Time Team Day 23 - Hero's Hill

Good morning, we are working through Thirty-One Days of The Time Team.  Where has the time gone for October?  It seems just like yesterday that I started this edition of Thirty-One Days of the Time Team.  Anyway, in this episode of the Time Team, our archeologists are looking for Heroes, in County Antrim in this episode called Hero’s Hill.  The run time for this episode is 47:32.

The Time Team is on a remote site twenty miles away from Belfast in Northern Ireland.  They are going to explore the prehistoric age in Ireland.  The site has not been excavated before and dates to the Bronze Age.  The promontory is magnificent and has views of the coast of Scotland.  Exploring this hill will be a challenge.  It is a half-hour ride up it by tractor and the Time Team will be battling wind, rain, and fog.  After he recovers his hat, Phil must contend with two site directors.  What will the Time Team discover in three days about the site?

The Time Team will be working with students from Queen’s College.  Together they will look at such questions as Who built this site?  Why did they build it?  What on earth was up on the hill to defend?  However, when geophysics reach the site all their plans to map the site have gone out the window.  The hill is proving to be a challenge for geophysics to survey the site.

Despite this, trench one goes in over a ditch site.  Phil and Tony look for flint and Phil is like a kid in a toy store.  Tony shows him some flints that he found, and Phil is thrilled with what was found on the site.  Then there is a discussion on flints and Phil’s flint addition.  Could the site be connected to the flint mind and tool making?  Were Stone Age people protecting their flint-making factory?  John Gater tries to work on geophysics in what he can.  However, there is trouble: the site is on a magnetic volcanic rock called basalt.  The Time Team is digging on a large magnet.

Brian Williams talks with Stewart Ainsworth about the landscape around the mound.  The mound is smack dab in the middle of a prehistoric landscape.  Francis continues to walk the site and found another potential site to dig: a stone age roundhouse.  Tony does not see it, however, once Francis shows it, Tony finally sees it.  Phil plans on the trench.  Trench two goes in over this roundhouse site.  If Francis is right, this would be evidence of people living on this site.  IT would also explain the defensive ditches.

Trench one is starting to show evidence of how the mound was built.  Tony discusses the history of hillforts with the professor from Queen’s College.  The Time Team concludes that the ditches were defensive.  What could have been on the site to defend?  A radar result may hint as to what was defended.  Was it a burial?  Was this mound a place for the dead?  However, Phil is trying to prove that people were living on the site.  Phil is finding a whole lot of flint in his trench.  Who were these people?  When did they live?

Day two starts with water in the trenches.  The tractors getting stuck in the mud.  The Time Team walked half a mile up the hill with their tools.  The digger cannot get up the hill.  However, spirits are high for the Time Team.  They discovered a system of prehistoric ditches.  Phil’s trench is showing a roundhouse on the site and shows that people occupied it.  Tony catches up with Frances and he talks about the plans for the day.  Trench two will be extended to learn more about roundhouse.  Another trench will go over the burial site.

What else will the Time Team discover about this prehistoric site?  Were the people who lived there working on a flint mine?  What about the place of the dead?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more.

This was a fascinating look at a site that was never excavated before.  The Time Team working with another organization to train future archeologists was great too.  This would be a good one for a fun history day.