Day One: Tuesday 28 August, am

Following a full crew production meeting last night, where the main objectives for this year’s Time Team Live were outlined, most people retired to the bar to rekindle old friendships, reminisce about past programmes and generally unwind. The staff number about 100 people for this production – ranging from electricians, camera operators, editors and specialists, to caterers, diggers and, of course, the Time Team. The atmosphere is one of anticipation mixed with excitement as everyone prepares for the controlled chaos that is Time Team Live.

By 8am this morning all the crew members have travelled the 10 miles from their hotels to the site in the New Forest and the TV circus has well and truly begun. The masses of technicians, cast and production support are milling around the special domed tent that has been set up as an incident room (right). The production schedule for the day is being scrutinised and everyone is finding out where they need to go if they’re digging a trench, or what they need to do if they’re in the first session of rehearsals.

The site itself is a large, L-shaped grass field situated within a river flood plain bordered by a road and a river on two sides, and cottages and maize fields on the others. In the centre of the field sits a raised level of ground.

As the clock hits 9am, three trenches are opened. Trench One (opened by Time Team’s Carenza Lewis, Kate Edwards and Kerry Ely) is on top of the raised level, Trench Two (opened by Phil Harding) is situated on the eastern edge of the field, and Trench Three (opened by Jenni Butterworth and Saxon specialist Andrew Reynolds) is placed next to Trench One on the higher ground in the centre. We caught up with series producer Tim Taylor for his first impressions as the diggers set to work.

‘It looks like this could be a good one,’ enthuses Tim. ‘We have some top experts on this programme and at the moment they’re stood around like vultures waiting for something to get stuck into. The ground is a bit like concrete where the soil has baked, but it looks good so far and I feel positive.

‘Doing a Time Team Live is always a bit different,’ he adds. ‘Potentially we have a very exciting site here. Metal detectorists have found a few very interesting finds in this area that they have reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It looks like we could be dealing with a cemetery, but that’s one of the things we’re here to clarify. We’re using local metal detectorists, who work very closely with the local archaeologists to pinpoint where there could be metal finds in the field. They are picking up all sorts of signals and we’re marking them out so that extra care can be taken when we excavate those areas.’

By 11am a fourth trench is opened by Time Team’s Katie Hirst and Barney Sloane, positioned between Trench Two on the eastern edge of the field and the other two trenches in the centre. Professor Mick Aston takes up the story: ‘What we’re doing is trying to find the extent of the archaeology here. It’s still very early days and the trenches are only just opened, but by digging in the areas that we have placed the trenches we can start to put together a picture of what we have here.

‘I always have three questions in the back of my mind when I do these things: what is the extent of what we’re dealing with? What is the age of the site? And what is the condition of the site? Hopefully we can answer all of these questions by the end of this dig and have a much better picture of what was going on here. Come and catch up with me later this afternoon, when the trenches are a bit more advanced, and I’ll let you know my thoughts.’