Helen Geake

Helen Geake joined Time Team as a regular for the 2006 series. She had previously worked as a digger during the 1998 Time Team Live and as a specialist adviser on Anglo-Saxon burials for the 2001 Live. Since then she has also appeared on various programmes on a 'one-off' basis.

She is currently the finds adviser (post-Roman artefacts) for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, having previously worked for the PAS as its finds liaison officer for Suffolk, one of the busiest county offices. Before that she was assistant keeper of archaeology at Norwich Castle Museum. She has a doctorate from the University of York and her undergraduate degree is from University College London. Her major research work has been on Anglo-Saxon burial practices in the seventh and early eighth centuries, studied through the objects deposited with bodies in graves.

How did you first become involved in archaeology?
Despite growing up in Bath, a city which is literally soaked in archaeology, I didn't know that it was possible to have a career as an archaeologist – my school only catered for people who wanted to become doctors and lawyers. I ended up training as a secretary and reading through the history shelves of the local library in between typing letters and making tea. Eventually I got to the end of a shelf, and below were the books on archaeology, so I started on these. It seemed like everyone could make a contribution to archaeology – all you had to do was to look around you, consult maps and maybe go on a dig.

I joined my local archaeological society and started going to lectures. Before long I discovered weekend classes in Bristol run by a charismatic chap called Mick Aston. These classes gave me enough confidence to apply to university, and while at UCL I began working as a volunteer on the Sutton Hoo excavation. This led to a PhD at York, studying the other cemeteries in use around the time of Sutton Hoo.

York was the most wonderful place to be just then. There were lots of enthusiastic researchers, all happy to spend as long in the pub or round the dinner table discussing ideas as they did actually at work. One of the most enjoyable parts of a Time Team dig is lunch or dinner when you can talk to people expert in fields very different from your own, and make connections and ideas that would never come just from reading books. This always reminds me of my time at York.

How did you get involved with Time Team?
Time Team began when I was at York, and I remember watching it with incredible excitement, then running down to a phone box to ring up Channel 4 to tell them how fantastic it was. It was the first programme to show the process of archaeology – what we actually did – and it was amazing to see this on the TV.

I first got involved with Time Team when I was working at Norwich Castle Museum, when they came to excavate a metal-detectorist site at Bawsey for the 1998 Time Team Live. I was just a local digger, but had a wonderful time. Three years later the 2001 Live was an Anglo-Saxon cemetery found by a metal detectorist – right up my street. I was invited along as an Anglo-Saxon expert and had the most fantastic time, learning about skeletons from Alice Roberts and Margaret Cox as we went along and finding more buckets than on any other site ever!

What else do you do as well as Time Team?
My 'day job' is working for the Portable Antiquities Scheme. We record finds made by members of the public, particularly metal detectorists. It is incredible how many highly important artefacts they find, and since the Portable Antiquities Scheme started recording these systematically across the country it's been obvious that their finds are changing the face of British archaeology. Equally important is the fact that many of their finds come from archaeological deposits which have been smashed to bits by agricultural machinery, and we have got to come to terms with this too.

I'm now in charge of the PAS's recording and research for the Anglo-Saxon to modern periods. I've had to learn more about the archaeology of different periods for this, and so it has been wonderful to do more Time Team programmes recently.

What do you enjoy most about Time Team?
The great thing about Time Team is the variety of sites that you get to work on. Most people only get to work on a few really brilliant sites in a lifetime, but on Time Team you get to go to a new amazing place every fortnight.

What I love too, and what I think shines through the programme, is that everyone involved is so interested – and not just the archaeologists. When we did the Big Dig, I went round to Bill Wyman's house (just a couple of miles from mine) to film him excavating his test pit. We didn't have to produce much footage from this, so it was quite relaxed. At one point I realised that Bill was being helped to dig not only by Tony, but also by the director, sound man and cameraman – five of them fighting to get into a one-metre test pit! I realised how lucky I am to do a job that is really interesting and fun.

Helen Geake answers some of our questions

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