, complete with the Bishops signature and seal. So we had our permission to dig on the Cathedral Hill at Downpatrick, but I think everybody realised what a challenge we had on our hands.

Hello, and welcome again to Time Team extra. I’m Robin Bush, and across the next half hour I’ll be taking a more in depth look at some of the things that Time Team found only last Sunday. Helping me this week is Dr Richard Lomas from the University of Durham. He’s something of an expert on early medieval village life. He’ll be helping me put a little flesh on the historical bones as it were. Last Sunday’s programme took us at the starting point, some lumps and bumps in a field just outside Middlesborough. Underneath this field lies the village of High Worsall.