Swords, Skulls and Strongholds
Britain is a land of monuments and buildings stretching back over seven thousand years, and in many ways they'd reflect the history of its people. Symbols of empire and civic pride from the proud Victorians; Elegance and proportion were defined by the tasteful Georgians; and the Tudors built palaces for prestige; Roman architecture asserted military might, power and civilisation; even our prehistoric ancestors left their mark on our landscape with stone circles, mounds and tombs. But the biggest man made monuments in Britain belong to one of the most mysterious periods in this countries past. These are relics of almost a thousand years of mystrery, superstition and violence, the Iron Age. But for centuries these huge monuments have been ignored or misunderstood. Now though with new excavations and new ideas we can at last come face to face with this huge chunk of our lost history.
More from Specials
Episode 1
Christmas Special – Much Wenlock - Much Wenlock, Shropshire
As a curtain-raiser for the 1998 series of Time Team, which started in January 1998, Tony and the team gathered. The first Time Team special to air took a look back over the last five years. Over the years, viewers have flooded the series with queries as to what happened after Time Team finished their three-day investigations – were the sites further excavated, were finds available to see in museums and how did local people react to finding an important archaeological find on their doorstep? Time Team returns to a few key sites for updated reports and the Team members also remember their favourite moments and finds.
Episode 2
Christmas Special – Barley Hall - Barley Hall, York
This pre-Christmas special offers a taster of what is coming up in the next series – and provides an update on previous Time Team digs. Presented by Tony Robinson from York's Barley Hall, where a Medieval Christmas celebration is in full swing, the show tells what has happened at many of the digs featured in the last series.
Episode 3
The Mystery of Seahenge - Holme-Next-The-Sea, Norfolk
Last year, on this bleak and beautiful stretch of Norfolk coastline, a local man made an extraordinary discovery. Walking the beach at low tide he found a bronze axe head. Nearby, was a mysterious circle of eroded timber posts half buried in the sand, and in the middle of the circle was a huge upturned tree stump. It’s utterly intriguing nothing quite like it’s ever been found before and everyone wants to know who built it, what it was for and what it originally looked like.
Episode 4
The Real King Arthur - Tintagel Castle, Cornwall
This king was called Arthur, and his stories known to us all. But actually he’s shrouded in mystery, some people say that he was a chivalrous medieval king. Others, a gritty Dark Age warrior, others again, that he never existed at all. Time Team are setting out on a quest of our own to see if we can find out who he really was. It’s a journey back in time through centuries of myth and legend, on the way we’ll visit sacred lakes, pull our own sword from the stone and uncover the very first archaeological host.
Episode 5
The Mystery of Mine Howe - Tankerness, Orkney
I’m in a remote farm in the Orkneys on a little hillock called Mine Howe. For years there have been stories around here of tunnels under the roads and mysterious underground rooms, which have never been satisfactorily explained until about six months ago when an extraordinary discovery was made. Acting on stories of a lost secret chamber first found in 1946, a local farmer and his friends set out to rediscover it. What they found was extraordinary. A set of stairs made of stone, disappearing into the earth and leading to a dark and secret chamber. A set of stairs leading into a hillock’s unique. And now the whole archaeological world is agog, everyone wants to know who built it and when and what it was put there for.
Episode 6
Time Team History Of Britain
Time Team takes a trip from the Palaeolithic to the present and plots the nation's past through the finds and revelations made across the last seven series. The Team pays a visit to classic UK archaeological sites, such as Grimes Graves and Bede's World, and examines key digs from programmes past to look at how archaeologists have interpreted the nation's history.
