The past as television: are television programmes more than nostalgic ephemera

Abstract

There is a branch of history called archaeology. The source of information that archaeologists value most highly is what they call a “midden”, known to the rest of us as a heap of rubbish. To an archaeologist, all of this rubbish is valuable as evidence of concrete patterns of existence, providing a sense of what it felt to be alive in a particular historical moment. The same holds true for television.