Time Team Day 29 - Iron-Age Market

Good morning!  I hope that you are doing very well.  I cannot believe that time has flown by.  The Thirty-One Days of the Time Team is winding down.  Then November will be here.   Anyway, this is an episode from season nine, after this episode, I will be down to six more episodes to find in season nine. The episode is called Iron-Age Market and has a run time of 49:49.

The Time Team is going to be examining a large field that is surrounded by a bank and ditch.  An antiquarian thought it was the remains of an Iron Age City.  Next door to the field is another massive hill with another bank and ditch enclosure.  Was this a fort where prehistoric people ran to under attack?  What will the Time Team find out about these hills in just three days?  This is one of Time Team’s more ambitious digs.

Geophysics gets to work on the site right away while Tony and Mick catch up with each other about the dig.  The field has been plowed up and the field walkers are out on the site to make finds.  A GPS survey is also done on the site to help the Time Team make a 3D Model of the area.  This is the first time there will be work done on these monuments.  Two trenches have also already been made.  What was going on in the site?

Phil and Mick talk with the farmer who owns the land.  Over the years this farmer had made his discoveries in the fields.  There were plenty of finds that were discovered just in the field.  Phil is over the moon with all the flint that was discovered.  There was also an arrowhead discovered too.  The finds demonstrate that people were living on the site for thousands of years.  There was pottery discovered.  The finds show that the area was busy during the Iron Age.

The geophysics results come back and show an Iron Age roundhouse.  A trench goes in over the roundhouse site to test the results.  Phil discusses the trench placement with someone from English Heritage.  The Trench is immediately expanded and Phil has even more to shout about.  He has discovered a piece of Iron Age pot.  Could there be a complete pot in this roundhouse?  That is cool to see if it is true that there is an Iron Age pot in the roundhouse.

Phil talks with the member of English Heritage about digging the site.  There seems to be a conception among some of the community that sites like these should not be touched.  However, by excavating these sites, historians can further the story.  This dig has revealed several different pots that help date the area back to the Iron Age.  Even more finds were made as a result of the field walks.  Day One concludes with Phil up to his neck in archeology and some very good geophysics results.

Spirits are high on this dig, there is an Iron Age pot next to burning and this pot was found in a round house.  Day two starts with a careful examination of the Iron Age pot that was discovered in the roundhouse.  Strangely, the archeology is close to the surface.  The plow did not go very deep into the ground, which is very lucky for the Time Team.  Geophysics results continue to show more targets in the area.  What was going on in this area?  Also on the site was a variety of stones, which would have been used for slingshots.  Phil talks with a reenactor to talk about how effective a weapon a slingshot was.  Phil takes part in the demonstration.  What else does the Time Team find?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out.

This was another dig where you felt like the Time Team may have bitten off more than they could chew in three days.  Some hard decisions had to be made about where to put in the trenches.  There was a lot of activity at this site, it was almost impossible to determine where the Time Team was going to dig.  The removal of the pot operation was very well done.  This would be a good episode to show a history and a science class.