How much secrecy is involved in a Time Team dig?

Ideally there is no secrecy at all as we get marvellous information from local people, who are often informed about Time Team's imminent arrival.

The main risk is from 'night hawks' and criminal treasure hunters, which is why the location of the Roman villa at Turkdean was kept secret for as long as possible. Criminals recently emptied a Roman temple into skips with JCBs, then scanned the destroyed archaeology with detectors at their leisure, looking for artefacts to sell on the black market.

Once we start filming, there is little hope of keeping a site secret, at least in the immediate area – the crane and the helicopter are usually dead giveaways! For that reason, there are some excellent sites that Time Team will never cover, because they are unknown at the moment and featuring them on a programme would expose them to risk of looting.

Although we often reveal our plans to local people, we are very wary of doing so to a wider audience. This is because most of the sites we excavate cannot cope with large numbers of visitors; in some the archaeology itself may be threatened by visitor pressures. Large crowds also make our work much more difficult. There is so much archaeological investigation to do in the three days that we just can't spare too much time to deal with a great many fans, much as we would like to.