The team

Top geophysics expert

Meg Watters is the team's technical leader and at the core of Extreme Archaeology's communications and data system. She is one of the top geophysics experts in archaeology, with extensive experience of mapping archaeological sites around the world. These range from post-medieval landscapes in Scotland to prehistoric sites in Egypt and a royal citadel in Sudan.

Meg is part of a highly specialised team at the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity and the HP Visual and Spatial Technology Centre at the University of Birmingham. Her work there puts her at the forefront of developing new and innovative approaches to mapping and modelling archaeological sites.

Favourite moments

Working with the geophysics and other technical equipment for Extreme Archaeology was crazy at times,' says Meg. 'I got to be pretty good buddies with Andrew, the head-cam man, who can fix anything that breaks with little more than a stick of gum.'

'The pressure to find targets to excavate in a day was some of the worst that I've had in my 10 years in geophysics,' she adds. 'Usually, I have time to think. But the look of surprise on Mel's face [Mel Morpeth, director and producer] when, in my third drag around the site with the radar unit at Chepstow, I pointed to the ground and said "There, your Roman road is there" was great!'

Another favourite moment came in Pembrokeshire for the Bay of Bones programme. 'Mel challenged me to pinpoint burials on the cliff edge. When I excavated down on top of a radar anomaly with a two by one metre trench and uncovered a complete stone-lined burial, I told him it was skill, pure skill – with a huge amount of luck!'

Learning to climb

Meg had never done any rock climbing or caving before making this series. 'The most extreme I've gone has been mostly hiking, canoeing and camping in remote places,' she says. 'But camping on a cliff edge at the Kame of Isbister in a hurricane, after seeing the equipment tent blown into a pond, was not anything I had the remotest desire to do.'

Then there was climbing up the Kame itself. 'Even though it was only four to six metres at the vertical point, you've got to wonder how, when you're only five feet four, you're supposed to follow [access team leader] Mike Week's hand and foothold route advice when he is a full foot taller with arms down to his knees.' As this was only the second climb Meg had ever done, she says that with her foothold breaking off the cliff face, leaving her dangling in the whipping rain ('Don't forget the lingering hurricane'), she started to question why she had agreed to do the programme.

Scariest moment

This wasn't her scariest moment, though. That came in the first tight spot in Slaughter Cave. 'It was just inside the entrance of the cave,' she says, 'as I wedged myself between the two walls of the cave. You have to bend your body to fit through and push really hard so you can actually move. I stopped half way and told Trevor Massiah I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this.'

'I could barely swallow and if it had got any worse I don't know what I'd have done,' Meg adds. 'Fortunately, we didn't need to do any geophysics or scanning down there so I only had to go down once. It was purely through Trev, Mike and Bean's help that I didn't get stuck.