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Tony Robinson presents a rich picture of Bronze Age Britain from Time Team's 20-year archive, starting with the oldest man-made item ever found on the programme, a flint axe found in the topsoil in a Worcestershire field (dig no.40). And Mick explains how cropmarks in fields can be used to identify structures from different periods. As shown in the Waddon dig (dig no.49), Bronze Age monuments can be found rubbing shoulders with Iron Age remains - in this case, a henge. These mysterious and charismatic structures are often made of timber, and thus rot away. But in 1999 the team had the opportunity to watch the excavation of a complete henge preserved on a Norfolk coast - not without some opposition (dig no.45). One of Time Team's specialities is reconstruction, and they decided to replicate the original seahenge using ancient technology. In dig 24, dig 54 and dig 77 they did a similar exercise with wooden walkways. Tony is joined by Richard Bradley from Reading University, who explains why it's called the Bronze Age, illustrated with some beautiful objects from the period.
If schoolboy history is to be believed, Iron Age Britain was full of wooed painted men and women running around spearing each other at every opportunity. Well we found that the Iron Age Brits were at times a bloodthirsty lot, and over the last ten years we’ve been surprised, amazed and occasionally shocked by what we’ve uncovered.
If I asked you what the Romans did to Britain I guess you come up with quite a list. They built our first highways and cities. They introduced a legal system, bureaucracy, taxes.
When the Romans invaded Britain in 43AD, they quickly won over most of the local tribal chiefs. And in return for support from the native Britons, they introduced them to the good life, Roman style.
After the Romans left Britain early in the fifth century, waves of other invaders moved in. Jutes, Angles, Saxon, Vikings and Norsemen, all left their mark during a turbulent period of British history. There's all the more fascinating for being so difficult to unpick. Without archaeology, we'd have precious little idea of what was going on during this period at all.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, England was a prosperous place. You can see evidence of the growing population and rising wealth in the development of our towns and cities. But, it was also a country of war, famine and social unrest.
From the end of the Middle Ages onwards, British archaeology presents us with a staggering mass of detail about our development from island states to world power. Archaeology can reveal the details of events spanning centuries, years, months or even days. Time Team's encountered them all as we've dug our way into modern Britain.
Was it 1066, the date of the Battle of Hastings which kicked off the Norman conquest? The fact that this date is so burnt into our minds shows that somehow we believe that this country changed overnight at that time. From being some Anglo-Saxon Celtic place to being sort of French.
