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To: mass55th
I'm sure the digs continued after the cameras left, at least I sure hope so. The history lessons in each episode were always really interesting. The archaeology dig segments mostly just did a great job showing you how dirty, unglamorous, and difficult archaeology really is.

There's a somewhat analagous US show called "Destination Unknown" hosted by some guy named Josh Gates. It serves to show the differences in US TV versus UK I suppose. In "Destination Unknown", like "Time Team", they create some premise ("the holy grail might still be out there!") but ulike Time Team, which breaks out shovels and spoons and crawlis in the mud for three days, Gates goes to different exotic spots in the world and pretends to explore unexplored areas (I say pretend because they are almost always in an area where there is a real archaeological dig and I doubt they just said "no, we've never been in there. Why don't you take your cameras and tell us what you find?") But it's interesting for the historical context segments as well as the "Indiana Jones" style hyped up explorer drama.

15 posted on 04/24/2018 11:41:56 AM PDT by pepsi_junkie (Russians couldnt have done a better job destroying sacred American institutions than Democrats have)
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To: pepsi_junkie
I watched Josh Gates when he had a show on the Sci-Fy Channel. He has a good sense of humor, and his programs always gave me a laugh. He's now on The Travel Channel, and I've watched his programs, and he's covered new subjects, but most of the season's episodes consist of episodes that are nothing but a re-edit of a previous episode on the same subject matter. They title them "New Finds," but don't actually have any new finds in them. I don't bother to watch those episodes, so the actual new episodes at new sites are few and far between. After watching Time Team, you're right, there is nothing like it on U.S. TV. PBS did a couple of seasons of a U.S. Time Team series, but it wasn't done as well as the original in the UK. If I was younger, I would have enjoyed getting down on my hands and knees to dig in the dirt for history, but at 70, I have enough trouble getting up off the sofa. I've been told by an archaeologist friend who works at the archaeology department of the University of South Carolina, Columbia that if you want to be rich, don't become an archaeologist. His favorite period of history was/is the colonial period, and at one point his team was working on locating the winter camp of Francis Marion...Swamp Fox on Snow's Island. He invited me to come help on one of the digs there, and I would have loved to have been able to go, but it wasn't the right time, and I had to decline.

I just searched to see if there was a report for the dig he conducted, and found this .pdf document:

The Search For Francis Marion Continues

I got to know Steve when I was researching the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantries. I had found his name in a publication for a dig that had been conducted on the bodies that had been found on Folly Island, S.C. That end of the island had been Union headquarters during the Civil War, and it turned out that the bodies were of black soldiers who had served in the 55th Mass, and another U.S.C.T. unit. They were removed and eventually reinterred at the National Cemetery at Beaufort, S.C. in 1989. The publication I'd found hadn't cited any of the first source material that I'd found during my research, and I wondered if he even knew about it. I called him at the college, introduced myself, and told him of my research material. He had never seen any of it, so I shared everything I had with him, met him in person a few times, and he used a lot of my material to publish another report on a dig that he had conducted at the other end of Folly Island where the Union Fort Green had been located, and manned by the 55th. He gave me an acknowledgement in the new publication, and sent me a copy of it. I haven't talked or written to him in ages as I've moved on in my interest in the Civil War, so I don't even know if he is still with USC or not. I gave all my boxes of research material to the National Guard Museum and Archives in Concord, Mass. several years ago as I didn't want it to end up in a dumpster when I died.

20 posted on 04/24/2018 2:09:03 PM PDT by mass55th (Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway...John Wayne)
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