I’ve just heard some excellent news (and let’s face it, we could all do with some of that at the moment!) courtesy of this piece in the Banbury Guardian. After far too long off our TV screens, the archaeology show Time Team is back this year and included on the menu is a vast Roman villa which will probably take years to excavate. You can see the villa walls outlined in crop marks in this photo, cheerfully nicked from the Banbury Guardian’s article.
It sounds as though the programme will now show on YouTube rather than television, and I can’t quite tell from the article whether Time Team will follow its original format of taking three days to ‘solve’ each new project, or whether it will focus more specifically on one particular dig. I don’t really care, though, because either way it’ll be amazing to have it back. It’s quite literally my favourite TV programme of all time. I loved the way it showed archaeology as something fascinating but also arduous and even frustrating, and I loved the stories it, er, dug up (sorry!) about the multiple layers of history in the UK and, occasionally, further afield. And the villa they’re investigating sounds absolutely incredible. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading off to find out more about it!
FIONA GLASS 