28th January 2011, 04:19 PM
In fairness, time team did two specials (that I can remember) where they followed the fortunes of commercial units undertaking long term excavations. ‘The Island of the Eels’, and ‘The Big Dig in Canterbury’.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-...episode-15
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsit...rbury.html
Stripy jumpers and West Country accents took a back seat in favour of shadowing commercial diggers to find out what happens when we haven’t got just three days to find out. There was a telling sequence where the cameras visited a squalid dig house, then followed up with a visit to the unit directors house, only to discover that he too was living in a derelict shell. He presented this as kind of honest poverty; a counter-cultural lifestyle choice along the lines that he was so committed to the past that everyday concerns like keeping a roof over his head didn’t matter.
It was a total PR disaster for everyone working in the field, and a clear signal to the viewers (at least in 2001) that archaeology doesn’t belong at the grown-ups table. Perhaps putting ‘real world’ archaeology into a TV petri dish might actually be counter productive…
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-...episode-15
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsit...rbury.html
Stripy jumpers and West Country accents took a back seat in favour of shadowing commercial diggers to find out what happens when we haven’t got just three days to find out. There was a telling sequence where the cameras visited a squalid dig house, then followed up with a visit to the unit directors house, only to discover that he too was living in a derelict shell. He presented this as kind of honest poverty; a counter-cultural lifestyle choice along the lines that he was so committed to the past that everyday concerns like keeping a roof over his head didn’t matter.
It was a total PR disaster for everyone working in the field, and a clear signal to the viewers (at least in 2001) that archaeology doesn’t belong at the grown-ups table. Perhaps putting ‘real world’ archaeology into a TV petri dish might actually be counter productive…