For twenty years Time Team was a British institution. Despite being a low-budget, often rather dull programme tucked away in the less glamorous parts of Channel 4’s Sunday evening schedules, for a generation it shaped the way the general public saw archaeology. I long ago lost track of how often I’d been talking to someone outside the subject and the ‘what do you do?’ question would be immediately followed up with, ‘So are you going to end up on Time Team, then?’ I used to laugh politely, maybe say ‘I hope not!’, because, like many people in academic archaeology, I had very mixed feelings about the show.
Those interlocutors had the last laugh, though. Because this is where Classical Memory Lane’s media-reminiscences intersect most closely with my own career. You see, I really did end up on Time Team. Twice.
So this article is the story of the programme’s role in making me an archaeologist and shaping public attitudes to archaeology. It’s the story of a valuable piece of old-fashioned public-service television which for two decades delivered long hair, beards, woolly jumpers and Wiltshire accents to the Great British Public. It’s the story of how I learned to stop worrying and love Time Team.
And to add an extra frisson of excitement, I’ve got the arbitrary structural constraint of just three sub-headings to tell it!
Ancient Worlds 