Digging with Time Team

Time Team has a regular crew of qualified archaeologists who dig the sites for each programme. The Team is also backed up at each site by local archaeologists. In addition to bringing invaluable local knowledge to the excavations, they can also usually be seen getting their hands dirty as they wield their trowels in some of the trenches.

Of course not everything on an archaeological dig is excavated by hand; and viewers often wonder how Time Team can bring a huge mechanical digger onto a site to remove the upper layers without damaging the fragile archaeology underneath. It's important to bear in mind that a careful assessment of the site will have been carried out before any machines (or indeed trowels) are used.

First, the geophysics surveys help to pinpoint where any archaeological remains might be. If the site looks particularly complicated a test pit may be dug to determine the underlying stratigraphy and find out how deep any remains are. Once the team has a good idea of what to expect, a mechanical digger may be brought in to remove the topsoil.

This is done using a flat bucket without any metal teeth. Usually, unless it is known for certain that any remains lie deep below the surface, this will be used to gently scrape back the surface a few centimetres at a time. Ian Powlesland, one of Time Team's regular diggers, has many years' experience using mechanical diggers on archaeological sites, but whoever uses the machine is closely observed by an archaeologist, who stops the digger the instant anything is uncovered. Once the archaeological layers are reached the mechanical digger is removed and the familiar hand digging process of mattocking, shovelling and trowelling begins.

The digging continues whatever the weather, which can bake the ground as hard as concrete during a heatwave or turn it into muddy slush during rain. 'The worst thing can be the wind, it just knocks you out. By lunch time you can feel as if you've done a full day's work, it just drains you down,' says site supervisor Kerry Ely. 'Add a bit of rain and it just gets better.'

The diggers generally work from 8.30am to around 6pm – or until it's dark if the site demands it. They get only a short 30-minute lunch break – though with restaurant-quality food from the on-site catering crew – and have sandwiches and tea brought around to the trenches twice a day, which is better than on any normal excavation.

'When it gets to 6pm and we break for the day it's the best' continues Kerry. 'Of course the worst bit is starting digging again at 8.30 the next morning. Some of the crew can look a bit fragile from the night before.'

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