Time Team - Iron Age Trading Center Green Island

We are three days away from completing Thirty-One Days of the Time Team.  It has been a challenge in selecting episodes but I hope that I provided a good variety of digs to choose from.  Time Team should be a show in the teacher, professor’s, or substitute teacher’s video arsenal.  Today’s episode of the Time Team will be the Mystery of Green Island.
​
The Time Team will be excavating an island in Dorset in Poole Harbor.  This island was the hub of trade for Dorset.  Green Island has produced some interesting finds.  Despite the finds, the island has never been properly excavated.  So the Time Team is on the case.  Will Green Island give up its secrets to the Time Team?  Was Green Island the hub of trading for the Dorset coast?

Why was Green Island the site of trading?  There is nothing special about the island.  It is located far from a channel.  Forty test pits were dug and they yielded some fantastic finds.  People worked on shale for armlets.  There was evidence of people visiting the island, but will the Time Team find evidence of industry and buildings?  Time Team normally Time Team does not dig on an island.  There were some challenges in getting the crew to the island.  On top of the logistical challenge, Green Island is a site of scientific research.  The Time Team will have to be careful when digging and backfilling their trenches.

Geophysics and GPS technicians are having trouble going over the island.  Equipment is getting tangled in the trees and signals are not being received.  Stewart Ainsworth is having trouble finding the lumps and bumps he needs.  Despite the challenges, the first trench is yielding some additional finds.  So why do local archeologists believe that Green Island was a harbor?

There was evidence of two jetties.  These jetties were found a few years before the Time Team made their way to the island.  At first, the archeologists thought the jetties connected Green Island to the mainland.  However, they could have just been a defensive feature for the Dorset coast.

Phil Harding is determined are get digging.  He is back to the Stone Age with his trench.  Harding explains that he is digging primarily through the sand.  So the sand is shifted when Phil digs it up.  This method had yielded several trays of finds.  A second and third trench is put in, and the Time Team hopes to find evidence of industry and buildings.

However, Green Island’s location makes Tony question why this island was a harbor.  There is an island further out that would have made a better port.  Why did the traders decide to use Green Island as a port?  Why not bypass the island and go right to the mainland with the trade goods?

The body of finds is growing as the trenches go in.  There is evidence of shale work in one trench.  In another trench here is evidence of metalwork.  Is this evidence of a blacksmith’s workshop?  Will the Time Team find the blacksmith’s workshop?  In trench one, Phil is discovering stones.  These stones are deliberately laid out.  Is this a building?  If it is, then this is the first building found on the island.  Or is it pointing to evidence of a building nearby?  This pile of stones comes from the Romano-British period and helps further the history of the Romans in Britain. 

Will Green Island continue to yield its secrets for the Time Team, finish watching this episode to find out.
This was a thrilling episode to watch, with all the finds that were discovered.  This would be a good episode for research purposes for an independent study student or good for a class on archeology.