Dr Chris Gaffney

Chris has worked in geophysics since 1983, including extensive site-based experience in the UK, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. In 1989, he formed a partnership with John Gater at GSB Prospection. He, too, is an associate editor of the Journal of Archaeological Prospection.

Like John Gater, Athelney was probably his favourite Time Team dig ('a cracker'), but he also remembers Tockenham – the site of a Roman villa in Wiltshire – fondly: 'It was huge. The scale of the results was never really captured on the programme. Everything was really clear, and for once on Time Team, the gradiometry worked well – usually it's only resistance that does, unlike 90% of our other work.' The excavation in Maryland was also memorable: 'It was amazing how the remains of the first brick-built building in Maryland just popped out. This happened on the first morning of the first day, which made the rest of the dig fairly anti-climactic for us but got everyone else off to a running start.'

Chris's ideal site is a monastery: 'Monastic sites conform to certain patterns, and are nice and simple and very clear.' However, he admits that simplicity and clarity are not the words that he would use to describe the geophysics team's experience at Downpatrick!