A number of timbers which can be seen jutting from the base of the River Thames at Vauxhall in central London have been identified by archaeologists as the remnants of a wooden structure that stood at the site in the Bronze Age. Most likely it was some kind of large wooden platform, probably a bridge leading out to a small island in the middle of the Thames. It's age - 3,500 years - would therefore make it London's very first bridge.
The timbers have only been revealed in the last couple of decades, as the river has eroded the bank in which they're buried. Archaeologists were alerted to their possible significance when two bronze spear heads - dating from the same period as the timbers - were located driven into the bank nearby. A short archaeological investigation was conducted in 2000 as part of the Channel 4 programme Time Team.
While it was only able to remove one timber from the site - a large post - due to a narrow timeframe, enough evidence was gathered to conclude that a large structure did stand there, and that as well as representing a crossing-point, the bridge also served a ritual function. It was the spot from which Bronze Age people were able to make votive offerings to the gods of the river, by throwing precious items such as spearheads into the water.
Best-selling author Caroline Lawrence has added her name to a growing list of celebrities supporting the fight to save Colchester's Roman Circus.
Lawrence, the author of the ‘Roman Mysteries’ series of children’s books, joins other high-profile people backing the appeal, including authors Ronald Blythe, Guy de la Bedoyere and Adam Hart-Davis, Time Team presenter Tony Robinson, architectural historian and TV presenter Dan Cruickshank, broadcaster Peter Snow, and former MP and cabinet minister Tony Benn.
No Christmas would be the same without many a wasted hour spent buried in the couch – wiped-out on a bellyful of turkey and stuffing, or nursing a hangover after a Herculean night’s mulled wine consumption – flicking the channels in a dozy haze. It's a Christmas tradition (although we can't guarentee that it dates back as far as some other ancient seasonal rituals)
This year you can spare yourself all those awful festive films and Christmas music videos you’ve seen a million times, by keeping Heritage Key’s handy guide to ancient world-themed Christmas TV close at hand.
All the old-school three-hours plus historical epics are being dusted down again for the season of good will – among them many of the biggest ancient world blockbusters of all time – as well as a raft of comedy and family-orientated ancient world-related movies, and even a few interesting-sounding documentaries.
Caerwent is a small village in south Wales that's famous for its historical - particularly Roman - remains. It was founded as Venta Silurum by the Romans, and served as a market town and later - after some local governance was devolved to them - an administrative centre for the native Silurians.
While never quite as impressive as other Romano-British tribal capitals in Britain, it was a sizeable town in its day with a large marketplace, temple and high walls. Many of the walls still remain today. Historian John Newman described them as "easily the most impressive town defence to survive from Roman Britain, and... one of the most perfectly preserved in Northern Europe."
After the Romans left, Caerwent became the centre of the Kingdom of Gwent. Some have suggested that the town may have been where the legendary Camelot where the real King Arthur - a local warlord who led resistance against the invading Saxons - held his court.
Numerous excavations have taken place at Caerwent since the 19th century, making numerous large and small discoveries from throughout the town's history. The most recent excavation - in 2008 - was the subject of a Time Team broadcast in the UK in January 2009. It focused on the invesitgation of buildings including Roman shops and a villa.
Dr Nicki J. Whitehouse is a lecturer in paleoecology at Queens University, Belfast, and co-chair of the Northern Ireland Archaeological Forum (NIAF). She gained a BA in Archaeology from Newcastle University in 1988, an MSc in Environmental Archaeology and Paleoeconomy from the University of Sheffield in 1993 and her PhD from the University of Sheffield in 1999. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society since 2003.
Her specialisms and areas of research include paleoecology and biodiversity: the origins and development of the British and Irish faunas, and quarternary environmental change - particularly late-Glacial and early-mid-Holocene environmental change - using paleoentomology. NIAF, which she helped set-up in 2006, is a loose association of individuals and associations concerned with protecting and studying the historic and archaeological environment, particularly in Northern Ireland.
Professor of Archaeology and Director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project
Mike Parker Pearson is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Since 2003, he has led the Stonehenge Riverside Project – the largest ever investigation of the ancient monument and other related sites nearby. He has published over 100 academic papers and 13 books, including The Archaeology of Death and Burial, Bronze Age Britain, Architecture and Order and In Search of the Red Slave.
He graduated from Southampton University with a B.A. in 1979, before earning his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 1985. He went on to work as an inspector of ancient monuments for English Heritage before joining the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology in 1990.
Parker Pearson began planning the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 1998, and launched its first season of fieldwork in 2003. It remains ongoing. He has also worked at various other sites in the UK, as well as in Denmark, Madagascar, Syria, Germany, Greece and the US.
A Time Team episode will tonight investigate one of the most controversial debates in American archaeology: when, and by what route, did the first humans arrive in America? University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear claims to have found evidence at the archaeological site of Topper in South Carolina that could change our whole understanding about America's earliest people.
A talk on the Stonton Wyville Survey and the dig that investigated one of its Anglo-Saxon sites led by TV archaeologists Time Team. Part of the Festival of British Archaeology 2009.
Venue: Great Easton Village Hall, Great Easton, Leicestershire.
No Christmas would be the same without many a wasted hour spent buried in the couch – wiped-out on a bellyful of turkey and stuffing, or nursing a hangover after a Herculean night’s mulled wine consumption – flicking the channels in a dozy haze. It's a Christmas tradition (although we can't guarentee that it dates back as far as some other 
