Digging for Britain
I have received the following email from Gemma Hagen in the BBC that may be of interest to some of you. Please, ignore the exaggerated tone of triumph. It may be a great opportunity for a young archaeologist to advertise his/ her project.
“Great news! We will be making series two of Digging for Britain. We hope to start filming in early 2011.
I’m delighted to say that the whole of Digging for Britain has been a success and rated really well with our audience. The final viewing figures for the Roman programme came in at 2.75 million which is absolutely enormous for BBC2 these days. To put it into context, the viewing figures for the 9pm slot on Thursday evenings have dropped back to 1.6 million after the series finished, which these days is normal for this time on BBC2. Received equally well by the critics, the preview in the Times said that “if archaeology had a World Cup, this would be the finals” and Time Out Magazine called it “exemplary stuff”.
Digging for Britain has also helped to give archaeology a really high profile in the press in the last couple of months – with some of our exclusive stories hitting headlines around the world! Such as the following two stories…..
Hambleden Infanticide
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10384460
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7853419/Romans-killed-babies-at-brothel.html
Frome Hoard
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1292990/Chef-Dave-Crisp-discovers-largest-hoard-Roman-coins-Somerset-field.html
And for series two we are already looking for great archaeology stories, and so if you have something coming up, or in the pipeline – whether this be field work, marine archaeology, lab work, skeletal work, conservation, post-ex analysis, community archaeology projects – or anything in between– we would love to hear about it as we will be researching and developing the stories between now and production in 2011.
Please do not hesitate to call me if you have a story in mind – my mobile is always on 07818 532230 – or drop me an email.
Gemma Hagen
