Is Time Team Finished??

stephenb (Stephen) · #1 11-08-2009, 09:32 PM

I know that Season 16 of Time Team (originally broadcast in the UK January-March 2009) has just completed on ABC1 here in Australia.

I have heard a rumour that this was the last season, and that they will not be making any more? Can anyone, especially our UK members, confirm this? I cannot locate any information in the internet to confirm or deny.

Time Team has been an outstanding program for the last 16 years.

I certainly hope that, at least of ABC2, they can keep running the previous seasons in sequence.

renormalised (Carl) · #2 11-08-2009, 09:48 PM

I hope that's not the case. Time Team is an exceptionally good program and one I look forward to every Tuesday. It would be a great pity if they stopped making the show.

stephenb (Stephen) · #3 12-08-2009, 09:11 AM

Carl, I too look forward to it both on ABC 1 on Tuesdays and ABC2 on Wednesdays.

It is quite evident that the program has raised awareness of local archeology in the UK and abroad. It's longevity is a testiment to it.

I see that Tony is now hosting the new series "Crime and Punishment" on Tuesday nights for the nxt few weeks. The first episode was vey informative and enjoyable.

chrisp9au (Chris) · #4 12-08-2009, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenluceskies

Carl, I too look forward to it both on ABC 1 on Tuesdays and ABC2 on Wednesdays.

It is quite evident that the program has raised awareness of local archeology in the UK and abroad. It's longevity is a testiment to it.

I see that Tony is now hosting the new series "Crime and Punishment" on Tuesday nights for the nxt few weeks. The first episode was vey informative and enjoyable.

Agreed, on all points.

Cheers

Chris

sjastro · #5 12-08-2009, 09:42 AM

Hopefully it will be back.

It intrigues me how an item the size of a thumbnail can be immediately identified as Saxon pottery from the Sussex region in the period 680-700AD.

No questions asked.

Steven

renormalised (Carl) · #6 12-08-2009, 10:05 AM

I know what you mean, Steven. What really makes me laugh is their technique called "pottery analysis". Archaeologists think they can accurately date a site just by looking at the pottery they find in it (if they find any at all). Quite frankly, I think it's a load of crock(ery)

Coming from a geologists point of view, I can't see how you could rely on pieces of (mostly) fired materials to try and confirm the age of anything. Apart from the fact that you have movement through the soil profile, over time, of any solid materials in it, how in the dickens do they even know how that pottery got there in the first place??. Then you have the problem of the firing process....it has a nasty habit of resetting the age of any radiometric dating materials within the pottery. Groundwater leaching can also have the same effect, contamination by biogenic materials....the list of problems could go on for pages.

The whole idea of pottery analysis is to look at what they find, and tell from the style of the finds what time period it came from. That'd be like finding a piece of 18th century Wedgewood crockery near the ruins of a modern skyscraper, in 1000 years time, and attributing the ruins of the skyscraper to the people who made the crockery.

It's not science.

However, that doesn't detract from Time Team

AstralTraveller (David) · #7 12-08-2009, 10:44 AM

Carl,

I think you are a bit harsh on the archaeologists and stylistic 'dating'. I imagine they would date pieces of pottery from finds where they are clearly in context and then extend (extrapolate) that to finds out of context. Of course they don't just look at a fragment fresh out of the ground and identify it, any more than they get 14C ages in 2-3 days. That bit is simplified for TV.

As for getting 'hard' ages, the fact that firing resets some 'clocks' is a plus. That means the clock started running at the moment the pottery was produced. The most obvious dating method for pottery is luminesence dating - either thermoluminesence (TL) or optically stimulated lumionesence (OSL). OSL is the better method but for this purpose the cheaper TL would suffice. Unfortunately both methods are destructive - though they don't need much material.

The other approach is to get a 14C date on a compound which you know was associated with the use of the item and not from mobile C compounds in the soil (eg animal fat). We have the right gear in the lab and dating archaeological artifacts is one of the uses we want to make of it. It consists of two GCs in train with column switching and a cryotrap between them. Only the interesting part of the first GC chromatogram is passed to the second GC, which has a more selective column of different polarity to the first. The purified compound is collected in a trap of the preparative fraction collector (PFC) and the whole rig is called GC-GC-PFC. Frankly its a bugger to operate and we are still testing the system to see whether we can collect compounds without changing the 14C:12C ratio. Serious results are at least 12 months away.

renormalised (Carl) · #8 12-08-2009, 11:17 AM

Actually, they don't...and I've seen them do it...date something just by looking at a piece of pottery (or artifact) that they find. It's not just simplified for the TV. They may try to corroborate it later on, but in general if they find something and think they recognise a "style" they may have found a date for previously, they go with that.

I'm very well aware of the various dating techniques, as you would imagine, and their pro's and con's. Yes, OSL would be the optimal way of dating things like pottery, and that would be the way I go about finding the dates for anything like pottery. Relying on "pottery analysis", as they define it, is not science. Dating something just on the basis of what style was in vogue at the time is fraught with problems. I'm not going to list them again, but there's even more that come to mind.

As for finding anything in context, you have to be very careful about the definition of context in any situation...as you can appreciate. In so far as any artifact found, I would be extremely careful about saying it was from this or that layer or whatever. Unless you have rock solid proof, you have no proof at all. Pottery and the like, settles in the soil profile, over time. I've seen stuff buried as far down as 2-4 metres in a soil eventually work its way to the surface, or go down a similar distance. If you look at the example I gave in my previous post....that is exactly the sort of problem that can crop up with dating "in context". You may find both objects in exactly the same context. But unless you had known about Wedgewood pottery from historic records, or had a good age determination done on hundreds of examples, you couldn't separate them. Yet clearly, the pottery (because we know so, from history) is 3 centuries older than the building. If you never had that precise dating done on the pottery, and only knew it from the "style", then you'd get it wrong. You might even find copies of that pottery elsewhere that may have been made at the time of the building, but that doesn't make it the same age as the bit you found...even though it's an copy of the original.

The system for 14C dating you're setting up in the lab sounds very interesting. I hope you manage to work out the teething problems.

Davros (Lauren) · #9 12-08-2009, 01:58 PM

Now everyone sees why i much prefer bones over pottery. Dating by association is loose at best depending on the time bracket under question. Time Team is a very glossy and non realistic portrayal of archaeological field work but it is so much better than most of the other crap on tv these days. It would be a shame to see it go. And it has helped the general public to gain an appreciation of heritage and the archaeological process. Much better produced than the American 'investigative reporting' style of documentary as well.

renormalised (Carl) · #10 12-08-2009, 02:41 PM

I totally agree with your assessment there, Mick. The way they produce those programs in the US, all they're looking for is just plain sensationalism with little regard to the actual work being done.

I shake my head in disbelief when I hear about "experts" proclaiming a date based on "pottery analysis". I often wonder how they can get away with it in the peer reviewed journals. If I was the editor or reviewer for a journal, I wouldn't allow it. Quite frankly I wouldn't even teach it, except as an aside, maybe. It's not good science.

As a geologist, if I were to identify a trilobite that was buried in the same sediments as a T-rex femur, and then said the trilobite was the same age as the T-rex femur, I'd be laughed at!!!. If I then insisted that it was true and that you could use it to date any T-rex femur found (or trilobite for that matter), I'd never get a paper published again. At least not until I woke up to myself and noticed the error and figured out why the trilobite got where it was.

rogerg (Roger) · #11 12-08-2009, 03:34 PM

Irrespective of accurate dating I find it fascinating what they manage to dig up out of a simple field. It will be a shame if it's finished. I didn't realise it had been going for 16 years! I only caught on to it a couple of years ago.

renormalised (Carl) · #12 12-08-2009, 03:55 PM

Certainly is amazing what you can find. Just think what future archaeologists are going to find buried in fields!!!.

Octane (Humayun) · #13 12-08-2009, 04:16 PM

A Vista layer.

Regards,
Humayun

Quote:

Originally Posted by renormalised

Certainly is amazing what you can find. Just think what future archaeologists are going to find buried in fields!!!.

AstralTraveller (David) · #14 12-08-2009, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octane

A Vista layer.

Regards,
Humayun

Proof of just how primitive we are.

Rob_K · #15 12-08-2009, 04:26 PM

Yep, Time Team would be a great loss!

I agree with everything renormalised has said, but we must remember that archaeology is in the Arts stream, not science, even though it may use some ‘scientific’ tools. It is fundamentally a descriptive study. What it does well is systematically record exactly what’s there using rigorous methodology. What it does badly is draw conclusions. Archaeology is an antiquated field that is rapidly evolving in the technological age. Maybe one day it’ll end up a science. Geology did!

Cheers -

AstroJunk (Jonathan) · #16 12-08-2009, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renormalised

As a geologist, if I were to identify a trilobite that was buried in the same sediments as a T-rex femur, and then said the trilobite was the same age as the T-rex femur, I'd be laughed at!!!.

That's not what they say though . Field archaeology is very rigorous indeed and you can see the teams of analysts collating the site material in the tents on site. Do you remember an early episode when some guy had salted a site with relics? It was fascinating as the team saw through the scam very quickly due to the distribution and representation of the finds. Top science!

And from a pottery perspective, Pot shards are the graptolites of Archaeology - highly indicative of period.

PS I studied Archaeology & Geology (and Astronomy) at Uni

renormalised (Carl) · #17 12-08-2009, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octane

A Vista layer.

Regards,
Humayun

If I found that, I'd rebury it and camouflage the field so no one else would be silly enough to dig it up

renormalised (Carl) · #18 12-08-2009, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob_K

Yep....Archaeology is an antiquated field that is rapidly evolving in the technological age. Maybe one day it’ll end up a science. Geology did!

Cheers -

I should wash your mouth out with soap for that!!!

renormalised (Carl) · #19 12-08-2009, 05:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AstroJunk

That's not what they say though . Field archaeology is very rigorous indeed and you can see the teams of analysts collating the site material in the tents on site. Do you remember an early episode when some guy had salted a site with relics? It was fascinating as the team saw through the scam very quickly due to the distribution and representation of the finds. Top science!

And from a pottery perspective, Pot shards are the graptolites of Archaeology - highly indicative of period.

PS I studied Archaeology & Geology (and Astronomy) at Uni

The only thing rigorous about field archaeology is that they use shovels to dig holes....or an occasional backhoe

Yeah, I remember that episode. It's just good detective work and a good bit of foreknowledge of what you're going to be finding in the first place.

Ah, I wouldn't be comparing pottery with graptolites. The only thing pottery is truly indicative of is that people once occupied a site. To then claim it's indicative of a time period, based just on the pottery evidence alone, is not even good archaeology. It has to have solid supporting evidence that's more of an indication of what time it came from.

That's why future archaeologists, in some sense, are going to find digging up our civilisation rather easy to date....someone will be digging in a field and next they'll say (Time Team 4850AD)...."Hey, look what I've found!!!. Looks like a dual quad core chip from an ancient computer!!!". Then the equivalent of that time's Phil Harding will say..."My Gosh, it is!!!. From the Late Microsoft period, I think. You can just make out the manufacturer's stamp on the back...2012 it looks like..."

Rob_K · #20 12-08-2009, 11:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renormalised

That's why future archaeologists, in some sense, are going to find digging up our civilisation rather easy to date....someone will be digging in a field and next they'll say (Time Team 4850AD)...."Hey, look what I've found!!!. Looks like a dual quad core chip from an ancient computer!!!". Then the equivalent of that time's Phil Harding will say..."My Gosh, it is!!!. From the Late Microsoft period, I think. You can just make out the manufacturer's stamp on the back...2012 it looks like..."

Hmmm.... Or did it work its way down through the soil and contaminate a 1995 site. Or perhaps it was a cast-off from a 2463 Museum of Technology that fell on hard times... Or from the fourth millenium retro-fundamentalist Gatesist sect whose high priests secretly nurtured artefacts of old technology through the ages... Or...

Anyway, bring back Time Team!

Cheers -