South London
First screened 10 February 2008

Q & A

Time Team regular 'Private' Phil Harding answers our questions.

What's your favourite Time Team dig?
Whichever one I'm on at the time. They all have something positive – people, stories, finds, locations – that make them memorable.

What's your favourite Time Team find?
Any one that helps to confirm, interpret or throw light on the site that we're working on.

What's the most important Time Team discovery?
Arguably the barbed wire under the 'Iron Age' sword at Llygadwy. It helped explain stratigraphy better than any other discovery we've ever made.

What's your best Time Team moment?
Seeing the look on John Gater's face when he realised the magnetometer that Kerry had made was a fake.

What's your favourite archaeological site in the UK?
Boxgrove, Sussex. It did more to interpret the Lower Palaeolithic of Western Europe than any other single site has ever done.

And abroad?
Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of humanity

Who's your archaeological hero?
Õtzi, the Ice man, a person who really saw the Neolithic.

What's your favourite archaeology book?
The Good Beer Guide, it's been referred to by archaeologists of all disciplines in all parts of the country.

If you could travel to one moment in time, where to and when?
To stand at the shoulder of the flint knapper as he made the hand axe found in 1916 at Furze Platt, Maidenhead. It's still the biggest hand axe ever found in Britain and is a superb piece of workmanship.

If you could dig one site, what would it be?
The site that contained the complete skeleton of the earliest occupant in Britain.

If you could make one find, what would it be?
The Furze Platt hand axe, but unfortunately 'Deffy' Carter found it, so I'm a bit late. I'll just settle for whatever crops up.

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