After nearly 20 years with Time Team, the total distance surveyed by archaeological geophysicist John Gater and his team is equivalent to the diameter of the moon (3,470km – in case you were wondering). The other statistics are equally impressive: 196 sites surveyed across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, including 49 Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAMs) and five World Heritage sites, which equates to over three months of continuous data collection. The banter between John and the diggers is a staple ingredient of every Time Team episode, as is the ‘go’ moment when the survey results come in.
The growth of geophysics (affectionately known as ‘geofizz’) as an essential aspect of archaeological practice mirrored the growth of the Time Team programme. In the first few years of the 1990’s when developers and planners viewed early screenings of Time Team, it became obvious to them how geophysics could make their lives easier and save them money. Why go into projects blind, with expensive test trenching and invasive evaluations, when geophysical survey could be done more cheaply, provide more information, and thus allow for more accurate forecasting?
An example of this early adoption is when British Gas employed the technology in advance of their North Sea pipelines, a massive project that John worked on after graduating from Bradford University in 1979. In some cases, the route of the pipeline was adjusted in order to avoid archaeological sites identified by geophysics – it was cheaper to deal with the archaeology in the planning stage and to chart a new route, than to press on without knowing what they might find. Just like imagining our workday life without e-mail, it is hard to imagine doing archaeology today without geophysics. Commercial archaeology enjoyed the fruits of this acceptance and geophysics quickly became a calling card for many professional units.
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