Time Team

Time Team's expert on 'landscape archaeology':  
English Heritage's Stewart Ainsworth

Stewart - tell us about what you do!
"I've been involved with Time Team since the start of Series 2 - more than 10 years now. When I first began, I think most people, including the TV Producers and even a few of the other members of the Team, expected me just to survey the edges of the excavations and make a plan of where the trenches were in relation to the buildings round about. But Mick in particular was keen that my real archaeological skills - observation and analysis - should be put to use. After all this time, I think that everybody - the rest of the Team, the people behind the cameras, and the viewers - all realise now that I have much more to contribute, sometimes even more than the actual excavations!

Time Team makes use of a lot of hi-tech equipment. What's nice about my expertise is that I don't really need anything more than my eyes, together with a big helping of curiosity and a little bit of logical thinking. I'm sure everyone will have done the same as I do at some point in their lives. You see a house by itself in the middle of a field and think 'That's an odd place to put it!', or you drive round a series of sharp bends on flat ground and say to yourself 'Funny way of planning a road'. Or, just as likely, you're walking through the local park, and suddenly you find the ground's all covered with humps and bumps, and perhaps you hardly even give it a passing thought. The trick is not to drop the whole thing at that point, but to go on and say to yourself 'So why is this like that? There's an explanation behind this strangeness, and I'm going to keep on looking for clues that might tell me what that explanation is'.

"Everywhere I go, I see patterns in the landscape: prehistoric burial mounds on the horizon, medieval abbeys near rivers, 19th-century hedges planted in straight lines. As soon as I get a sense that something's not quite how it ought to be, I start getting curious about what's gone on in the past to make things look they way they do today. I use old maps, aerial photographs, things people remember, objects people have found, I look at the lie of the land, the geology, the plants - literally any clues I can get my hands on - to try and untangle how the landscape developed. It's a detective process.

 "That's why the team I work with at English Heritage - my day job - is called the Landscape Investigation Team. There are only 18 of us, and between us we cover the whole of England. A bit of a tall order! I'm no different from the others: a lot of them know far more than I do about certain types of monument. What we all have in common is an ability to tackle any archaeological site, monument, or landscape - no matter where or what, whether it's Stone Age or Second World War - with the same attitude, the same curiosity to work out how any single part of it relates to what was going round about, the same urge to understand how the whole pattern changed over time. In my experience, there are very few people outside the English Heritage Landscape Investigation Team who have this skill, even though the technique is basically so simple and the evidence is right there, staring us all in the face. And because we usually have more than three days to carry out each of our investigations, we can afford to be be really thorough. I reckon that when I do my walk around the landscape on Day 1 of every Time Team shoot, I might get as much as 90% of the true story. But, often, that extra 10% that we can get by examining and mapping the evidence in detail throws up something really crucial, or something really unexpected and exciting.

But in other ways, my 'normal' job's just like Time Team. I'm part of a small team, I get to see a lot of different parts of the country, I get to deal with all sorts of different projects, some of them quite local investigations just like Time Team, some dealing with whole regions or even the whole of England! I've worked with Al and Trev to unlock the secrets of Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland - we recorded our progress in a live web diary that we updated every day. If you read the September 2000 issue of Trench One magazine, you'll know that I've been doing a lot of work looking at Iron Age hillforts in the Northumberland National Park, which is a very beautiful part of the world, and packed with superb archaeological remains! So, when people ask me is my 'normal' job as interesting as Time Team, the answer is definitely a 'yes'!"

What's your favourite Time Team moment?
"The moments I enjoy best - and there are plenty of them - are when I've stuck my neck out because I think I can see something - maybe a little rise in the ground surface, maybe an unusual species of tree, maybe a mark visible on an aerial photo and nobody else believes that it's important. I end up arguing and fighting, trying to get other people to see what's there in front of them. It's hardest if the Geophys team have a go and they can't find anything, even with all their expensive hi-tech equipment. Then people start to look at me strangely, as if I'm going a bit off the rails, and I can see the cameraman thinking 'Poor old Stewart, he's going to look a right fool in front of 3 million people'. And so I have to argue even harder to get anyone to come and open a trench. And then, at last, Phil comes along, puts his spade in the ground, and it doesn't take long before my idea's been proved and everybody's suddenly forgotten that they thought I was mad five minutes earlier. Those are the best moments. Sometimes I get it completely wrong, but, I've spent a lot of my life doing this and I've learned to trust the technique. If you read the summaries of the programmes on the The Time Team website, you'll begin to see what I mean!"

Is it really true that anyone can see the things you see?
"Yes, definitely! People often overlook the things I see, or don't think to ask themselves why things look the way  they do, but that's different. You've got to remember that I've spent most of my life roaming around the British countryside looking closely at everything I see. That experience counts for a lot. On the other hand, last summer I was involved in an English Heritage investigation at Wharram Percy, which is a deserted medieval village in Yorkshire. We were teaching young kids from local schools about the site, and by the end of the day all of them were able to look at the humps and bumps in front of them and see walls and doorways and rooms, even though the houses fell down 500 years ago. And I'll tell you who can look at humps and bumps and see exactly what I'm talking about: farmers and greenkeepers at golf courses! Like me, they're so used to looking at the surface of the ground, they see the patterns immediately. It takes experience to see what I see, and skill to understand it, but it's not magic!"

So how can I get to do some 'archaeological investigation'?
"Well, the first thing is to have a look at some of the investigations I've been involved with recently: you'll see my name and e-mail address at the end of some of them. And you can always come along to one of the events we organise and take part in from time to time. And next to time you visit an ancient monument or a historic building, don't just believe what the signs tell you: do a bit of looking and thinking for yourself. English Heritage looks after hundreds of ancient monuments and historic properties that are open to the public, but barely any of them are really well understood. In fact, you don't even need to go to an ancient monument. The past isn't just underground, it's around us all the time, and finding it's just a question of looking closely. So go for it!"