‘Tell me what you can see.’ As I tentatively turned around, VR goggles securely strapped to my face and a controller grasped in each hand, I found that I was no longer standing in a Norfolk field. Before me lay a vibrantly colourful, elegantly furnished room within a Roman villa, beyond which I could see a shrine and a tranquil garden – a vivid virtual reconstruction based on excavated evidence mainly uncovered over the long history of Time Team. The voice directing my gaze belonged to Tim Taylor, the show’s creator and Executive Producer, and I had come to visit the Team during one of their famous three-day excavations. I am sworn to secrecy as to what they found (though watch this space for a fuller update once the episode airs!), but I can disclose that our meeting took place at Brancaster Roman Fort (Branodunum) on the north Norfolk Coast.
The show had visited this site before, beginning in 2012 when geophysical surveys overseen by Time Team ‘geofizz’ expert John Gater produced exceptionally clear images of the fort’s underlying archaeology, and that of its civilian settlement (see CA 276). They returned last September to carry out another survey using now much-more-advanced technology, and this work (which is available as an episode called ‘Brancaster Geofizz Challenge’ on the Time Team Official YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/TimeTeamOfficial) also produced remarkable results. Fast forward to March of this year, and the Team were back on site to explore some of these findings in more detail with a targeted excavation. I will save the rest for a future feature, but it gave me the perfect excuse to speak to Tim and the Team as they celebrated five years since the programme’s return.
Time Team reborn
From its first episode in 1994, Time Team rapidly rose to become an archaeological icon – and the longest-running archaeology/history programme in TV history, investigating hundreds of sites over the course of 20 series. Channel 4 cancelled the programme in 2012, and its final series aired in 2013 (CA 274), but its popularity endured. The fact that viewing figures for the Time Team Classics YouTube channel spiked significantly during the first COVID-19 lockdown highlights how comforting many found its familiar faces and community atmosphere – and in 2021 the show was reborn online, its return crowdfunded by thousands of enthusiastic fans (CA 375). This was achieved via Patreon, a funding platform where supporters pledge monthly donations in exchange for early access to or extra content, and other benefits. Time Team’s Patreon membership currently has three differently priced tiers, offering various rewards, including access to exclusive videos, ad-free podcast content, and 3D digital models of finds; Q&As with the team and ‘behind the scenes’ insights; the chance to join the team on a live dig; online archaeological masterclasses; and the ability to vote in polls of future excavation sites (see ‘Further information’ below). The success of this approach, and the steadfast support of Time Team’s fans, is demonstrated by the fact that, five years later, the programme is still thriving.
When was Hadrian’s Wall built?