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The Tribes of Science

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More Tribes of Science

Peter Curran visits members of the many and varied disciplines of science

Scientists are often viewed as a homogenous bunch but, from astronomers to zoologists, there are many and varied Tribes of Science. Peter Curran goes on a mission to study their unique cultures

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The Tribes of Science: More Tribes of Science: Episode 1: The Archaeologists

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Episode 1

Episode 1: The Archaeologists

The Archaeologists

BBC Radio 4 - The Tribes of Science, More Tribes of Science, The Archaeologists

Peter Curran encounters a tribe of archaeologists, digging up Stone Age life on Jersey.

Peter Curran puts archaeologists under his anthropological microscope. He meets a tribe who are excavating the culture of the Stone Age on Jersey.

In the first of a new series, Peter Curran puts archaeologists under his anthropological microscope. Do the scientists who discover and interpret lives in the distant past have a distinctive culture and mind set of their own? To find out, Peter visits a tribe of British archaeologists at their excavations on the island of Jersey.

For 250 000 years, Jersey was a magnet for bands of nomadic Neanderthals and later Stone age hunter gatherers. During much of that time, sea level was lower than today and you could walk to Jersey from Britain or France. When ice ages waned, groups of Palaeolithic people gravitated there to hunt mammoths, rhinos and reindeer.

Today Jersey is drawing archaeologists from all over the UK because of its windows into the early Stone Age past. One is in a rocky ravine by the sea and the other in a farmer's field. While the scientists want to learn about the people and their lives in the landscape back then, Peter Curran gets down in the dirt to find out what makes the archaeologists tick and what might distinguish them as a tribe of science.

Peter explores what drives the desire to spend a summer month crouched in the dirt with trowels and sieves, and hears about tribal life in the archaeolological trenches.

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Episode 1: The Archaeologists

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