Specials

Christmas Special – Much Wenlock - Much Wenlock, Shropshire

As a curtain-raiser for the 1998 series of Time Team, which started in January 1998, Tony and the team gathered. The first Time Team special to air took a look back over the last five years. Over the years, viewers have flooded the series with queries as to what happened after Time Team finished their three-day investigations – were the sites further excavated, were finds available to see in museums and how did local people react to finding an important archaeological find on their doorstep? Time Team returns to a few key sites for updated reports and the Team members also remember their favourite moments and finds.

Christmas Special – Barley Hall - Barley Hall, York

This pre-Christmas special offers a taster of what is coming up in the next series – and provides an update on previous Time Team digs. Presented by Tony Robinson from York's Barley Hall, where a Medieval Christmas celebration is in full swing, the show tells what has happened at many of the digs featured in the last series.

The Mystery of Seahenge - Holme-Next-The-Sea, Norfolk

Last year, on this bleak and beautiful stretch of Norfolk coastline, a local man made an extraordinary discovery. Walking the beach at low tide he found a bronze axe head. Nearby, was a mysterious circle of eroded timber posts half buried in the sand, and in the middle of the circle was a huge upturned tree stump. It’s utterly intriguing nothing quite like it’s ever been found before and everyone wants to know who built it, what it was for and what it originally looked like.

York

The dig's archaeological highs and lows are crammed into just 60 minutes in York where the finds range from a Roman skeleton complete with hobnailed boots, a Viking's discarded leather shoe, and the pillars of a monastic hospital. But what does all the evidence show? Who were these people and how did they live?

The Real King Arthur - Tintagel Castle, Cornwall

This king was called Arthur, and his stories known to us all. But actually he’s shrouded in mystery, some people say that he was a chivalrous medieval king. Others, a gritty Dark Age warrior, others again, that he never existed at all. Time Team are setting out on a quest of our own to see if we can find out who he really was. It’s a journey back in time through centuries of myth and legend, on the way we’ll visit sacred lakes, pull our own sword from the stone and uncover the very first archaeological host.

The Time Team History Of Britain

Time Team takes a trip from the Palaeolithic to the present and plots the nation's past through the finds and revelations made across the last seven series. The Team pays a visit to classic UK archaeological sites, such as Grimes Graves and Bede's World, and examines key digs from programmes past to look at how archaeologists have interpreted the nation's history.

The Mystery of Mine Howe - Tankerness, Orkney

I’m in a remote farm in the Orkneys on a little hillock called Mine Howe. For years there have been stories around here of tunnels under the roads and mysterious underground rooms, which have never been satisfactorily explained until about six months ago when an extraordinary discovery was made. Acting on stories of a lost secret chamber first found in 1946, a local farmer and his friends set out to rediscover it. What they found was extraordinary. A set of stairs made of stone, disappearing into the earth and leading to a dark and secret chamber. A set of stairs leading into a hillock’s unique. And now the whole archaeological world is agog, everyone wants to know who built it and when and what it was put there for.

TMDB 6.0/10 from 1 votes

Behind The Scenes At Time Team

This special programme looked behind the scenes at some of the things that you don't usually see in the normal Time Team programmes.

The Bone Caves - Alveston, Gloucestershire

The Battle of Bosworth was the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses. It was the beginning of the end of three decades of treason, rebellion and dynastic warfare. Against huge odds, Henry Tudor won the day to take the English Crown. It was a turning point in English history, the end of the Middle Ages and the savage beginnings of the country we recognise today.

Coventry’s Lost Cathedral - Coventry, West Midlands

Welcome to what used to be the quiet backgarden of Coventry Cathedral's offices. Quiet that is, until Time Team kick-started an excavation into St Mary's, Coventry's first Cathedral which was ruthlessly destroyed by Henry the Eighth during the reformation. Over three days in 1999 we uncovered the remains of a building which would once have rivalled any Cathedral in England and yet work on this fantastic site had barely begun.

The Island of the Eels - Ely, Cambridgeshire

Time Team has been following an excavation in Ely, Cambridgeshire, for a feature-length documentary screened on 17 May. It has uncovered a remarkable picture of Ely in past centuries: channels where boats used to moor to load and unload goods; a medieval kiln with huge quantities of high-quality pottery finds; and a number of buildings fronting the road at Broad Street.

Dinosaur Hunters - Dinosaur Belt, Montana, USA

If you think archaeologists with their strange haircuts and their bizarre dress sense and their obsession with all the rubbish from ancient civilizations are a funny lot, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Phil and I are in Montana, in the wild west of the USA. And every summer, what seem like half the eccentrics in the universe turn up here to dig for even larger remains from times even longer ago. We’re here to meet the dinosaur hunters, we wanna find out what they do, and how they do it and hopefully even have a go ourselves.

The Big Dig in Canterbury - Canterbury, Kent

I’m right at the top of Canterbury cathedral and a few hundred feet below me, the most ambitious urban archaeological project the country’s ever known, has just begun. One eighth of the entire ancient city is gonna be excavated to make way for a huge new shopping centre. The Big Dig as its known locally is right down there in the centre of town. So it should be jam packed full of exciting archaeology from the present day, back to the Romans and maybe even beyond. The Archaeologists are up against the clock though. The developers want them off site as quickly as possible. The Time Team are gonna be following the progress of the big dig both onsite and behind the scenes and were gonna be helping the local team to reconstruct the 2000 year story of this historic piece of Canterbury real estate. Oh… And we’ve got just nine months to do it.

Londinium, The Edge of an Empire - London

2000 years ago, London didn’t exist. It was created by the Romans in the first century AD. They settled just over there in what we now call the city. It started as a simple bridge over a river, but within a hundred years had become a bustling city with a population of 30,000. But it was a long way from Rome, and Londinium has always been considered a bit of a frontier town, an unsoffisticated outpost perched precariously on the very edge of the Roman empire, until now. Over the last nine months, archaeologists from the Museum of London have been working on a site right in the heart of the city, and what they’ve discovered, suggests that Londinium was in fact one of the most soffisticated and advanced cities in the whole Roman empire.

The Wreck of the Colossus - St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly

HMS Victory, probably the most famous English warship of all time. Everyone knows the story of how the Victory, under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson routed the French at the battle of Trafalgar and how Nelson died a national hero. Quite rightly, this is a perfectly preserved piece of our maritime heritage, but what happened to the other ships under Nelson’s command, where are they? Well, the simple answer is, they’re all long gone. Either destroyed in battle, lost at sea, broken up or just rotted away. Well, maybe not quite all. This is a story about the underwater excavation of one of Nelson’s lost ships. It involves Nelson’s mistress, Emma Hamilton; her husband, amateur archaeologist, Sir William Hamilton; a priceless collection of antiquities; a shipwreck and the discovery and raising of one of the most important pieces of maritime art ever found in British waters.

Ten Years of Time Team

Ten years ago university lecturer, Mick Aston was teaching archaeology to classes of just 30 students. Now, thanks to television, Mick, Tony and the team reach an audience of over 3 million. Time Team, Channel 4's award winning archaeology show is ten years old.

Hadrian's Well

A team of expert engineers, archaeologists and craftsmen are about to join forces in an epic archaeological experiment, to build a full size working replica of a Roman water lifting machine. At almost 4 meters in height, capable of raising 7000 litres of water per hour, this was ancient cutting edge technology. But no-one really knows how it worked or what it really looked like. What we do know is that the machine has to be installed and working in the Museum of London in three months time.

Big Dig, The Hole Story - Canterbury, Kent

Digs at Great Easton, Leicestershire; Wolverhampton; Barnet; Oakamoor; Preston; Cheltenham; Upminster and Groundwell Ridge in Swindon.

Sheffield Steel City - Sheffield, South Yorkshire

The team followed ARCUS, the Archaeological Research and Consultancy at the University of Sheffield, on some of its excavations into Sheffield's industrial past. Early death, deadly machinery and the worst man-made disaster in British history were revealed as Time Team documented the work of the archaeologists who have spent more than six years digging through the remains of a city that was once the biggest producer of steel in the world.

The Crannog in the Loch - Loch Tay, Perthshire, Scotland

Loch Tay, and the kind of view that draws people to Scotland. But the landscape isn’t the main attraction for archaeologists Nick Dixon and Barrie Andrian, who are much more interested in what they can see in the shallow waters around the edge of this loch. In this time team special documentary, you’ll be submerged into the world of underwater archaeology, and visit an Iron Age house that hasn’t been seen since prehistoric times. Are you ready? Stand by to dive into the Iron Age.