To follow up from earlier posts: have the other episodes of Time Team
been broadcast in the US?
 
Watching, in one session, last weeks on video (18th century factory now
under housing in Birmingham) and this weeks (early medieval cemetary in
Govan, Scotland), I realise there was another important element missing
from the Maryland programme (besides the beer).  This was the presence
of ordinary people, wandering past, or having their doors knocked on
('can we dig up your patio, mate?').
 
The original premis of the programme was that each programme would be
started ordinary people who said 'what _are_ those hillocks in the field
behind my house?' or 'it's always said that there's a castle under
castle street ...'.  And most of the programmes are, indeed, inspired by
(to generalise wildly) the middle-class, museum-visiting public, whom
one would expect to come up with such questions.  But the folks whose
patios get dug up, wander past the excavation in the town car-park and
so on are from the whole spectrum of society.  One particular vivid
memory is of a couple of lads who, playing truant from school, came
across the Time Team, and helped excavate a castle.  _Time Team_
suggests that one important part of (historical) archaeology which is
rarely recognised is 'outreach'.
 
--
Pat Reynolds
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Keeper of Social History, Buckinghamshire County Museum
   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Prattchet)