Time Team, History and Archaeology

AWW:   Could you please tell us about some of your current projects, such as Time Team and History Hunters, because those don't play, to my knowledge anyway, in North America.

TR:  Time Team is the most extraordinary success. It's almost unbelievable. Essentially in the series I take a handful of archaeologists to a place they haven't been to before where we think there might be something of interest. And they've got three days to find what archaeology they can and to put it together and tell the narrative of what the site is and what it was like in old times.

                Now, I did the series initially when it started out, it did simply because the leading archaeologist was a friend of mine and I was interested in archaeology.  I certainly didn't do it as a career move.

                It's now consistently in the Channel 4 [the British channel it plays on] top ten of the week. It's gone from four episodes in a year to 13, plus two documentaries plus a three-day live television event plus a Christmas special. It had its spin-off series History Hunters and more spin-off series planned. The book based on the series went to number one in the hardback charts [best-sellers lists] and the follow-up is currently at number seven. It's spawned a host of imitations on other channels. And won all the awards it could possibly win.

                It's quite bizarre because I suppose as a freelance I must make about 40 different projects a year. You know, whether it's television or radio or movies or CD-ROMs or books or whatever. You can simply never predict which ones are going to be most successful. This is now entering its 9th season -- we started four days ago. And it's just quite bizarre.

AWW:    What do you find most fascinating about history and archaeology?

TR:        I think I never understood why some people weren't interested in history. History has always seemed to me a bit like air, breathing or walking. It's so much part of who we are that not to be interested in it seems to me to be entering a state of quiet puzzling denial. How can we know who we are unless we know where we come from? How can we know where we're going unless we know which way we're facing? All those kind of issues. You really can only begin to get a purpose on if you understand the history of your people.

AWW:    As I understand you are the head of the Young Archaeologists Club?

TR:        I am president of the Young Archaeologists Club, yeah. One of the interesting things about it [Time Team] is that it's one of those shows that plays at about six o'clock at night and has attracted an enormous young audience as well as an older audience. It really is a family show. When I say family show I mean we don't make any concessions to making a family show. It just happens to be a show -- rather like The Simpsons, I imagine -- that people of all ages care to watch. And we were asked at one time if we would make a junior version of the programme, and we said there's no point. That would be extraordinarily patronizing, because kids love the programme as it is. One of the things I wanted to do was obviously encourage that interest which is why I became president of the Junior Archaeologists Club.

AWW:    I guess this is a good time to bring this in, but one of my friends who lives in London wanted me to say that she really enjoys the series and watches it every week. And she thinks extremely highly of you. I believe the words were "Good Egg".

TR:        (Laughs.) That's good.

AWW:    I know that if Time Team were on in Canada I'd be watching it, because it very much sounds like a show I would be interested in.

TR:        It's playing every night at the moment on Discovery Europe. And a couple of shows have gone on to Discovery in the US. We actually did a show in Maryland about the first European settlers in that part of the country. And there's consistently been talk about making it a worldwide programme. Whether or not that will ever happen, I don't know.

AWW:    Ah, I was wondering because I was looking on the web to see if it was here anywhere, and I saw one listed in Maryland, and I was wondering if that was the actual British programme or a North American version.

TR:        That was us. I think we're going to go to Mexico in about a month and dig a Mayan temple.

AWW:    How do you choose which sites to go to?

TR:        A variety of different ways. We have four professional researchers looking for us who consistently come up with sites. Also our own archaeologists get to hear about sites through their work. And viewers write into us and offer sites. I think we've got something in the region of 8,000 requests from people who watch the series to ask us to come and dig up various things.