Sara Perry writes: I’m so pleased to announce that, more than seven years after discovering the records hidden deep inside the BBC’s archives, my research on the first-ever English-language archaeology TV shows (aired in 1937) has been published.
These shows were effectively 100% produced and starred in by key female archaeologists and TV producers of the time. Archaeology was one of the first subjects to air on television very shortly after the British TV service launched (November 1936) At the time, archaeology was considered an experimental science, presented alongside other emerging - and, in some cases, now discredited - empirical research areas like palm-reading(!)
No filmic records survive of these shows (because of the live-to-air nature of TV in the early days), and after weeks of searching through the BBC’s paper archives, I am fairly confident that no scripts survive either. What we do have access to are correspondences, the most fascinating of which include exchanges between producer Mary Adams and Mortimer Wheeler, and Wheeler and David Attenborough (then working behind the scenes in his early professional role for the BBC)
The Maiden Castle Broadcast
On 14 July 1937 the UCL Institute of Archaeology’s Assistant Secretary and Maiden Castle volunteer/press assistant, Margot Eates hosted a 15 minute talk on Maiden Castle
This talk arguably represents the first archaeological TV programme in the world for which records survive.
While the script for this IoA broadcast seems to have been lost, and while the live-to-air nature of early television negated recording of the show, various pieces remain of Eates and Adams’ detailed preparatory correspondence
The programme seemingly opened on the line, ‘You are looking at a model of the rampars of Maiden Castle in Dorset, with the model (resting on a turntable) figured as the sole focus of the first shot.
Subsequent shots showed other models, two air photos, a map, chart of dates, a diagram of stratification, a ground photo and an artefact photo. So significant was this material that the BBC was willing to insure it for more than £75, as well as to invest in the special shipping of a model prehistoric loom weight to the television studio,
Read more at Sara Perry's Blog:
https://saraperry.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/introducing-the-worlds-first-english-language-archaeology-tv-shows/
Update: the paper (Archaeology on Television, 1937) is currently free to download from here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14655187.2017.1283932
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road