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?

Stewart Ainsworth, landscape archaeologist

Stewart Ainsworth is across the incident room from Henry Chapman at Sedgefield, poring over his maps.

'The first thing on any Time Team for me is to look at maps,' says Stewart, 'maps from lots of different periods. That way I can get an overview of how a landscape is used and how it may have changed,' he says. 'The next step is to look at aerial photographs for signs that you can't see on a map. With that information I then walk over the ground.'

'One of the things we've been talking about on this programme is "ladder" settlement,' Stewart continues. 'If you imagine a ladder with its side rails and rungs in between – that's the layout of this settlement. We have boundaries on either side, and measured plots within it. This was basically very early town planning.'

'One of the great things with this site is the fact that we have located a Roman road between York and Chester Street [another Roman road to the north], and this settlement sits on either side of that road,' says Stewart. 'The exact setting-out of this site, the fact that it was deliberately planned, points towards some military influence. We're only about 20 miles from Hadrian's Wall here. This place could well have been set out or predetermined by the military telling the civilian population how they should plan their development.

'We certainly don't have lots of evidence for major stone-built structures here, but I imagine that we are looking at a variety of different crafts being practised here inside basic timber buildings. If you want a modern equivalent, I think this could be the Roman version of an industrial estate alongside a dual carriageway.'

Theresa Hall, fieldwalking specialist

Archaeologist Theresa Hall also walks the landscape: her speciality is fieldwalking.

'We superimpose a grid of 20-metre squares over the field,' says Theresa. 'Each square is numbered and then we walk each section and pick up any finds that we see. All of the finds are then analysed and concentrations are plotted onto a map. These dense areas of finds can indicate settlement. The interesting thing here is that we could tie our plots with the geophysics results. We found concentrations of Roman pottery within several of the boundaries on the site. It all looks very promising.'

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