As the summer season at Flag Fen built to a tremendous crescendo, we were thrilled to host our penultimate DVIP speaker – Time Team’s very own Tony Robinson.
There’s a fantastically adorned chair in the Iron Age roundhouse at Flag Fen, with ‘Bard of the Fens’ carved across the back. If anyone deserved to inherit that mantle (or at least borrow it from Francis Pryor!) it had to be Tony.
Instantly putting us all at ease, Tony took us on a personal journey, describing himself as an ‘archaeological storyteller’ and explaining how he had come to love the past. With his irreverent style honed, like a cunning plan, in West End theatre land – his mission in life is to undermine the ‘academic conspiracy’ that tries to make archaeology boring and inaccessible. This clip is from the question and answer session – but gives a brief flavour of the fabulous, thought-provoking time that was had by all.
- Why has Time Team only got three days to find out?
- What’s the most exciting site Time Team has ever dug?
- Is archaeology engaging enough for young people?
- How does Time Team choose its sites?
- And… touching on the controversy that surrounded Mick Aston’s resignation from Time Team last year (and foreshadowing the Channel Four’s decision not to re-commission the series) – is archaeology on TV dumbing down?
A master at work; watch this and you’ll know why Time Team will be sadly missed!
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Written by Brendon Wilkins
As Founder and Co-CEO of DigVentures, Brendon brings together two decades of commercial archaeology experience with his expertise in digital innovation for archaeological fieldwork, public participation, and social impact evaluation. With a consistent research and publication record, his PhD (‘Digging the Crowd: the future of archaeology in the digital and collaborative economy’) explores new business and social impact models that position citizen science as a response to economic and climatic challenges facing humanity. Brendon steers the ship of DV’s fieldwork, evaluation and ‘Deep Time’, our crowdscience platform training citizens to search Earth Observation Data for cultural and natural heritage. Brendon’s signature laugh lights up every room, especially when he sneaks onto the turntables for a cheeky DJ set!
Comments (1)
Shame. Sound not good enough for me to follow 🙁