Professor Michael Aston is best known as the leading archaeologist on thepopular Channel 4 television series Time Team. He is an Emeritus Professor at Bristol University, and Honorary Visiting Professor at Durham and Exeter Universities.
News
Winscombe and Sandford Archaeological Survey Project
Now
that Professor Aston's long-term project on the parish of Shapwick has
concluded, he has turned his attention to his home parish of Winscombe. This
parish is very different from Shapwick. While Shapwick has the classic English
village, Winscombe has a scattering of farms and hamlets. Little is in print in
the way of in-depth studies of this pattern of settlement. So Mick's project
should be enlightening.
It's a tough choice in some ways. There are few earthworks that leap to the eye. However the team is fortunate in having a good set of documents. Mick has explored Winscombe's history with the help of local historians. Maps of different dates have been compared to give a sense of the changing landscape. Local people have been encouraged to bring forward finds; many responded. The digging of test pits began in 2010. The aim is to dig 500 across the parish. They are heading towards the first 100. Mick and his cohort were in evidence at the Winscombe May Fair last year, and actually demonstrated digging a test pit at the Michaelmas Fair 2011. The survey of the buildings of the parish has begun.
Mick is hugely enjoying this plunge under the surface of familiar
terrain.The project is not intended to be as intensive as the study of
Shapwick, but will draw on lessons learned there. It is intended to run for
five years, with a report on it every year published in Somerset
Archaeology and Natural History. See the list of Mick's scholarly papers for what is already in print.
Mick has not been letting the grass grow under his feet! He has also given
talks on the topic. Prof. Aston presented a public seminar at the Centre for English Local
History at Leicester University on Thursday 6 October 2011 on The
Winscombe Project, Somerset: The why and how of a local study
. He talked on
the same topic at The
Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Annual Archaeology
Symposium, this year held at Wells and Mendip Museum, in association with
the Wells Natural History and Archaeological Society on 10 March 2012. He also
spoke at Wells and Mendip Museum again on Saturday the 24th of March 2012 on
The Winscombe parish archaeological and historical project: the first two
years
.
Mick has become the honorary president of the Friends of St James the Great in Winscombe. The group was formed to help preserve and maintain the church,which is thought to have been built in the 15th century on the site of older churches and is the only Grade I-listed building in the parish.
Time Team
The news came out in February that Mick has left Time Team - a decision made
months ago. You can read his comments to The Western Daily Press
online at This
is Somerset: Professor Mick Aston quits Time Team over 'dumbing down' row.
The March/April 2012 issue of British Archaeology
carried an interview with him, and commentary by the editor. It is quite a
Mick-heavy issue, so he appears on the cover. The editor of British
Archaeology, Mike Pitts, explains
on his blog how a story about Mick leaving got spun by the Daily
Maul into an attack on the unfortunate Mary-Ann Ochota. Neither on or
off the record, in all the conversations I’ve had with Mick over the past
couple of months ... has he ever spoken of Mary-Ann in a disparaging way. She
was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A farewell letter from
Mick also appears in the April issue of Current Archaeology.
In a nutshell Mick objected to the loss of key members of his team in series
19, and changes in presentation that obscured the process of archaeological
discovery. Marion Ravenwood
gives
the inside story at Digging the Dirt. Reaction from readers appears in the
May/June issue of British Archaeology along with a
delicately-balanced damage-reduction piece by Tim Taylor, series producer of
Time Team, which confesses errors with the handling of series 19, which he
assures us have now been addressed, while managing to pour healing balm on the
authors of said errors. His gift for PR has been almost wasted on TT all these
years, since the programme pretty well sold itself, but has now risen to the
challenge of public uproar.
My own view is that Time Team (original flavour) broke the mould. It wasn't a standard documentary. Instead the viewers could watch the process of discovery and share with the team the excitement, the surprises and setbacks. Probably few viewers realised just how difficult it is to make such a programme. The standard documentary is so much easier. Everything is worked out in advance and there is a script to follow. Whereas with TT the director had to improvise, to think on his feet. The archaeologists need to be so knowledgeable and quick-witted that they can talk about their discoveries as they make them, rather than pondering for days or weeks or months, as is the norm. Simply having a degree in this or that does not qualify anyone for a speaking role on T.T. The core team and the experts that Mick recommended in series 1 had an average 20 years experience in their fields. That included Tony Robinson, who was an experienced performer. T.T. demanded exceptional talent on both sides of the camera. I foresaw years ago that key people would have to leave one day, with a consequent dimming of TT's brilliance. I said then that I would prefer T.T. to quit while it was ahead than sink into mediocrity.
Some have surmised that C4 is actually trying to kill off the programme. Nothing could be easier if they so wished. They would only need to stop commissioning it. Why put money into creating a bad programme? Ironically the problems arose from the exact opposite desire. C4 and the production companies involved in making the programme have a vested interest in keeping it running. Hence the attempts to refresh the format with younger people. It might have worked if properly thought through. The idea of replacing people in their 60s with people in their 20s is misguided. It jumps a key generation. Time Team started with a bunch of people mainly in their 40s - young enough to have the energy for such a demanding format, but experienced enough to make it work.
Time Team series 20 is currently being filmed without Mick. Mick will continue to advise Tim Taylor on the website Time Team Digital, where you can see some excellent short videos of Mick encapsulating topics in Mick's Masterclass.
Publications
Following
the scholarly monograph on Mick's 10-year project on the Somerset parish of
Shapwick, comes something with more popular appeal. Mick Aston and Christopher
Gerrard, Interpreting the English Village: Landscape and Community at
Shapwick, Glastonbury is due out sometime in 2012 with wonderful
illustrations by Victor Ambrus, familiar from Time Team. There is a sample on
the cover.
Also Mick contributed an article Publicizing archaeology in Britain in
the late twentieth century: a personal view
to The Oxford Handbook
of Public Archaeology edited by Robin Skeates, Carol McDavid, and
John Carman. It turned into something of a polemic, he tells me. He holds
strong views on the topic.
Community
Mick has
been back to school and it looks like fun. St Julian's Church School, Wellow,
joined Camerton School to host a history day in early February 2012 with pupils
and staff dressing as historical characters. Professor Mick Aston visited the
school with his assistant Teresa Hall and declared himself amazed by the
costumes and the research the children had put into their characters. You see
him here admiring the ceramic tile time line made by the pupils with the help
of ceramic artist Bethan Sheff.
Uphill walk
In support of the Churches Conservation Trust, Mick enthuses about a favourite walk through Uphill, Somerset. If you want to follow in his footsteps, you can download the details of the walk with a map, to print out from pdf.
Time Signs Online
Before the enormously popular Time
Team, Tim Taylor first collaborated with Mick Aston in making the
four-part series Time Signs, broadcast
in 1991. The series followed the exploration of the Wolf Valley in Devon,before
it was flooded to create the Roadford Reservoir. The evacuation of its farming
families gave the archaeologists a free hand. The series has been made available at YouTube by
4oD Documentaries (Channel 4 On Demand).Â
Mick's Travels
In recent years British Archaeology has been carrying a regular contribution from Mick, called Mick's Travels.
In the May/June 2012 issue Mick Aston finds an old stone at the centre of things on the Lizard Peninsula.
Mick goes to Suffolk in the March/Aril 2012 issue. His last ever three-day project with Time Team investigated what is left of Dunwich, a medieval town which has been gradually lost to the sea.
In the depths of the British winter Mick looks back on his summer holiday in Brittany in the January/February 2012 issue. He was in search of evidence of the early Church, from Christianised Roman buildings to Romanesque churches, with shrines and holy wells along the way.
In the November/December 2011 issue, Mick finds the story of the de Vere
family in the Essex landscape.
Mick pays tribute to the life and work of the late Philip Rahtz in the September/October 2011 issue.
For his contribution to older issues, see Mick's articles.