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At work with Stewart Ainsworth
Stewart Ainsworth, Time Team's 'lumps and bumps' man, has his hands full. Not only does he work for Time Team, but he also has a full-time job as a senior investigator and project manager for English Heritage. Based in York, his area of operation covers the north of England. Together with his skilled team of investigators, Stewart travels the countryside surveying, recording and investigating archaeological sites.
Stewart's day job
To find out more about what what Stewart does for his day job (er ... pretty much the same as what he does on Time Team?), click here!
Stewart's 'lumps and bumps' team
The investigation team is made up of experienced archaeologists Al Oswald and Trevor Pearson (Scarborough's greatest living archaeologist). They are a friendly bunch and Stewart is keen to emphasise that they work very much as a team in the department. 'Although I co-ordinate the projects, every member of the team has their own area of responsibility for different phases. Everyone who works on a project gets their credit, I think that's the best way to do it,' says Stewart. Two other archaeologists from another team are helping out with the project: Amy Lax and Marcus Jecock.
Stewart's team is working on a project which involves recording 12 hillforts and their context within the landscape in the Northumbrian Cheviots over three years. The Cheviots are very remote moorland hills and peaks. This means that very little disturbance has taken place since the Iron Age and the preservation of sites is spectacular. Roundhouses and enclosures are visible above ground and, because the main building material was stone, many walls and defences are still standing, sometimes five stone courses high. That's amazing when you consider the stones were put in place over 2,000 years ago.
The first sites were recorded by the team in 2000. Al, Marcus and Stewart surveyed and recorded the West Hill hillfort at Kirknewton. Another unusual prehistoric site called Hethpool Bell, also at Kirknewton, has been recorded by Stewart and Trevor. Hethpool Bell sits on a hill that closes a valley and may be some kind of ritually significant site.
Trevor and Amy also worked on the hillfort at Castle Hills at Alnham. Other sites in the project include a range of hillforts in College Valley: Fawcett Shank, Ringchesters and Monday Cleugh.
Out in the hills with Stewart
Matthew Reynolds joined Stewart on a reconnaissance of a hillfort site called Great Hetha in summer 2000.
Stewart Ainsworth and his team have been steaming ahead with the fieldwork on their hillfort project and making many new and exciting discoveries. Following his reconnaissance visit to Great Hetha, Stewart is keen that work on this particular hillfort should be completed before the winter sets in as the hilltop is very exposed. As a consequence, he re-scheduled the fieldwork ahead of the original timetable, which unfortunately meant that he was on holiday when the survey took place.
'Although the team have waterproof clothing and thick skins, operating electronic equipment and producing delicate drawings in driving rain for two weeks – which really wasn't forecast, honest Trevor and Amy – made them less than appreciative of my holiday postcard they received as I soaked up the sun on a walking holiday in the Austrian Alps,' says Stewart.
Despite the rain, the results from the survey are dramatic. It is clear now that the hillfort had two separate phases. The first and earlier phase was a relatively insubstantial bank running around the hilltop, possibly with a timber palisade (fence) along the top. This may have been no more than a simple family homestead. However, at a later stage a massive stone-walled hillfort was built within this enclosure, the original enclosure then being incorporated into the defences of the new hillfort. This is a sequence of events that is being recognised in other hillforts, and clearly points to a period of turmoil and need for added security and defence during the Iron Age.
The survey at Castle Hills is also now complete. This is a complex, largely earthen hillfort, which makes this rather unusual in the Cheviots, where the defences are normally built from stone. Although there are a number of ramparts and ditches at Castle Hills, this was probably more to do with display of power than defence, as this site is on the fringe of the Cheviots and visible from the lowlands to the east. We are sure that many hillforts were meant to look more impressive and substantial than they actually were when viewed from a distance. After the Iron Age, there was extensive re-use of the site for settlement during the Roman period, including the setting out of fields across the surrounding landscape. During the survey a fine Roman quern (used for grinding corn) was found in a collapsed 19th-century drystone wall, a good indicator that cereal crops were being grown in those fields.
While these other surveys have been running, Stewart is also out on the ground preparing for the next hillfort survey at Fawcett Shank, where fieldwork will be starting soon.
'This was an absolute pain to find, as the hillside is now covered in coniferous trees, most of which seem to have fallen down and hidden the tracks,' says Stewart. 'This is one survey where the Land Rover will have to stay at the bottom of the hill and the rest is good old-fashioned legwork. At first sight, this site just looks like a collapsed sheepfold – which in fact it is – but underneath there is clearly something else, which could be the remains of a hillfort. There has been some debate about this site for a while as to whether it is a genuine hillfort. Hopefully, our new investigation will shed light on this.'
As well as the work on the Cheviot hillforts project, Stewart has been doing fieldwork with his team in the Lake District in preparation for a survey of an abandoned 19th-century copper mine at Greenburn near Little Langdale, being carried out in partnership with the National Trust.
Stewart continues: 'The Lake District trip turned out to be an exciting recce as I managed to drive the Land Rover into a deep, decidedly non-archaeological ditch and had to be unceremoniously hauled out by a friendly farmer. I also have to fit in Time Team shoots. So you could say that my life as a landscape investigator is hectic – but there again, I wouldn't want to do anything else!'
Stewart Ainsworth answers some of our questions
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