Digging for gold: How an enduring subject keeps unearthing new audiences
Using the verb “to dig” with the meaning to like or understand something was first identified by lexicographers in the late 1930s, coincidentally the era in which an Anglo-Saxon burial boat was uncovered by archaeologists at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Subsequently, British TV viewers have really dug shows about digs. Currently, BBC Two viewers are enthused by Digging for Britain, reporting from old and new excavations, and Britain’s Biggest Dig, in which the gouging out of England for the HS2 rail route finds the past beneath the grass.