Time Team Day 25 - The Puzzle of Picket's Field

Good morning!  We have less than ten days to go in the month and less than ten episodes of the Time Team to go!  It feels like only yesterday I started the October 2023 Edition of the Thirty-One Days of the Time Team.  I am still mining the Time Team Classics page for episodes.  I hope they eventually upload series four to that website because series one, two, and three are done!  Today’s episode is from series twelve and is called the Puzzle of Picket’s Farm, and the run time for this episode is 47:49.

The Time Team is heading to Dorset, following the discovery of Roman brooches and coins in a field.  The Team is sure that they are going to uncover a Roman Temple.  Unfortunately, the archeology is points in a different direction.  Something was going on at the site, however, there is no sign of any buildings.  The work is slow, but the trenches are slowly revealing their secrets.  Have the Time Team stumbled onto a Stone Age burial site that has been around for thousands of years?  Miles Russell joins up with the Time Team to talk about the Bronze Age.

When one family took over a farm, they immediately ran into difficulties plowing the south end of a field.   Every time the family plowed, the bolts on the plows broke.  The Roman finds soon emerged.  Tony catches up with the owners of the farm.  They talk about the number of Roman broaches that were found.  Then in the spring, a square shape showed up in the field.  So what is underneath the surface of the field?  Guy talks about the potential of a Roman temple.

Geophysics and field walking will commence on the field.  A Roman expert is looking over the building finds.  He disappoints Tony when he points out the features of the building material that was found.  The building material was not Roman in the first place.  However, the Roman building that was on the site, may have been a timber building.  Tony is lamenting that it is going to be one of those digs.  The field walkers are not finding Roman finds and the geophysics results are not good.  The only thing that is proving this to be a Roman site is the coins and broaches.

Trench ones go in in the area over where the Roman finds were found.  There was a concentration of finds that were in the area.  Tony feels like the Time Team is on the brink of disaster.  In the meantime, the Roman experts are looking over the Roman coins.  The coins were used for everyday purchases or given to the shrine.  The broach finds were broken, and in a religious context, the people gave the worse of their items.  It is a very strange place.  One Roman expert seems to think the site could be a Roman market or fairgrounds.  Phil discovers strange colors in the soil that seem to hint at a ditch in the ground.  Trench one is expanded because he needs to find the second edge of the ditch.

There is some archeology in the area.  Phil is thinking of flints and pottery.  This is not a Roman feature because they did not build in curves.  Perhaps this site is from an earlier time period.  What is in this area?  Who would have lived here?  The Time Team has a mystery to contemplate.  Geophysics continues to work to try to learn more about why the Roman coins showed up.

John, Tony, and the Farmer are going to look for the shadowy figure in the field.  The problem is that the farmer did not mark where the shadow was.  It was in the area where the bolts were broken on the plow.  John really does not see anything on the geophysics results.  Trench two goes in the area of the shadow even though the geophysics results do not show anything in the ground.

What will Phil find in his trench?  What will be discovered in the other trench?  Will the Time Team actually find Roman artifacts?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more!

Tony gets in on this dig and discovers a Roman coin.  This would be a good episode to show for a history fun day because of the twists and turns of this dig.