Time Team America, Wednesday, July 8

Grad Student Chelsea Rose digs in (courtesy PBS)

It’s kind of weird, in a way, that sometimes our most annoying habits as kids can be the very traits that make us perfect for our given careers. Take me, for example. I spent much of my childhood being chided for being nosy and asking too many questions. And yet, when I first started in the journalism trade, I was told to do exactly that.

So if you’ve got a kid who’s got a lust for digging in the dirt just to see what’s there, you may, in fact, have a junior archaeologist on your hands. Yeah, it’s a mess to deal with when junior is young. But what a cool career.

And that’s exactly what I liked most about PBS’ new series Time Team America, premiering tonight at 8 p.m. (but check your local listings to be sure). I mean when we think of archaeology, we think of ancient sites, like Egypt. We forget that we had some pretty interesting ancient civilizations right in in the good ol’ U.S. of A. And some not so ancient ones.

Time Team America is a documentary series about a crack team of archaeologists who go around to various digs (I strongly suspect severely underfunded ones) for three days to jumpstart projects.

For example, in Fort Raleigh, North Carolina, is the site of the lost Roanoke Colony, the earliest English settlement on this continent. But nobody knows exactly where it was because it was abandoned shortly after it was established and no one knows what, exactly, happened to the colonists who tried to settle there.

The thing is, they did find what appears to be a science room near where they think the original site was. But they can’t find the rest of the colony – or the remains of the rest of the colony. But because it’s mostly well-informed amateurs doing the looking, they’ve really only been able to spend 8 weeks of time ove r 15-odd years to do any looking. That’s not a lot of time when you’ve got a lot of space to cover.

So the Time Team has come in with a geo-phycisist to do radar on potential sites to see where the most likely spots to dig would be. The team has a back hoe to dig preliminary trenches in a fraction of the time humans only can. You know, the sorts of things any well-funded archaeological search would have.

Now, the team only has three days, and what they find may not look all that exciting. But the good thing is, you’ve got host (and artist) Colin Campbell to explain why those tiny little pot shards are so important and why the funny stains in the dirt are so impressive.

The show is basically a really cool intersection of history and science and moves quickly enough for most middle schoolers to deal with.

That being said, if you’ve got issues with body art and piercings, be aware that a couple of the team members are interestingly decorated, to say the least. But I, personally, thinks this adds to the relatable factor. These aren’t stuffy old men in white lab coats. This is your wild cousin who looks like she’s a punk rocker (and may well be), but she’s also a genius. My only fear is that team lead investigator Dr. Adrien Hannus does bear an uncanny resemblance to actor Scott Krinsky, who plays the sleazy Jeff on NBC’s Chuck. I swear, it’s the same wild hair and dimpled chin.

Unfortunately, separated at birth issues do not fall under the Time Team’s purvue. But the show is a lot of fun.