Meet the Ancestors and Time Team,
Archaeology on British TV in 1998

Don't forget the Archaeology TV feast coming up for UK viewers. Those in the US can go green with envy but you lot get free internet access so don't feel too hard done by :-)

Meet the Ancestors BBC2 Thursdays 9pm

also: Vicky Cooper spends a day filming with the crew of Meet the Ancestors, BBC2's long-awaited answer to the Time Team. Part of Assemblage

Time Team Channel 4 Sundays 6.30pm

Don't miss the new series.

Also, did you know about

Time Team Extra

8-part series beginning Friday, 9 January at 3.30pm

In response to the thousands of viewers who want to know what happens after TIME TEAM have left a site, and also to place the previous weekend's finds in a wider perspective, TIME TEAM member Robin Bush hosts a new series that will address all these issues.

Here's a quick guide to what else you can find on this web site:
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Site authored by: Andy Burnham (aburnham@easynet.co.uk) [WebBot Include Component]

The 1998 series of TIME TEAM begins on Sunday, 4 January at 6.30pm and promises to be the most exciting in the five years that the programme has been running. It's also the longest, with eight programmes instead of the usual six. The series kicks off with an excavation ­ beneath a pristine croquet lawn ­ of the privy lodgings of Elizabeth I at Richmond Palace, which she inherited from her father Henry VIII and where she died. From Tudor times, we travelled back more than 5,000 years to the Somerset Levels, where the peat hides some of Britain's best-preserved wooden structures. Led there by the possibility of finding a trackway, we were excited to uncover something even more unusual ­ a mysterious platform complete with Bronze Age finds. The Viking invasion was a significant event in British history. Orkney was used by the 'Northmen' as a stepping stone for their forays, and on the Ness of Brough on the island of Sanday, we investigated a series of mounds that might just be a Viking burial site. Before Britain was invaded by the Scandinavians, it succumbed to the Romans. On a farm in Gloucestershire, TIME TEAM made a fabulous find ­ one of the most important undiscovered Roman villas in the UK. This was shown on TIME TEAM's first 'live' broadcast over the August Bank Holiday weekend; the programme in the series will have specially shot footage of what we found. This year's expedition abroad took us in pursuit of the Beaker Folk on Mallorca, where an entire settlement of this enigmatic culture has been found. We investigate a strange area known as 'the Maze' and an ancient temple site that has a fascinating link with astronomy. Back in Britain, within in ancient farmhouse deep in the Shropshire countryside, we discovered the remnants of a grand manor house and pieced together the story of its construction and the strange fate that befell the family who had hoped to live there. Going further afield, to Northern Ireland, we excavated the ecclesiastical settlement of Downpatrick, where ­ legend has it ­ St Patrick died. It was also the site of Bronze Age encampments and later Benedictine monasteries, and we had the task of sorting out this historical puzzle. Finally, we visited the medieval Tees-side village of High Worsall for the first time since it disappeared! As well as the archaeology, we continued our practice of trying out various activities of the time periods we were studying. For this series, Carenza made Elizabethan perfume and groomed Phil's hair with a Viking comb, and Mick learned the secrets of medieval plaster-making and discovered that catching fish medieval style is harder than it looks. Meanwhile, game-for-anything Phil built a prehistoric trackway across a marsh, found out about Roman pewter bowl-making, smelted copper ore the Beaker Folk way, and tried to turn a calf skin into parchment.

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"Meet the Ancestors! Bringing history to life by excavating bodies from the ancient past. An exciting glimpse into the past as 'Secrets of Lost Empires' archaeologist Julian Richards digs up and examines five bodies spanning over 300 years from the Bronze Age to Medieval times. Our ancestors are all around us – part of the vast cemetery in which we all live. In past centuries our ancient dead helped shape and reinforce contemporary culture, but today they lie unclaimed in museum cases, artefacts rather than people. In a fast changing, multicultural society where few of us depend directly on the land, the link with our ancestors is broken. A burial from the late Bronze age site at Bleadon, Nr Weston Super Mare, Somerset. Five programmes of hands on, as it happens, archaeology gives some of our distant ancestors a chance to speak for themselves. In each programme, history is brought to life as a person is dug up and examined. English Heritage archaeologist Julian Richards and a small team of experts will search for and excavate burials spanning over 3,000 years of our past from the Bronze Age in 2000BC to the Medieval period in around 1400AD. Same burial from Bleadon, Nr Weston Super Mare, Somerset. At each of the key stages, Julian Richards debates the evidence with on-site specialists as the full   picture of who the bodies were gradually emerges. The series examines how each of our excavated ancestors lived and died and how their graves reflected the societies which buried them."