Tony Robinson 

Tony Robinson, the series presenter, is probably best known for his role as Baldrick in Blackadder and as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Maid Marion and Her Merry Men, which he also wrote. He has a keen interest in history and archaeology – he is president of the Young Archaeologists' Club – and is particularly fascinated by ancient Greece and the biblical lands of the Middle East.

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.

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.

John has been involved in archaeological geophysics for 18 years, working for British Gas, the Ancient Monuments Laboratory (English Heritage) and Bradford University Research. In 1986, he set up Geophysical Surveys (later known as GSB Prospection), an independent consultancy in geophysics for archaeology. He is also associate editor of the Journal of Archaeological Prospection.

Carenza Lewis

In 1985, following study at Cambridge University and taking part in an archaeological dig in Jordan, Carenza joined the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, now part of English Heritage, as a field archaeologist for Wessex. Although she has a speciality in the medieval landscape, she has worked on sites from many periods – from prehistoric Avebury to the 'Mulberry harbours' used for the D-Day landings of World War II. For two-and-a-half years, she was seconded to the History Department of Birmingham University, where she was involved in bringing together all sorts of information from a wide variety of sources to investigate how the landscape of the East Midlands affected settlement and vice versa. She later repeated the same exercise for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. She is now based at the University of Cambridge.

Phil Harding 

Phil still works as a field archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, and has been involved in a project listing all known Palaeolithic sites in Britain. He has also completed a number of excavation reports – including some for Time Team – on sites ranging from the Palaeolithic to the Industrial Revolution. He continues to demonstrate flint-knapping at craft shows and to local societies.

Where did Phil get that hat? Find out here.

Robin Bush

Robin Bush was born at Hayes, Middlesex in 1943. His father was first a schoolmaster and then a training college lecturer (in mathematics) and the family moved around quite a bit before settling at Exeter in 1948, transferring to Exmouth a few years later.

Jenni Butterworth

Jenni can't remember how she first got interested in archaeology, but she always quite liked history at school and did her first work experience at Warwick Museum when she was 15, so she was obviously into archaeology by then. She did a degree in archaeology at Bristol University, and in her final year took Mick Aston's monasteries course. After meeting Mick and finding she was interested in the same subjects as him, she decided to do a PhD on monasteries and their estates in the West Country, with Mick as her supervisor. It was while she was working on her PhD that Mick first invited her to do some digging for Time Team. The first programme she did was a monastery she was studying called Templecombe, in Somerset (recorded in 1995). Jenni finished her PhD in 2000, and graduated to become Dr Butterworth in July 2001.

 Victor Ambrus

The quiet artist we are all familiar with has quite a vivid past: in 1956, Victor took part in the Hungarian Uprising. When a building that he and his fellow students held came under fire from the Soviets, he escaped and he eventually left his native Hungary. On his arrival in London, he began to study at the Royal College of Art.

Guy de la Bédoyère

Guy de la Bédoyère has appeared in a number of Time Team programmes as an expert on the Roman period. In addition, his expertise in second world war aircraft was called upon for the Wierre Effroy programme, in the 2000 series, covering the excavation in France of the 92 Squadron Spitfire, which crashed on 23 May 1940; and the Reedham Marshes programme, in the 1999 series, which excavated a crashed USAF Flying Fortress.

 Margaret Cox

Professor Margaret Cox is a forensic archaeologist and no stranger to Time Team as a human remains expert.

Today Margaret Cox is a professor, senior lecturer and course leader for the well-respected forensic archaeology courses at Bournemouth University. She has made numerous appearances on television, which, together with her published work, have earned her the respect of both the viewing public and the archaeological establishment.

Mick The Dig

Mick has been involved in archaeology for almost 20 years. Way back in the 1970s, resplendent in his flared trousers (long gone, but the hairstyle has survived), he got into mechanical engineering and received a HND. Stuck in a factory, he missed the outdoors and so got a job as an archaeological assistant. He was hired simply because he owned a yellow Morris Minor van and no one else on the team had transport. Although he got into archaeology because he hated working in a factory, Mick's favourite period is industrial archaeology. Some of this has been in the Potteries and at Ironbridge in Shropshire, near where he has built his own house.