Time Team surveyor Henry Chapman can often be seen waltzing off into the distance with his equipment, while landscape archaeologist Stewart Ainsworth can always be relied on for his highly accurate predictions. How do these two masters of topography work?

Henry Chapman, surveyor

'Here at Sedgefield we have a massive landscape, but what appears to be happening is that a Roman road is following the natural topography of the land,' says Henry. 'I'm doing a large survey of the whole area so that I can create a large model of what we can see. By doing the survey I can pick up lots of little lumps and bumps on the ground that may not be immediately obvious to the eye. I can also tie in all of the geophysics data and plot the location of the trenches onto my plan so that we have a much better and rounded impression of what is happening with this landscape.'

After setting up his base station, Henry walks off into the distance to start surveying.

'The base station over the other side is talking to satellites so that it knows where it is on the planet,' continues Henry. 'Then the surveying staff that I carry triangulates with the base station and the satellite to pinpoint exactly where I am. It's very accurate. With a normal GPS (global positioning system) that you may have in a car it can be accurate down to a few metres. This system is much more sensitive and is accurate to within millimetres. I also like this equipment because it's a nice yellow colour.'

Henry then sets off across the field to plot another geophysics grid. A little later in the day we catch up with him again in the incident room, where he is processing his information. 'I'm very, very excited, just have a look at this,' he says. 'The computer acts as the hub for the whole shooting match. I use software called the Geographical Information System, which maps all of the data recorded in the field. I can look at duplicating data sets and enhance the data to try to identify features and set the area we excavate within the bigger picture of the landscape as a whole. This has been a good one to do.'

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