Phil Harding

Vanessa Hiller caught up with the cuddliest man in televised archaeology, Time Team's Phil Harding.

Friday morning, 5.45, bleary eyed I fell from my bed and began to negotiate various forms of public transport in order to make my journey across the Tamar, up to Wiltshire, heart land of the Home Counties, in order to speak to Phil Harding, Field Archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, and star of Channel Fours long running archaeology series Time Team. But what to ask? Helpful friends had suggested questions revolving around the art of growing sideburns and a tuneful but inappropriate Simpsons style rendition of “where did you get that hat?” I decided I was on my own here. Determined to show at least a smattering of archaeological knowledge, I found out when the Palaeolithic time was (millions and millions of years ago!) and watched some episodes of Time Team. Luckily, Phil Harding is a bloody nice bloke and didn’t seem to mind my gross archaeological incompetence!

How did you get into archaeology and become an archaeologist?

Well, from the age of eight I knew that history was the subject which meant more to me than anything. I actually got invited to a dig at that age, so it was something which was there right from the word go. I started digging when I was at school and I used to go to local digs. When I left school, having failed miserably to prove any ability at anything academic I was wileing away my time, thinking where the hell do I go from here. I had two weeks holiday from my job and was on a dig. The trench supervisor said to me, oh, he said, you’re going to come and dig with me in Southampton aren’t you and I said, well that’s news to me! The long and short of it was, he persuaded me to pack up this job, much to the shock and horror of my parents, well at least my mother, who was horrified at the thought of me going into a life that had absolutely no future, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

So, how did you become involved with Time Team?
Well, Tim Taylor, the chap who thought up Time Team was doing a programme on construction at the Roadford Reservoir in Devon. He thought that it would make a good subject for television, to literally tell the story of a valley that was being flooded to create the reservoir. He got Mike Aston [of Time Team, multi coloured jumpers fame] to present it. During the time they were making the series they found some flints, so he asked Mick if he knew anybody who knew anything about flint. Mick said the chap for that would be Phil, so you know, that’s how I came to be involved. At that stage he was putting Time Team together and hatching the idea in his mind and then I suppose, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t! I thought it would be like drop down once a year and flint knap which wasn’t really an arduous problem, but the idea that it was actually going to totally take over my entire life like this and that it would still be running after twelve years was, well <guffaw, guffaw>!

Is this where your work as a flint knapper came from, was this as a result of being an archaeologist?
That was from being eight years old and running around across fields and finding pieces of flint and imagining that they were pieces of axes and tools. Of course, they weren’t, but you know, I had an active imagination! The interest in flint knapping is that it’s a link with the past, you can in a way get back to the people that made them originally, you learn the mental skills and ability, you know, its not just smashing rock, it’s a craft. There would have been the same errors and the same frustrations 30,000 years ago when people were working on the axes. It’s a link with those people.

Are you glad that you have had such an involvement with Time Team?
Of course, I think it has revolutionized the way that Archaeology is put over on the tele and it has made people so much more aware of archaeology, more aware of the techniques, for example everybody now knows the word geo phys! All that kind of familiarisation of the public with archaeology, I think it’s marvellous. If you get a bunch of archaeologists together, they use jargon so much and of course, when you analyse what they’ve said, you find that actually they could have said it so much more simply, you know in words that ordinary people could understand <much chuckling> I mean, the public don’t want to know about blips in early carbon dating!

Is that where Tony Robinson comes in?
Yeah, Tony is the link with the viewer. Rule One on Time Team is that nobody addresses the camera except Tony, unless its in exceptional circumstances. For example if you’re not together in the same scene location, then you could speak to the camera, but really, you’re just replying to Tony, you’re not addressing the camera directly. Usually what you have is a clutch of archaeologists, doing the archaeology and Tony is the link to let the viewers know what is going on, he’s the sort of devils advocate on behalf of the viewer. And it’s nice to have him, you know, he’s not an archaeologist, but he’s a good presenter. He can see the way the programmes going and he can see the argument and just go bang, and put in a quick aside to the viewer which winds up the scene and leaves it hanging.

Were you star struck at all to be working with him?
Well, Mick knew him from a trip to the Mediterranean where they were working together on a history project, so that’s how they met. But, yes, I suppose when we first met I did wonder who he was. But he’s just an ordinary bloke, who’s just different because a lot of people know who he is.

Do you get recognized a lot?
Yeah, but, the way I see it is, I’m familiar to people, you know, I see it as I’m a familiar face and now I just have a larger circle of friends! (chuckle, chuckle)

Do you have any interesting archaeological stories from Cornwall?
There was a chap who had an interesting theory about the origin of the sword in the stone incident from the Arthurian legends. In the Bronze age, they made swords by casting them in stone and he reckons that could be where the legend of the sword being pulled out of the stone comes from, you know they cast the sword, and then pulled it out and that then gets incorporated into the legend. Of course, this isn’t a theory of mine, but we did cast a sword. I didn’t finish it off, you know, it would have had the edges trimmed and it would have been polished, but you can see maybe where the legend came from, from looking at this sword.

Vanessa Hiller

© Substance Magazine 2005