Time Team - The Big Dig (And Other Archeology Programs On TV)

HSA's mum is an archeologist, so she knows about all these things. I heart HSA's mum!

Call me weird, but I really like it when they find nothing. Because they so obviously try to hide their disappointment and teach us something anyway.

If you like it when they find nothing, then you would have loved it. There was nary an excuse to dress up in Pagan costume and re-enact a bobbins ceremony that they have worked out from finding a couple of pistachio nut shells in a hole.

Silbury Hill is great to get pissed on. The Barrow nearby is equally spooky.

The best thing is when they find nothing, but they have their artist bloke paint a picture of what they THOUGHT they would find, had their theories been correct. "Well, clearly we found nothing but DIRRRRRT but here is a painting of an Iron Age tea dance!"

Then they concreted over the lot and built the ugliest, least fitting, most pointless department store you could imagine.

However, they did mention Silbury Hill/West Kennet in coordination with Avebury. In fact, they did a little segment on Silbury Hill saying "We really wish that this had made the top ten, jeez, you viewers are stoopid not to vote for it"

They also noted the vast system of monoliths and arcades across the landscape around Avebury.

(We were hoping that they would show the other White Horses around the area, as well, because then you could see HSA's mum's house on the telly!)

http://www.carlukecc.freeserve.co.uk/images/Gallery/Hunter%20Kennedy/callenish.jpg

Makes the other monuments look like piles of silly stones (or boring bumps or caves or ickle pictures of horsey-worsies). Apparently "Hercules" by Aaron Neville was written about it.

My brother has a beermat featuring a picture of the Cerne Giant and signed by Depeche Mode. This is the worst thing I can say about the Cerne Giant.

I am looking through dozens of photos of White Horses in Wiltshire, but I can't find the right one and Mysterious Wiltshire is being no help at all. HSA's mum's White Horse is very prancing and gay.

I think it may be one of these:

http://www.microlight.flyer.co.uk/chalk.htm

I think it was Maiden Castle they were talking about on that particular programme, being gleaming and white and made of chalk. Carenza was quite keen on it!

I think that is just about the only situation where "Let me through! I'm an archeologist!" would actually work.

Yes!!! That is HSA's mum's White Horse! I am very pleased.

Try clicking here:

http://wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk/images/bromidfront.jpg

http://wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk/bromidfront.html

A spelling pedant writes: Callanish or Calanais. I've spent several relaxed summer evenings leaning against those stones, drinking bouze.

(apparently, lots of pro archaeologists were very anti- Big Dig, because they thought it would encourage lots of amateurs to go plunging through and digging up everything they could find, thus destroying it all.)

http://www.weirdwiltshire.co.uk/wiltshire/leisure/weird/images/broadtown.gif

http://www.weirdwiltshire.co.uk/whitehorses/broad.html

In case that doesn't work.

You weren't allowed to participate in the Big Dig unless you had already checked that your site wasn't scheduled or protected or anything.

The Weird Wiltshire site is GREAT!!! I must say that.

It was curious that almost all of the sites on that 10 Best Programme were either in Southwest England or else in the Orkneys, with nothing in between. Does Wiltshire have a monopoly on sites for some reason, or are their tourist board just better at promoting them?

Also: cider / whisky.

The sites in the programme weren't the "most significant" as picked by historians or archeologists, it was a populist vote. Therefore it would be the "best known" or "best loved" sites.

Though I see your point about monuments being better preserved in remote areas than, say, London or Manchester.

1. Wiltshire's totally the Midlands
2. I suspect the national fame of lots of those sites happened in the late 19th / early 20th century with the (arts & crafts etc etc related) fashionability of heritage / archaeology. Even with the advent of the railway, Wiltshire is much easier to get to from England's main centres of population than Cornwall. (This doesn't explain Orkney obv but I'll put that down to the continuing incuresion of viking types or something).
3. Maybe Wiltshire had a particular culture of standing stones. chalkuy uplands = good place to carve pictures into a hill. Try doing it on some sodden foggy Dartmoor Tor and you'd be wasting your time.
4. Cider?
5. the above are rough guesses of course
6. WG Hoskins "The Making of the English Landscape is the best book ever anywhere by anyone about anything. I prefer the little Pelican version to the large format with colour pictures version. But that's just me. He was from Exeter you know.

If you'd told me this morning I'd be looking through thisisg0lf.com, I would have thought you were wrong.

The Time Team programme from Ely made me want to live in Ely. But I don't.

Gah, I have an archaeology exam to revise for and I'm replying to this instead. Shows dedication, I expose.

Hmm, yes, anyway: I discovered a few weeks ago (at Barcombe Roman Villa in Sussex) the joy of finding nothing on an archaeological site! It means that you know there is definitely nothing in that area and can get on with the rest of it! Wahey!
Pro-archaeologists seem to enjoy this. Although possibly not quite as much as drinking.

I'm going to Yorkshire for a month soon to dig up a Mesolithic peat-bog with an archaeologist who I bet was against the big-dig thing. (Or he would have had an opinion, anyway, he runs an MA in Public Archaeology...) I'll have to ask him.

I'm sure it just means there'll be even more of a surplus of archaeology graduates. but ho-hum, even less money for me if I ever take it up professionally. bugger.

and...Cope's book is somewhat a load of subjective, conjectural rubbish. completely unproveable and inherently biased. interesting from a phenomenological, post-processual viewpoint, though...

Aah, archaeological theory.

and better than talking about their socio-economic meaning...

Pro-archaeologists generally enjoy nothing as much as drinking, though.

I agree with you about the Cope. He might not have invented the stone circles himself, but the 'completely unprovable, inherently biased' is spot on, although no worse than most of the guff that gets published about them.

By 'the old woman of Callanish', do you mean the one laid down on the horizon?

I am also post-processual. It's uncomfortable. But that might be the Chalfonts.

If you go to Callanish and look in one particular direction, on the skyline there's a range of low hills that look like the profile of a woman lying down. At a particular time of year, the moon rises from her groin and skims across her breasts. It might be partly why the Callanish was such a holy site.

But if you are going to Wiltshire, why bother with crudely drawn chalk pictures when you could visit my childhood home? It's in Sherston (in Northern Wiltshire, or probably Scotland if you listen to Hopkins), an old 17th Century coaching inn, and it says "SKIDMORE'S" on it in big letters, or at least it did when I last went past, so you can't miss it (it was my dad's, who was a butcher; when he retired and sold it, the new owners felt the name had been so well established it should be kept).

So that's why every Time Team programme seems to end with Phil and Mick settling down with a horn full of mead or something...

Yup, Bill, that's the Motel of the Mysteries with the Toilet Seat. I loved that bit - the ritual chant, "Sanitised for your protection."

I didn't become an archeologist because... well... you have to go to school for a very long time - often the rest of your life - and I hate university. Though I probably should ask HSA's mum or someone about how I sign up to go dig non-professionally. (Or just keep wandering along the Thames tidal plane collecting teeth)

I just went on this with university, although as part of my course, not the public thingy (which is fully booked, but is prob running for years ahead...)

http://www.archaeologyse.co.uk/courses.html

To be fair, the site isn't spectacular, but lots of tile to be had! And a nice tesselated floor! Woo hoo!

I know Reading University does a training dig at Silchester which is meant to be good, but again, prob booked up (and again still running for years...)

This might help: http://www.archaeology.co.uk/directory/index.htm

And finally, the lovely people at UCL are having an open day. Come, marvel at the drawers full of stuff in the collection, which people seem to have very little idea of the contents of (I should know, I'm meant to go back and finish cataloguing bits of the bloody stuff next term...)

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/events/natarchday.html

It's like a chance to meet a whole department full of strange people!

Not only that ILx sighting fans but I just saw Ed loping in his peculiar gait down Torrington Place.

For the non-archaeologists: V. Gordon Childe was a famous archaeologist from the 20th century. He was an Australian and a Marxist, one of the people Orwell 'denounced' to the Foreign Office as a Soviet sympathiser, and [allegedly] killed himself by jumping off a cliff shortly after he retired, when carbon dating was starting to prove that most of his life's work was a bit wrong.

And I know all too much about the Institute of Archaeology - last year I had to import their rather poor quality alumnus data into the main UCL alumnus system. Some addresses were along the lines of "somewhere in Scotland, probably".

I loved their scrolling "breaking news" things that never said anything newsworthy or interesting.

In the end, did they find anything?

Did anyone else in this world ever go to the Notting Hill carnival and Buckingham Palace on the same weekend?

We're not following TV cameras around.

found a lot of walls and a few trinkets. and a broken tankard. the odd coin (and a beer token, like a coin but only valid for pubs). they did a lot of extrapolation, as usual 8)

flavoured ice in the shape of asparagus. champagne jelly. the history of mealtimes was interesting.

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/B/big_royal_dig/buck_pal/buck_latest.html
has some details (but not much).

archel, was your friend meriel? (see same page)

http://www.archaeology.org/0407/reviews/jpegs/battlefield.jpeg

(The one in the kilt, natch.)

I used to have a MASSIVE crush on his older sister Al3x Burn3t who appears in this episode a lot I'm told... I'm really sad that I missed it.... :)

Man dies in freak jousting accident whilst filming Time Team.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7056583.stm

We must have seen this guy! (Unless there are loads of jouster re-enactment people, which is possible)

Earlier this year, we all went to a "History Weekend" which had lots of flying biplanes, battle re-enactments, medieval camps, sword fightings and Joustings. They use Balsawood as jousting lances, but it still looks pretty dangerous stuff.

This looks like one hell of a freak occurance, but even so...