The Dig

The Dig and Time Team

I concur, it is a good movie. I watched it last year sometime after watching several seasons of time team. Time team was one of the most popular shows on the BBC. A rather quirky group of archeologists headed up by Tony Robinson travel around Great Britain conducting digs of sites that have never been dug. The goal is to uncover as much as possible in a three day dig and report as a television show.

Professors of archeology must scream in their over padded chairs at these people, but they are professional and mostly the are doing the kind of preliminary work necessary to determine if more work is necessary. The professional team consists of Phil Harding, Mick Aston and a variety of experts the series brings in. Phil and Mick are the delight of the series, solely because they fit the image of mildly crazy English academic. Most of England seems to think the same as the series went on for 20 years, ending in 2014. The entire series is on Amazon Prime and is worth some time if your interested in English history and archeology. 

Very interesting info and photos from that British Museum link. I did read elsewhere that at first they thought no body had been buried with the ship. But the soil samples of later excavations I guessed proved there was one. It’s just that it was not preserved in the highly acidic soil.

That purse lid is truly the stuff of kings or noblemen. And it’s nice to be able to view some of those photographs that were taken back in 1939. That was a nice aspect of the film, although the fellow in the film was a composite of two other characters.

Well, we grow rock of all sizes. However in Sacramento if you go down 20 feet you can find the remains of the city in the 19th century. The city fathers got tired of the annual flooding of the Sacramento River and built the city up about 20 feet. So, like Seattle there is a whole underground in Sacramento that few except history professors. 

Episode 2 of Season 2 of Time Team was about Hylton Castle in Sunderland.

This is in 1995 and apparently the local community’s castle restoration team was just getting underway. The Time Team is ostensibly brought in to help do an initial survey, although the castle’s official web site has no obvious mention of them.

But it appears (especially if you look at that Google Map link) that plans are underway (there’s a lot of bare earth laid exposed) and a grand opening is set or has happened recently. This web site mentions a 2020 date so I don’t know how often they update it. But under “Plan Your Visit” it says:



One suspects the Wuhann Flu madness has stalled things. And along with the castle is a large expanse of open space called “Hylton Dene” which is a local favorite for dog walking and such. Anyway, despite the lack of credit on their official web site, the impression is that the Time Team gave them quite a boost.

The episode itself was so-so. They dig a few trenches, scan the earth underneath, and then talk about what structures were probably there. Unfortunately, the way it’s presented it all seems like idle speculation. Either they don’t have the time to present their conclusion in a coherent fashion or they’re just making it up as they go along. There is a sense of the latter.

And for all the centrality of the castle to the story, we’re not given much of a look at it other than mostly exterior shots. There is one interior sequence but it doesn’t range far. From what I’ve read, the castle didn’t seem to become abandoned until the 1950s or so. But there’s little background in the program on previous owners or how it came to be in the state and shape it is in.

Further reading shows that there were several owners and each did a fairly thorough remodel. Nothing is sacred and entire walls or windows were removed or changed to fit the fashion of the times. So the remaining castle is a hodgepodge of influences and remainders.

The grounds themselves hold great promise for restoration. Apparently there was previously quite a formal garden with ponds and paths. And if you look to the far right of that Google Map image, you’ll see some rippling in the lawn which, I think, was explained as where a terraced garden once lay.

I think 15 K would be a good start. I missed England and France when I was in Europe, of course I was not a tourist. There are a few places I long to see but probably won't except pictures. There are a few in Wales, Ireland and Scotland that I would like to visit, Harlech in Wales, Carrickfergus in Ireland and Holyrood in Scotland. In France there is only one Fontevraud Abbey and pay respect to Eleanor and Henry II. Of all the 11th century monarchs these two were the most influential, neither England or France would become real nations without them. For the rest just drift with where the urge takes. 

Never heard of it, but it's officially on the tentative itinerary. You had me at "Holyrood." With a name like that, I've got to see it.

In episode two of season two, Time Team visits Tockenham, Wiltshire, to take a look at a pagan Roman statue embedded into one of the outer walls of the 15th century church, St. Giles.

They bring in an expert who tells them exactly who the figure is (not who they thought it was) which changes their whole idea about what the story could be behind the statue.

That’s the excuse for coming to Tockenham. But the real story picks up when they hear of a local farmer who had found some Roman artifacts in his field. When they scan the field, it appears to be a major Roman villa buried underneath. More info here.

This led to the farmer’s land being “scheduled” by the British government which presumably means he lost all use of it and pretty much put a halt to any real exploration by the Time Team, although they were allowed to dig a couple preliminary ditches at the margins. Perhaps the farmer should have kept quiet about the artifacts. I wonder if he is compensated for his inability to use the land. I wonder even if he still has to pay taxes on it. None of this was delved into.

As far as I can tell, very little work has been done at the site since the 1994 brief survey by the Time Team. My guess is there are a whole lot of farmers finding things who keep mum about it. I don’t blame them.

There is a fine series on Netflix Secrets of Great English Castles. It covers Dover, Tower of London, Warwick, Carnarvon, Stirling, and Carrckfurgus. It is not an expansive history but give a solid overview of The Who and why these castles were built and good photos of the castles today. I found it mostly interesting with a few  moment of repetitive boredom.

Season 2, episode 3 of Time Team is about Lambeth Palace. Not a particularly good episode. The highlight (as it usually is) is the one team or expert who recreates ancient technology or artifacts. In this one they build a small section of a Roman road. An episode completely focused on the roads would have been much preferred. At the end of the day, they really didn’t find out much in their excavations around Lambeth Palace.

Next up was one set in Winterbourne Gunner where a developer has had to halt his project because of an old graveyard. I commend Tony Robinson for not being a politically correct namby-pamby prick. He was getting in the face of one of these seaword technocrats who informed us that not only did the developer have to stop his work, he had to pay for the excavations that the state demanded. Tony didn’t slap this clown (as he should have) but he didn’t just roll over. He asked her some hard questions

Again, I can guarantee you there are thousands of farmers and developers who have found great stuff while digging or plowing but have hushed it up because of the onerous demands of the state.

I’m all for recovering and preserving the past. But, Jesus H. Christ, I doubt you could swing a dead cat in Britain without uncovering some buried corpse of piece of pottery. There has to be some balance. And if you’re going to devalue someone’s property, it is incumbent upon the state to compensate a property owner. I could have slapped that bitch when she said that the developer had to pay for the excavations.

In this case, Time Team was able to render a valuable service to the developer. They did a fair amount of excavation, including uncovering some graves. By the end of the show, the seaword bureaucrat gave grudging approval for the developer to continue.

The true irony of this (and I would love to share a beer with Tony in a pub to talk about this) is that the one hand of government is interested is preserving the past — while about seven or eight of its other tentacled hands are busy trying its best to overthrow and wipe out Britain, either by importing Muslims or it’s dalliance with the EU. For every acre confiscated from a private property owner, 30 bureaucrats need to be executed or banished from the land.

Season 3, episode 1, visits Boleigh Cornwall where they investigate an interesting cave-like man-made feature called a “foogoo.” At the end of the day, this is also an episode that basically went nowhere. And, again, the highlight was the recreation segment. In this one they smelted some tin. I also got the strong feeling in this one again that, regarding reconstructing the small settlement that once stood here, they were making up an awful lot of it as they were going along. Maybe this is just an honest look at archeology which is likely an inexact a science as is Darwinism.

Would have loved to have seen more about the making of the Roman roads, the tin smelting, the forging of a dagger (which was a too-short segment of a previous episode), and stuff like that. In one of the first shows, they make a suit of cloth “armor” that is stuffed with batting and such in order to cushion sword blows and/or prevent them from cutting. Good stuff these recreation bits. They should concentrate more on them.