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On the foreshore of the river Thames, just opposite the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall, London, some old timbers - a series of posts or piles driven into the riverbed - have been discovered peeping out of the water at low tide. Two Bronze Age spearheads, around 3,000 years old, have also been found thrust hard into the foreshore nearby. Could these timbers be the remains of London's first bridge or the supports of a platform where Bronze-Age people made offerings to the river gods? As usual, Time Team has just three days to find out.
Time is even more restricted on this excavation than the usual three-day limit for Time Team digs. As the timbers are right at the water's edge at low tide (and up to eight metres underwater at high tide) there are only a couple of hours during which any excavation can take place. The site is also being eroded because the changing topography of the foreshore is affecting the tides. Time Team is going to try to rescue one of the posts so that it can be studied, preserved and displayed at the Museum of London.
The whole excavation centres upon a single trench, which is so small it could be referred to as a test pit. It has had to be kept as small as possible because the environment at the water's edge is extremely sensitive and any larger excavation could seriously damage the immediate ecosystem. With the tides determining what can be done and when, excavation is limited to barely two hours per day. On the first day, the post has hardly been exposed by the time the tide starts to come in again. To protect the site the trench has to be backfilled with bags of gravel, which can easily be removed when the tides grant the Team access again for the second day of digging.
Day two sees digging under way again as soon as the water is at a safe level. With the trench getting close to a metre deep there's still no sign of the post moving until Phil notices it budge, just slightly. The trench is now deep enough to free the post by the smallest amount but the suction of the Thames mud means that it is still not enough to lift it. Again, despite pushing the digging efforts to the limit, the order has to be given to leave the post for another night and secure the trench. 'Well, we didn't get the post out in the limited time we had. I guess that's just Time Team,' says Tony.
By day three time is running out. Heavy rain during the night has knocked out the power to the incident room and tension is running high. The Team is forging ahead in the confined conditions around the trench, fighting against the elements. The post is now well exposed and rocking gently. Then, it breaks. What is evidently an ancient fissure has finally given way. The post is lifted and taken from the shore for conservation.
The consensus of the specialists is that what remains here is some sort of structure, either a jetty or bridge, which was constructed by Bronze-Age peoples to reach a natural island in the Thames. During the Bronze Age the site may have been especially significant because it was at the limit of the tidal river, where salt and fresh water merged, and there would have been a huge tidal surge here. The fresh water meeting the seawater would have caused the river to flow and eddy in different directions during the day. This would undoubtedly have been a strange and intriguing phenomenon for Bronze-Age people. The intentionally deposited artefacts discovered previously on the site could indicate that this place was one of importance, and possibly religious significance, for those who used the Thames 3,000 years ago.
Shoot director Michael Douglas was put in a difficult position trying to make a Time Team programme with such severe time restrictions on digging. Here he explains what it was like:
'I felt surprisingly calm. We had so many archaeology experts working on this who all seemed to be happy with what was being found. We discovered new things that they did not know about two days before the excavation. It all went really well, but we had so much information it really had to wait until the editing stage before I could put it all together.'
What about working in the tense environment of the tidal river?
'Sorry to use a cliché but it was very challenging. Each morning we had three crews all shooting around one little trench. One thing's for sure: you cannot argue with the Thames. We had two hours and that was it. We just had to cope with the elements and shoot everything we could. It was quite thrilling.'
Gustav Milne, a Thames waterfront specialist from the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, is something of a local expert and well renowned in archaeological circles as a leading authority on the river.
'The Thames is a fundamental part of the history of London,' says Gustav. 'The remarkable thing is that we know so little about it. I've spent the last 25 years of my life exploring the Roman and medieval Thames and that's been a revelation to me. Here on this project we were actually trying to go back to over 3,000 years ago. We found lots of new stuff doing this project and the whole thing was very interesting'.
So what was it like for the Team leader, Mick Aston, starting filming on his ninth series of Time Team?
'I approached this with some trepidation,' says Mick. 'When I got to the site I thought "Oh dear here we go again", but by the morning I was caught up with the buzz and well on my way to getting into another series. It's always the same. The programmes look like they carry on into the distance but then when you're in the swing of it things are fine.'
Last year Mick was fully booked with his professorship at Bristol University, Time Team, a couple of books, his Shapwick medieval village project and a busy lecture tour. This year he's reorganised things a little.
'I've actually taken a year's sabbatical from Bristol University. I'm still working with my postgraduate students, but otherwise I'm taking a bit of a break. This lets me concentrate on Time Team, the writing up of the Shapwick project post-excavation reports, and my monasteries book. I've been saying that I'm starting my monasteries book for ages - well now I really have!'