Time Team Day 16 - 8th Century Church

Good morning!  The Thirty-One Days of the Time Team continues and this time I am throwing it back to an episode of the Time Team from season four.  Once this gets done, I will have to find three more episodes for season four and then I will have season one, two, three, and four done.  My next goal, if I get done with season four this year is to get season five!  Tony has plenty of hair in this episode!  The Time Team is looking at a graveyard from an Eighth Century Scottish church.  The episode is simply called Eight Century Church and has a run time of 51:31.

Large and intricately carved gravestones have been found in a Glasgow Graveyard.  These gravestones date back to the Dark Ages.  Some tombstones associated with the Vikings were discovered as well.  Who was buried and why were they buried her?   Archeologist Anna Richie helps the Time Team make sense of the site.  Was this the site of an early Christian burial?  The Time Team is going to investigate possible connections to Dumbarton Rock and Strathclyde. 

Carenza and Tony take to the helicopter to get a jumpstart on the site.  They comment on the shape of the church and how it looks in comparison to the landscape.  This site may be one of Time Team’s more difficult sites.  Geophysics is working on the site.  At least eleven generations have been built in this graveyard.  There have been interesting headstones discovered and now Time Team wants to detangle the history of this churchyard.

Unfortunately, Uncle Mick has broken his leg looking for a Holy well, so the Time Team is joined by Anna Richie.  She is an expert on the Scottish Dark Ages.  She talks about the unusual shape of the churchyard.  It is in a pear shape instead of a square shape.  She talks about how important the site is and that many gravestones were discovered.  She talks about what the Time Team should be looking for.

The first trench is opened near the path and it is going to be a delicate operation because the Time Team does not want to disturb any current remains.  The Time Team is going to look for the earliest church that stood at the site.  Tony and Anna talk about the earliest gravestones that were found on the site.  Many of the gravestones were carved to look like houses.  The Viking gravestones were exclusive only to Britain.  They would have resembled the long houses they had left behind.  Then another gravestone is examined.  Tom Davidson Kelly, the current pastor of the church gets in on examining those gravestones.

Over the weekend there will be an experimental archeological aspect to this.  The Time Team is going to carve a stone to add to the collection.  In the meantime, the first old burial is discovered.  The body is found in a jumble at this site.  The body is over two hundred years old so it will be documented and the dig can go on.

Tony, Carenza and Robin meet together and examine the local maps of the area.  They were looking for a hill with a ditch surrounding it.  This would show that this was an important area for ceremonies.  The Time Team is going to dig the biggest trench, so this area will be fenced off.  It will take half a day to dig to get to the layer they need to get to, but hopefully the archeology will be excellent. 

In the meantime, Uncle Phil talks with a local archeologist about another site in the graveyard that may have been a grand entrance to a ceremonial hill.  Who was buried at this site?  Why were they buried here?  What will the Time Team find about this site?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out.

I really missed Mick in this episode, and it would have been interesting to see how he and Anna would have gotten along.  His commentary was really missed.  This was rather a slow episode to start with little tidbits here and there about what the Time Team was digging.  However, I would be skipping showing this episode to a history class.