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Time Team Digs
The Dark Ages

First shown 29 November 2002.

Tony Robinson, with the help of historian Dr Joanna Story, of Leicester University, looks back at what Time Team has learnt about the so-called 'Dark Ages' in numerous digs from the past ten years.

Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and other Norsemen all left their mark during a period of British history that is all the more fascinating for being so difficult to unpick. Without archaeology, we would have only a limited idea of what was going on as society was largely illiterate during this time and written records are few and far between. This programme sheds new light on the period that has been called – rather misleadingly – the 'Dark Ages': in fact, it turns out to have been anything but dark.

Time Team has dug Viking settlements in Shetland and York, which yielded fine jewellery and evidence of a settled domestic life. Extraordinary Saxon burials in the south were rich in ornamental finds and revealed a sophisticated society. And monasteries in Norfolk and Northumbria were busy producing exquisite illuminated manuscripts and goods for trade.

With St Wystan's Church in Repton, Derbyshire, providing the backdrop, Joanna Story guided viewers through Saxon and Viking Britain. Religion, trade and burial customs are just some of the areas covered.

The programme revisited such memorable sites as:

Breamore, in the New Forest, where a remarkable Anglo-Saxon cemetery featured in the 2001 Time Team Live.

Saxon Ely, which featured in a Time Team documentary special in 2001.

Bawsey St James, in Norfolk, where a skeleton whose owner had met a violent end provided the exciting culmination for the 1998 Time Team Live.

St Hilda's monastic settlement in Hartlepool, founded by St Aidan in 640 AD.

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