Don't panic, this isn't a warning that Plague has hit Curnow Towers (except for the ubiquitous plague of rodents) although I will admit that two of our cats have been confined to barracks over the last day or so, having contracted what Si's beloved Del Boy once termed 'the two-bob bits'. Stepping gingerly onto the kitchen lino this morning, one could almost believe that I had offended the God of Israel in some way...

But if I'm not in need of an 'X' chalked on the front door, and bearing in mind that I had previously told Lissa in an email that my New Year's resolution was to not witter on so much, what exactly is the subject of this latest voyage into the unknown? I will tell you. This evening Mrs C and I found ourselves watching Time Team on one of the satellite channels - it was in fact an edition from 2003, based at a site in Fife. As is often the case with these Time Team shows, the site in question was an ancient burial site, in particular a cist which is (he typed, with reference to the Time Team website open in another window) "a Bronze-Age stone-lined pit, like a small chamber, into which dead people were interred." Incidentally (and breaking my resolution not to stray off the subject with an almost shocking disdain) if, like me, you have an issue with the hyphen in Bronze-Age, the above is an exact steal from the TT site, so take it up with Tony Robinson.

As is also often the case with these Time Team shows, my wife and I disagreed over what they were doing. Just as she was heading towards the kitchen (and bearing in mind the plaintive mewing coming from behind the sick-bay door, I think that shows just how brave a lady Mrs C is) Tony Robinson was filling in the back-story of the Fife dig, explaining that the land in question had been purchased by a developer, who was going to build on it. Mrs C's opinion of this (before she finally went to put the kettle on) was that it was a bad thing, the idea of building on top of this burial site. But my own view was that it's surely no worse to have your remains built over, than it is to have them dug up and pawed over - and to have that done for the sake of a television show is, I would suggest, yet worse still.

Part of me is a natural cynic, part of me is inevitably inclined to disagree with my wife as a matter of husbandly duty... and part of me unfortunately wonders over archaeology in general. The word, in fact, that often comes to mind when watching Time Team is 'toboggan'. That might need some clarification (no, you think?) but is in fact a word commonly used at Curnow Towers to describe something utterly pointless. Its origins lie (for those of you thinking about an actual toboggan and thinking that there is a point to it, namely to get down the Alps very quickly and to give John Noakes something to do) in one of Billy Connolly's routines.

Connolly (who I discovered the other day has recently made the unexpected career move from 'national institution' to 'controversial' - like the witches in Oz, popularity comes and goes so quickly round here) said that he was talking to a rather upper-class gentleman, and upon asking this chap what he did for a living was given the one-word answer, "Toboggan". A totally pointless pastime, which this guy was able to indulge as, for want of a better word, his job. Ludicrous, pointless, totally of no value to the world...

...which brings me lumbering like the philistine I so clearly am, back to the Time Team. Why should the fact that four thousand years ago, some people (mainly children, but also a couple of adult males) were buried on this site, be (a) more important than a developer who is still perfectly healthy building some houses on the land; and (b) important at all.

OK, I'm not saying that archaeology doesn't, or at least hasn't, made a contribution (I did type 'big contribution' but removed the qualifier, if that's at all significant) to our lives. Obviously on a purely objective level, it has filled many text books with excavated/recovered/extrapolated knowledge about how the Aztecs lived, of how homo sapiens evolved, how people in the Bronze Age (or Bronze-Age, whichever) buried their dead... but do we need to know that? I'm reminded of the argument I used to have with Dad when I was still at school, as to the value of algebra (before anybody points it out, yes, I am aware that "the value of algebra" is a contradiction in terms - precisely my point). I claimed then, and in the eighteen years since leaving school have yet to see anything to convince me otherwise, that algebra is only ever useful to those people who want to be Maths teachers, because they will have to teach it...

Similarly, isn't the knowledge of the daily lives of the ancient Britons only of use to those who want to become archaeologists specialising in the ancient Britons? I know this makes me sound tremendously ignorant and narrow-minded, but I don't really believe that if I were to know all about Roman aqueducts it would enrich my life. You could make the case that perhaps from them (or was it the Greeks, I'm starting to doubt myself now) we developed what we now enjoy as indoor-plumbing (alas our cats haven't quite grasped the principle of the flush toilet, otherwise I wouldn't have the prospect of a green haze rising from the kitchen to contend with). But to be honest, as long as we have it, who cares who originally thought of it? The handle, the cistern and the ball-cock all do their jobs, without my needing to know whose idea they were.

I often wonder, while watching Time Team, how archaeologists make a living. OK, the 'star names' on Time Team probably get some kind of salary for appearing on the show, and I suppose one or two may be sponsored by Universities in return for giving lectures (to people who want to be archaeologists, obviously, since I don't think it would have any value to a student of French Literature). But the young, also-ran, digging-in-the-boring-trench, extras... how on earth can they survive as archaeologists? Maybe I've led a misleadingly sheltered life, but I'm prepared to bet that people reach for the Yellow Pages looking for a plumber or an electrician far more often than they do because they're in dire need of a 24-hour archaeologist.

I'm not saying that there aren't lessons to be learnt from history, but I don't see that as being the same thing as what we get on Time Team and its ilk, not at all. It's probably a bit rich coming from a man who spends most of his time talking about a creaky old TV show that was last made when he was still in his teens, but isn't there a danger of concentrating on the past, at the expense of the present? I'm far more interested in where mankind is, and where it's going, than I am in where it's been.

Let me quickly add, mind you, that I do enjoy watching Time Team, despite it being based, for me, on a very dodgy premise. Even if I think that what they're doing may be of only questionable value (oh look, another Roman vase, how earth-shattering...) there is an undeniable enthusiasm amongst the team that is tremendously entertaining. There are also the occasional comments and insights that make you think of things in a different way - in case anybody thinks that this is me effectively invalidating my own argument, I don't mean insights into what people made and how they lived and died, but the occasional observation on human nature which could have been made equally well sat in a studio rather than out in the field (or out in a field) grave-robbing. Tonight one of the guys (he was an expert on the Age of Bronze, but I can't remember now whether his on-screen title was hyphenated or not) theorised that the site of these cist burials may in turn have been a site of burial in an even earlier age; ie, it may have already been known as "a sacred site".

Now that does interest me, and rather more than the apparently giddy excitement to be derived from finding half a skull. For two reasons, really, although they are rather contradictory. The first is the suggestion that earlier man had no compunction about burying people in sites where people were already, or had already been, buried. As a general rule, that is a custom we tend to shy away from - and obviously, in 'modern' Church yards where each grave is marked with at the very least a headstone of some sort, it is all too obvious that the plot has already been used. So I find it interesting that what we would probably consider a disrespectful practice apparently wasn't an issue for our forefathers.

But conversely, going hand-in-hand with what we might regard as an insensitive practice, is the fact, as tonight's expert said, that man at one time had a sense that something was "sacred". Time and again there have been (on the Time Team, which I should perhaps be embarrassed to admit is about the limit of my archaeological knowledge) examples of Churches being built on the sites of Monasteries, or, as tonight, the same site being used for burials in several ages. There seems to have been a sense of continuity, perhaps a sense of 'place' which I do think we've lost. The exact reverse of the 'reuse' of burial sites situation, I suspect early (or earlier) man would disapprove of our building secular dwellings over (or out of) a sacred place.

Certainly, from these programmes comes a sense that our ancestors had a generally much more spiritual take on life in general. Given that, it seems even more insensitive that Channel 4 and its ilk feel they have carte blanche to dig up the remains of anybody they happen across. Whether the ancient Bronze-Age men and women being buried were expected to find heaven or hell I don't know - but I'm fairly sure that they never, ever expected to be dug up.

Rest in peace, until next time!