British field archaeologist Phillip Harding has become a familiar face on the Channel 4 television series Time Team, his trademarks being his long hair, battered hat and West Country accent. Trained on excavations with the Bristol University Extra Mural Department from 1966, he has been a professional archaeologist since 1971.
Born in Wiltshire, he was educated in Marlborough and worked in a puppet factory in the same town after he left school. He left his job in 1971 to work for the Southampton City Council Archaeology Unit, combining this with five seasons of excavations run by the British Museum at the Neolithic flint mines of Grimes Graves, Norfolk. He has since been an acknowledged expert on flint-knapping and has given many demonstrations around the country.
In the later 1970s he worked on excavations in Berkshire, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and the Isle of Wight for the Department of the Environment. In 1979 that section of the DOE became Wessex Archaeology, a non-profit organisation which is one of the biggest archaeological practices in the country. Phil Harding continues to work for Wessex Archaeology when not filming.
British field archaeologist Phillip Harding has become a familiar face on the Channel 4 television series Time Team, his trademarks being his long hair, battered hat and West Country accent.
In 1979 that section of the DOE became Wessex Archaeology, a non-profit organisation which is one of the biggest archaeological practices in the country.
PhilHarding continues to work for Wessex Archaeology when not filming.
Phil talks about how he first got involved in Time Team and how he feels about the programme now.
I arrived at Wessex Archaeology on a cold, wet and windy afternoon and was met by the big grin and firm handshake of PhilHarding.
Phil showed me some of the examples that had come from the site before my visit: hand-axes of a comfortable weight and fine shape that felt as good to hold today as they must have done to the craftsmen that made them some 200,000 years before.
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