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    Has Time Team discovered a lost Roman building? | Time Team Podcast



    Helen Geake and Martyn Williams bring you more from the world of archaeology. In this episode of the podcast Derek Pitman shares some of the results from a geophysical survey of the Mapperton Estate. Could the grainy blobs on the data be a lost Roman building?
    As Suzannah Lipscomb takes you behind the scenes at Broughton Castle, our chief metal detectorist, Keith Westcott, reveals how he discovered a huge Roman villa nearby.
    Mark Bayley from The Genealogist demonstrates how you can use maps to research your family tree.
    There’s also Time Team News, where you’ll get Helen’s thoughts on the following archaeology stories in the news this week.
    Cave discoveries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8ejjw7377jo
    Homer’s Iliad: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/egypt-mummy-homer-iliad-gut-b2961509.html
    Red hair genetics study: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/16/red-hair-gene-favoured-natural-selection-study

    Time Team members have access to a bonus podcast where osteo-archaeologist Jackie McKinley gives you an in-depth insight into research done into the double burial at Cherington. Cutting edge DNA technology has revealed a boy and girl, buried together, were brother and sister. Jackie explains why the discovery is changing what we know about Anglo-Saxon burials. That’s available via Patreon.

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    ==CHAPTERS==
    0:00 Introduction
    3:47 Broughton Castle
    8:32 Mapperton geophysics
    18:54 Time Team News
    26:43 The Genealogist

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    35 Comments

    1. @Steve-Cross on

      I’m surprised the BBC, didn’t push for the ethnicity. Or anything else, too muddy the waters, of our ancestors. They are pretty good at doing that.

    3. @MaisieSqueak on

      The only reason the media is so fiercely interested in the bodies you've discovered is bigotry.
      They LOVE that you're SO sure it's a boy and a girl.
      You may have noticed how they kept clarifying that with you.

    6. @SkipMDMan on

      I'm sure that the Earl and Countess of Sandwich at Mapperton would be glad to give you assistance if they could use it on their YT channel too.

    7. @RabidJohn on

      Geophysics is great for improving the effectiveness and precision of trench placement, but how do you know where to geophys?
      Keith's story was a great example. Someone with an 'educated hunch' looking for clues can be very effective at finding things.
      The policy of sending archeologists in to investigate areas before (re)development has also turned up some remarkable finds in unexpected places.

    11. @LilieDubh on

      Not really interested in my genealogy, but hubby's family is fun. He's descended on his mom's side from the Hoopes family, a Quaker clan who pre-date the US, and were involved in anti-slavery efforts early on.

    12. @TomBrown-r9v on

      Presumably it's now possible to go back to human remains that were excavated decades ago, and have a look at familial relationships through DNA? 🧐

    14. @harrybruijs2614 on

      That tithe map does not work for landless people, who were and are the majority of the population. It works also better if you are from Norman lineage, because even nowadays they are richer than people from Saxon lineage.

    15. @annekeener4119 on

      Which chapters of the Iliad were used? There are at least two chapters that contained information about funeral rites, when Achilles buried Patroclus and when Priam buried Hector. There are also numerous scenes of the gods and the gods blessing people, all of which could be of interest to someone blending Hellenistic and Egyptian traditions.

    18. @NSGNT on

      Expected Archaeology on field, got in this episode None. Lots of taking, in fact that all it is Talk Talk Talk 🦜🦜🦜

    19. @randywaite4573 on

      With all the discoveries by means of Geophysics and Radar, and normal excavations, had the Romans kept any records of their own during occupation that could possible help with research??

    23. @stacietessman3318 on

      Im from the US and started watching you a few years ago. My son wanted to research our genealogy. I knew we had a Welsh surname and the rest of us was very Irish. Turns out my famiky genealogy goes back to Alfred the Great. Our ancestors came to US in 1623 because they stayed catholic. It made watching all the episodes much more interesting.

    25. @rossmacintosh5652 on

      With all due respect, Helen Geake saying the family of the two deceased siblings would have no understanding of disease seems very nieve. Isn't it reasonable to instead think that, in all likelihood, their family & community would have had an explanation? They might well be incorrect about the real causes but it is human nature to ALWAYS have some sort of explanation for what happened. It's not likely that the Anglo-Saxons were just existing in time & space without cultural constructs that explained every aspect of their existence.

    26. @genixia on

      I was exposed to a lot of history as a kid, growing up with a wealth of exposure through family holidays and a great primary school. Despite that, I never felt a deep personal connection to it, coming from a working class background, and was always drawn to technology instead.

      I've also always loved maps. I'm not entirely sure when I discovered them as puzzles, but maybe it started with a family holiday to Cornwall, Devon or Blackgang Chine, and the perpetual meme of "X marks the spot" of buried treasure.

      In the '90s Time Team demonstrated an effective intersection of history, maps and technology (and even buried treasures!) with its use of fledgling geophysical technologies and landscape archaeology.

      More recently the propagation of genealogical information on the Internet and cheap DNA tests have combined to allow technology to help me find my connection to history and archaeology – including several sites that Time Team have visited.

      I had known growing up that I had an American grandfather who'd left more than bombs in Europe during his service during WWII, but my mother had never been told who he was. In just the past decade DNA and Ancestry.com have allowed him to be identified (along with 4 Kentucky half cousins). That's where it got interesting.

      My grandfather was descended from the Baltimore Calverts who founded Maryland. As Dr. Geake noted, once you find someone famous in your tree parts of it suddenly get very well documented. The wealthy and well-connected tended to marry into other wealthy well-connected families, and all those families tended to be educated, leave written wills, and have lineages documented by historians and genealogists.

      My grandfather was a WWII hero having flown 70 missions in B26s. One of his 4th Great Grandfathers was a "Winter Soldier", a US revolutionary war hero who died shortly after the Crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Princeton. He was also the first cousin 3 times removed of George Washington and one of his 4th GGF was the Colonial Governor of Maryland.

      From there with marriages into other well documented families, it's fairly easy to demonstrate descendancy from British royalty. I have two lines back to Edward III, and can trace back to Empress Mathilda, William the Conqueror, Rollo of Normandy, Alfred the Great.

      So technology finally connected me emotionally to history and archaeology that I've have been learning about for decades.

      Time Team went to St. Marys in Baltimore. It went to Hastings. It went to Aethelney. Familial connections have popped up many times.

      It's fascinating being able to trace and find properties that your ancestors lived in. I moved to the US at the turn of the century, so jumping in the car to go exploring my UK ancestry isn't an easy option. Yet with historic maps, lidar imagery and satellite imagery all available online (shout out to the National Library of Scotland for making them readily available as overlays), I've been able to identify buildings that some of my ancestors lived in, and even "visit" them via Google Streetview.

      We truly live in enlightened times.

    28. @doncook2054 on

      The Romans were always trying to link themselves too the Trojans—they weren't, of course; but that wouldn't stop them to taking that claim beyond the grave.

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