Time Team Day 26 - The Celtic Spring

Good morning, the journey into the Thirty-One Days of the Time Team is sadly winding down for 2024.  Today’s episode is going to come from Series Eight.  This time the Time Team is on a dig that may be too good to be true.  The episode is called The Celtic Spring and it has a run time of 48:29.

It is a dig like no other.  In a garden, there is a Neolithic tomb, as well as a Norman Tower, and a sacred spring.  Why are there so many finds in this area?  What is the significance of this place?  The Time Team is on a mission to work out whether or not the artifacts at Llygadwy are genuine.  Or are they part of an elaborate crime against archaeology?  What is going on here?  The Time Team has three days to find out.

Llygadwy was often described as an archeological theme park.  Others described it as a hoax.  The local archeologists did not want to touch the site.  So the Time Team is going to be working on its own and subject the site to a variety of tests.  There will be a variety of experts that will help the Time Team make sense of the site.  Tony and Mick catch up with the finds that were discovered by the landowner of the site.  However, there was not much context to the site.

Trench one goes in near the spring where many of the finds were discovered.  People would have thrown things into the spring as a sacrifice.  The son-in-law of the landowner talks about what was found in the spring.  They talk about what was found in the spring.  The landowner has declined to be interviewed for this Time Team.  The Time Team learned that the area has been extensively landscaped over the years.  Tony catches up with Phil to learn more about the Neolithic tomb.  You can sense that the Time Team feels that there is something off about the site.  Of course, Phil teases John about not needing geophysics results.

Not much progress is being made in the spring, however, Phil has made some discoveries around the Neolithic tombs.  This calls into question the theory that the tomb is fake when there was intact archaeology around the stone.  Eventually, Carenza finds a piece of a Roman brooch.  The other finds that were made over the years are cataloged and organized until the time period.  However, does this lead to the conclusion that the Spring was a ritual spring?

What was going on at this site?  Day one concludes and Day Two progresses.  The work continues in the spring and work begins on the Roman tower.  The experts are not agreeing with the conclusion that the spring was holy.  Robin Bush discovered a vicar who was very interested in Druids and Bards.  He was very good at woodworking and decided to create some additional features in his garden.  He traveled through Europe and collected antiquities.  Did he salt the field with the items he collected on his journeys?

Then there is a discovery that causes a great deal of debate amongst the Time Team archeologists. There emerge two camps about the discovery.  It seems that everything that was found at the site is out of context.  So what is really going on at this site?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out.

Yeah, from the introduction to the end of the episode, you have the feeling that this was all too good to be true.  Throughout the episode, there was something off about this site.  I watched this episode years ago, and I remember the sword discovery, to learn about how the sword was excavated, you will have to watch this discovery.  Everything was bizarre about this site and it just got more bizarre over the episode.  Mick was his lovely curmudgeonly and skeptical self throughout the episode.  Tony is also outraged towards the end of the episode as well.  I would show this episode to a history and a science class because of all the theories that were going on with this site.  For a history class, I would show this towards the beginning of the year because how out of context everything was with this site.