Digging the Dirt With the Time Team
By Tim Taylor
Channel 4 Books (Pan Macmillan) - February 2002
ISBN 0752261614 HB
Archaeology/TV Tie-in
Various Sites in England

Reviewed by: Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
Buy a US || UK Copy

A new season of the popular archaeology program Time Team is always a treat for UK viewers as the team endeavors to unearth treasures from the past in just three days. The ninth season, filmed last year, was beset by problems from the start, due to the foot and mouth disease epidemic but as these six chosen episodes show, wonders were worked and it was "all right on the night" There is an unusual site at Vauxhall in London involving mysterious 3,500 year old wooden posts, a mixed monastery in Bedfordshire, industrial archaeology and Civil War history in Shropshire, a Roman town in Hertfordshire and - my own favourite - two hillforts in Cornwall.

As usual, this is a coffee table book that is going to be enjoyed by all fans of the series. It is full to bursting with lots of photographs of the larger-than-life crew and plenty of humor, as well as behind-the-scenes looks at how the program is made, the sites they didn't choose to feature and the difficulties surrounding making such a unique and well-loved series. It is rather like reading a diary, and if you are hoping for an in-depth look at the archaeology of each site, then watching the shows will tell you just as much, if not more. In each chapter there is space set aside for a short discussion of the period featured but I would have liked to have seen more technical data such as those "geophiz" maps and more about the finds and technology used to locate them. Surely some of the humorous photographs could have been sacrificed for this. Notwithstanding the drawbacks, this is a lovely souvenir to have of the series and it will make a great present for any Time Team fans you know.

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