Time Team

Series 20 | Episode 12 | The Time Team Guide to Experimental Archaeology


Tony Robinson celebrates the more than 150 practical experiments and re-creations that he and the Team have conducted over 20 years in order to unlock the mysteries exposed by their digs. 

Rebuilding - and even reliving - the past is a controversial area of archaeology. But it's one that Time Team has long championed, and one that has yielded some amazing results. 

This programme revisits some of the programme's greatest hits, from recreating individual objects such as Stone Age axes, Roman pewter bowls, medieval pottery and a Stone Age sword that throws new light on the myth of King Arthur's Excalibur, to building an entire Iron Age house and a Roman machine that lifted water from a deep well. 

The programme also revisits some of Time Team's forays into living history, from finding out what it felt like to be in Dad's Army to surviving 24 hours as a Victorian prisoner, in an attempt to see the past through our ancestors' eyes. 

Plus how a huge and - at times - contentious experiment for the programme finally solved the riddle of Seahenge.