Mick Aston

Mick grew up in the Black Country of the Midlands. His father, a manual worker, was interested in archaeology – not the usual castles and abbeys but rather prehistoric sites such as standing stones. When Mick was 15, he camped near Stonehenge. Although it was after hours and closed to the public, the monument, bathed in dramatic lighting, made a great impression on him, and his father later gave him a book about it.

Unfortunately, Mick's grammar school didn't encourage him in his burgeoning interest in archaeology. Quite the contrary – they tried to put him off, only considering sports and music to be proper pursuits for their students. A teacher at a nearby secondary school was much more help, arranging for Mick to go on field trips.

One Christmas, Mick received a copy of Collins' Field Guide to Archaeology by Eric Wood and the list of scheduled monuments. Using the latter, he looked up the places that were local to him and began visiting them. When he eventually discovered the Council for British Archaeology and got lists of excavations from them, he wrote to Jim Gould, who was working at Wall in Staffordshire, and began to visit the site every weekend.

At Birmingham University, Mick studied geography with archaeology as a subsidiary – the roots of his lifelong interest in landscape archaeology. At the university, he met Philip Rahtz (later professor at York), Philip Barker, Graham Webster, Trevor Rowley and Brian Hobley, all of whom were working in the Midlands at the time and taught extramural archaeology courses. In particular, Philip Rahtz posted notices on the university noticeboard about forthcoming digs, most of which Mick joined.

When Mick was working on his PhD, he and his girlfriend arranged to go and see her parents, with Mick planning to show them all the notes for his thesis, to impress them with his seriousness. But, on the way, he and his girlfriend stopped at a T Rex concert, someone broke into Mick's van and all the notes were stolen. This is why Mick is now one of the few professors in Britain not to have a PhD!

In 1970, as Mick finished a three-year period during which he did research and extramural teaching, Trevor Rowley rang to ask if he was interested in a job as a field worker for the Oxfordshire County Museum. He was and he stayed there until 1974, when he became the first county archaeologist for Somerset. At first, the powers-that-be didn't know what to do with him, but eventually he set up the county's Sites and Monuments Record, got married and spent four happy years in Taunton. Then he woke up and panicked, thinking he would be there for ever.

A temporary contract as tutor in local studies in the continuing education department at Oxford University – with Barry Cunliffe persuading a dubious interview panel to hire him – saved him from this fate. Then Peter Fowler (now at Newcastle) wrote a reference saying that Mick would be the best person for his job at Bristol. In 1979, Mick arrived there as staff tutor in archaeology in further education, and has been there ever since.

Over the past 20 years or so, his responsibilities have changed. In 1981, he started to teach undergraduates as well as adult students, and in 1990, he became reader in archaeology. In 1996, he became the first professor of archaeology in a continuing education setting, and two years later, his role was taken over by the Time Team Lecturer in Archaeology, Mark Corney (seen on Time Team Live last summer), to release Mick to lecture and take part in the television series.

For Mick, archaeology is an academic area in which passion, enthusiasm and experience still count, and he has spent most of his life trying to get the public interested in it – which explains his involvement in Time Team.

Favourite site
Many sites give him a buzz, but the Shapwick Project in Somerset has a special place in his heart. Since the 1980s, Mick and about 15 other people have been regularly fieldwalking in and around Shapwick parish, and they are now all good friends. The 'site' itself isn't particularly extraordinary but its circumstances are, and the fieldwalking gives Mick and his friends the chance to get away from the office! His ideal site is anywhere that you can get close to ordinary people living a long, long time ago.

Favourite walk
Mick doesn't need to be anywhere special; he can find something of interest in almost anything. However, he is greatly fond of the walk that begins at the doorstep of his home in North Somerset and continues round the parish, 'beating the bounds'. Here, within a mile in any direction, he can experience very wild and tremendously varied landscape, taking in the Somerset Levels and the Mendips, as well as a great wealth of birdlife and the sites of watermills and a hillfort. He likes being alone when, as well as walking, he can get on with the drawing and painting he enjoys but for which he has very little time nowadays.

Favourite music
In 1972, Mick left rock behind and discovered classical music – initially Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and Bach's Toccata and Fugue, among other pieces. He has developed an abiding love for the music of Beethoven, but has also learned to appreciate other composers, especially Monteverdi, Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Mozart.

Mick's idea of heaven
Morse on television, red wine and spinach lasagne on a winter's evening.

Mick's Diary

Mick Aston' writes a regular diary for the Time Team magazine, Trench One.

Cold and damp
As I write this in January 2000 it is cold and damp, very different to when I last wrote in September when we were just about to leave for Denia near Alicante in Spain! Making Time Teams in 1999 seemed to go on forever. Usually we feel as if we have finished by October but last year they went on until nearly December. Sooner than we think we shall be off on a new series (the eighth) for 2001. Already today two of the researchers (Pippa and Jenny, both ex-students of mine) have been on the telephone to discuss ideas for programmes.

But last year first. Denia was good fun and warm! It was a superb site with well-preserved buildings, a most interesting cemetery and fantastic early medieval pottery. The Arab world was well advanced by the 12th and 13th centuries. By now you would have seen this programme and the one about Sutton near Hereford, the last programme to be made in the series, where we tried to find the Anglo-Saxon palace belonging to Offa, king of the Mercians in the eighth century. But that was not the end of the filming because we made a Christmas Special (which went out on 19 December 1999). This involved going to Burslem in Staffordshire with Carenza and Tony, and to Bournemouth University with Tony to see the amazing skeleton Margaret Cox was examining from Bawsey in Norfolk. Finally, we all met up at York, where Barley Hall was freezing, but it was good to see all of the Team for the last time in 1999.

Seahenge controversy
We also made a documentary – a new experiment for Time Team – at the strange prehistoric site called 'Seahenge' on the Norfolk coast. Since this has generated some controversy I thought I would explain Time Team's role and the part played by individuals.

The timber circle on the beach was well known to the locals apparently. English Heritage (the national body charged with the protection of the historic environment) took the decision to move the timbers as it was argued that they were being eroded by the sea.

The Norfolk Archaeology Unit were employed to carry out the excavation and the recording. Francis Pryor and Maisie Taylor of Flag Fen at Peterborough were in charge of conservation of the timbers, and further study of them at Flag Fen.

Various members of Time Team were only marginally involved in these activities, where we acted rather like Tony as presenters, asking the questions and trying to put the site into some sort of context. Right at the end we were asked to build a replica with tools and techniques in use at the time of the Bronze Age. All this was filmed by Graham Johnson, to us a new producer/director, using a 'mini cam' camera (a high quality very small digital video camera). He has made a lot of fly-on-the-wall films and here tried to capture the various issues and points of view involved.

So far I have had messages equally appalled and enthused by the programme. To those who regret the removal (or destruction) of the site I would just add that several similar sites are removed (by gravel extraction or road building) each year in other parts of the country. So far no fuss has been made about these, which suggests to me either it was the good preservation of the timbers or the enormous publicity which set some people off about the Seahenge site.

Photos and books
Normally in the months before Christmas I am involved with the production of the Time Team Reports but this year we didn't produce one. Instead I supplied a lot of pictures for Tim Taylor's new book. Also I finished at long last Mick's Archaeology (Tempus), which I mentioned in my last diary. I had forgotten how long it takes to check everything, put captions to pictures and compile the index. I also went to Cornwall, where my old friend Martin Elliot (whom I have known since I was four) took some pictures of me for the cover of the book. Martin's photographic work is well known – he took the famous picture of the 'Tennis Girl' in the 1970s which has so often been used as a poster.

The publisher, another old friend, Peter Kemis Betty, was impressed enough with the book to suggest a reprint of my monasteries book, which came out in 1993 but has not been available for several years as the publishers went bankrupt! So I have spent a lot of time sorting out illustrations and finding maps and photos so that I can get this to the publishers (Tempus) by the end of January. It will be out in May 2000 with a splendid new cover and lots of colour pictures, renamed Monasteries in the Landscape. This is not the same as my early monasteries book which I am still (slowly) working on.

Time capsule
Phil and I went to bury a time capsule at the Westonbirt Arboretum in a new timber-framed building in Gloucestershire and I have so far visited Welwyn, Oxford, Bournemouth, Manchester, Chester and Leyland to give lectures. In the near future I shall be going to Stafford, Ubley (near where I live), Andover, Wells, Lechlade, Durham, Sheffield and Dollar (in Scotland). Not all of these are open to the public but I hope to see Time Team fans at some of them.

University work has involved marking two PhD theses, one from the University of East Anglia at Norwich and one from Exeter University. This takes a lot of time (ten days or so each) and concentration but it is a rewarding process to see young scholars producing new ideas and arguments and generally advancing the subject. I have a third PhD to mark before we start filming again. I have also been teaching my MA students in the university, lecturing at a conference on Somerset's archaeology, delivering the prestigious annual Beatrice de Cardi Lecture organised by the Council for British Archaeology – where I talked about archaeology and the media – and helping to set up a Young Archaeologists Club branch for Bristol, Bath and North Somerset.

Quiet Christmas
I had a quiet Christmas with my small family and celebrated the new year by watching one of my favourite films, The Sting. I'm afraid the Millennium hype was too much for me and I gave up on all of it. But I have managed some time for decorating (my hall and corridor in yellow, orange and red, with eleven differently coloured doors) and fitting out a new office in one of the former bedrooms. The new computer has just arrived so I have to get back to working on the monasteries book before the new Time Teams stop me doing anything else!

Mick Aston interview with Current Archaeology – Mick talks about archaeology, Time Team – and his brain haemorrhage in March 2003

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