Time Team Day 4 - Dig by Wire

Time Team is heading on over to Gateholm Island.  This island is off the coast of Pembrokeshire and a handful of objects have been found over the years.  It is one of the most dangerous and inaccessible places Time Team has ever excavated.  Tony Robinson will have to zipline over to the island.  Did the original inhabitants have an easier way to get to the island?  What will the Time Team discover about the island?  Gateholm is managed by the National Trust and hopes that Time Team will unlock the secrets of the island.

​Gateholm will be a serious challenge for the Time Team.  Every tool and everyone has to travel by zipline to the island.  This will take time and cut into digging time.  The archeologists started digging before Tony arrived on the scene. 

Alex Langlands and Emma Woods examine the results of the geophysics and aerial photographs.  Alex notes that there are rectangular buildings on the island.  Was Gateholm a sacred isle?  Or the site of an early monastery?  Francis Pryor seems to hint at that.  Across from the island, there seem to be hints of a promontory fort.  Phil Harding organizes a field walking team to look at the fort site.  Are there two sites linked together?  As the group field walks, an arrowhead is discovered.  This hints that the site was inhabited over 10,000 years ago.

In the meantime, Francis uses aerial photography to plant his tranches.  To Tony, the trenches seem randomly placed.  Francis is looking for monk cells and a roundhouse.  Mary Ann Ochata looks at what was found on the site.  There was a wide range of artifacts found and hints that the island was occupied from the Mid-Roman period.

A trench goes in on the fort site, after a trip across the island on the zipline.  IN the meantime, on the island, there are some good discoveries.  Pottery was found on the island this will help the Time Team date the site.  In the meantime, Francis and John Gater debate the position of the first trench.  Phil throws a bomb into their plans with evidence of earlier occupation.  The first trench goes in on the fort site.

Alex does some investigating at how the original islanders got on and off the island.  Perhaps, there was a land bridge connecting the island to the mainland.  At the end of day one, the Time Team ziplines back to the mainland.  One of the archeologists brings back a large red bag of fines.  Some of the pottery pieces come from the Roman period.  The evidence seems to hint at Roman settlement.  Are the two sites linked together?

On Day Two, Time Team continues to look for evidence as to why people lived on Gateholm.  The Time Team will be going hard because of the threat of rain.  Trenches will be extended.  Will these trenches reveal evidence of Iron Age settlement and roundhouses?  Francis believes that archeology will prove it.  Domestic life is slowly emerging from the trenches on the fort site.  The forts inhabitants built up high banks to protect from attack.  Would these walls protect the inhabitants inside?  Time Team looks to answer this question.

Will Gateholm Island reveal its secrets? Did people settle on the island before the Roman Empire?  Was there something mystic about the site?  Or was it an early monastic site?  How does the fort tie into the site?  Tune into this episode of Time Team to find out!

This was a good episode because the Time Team faced some challenges with this dig.  This one would be a good episode to show to an archaeology class.