Time Team Special Edition

Hollywood defied the stereotype of archaeology as a dry, boring science when they brought the Indiana Jones character to life, but that was fiction. To really shatter the image of the meek, weak, scholarly archaeologist, British television unleashed the rowdy (but still scholarly) crew of TIME TEAM’s real archaeologists onto Britain’s hills, vales, cities and towns. Since Time Team's launch 17 years ago the series has become a British TV sensation, spinning archaeology terms like “geofizz” and “stratigraphy” into the common vernacular and sending ordinary Brits into the back garden to dig up Roman ruins.

 

On Wednesday, August 19 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV (DT21.1/cable1011/cable11) PBS treats American audiences to two hours of Britain’s Time Team, and takes viewers on an energetic expedition to high-profile sites on both sides of the Atlantic. They begin at Jamestown, Virginia, where a British company's commercial enterprise planted the seeds that would become the United States of America. Nearly a million finds have emerged from the trenches at Jamestown, but far more remains to be discovered. The team retrieves piles of perfectly preserved 17th-century artifacts, traces the names and life stories of the early American pioneers, and learns why one-third of the colonists died within months of arrival.

 

After three days in Jamestown, Time Team travels back to England to discover what lies beneath The Queen’s famous palace gardens. Under royal pressure and spurred on by their three-day time limit, the team tears into the ground beneath the royal residences to unearth the storied past of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Their spectacular finds include the foundation of a fourteenth century building where Edward III honored the legendary Arthurian knights.