It is one of the oldest mysteries in American history: What happened to the "Lost Colony" of Fort Raleigh? In 1587 the English sent a group of hardy, hopeful colonists to make a go of it in the New World. But when English ships returned with supplies just three years later, they found the settlement empty and the colonists gone. Only one clue was left behind: the word "Croatoan" carved in the gatepost of their fort. To this day, the fate of the colonists and the location of the original settlement remain a mystery. Time Team America travels to Roanoke Island to look for evidence of the colony, find out what it looked like, and learn what life might have been like for those first English colonists.
Deep in the woodlands near the Savannah River in South Carolina lies a remarkable archaeological site that may challenge our understanding of America's first inhabitants. Named after the local man who discovered it, the Topper site was once the location of an ancient quarry, a kind of prehistoric workshop, where people came thousands of years ago to make weapons and stone tools. For archaeologists, the site is providing a wealth of material left behind by the Clovis people. Known for their distinctive stone spear points, the Clovis people are commonly thought to be the first to inhabit North America around 13,000 years ago. But evidence being found at sites like Topper is challenging the long-held theories about when people first came to the American continent. Did they follow big game across a land bridge from Siberia to North America 13,000 years ago or did they arrive much, much earlier and by a different route? Time Team America visited the Topper site to join the hunt for evidence that could shed light on these questions.
Buried beneath farmlands in Western Illinois, lies the remains of the first American town founded by a freed slave before the Civil War. The story of New Philadelphia is a little-known episode from our frontier past and a dramatic testament to victory over enslavement. In 1836 "Free Frank" McWorter purchased his freedom from a Kentucky plantation owner and headed North. When he reached Illinois, he planted roots, started a town, and sold enough property to purchase the rest of his family out of slavery. Eventually, New Philadelphia became a thriving, multi-racial community which endured until well after the Civil War. The local landowners, descendants of the town's residents and the McWorter family want to uncover what remains of New Philadelphia to commemorate its place in history. Time Team America was invited to join the research already in progress and to help search for the schoolhouse where New Philadelphia's African American children learned to read and write in freedom.
Located in the remote Book Cliffs region of eastern Utah, Range Creek is the kind of site archaeologists dream about. The sage-covered meadows and rocky cliffs are scattered with the remnants of an ancient people: pit houses half-buried in the sand, mysterious petroglyphs scratched into the rock walls and bits of pottery and stone tools lying where they were dropped over a thousand years ago. Best of all, most of the hundreds of archaeological sites remain virtually untouched, providing a rare opportunity to find out what may have happened to the Freemont people who once flourished here. Time Team probes the ground, scales the cliffs and learns what life was like in these canyons a thousand years ago.
In 1865, a unit of cavalry soldiers thought they had volunteered to fight in the Civil War. Instead, they found themselves sent west to defend pioneer settlers against angry Sioux Indians in what is now South Dakota. Upon their arrival, the soldiers built Fort James, one of the few stone forts on the American frontier. The fort's quartzite walls still peek out from under a grassy field that seems to have somehow survived intact. The site has never been excavated, but experts believe that the fort's remains hold a time capsule of information about life on the early frontier. Time Team America traveled to South Dakota on a rescue mission: to find out how much of the fort survives and how big an area it covers so that the archaeology can be protected for future research.
Josiah Henson's 1849 autobiography inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and galvanized abolitionists. But for 30 years, he was enslaved here, on what was once a 270-acre plantation run by Isaac Riley. An acre of land and an old house are all that remain. Time Team America descends on a upscale DC suburb, digging for clues beneath the manicured lawn and peeling back layers of the old kitchen floor to tell the story of one of the most important Americans of the 19th century.
At Badger Hole, Oklahoma, the Time Team America crew excavates what may be the largest Folsom-period bison kill site in North America. Long extinct, Bison Antiquus roamed the plains 10,000 years ago. How were Paleoindian hunters able to kill so many of these massive bison—weighing 1500 pounds each—without the help of bows and arrows or even horses? The lives of these ancient ancestors seem elusive, but by investigating bison bones, arrowheads and more, the Team discovers clues about their habitat, hunting range, and their ingenuity that will help us understand them.
In the fall of 1864 the Confederate Army marched Union prisoners into a hastily built compound called Camp Lawton in Jenkins County, Georgia. The population mushroomed to more than 10,000 in just six weeks. Then, as Sherman's army approached, guards and prisoners alike were forced to flee. Abandoned, the camp disappeared into the forest and remained undisturbed for over a century, until a team from Georgia Southern University surveyed the site. They found what appeared to be on wall from the camp stockade wall, Civil War era coins, a daguerreotype, and more. The rest of the story was waiting to be uncovered. Time Team America joined the effort to map the entire stockade and learn more about this important moment in the nation's history.
In Cortez, Colorado, the Team explores the Dillard site, a village that some 1500 years ago was home to people of the Basketmaker III era, a culture that advanced itself with technologies like farming, pottery, and the bow and arrow. The innovations of the Basketmaker III era led to the complex, beautiful Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings of the nearby Mesa Verde region. Recent discoveries at the Dillard site—located at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center—lead researchers to ask: was this site more than just a village? Was this concentrated settlement the scene of a turning point in human history? Time Team America hopes to help solve the mystery.
