The team

Team leader who wouldn't go far

Dr Mark Davies is the Extreme Archaeology team leader. His geology teacher didn't think he would go far, but today he is one of the world's leading hazard experts, specialising in volcanoes.

He chose his career after leaving school without any qualifications, but was inspired to do something after seeing news footage of 32,000 people being killed by a volcano in Colombia. It took 10 years of retraining and education, studying geology at Cardiff, volcanology at Clermont-Ferrand, France, and a PhD in geophysics at the Open University, England, for him to achieve his ambition of becoming a volcanologist.

Mark now works at the Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in Honolulu, a world-renowned hazard, planetary and space research centre. He has been an advisor to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory and Ingeomenus Volcano Observatory in Guatemala. He also applies his vast knowledge to assess petroleum prospects and their impacts. His adventurous past has included a stint as a mountaineering trainer and survival expert.

Experience in TV

Although Extreme Archaeology is his first experience in television presenting, Mark has featured in numerous television documentaries, including Volcanic Eruption, Pelee Awakens and The Volcano That Blew a World Away (all Cicada Films for Channel 4) and Volcano Man for the BBC. He also presented his own radio show, Boy Talk, which ran for three seasons on BBC Radio Wales.

In 2000, Mark won the British Association's prestigious Charles Lyle award for the advancement of public understanding of science, a result of delivering over 200 public lectures to various social groups around the UK and France.

Common ground

Mark says he is surprised that there is not more collaboration between volcanologists and archaeologists, since they share a great deal of science and many techniques in common. For example, he says that a common interest in geophysics 'created an immediate rapport between myself and Meg Watters, the team's archaeo-geophysicist.'

There are other areas of common ground, too, (see Extreme Archaeology: The volcano connection) but he adds: 'I have to confess that the nearest I've come to Alice Roberts' discipline of old bones (or osteoarchaeology, to give it its proper title) is Swansea's accident and emergency unit!'

Mark says that both the archaeologists and the access team on Extreme Archaeology were 'led by stupendous people, Katie Hirst and Mike Weeks respectively, who both made my job as the leader incredibly easy. Delegation and mediation was the name of the game – and it worked extremely well.'

So how did a volcanologist get to be in charge of Extreme Archaeology?

'It's because of being a jack of all trades – and the fact that I have led many expeditions into remote and desolate places around the world,' says Mark. 'Or possibly because the powers-that-be who made the programmes required an aesthetic counterpoint to the good-looking women and men who make up the archaeology and access teams. Maybe that's the real reason why they chose an overweight, balding Welshman!'

See Learning the ropes for Mark's account of how he started on Extreme Archaeology.