Time Flyers
English Heritage's Dave MacLeod is one of the three expert presenters of BBC2's Time Flyers.
"Filming Time Flyers has been one of the strangest and the most exhilarating things I've done in the sixteen years I've been involved in aerial archaeology. Over the years, I've given hundreds of talks about aerial archaeology to small groups, but making television is quite unlike standing up in front of an audience and delivering a lecture. You tend to forget that the audience is there, just behind the camera lens, so it can be a real surprise when people come up to me and say how much of a hit the series is with their kids.
"Time Flyers can be a really packed half-hour programme, so the storyline must be strictly followed. On the other hand, we sometimes have to think on our feet when the excavations fail to deliver the results we're expecting. I get a sort of vindictive pleasure when this happens, because it helps to remind the production team that archaeology is not just about finding things in holes in the ground!
"In some ways, my job as a member of English Heritage's Aerial Survey Team is very similar to my role in Time Flyers. Sometimes when we go up, we're looking for new evidence at a specific site or monument, whether it's one that's recently been discovered or one that's been known about for decades. For example, we often play a key role in larger English Heritage research projects, by contributing to the understanding of the place of an individual site or monument in its wider landscape context. Of course, this is incredibly valuable when all the surface traces have been erased by modern ploughing and are now only visible from the air as 'cropmarks' or 'soil marks' (depending on the time of year). It's a bit like geophysical survey, but much quicker and over a much larger area!
"At other times, when we go up, we're starting with almost a blank map and simply looking to see what we can find - we call this aerial reconnaissance. Equally, if we're flying home from somewhere and we happen to see something interesting, and the fuel gauge is still looking healthy, we'll take the time to try and photograph what we can see. Some of our most exciting discoveries are made this way - completely by chance!
"Not everyone in the English Heritage Aerial Survey Team actually goes up in the planes - in fact, a few of them hate flying! A lot of the Team's work involves studying existing aerial photos and mapping what can be seen on them. English Heritage's public archive, the National Monuments Record, holds the largest collection of aerial photographs in England, dating back to the earliest days of flying. Some of the photos taken by the RAF in the Second World War were taken under excellent conditions - clear skies and low sunlight - and these are sometimes the only records of archaeological monuments that have since been lost or damaged, for example by modern agriculture or the growth of towns and cities. Over the years, the whole country has been covered photographically, and you can get copies of any of the photos for yourself, whether you're interested in archaeology or just an unusual view of your house! At present, we're involved in a project to record all the archaeological remains that we can see on these existing photographs: we call this the National Mapping Programme (NMP). It's going to take us a few years to complete and when we're finished, England will have the most complete record of its historic environment of any country in the world. But I'm certain that even then we'll keep on making new discoveries and improving our understanding of our heritage."
You can find out more about Dave's role in BBC's Time Flyers by clicking here.
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