Time Team is a British show that ran for almost 20 years, and is back in production now, thanks to Patreon.

-Vurbal (March 03, 2022, 09:40 AM)

I didn't know that (thanks). They must have made a fair bit of money on patreon, cause that show can only be expensive to make. I watch the odd episode, will be interesting to see what the new ones are like. (There's some great English accents to be heard on the show as well.)

-tomos (March 08, 2022, 06:11 AM)

I'm sure you're right. Just the heavy equipment for some of those episodes must have been incredibly expensive. And then there's all the high tech geophysics gear. The pub bills were probably enormous too.  :) 

It will be odd without the real stars of the original - Phil Harding and Mick Aston's hideous sweater.

If you like archeology, I highly recommend the Time Team Classics channel. Time Team is a British show that ran for almost 20 years, and is back in production now, thanks to Patreon. Each episode revolves around a 3 day dig, generally in a site that's not considered significant enough for a major, publicly funded, operation. Among other things, they were pioneers in the use of various geophysical surveying tools and methods, which have since become the industry wide standard.

If you aren't already familiar with the ridiculous wealth of archeology underneath Britain, that alone is eye opening. Whatever period of history you're interested in (as well as much of prehistory), they've probably dug it up. From Paleolothic caves, to Mesolithic hunter gatherer camps, to neolithic settlements, to Roman towns, villas, forts, and industrial complexes. Then there are the Saxons and Vikings, who left little behind besides graves and voids in the ground where wood has long since rotted away.

Ironically, some of the haziest history is much more recent. During Henry VIII's reorganization of the Church of England, the institutional memories of numerous major churches almost disappeared, practically overnight. There are apparently dozens of sites in England, where a church, or series of churches, stood for hundreds of years, before being shut down, and disappearing completely. The most famous of these would be where Richard III's remains were found several years ago, but they really are all over the country.

There are also very cool demonstrations of ancient technology. For starters, their head digger is an expert flint napper. Give him 5 minutes and he can make a scraper. An hour or 2 will get you a shockingly effective axe, and give him some mortar and a board and he'll build you a bench from the stuff in an afternoon.

If you prefer Roman history, they also build a section of Roman road in one episode, and cobble some hobnail boots to walk on it with. In another episode they make charcoal, like what was used to fire iron furnaces before coal.

This show actually made me a lot more interested in the local archeology. Here in the US, pre-European archeology is almost criminally ignored. Given the length of human habitation in North America, how many civilizations and local/regional powers must have risen and fallen, leaving no stone monuments or writing? It must be dozens at least, maybe just in my little part of the continent, in between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

Fair warning, the host gets pretty annoying. He was apparently the driving force in funding the series, and kudos to him for that, but sometimes he reminds me of something I read on Despair.com. There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.