During a run-through just before the first live broadcast, a TIME TEAM runner (one of those invaluable dogsbodies without whom no television production could be made) was having a very difficult time keeping members of the public away from the back of the St Leonard's site, where Tony, Mick and a gaggle of camera and soundmen were due to hurdle through a narrow doorway, down a path and then down a grassy hill to the incident room.
One problem was that, when the runner heard 'Stand by!' on her 'comms' (walkie-talkie), she would tell everyone to remain away from the area for 'Just five minutes' until Tony & co. had passed. Unfortunately, 'stand by' and 'just five minutes' is often television-speak for at least half an hour. This taxed the patience of some members of the public - and the drifting in of non-TIME TEAM bodies made the runner tear her hair.

So if you are planning on coming to see TIME TEAM at York, please obey the instructions of the stewards, runners and security personnel. Being run down by a cameraman is not something to be recommended and if you were to knock one down with all that expensive equipment. Roman find expert Lindsay Allason-Jones from the University of Newcastle and a veteran of the two previous 'live' TIME TEAMs says that, although they have only found a few bits of pottery at the Roman cemetery 'and a very nice piece of modern water pipe' they have uncovered some extremely interesting sherds of Roman glass. Some of these are from high-status blown objects, not unlike the piece that glassblower Mark Taylor will be attempting to create during this weekend.

Latest update from Walmgate
from Matthew Reynolds, TIME TEAM Club coordinator.
11.15am

Things are just starting to get going on this site, one that promises to offer up some great Viking archaeology. First stop was to ask Dr Patrick Ottaway, this area's excavation supervisor, to sum up the situation. 'It's going very well,' he said. 'Here at Walmgate, one of our main medieval streets, the machine digger is working away as I speak. We know that on this site we have archaeology of the Viking and medieval periods as we are currently clearing out a sample trench we did a few years ago. We plan to keep going down and expanding as we find out more of York's past.'

12.15pm

The excavations are ongoing and rehearsals are taking place ready for the live transmission. The rehearsals basically make sure that everyone is in the right place and knows what to do, and the director is happy. I managed to pin down 'Mick the Dig' for an update.
'As you know,' he said, 'we have been re-excavating a trench originally dug in 1991. We have been finding material from the fill that represents just the sort of thing we expected to find in backfill. We are down to the bottom of that trench, have cleaned it up and are now looking at extending it and trying to find some evidence of the medieval buildings that used to be here.'

The finds from the site so far have been the usual medieval pottery and the odd bit of Roman pottery, such as sherds of late grey ware used in utility vessels. The Roman material is probably at this level because it has been re-deposited by modern disturbance. All the finds are being processed on site and the spoil is also being wet sieved - that is, placed in buckets of water and then the waste water poured through sieves.
One particular find that has stood out is a small disc that could have been a brooch or part of a harness for a horse. It's about 3 centimetres (1.25 in) in diameter and has a looped design. Made of a lead alloy, it probably originally had a tin or silver plating, but only tiny traces remain, teasing us to this conclusion.

2.00pm

During the live broadcast I happened to be in a pub with Steve Bonser, a TIME TEAM runner. Unfortunately we were not here to have a pint but to get some ice from the barman to cool down the drinking water on site. We were lucky enough to catch a bit of the programme as everyone in the pub had crowded around the TV that usually shows the football. I'm happy to say that they all thought the first broadcast looked great! You had a better chance of surviving medieval medicine if you were poor than if you were rich because poor people would tend to use traditional herbal remedies, which might not cure you but at least wouldn't kill you, whereas wealthy people would be treated to the latest quackery. This would include potions and lotions of lead and mercury, or powerful purgatives to make you vomit or give you diarrhoea. The end result is that you would probably be poisoned or severely weakened or both.

Rich people would also have the dubious benefits of surgery which, given the lack of anaesthetics, antiseptics or blood transfusions, would almost certainly kill you.
However one advantage for the aristos of the Middle Ages was that they were likely to have their blood let by a leech, which was a fairly gentle method, instead of using a knife to open a vein. Carole Rawcliffe, who is Reader in the History of Medicine at the University of East Anglia, thinks there's something to be said for the use of leeches.

They were used to restore the balance in the body's humours, which was a sensible means of treatment given the medical knowledge at that time which lacked all the things we take for granted, such as x-rays and microscopes,' says Rawcliffe, who could be seen at the Live applying a leech to Paul Thompson's arm to cure is too-sanguine humour.
Medieval medics believed that our health depended on the balance of the four bodily humours, which corresponded to the four elements (fire, water, earth and air). The humours were:
Choleric (yellow bile), responsible for hot and dry symptoms, corresponding to fire;
Phlegmatic (phlegm), cold and wet symptoms, water;
Melancholic (black bile), cold and dry symptoms, earth;
Sanguine (blood), hot and wet, air.

These were reflected in the planets, with Mars said to cause choleric symptoms, the moon phlegmatic symptoms, Jupiter sanguine symptoms and Saturn (the most unhealthy planet) causing melancholy. Too much of a particular humour was thought to lead to specific illnesses, for example choler resulted in frenzy, phlegm caused dropsy and phlegm in the joints was responsible for arthritis. 'Bleeding or leeching would aim to restore the balance,' explains Rawcliffe. 'Or sometimes herbal remedies or diet would be used, such as lettuce, which is a phlegmatic plant, would be prescribed for choleric patients. It was quite a holistic way of treatment.'

Leech update 7.40pm Friday - The leech has just dropped off Paul's hand after clinging on for 45 minutes and growing fatter and fatter. The length of the leech's stay was ironic given that it didn't want to get sucking at the beginning and even made a bid for freedom by jumping on the table in the medicine tent. The leech team had to prick Paul with a needle and draw blood before the leech would show interest.
Paul feels fine but his hand is 'a bit sore' and his arm was going numb by the time the leech released its grip. 'Every now and then I felt little pricks like a nettle sting and the leech got a bit fatter,' says Paul.
The leech will be able to live for six months off Paul's blood but then it will die as it won't be allowed to feed off any other people because of the risk of transferring infection between patients. 'So this was his last meal,' says Paul. 'I'm happy for him to enjoy it.' ...and after!

Friday: pm.

Just after 4pm, the diggers at the Roman cemetery came up with a real treasure: a 'quite rare' coin featuring Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, who was proclaimed emperor by the Roman army right here in York. According to coins expert Craig Barclay – head of numismatics at the Yorkshire Museum and responsible to the Yorkshire coroner for the reporting of treasure trove. Helena herself was the first wife of the emperor Constantius Chlorus (Constantius 'the Green'!) who died in York. Before that, he had divorced Helena for political reasons, but her son Constantine remained devoted to her and she was held generally in high esteem. She was the one who persuaded Constantine to make the Roman empire Christian, and she toured the religious sites of the Holy Land and is reputed to have found the 'true cross' she was canonised as St Helena for that. St Helena island, the final home of the exiled Napoleon, is named after her, as is St Helen's Square in York.

The coin dates from AD 337-340 and was, again according to Craig Barclay, made in 'the second workshop at the mint in Trier', which was in Gaul and now is in France.
Another coin from the 270s found in the trench shows Tetracus, a Gallic rebel emperor. However, unlike Helena, this piece of money is still quite commonly found.
The band of bright white gravel now evident in the Roman cemetery trench is the resting place of a modern pipe and not the hoped-for Roman wall predicted by geophysics. The diggers are now cleaning this gravel out and also the infill over unidentified features further down.
Osteoarchaeologist bone expert Margaret Cox just flew in from Kosovo last night to be with us in York. In Kosovo, she was working with the British Forensic Investigation Team, a TIME TEAM dig, even one as big as a 'live', is a snip after that type of work.

Margaret was able to give us an update on the 'Bawsey skull'. For those of you who didn't see the last day of last year's live, a skeleton was dug up within the final 30 minutes. What made it so spectacular was the fact that the skull had been sliced right through horizontally and the free part buried with it. At the time of the discovery, we thought that this had been a monk or peasant slaughtered by an invader – say, a Viking.
Now, Margaret says, all that has changed with the finding that the skull is that of a woman aged over 30 who would have lived some time in the 8th-10th century. According to a forensic pathologist, she was hacked from behind but not all the way through. Amazingly she survived this, but she must have been very poorly because, a short while after the injury (attack?), someone attempted to relieve her suffering by carrying out trepanation, the cutting of the skull for medical or spiritual reasons, a practice that has been used from prehistoric times right up to the present day. This person cut the top of the skull completely away from the rest. Because this top piece remained with the body in death, that is, in the grave, it is very likely that the woman did not survive the 'operation'.

The Archaeology of York - First Geophysics Result

Where can I stay?
Accommodation in York.

Find a Hotel near Helmsley or Youth Hostels YHA Youth Hostels in the area York.

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