Helen Geake

Helen Geake with Stewart Ainsworth while shooting a Time Team in 2007

Dr Helen Geake is one of the key members of Channel 4's popular and long-running archaeology series Time Team, presented by Tony Robinson, along with Mick Aston and Phil Harding.

Geake was born in Wolverhampton in 1967 but grew up in Bath. She originally trained as a secretary. However, reading archaeology books and attending lectures by Mick Aston led her to study medieval archaeology at University College London. Subsequently she took a PhD at the University of York in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries contemporary with the spectacular ship burial at Sutton Hoo.

After university she worked as assistant keeper of archaeology at Norwich Castle Museum. Currently she is Finds Advisor for Early Medieval to Post-Medieval Objects for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, based at Cambridge University Department of Archaeology. She first worked for Time Team in 1998 as a digger, and took part occasionally thereafter as an Anglo-Saxon specialist. She joined the frontline team of presenters for the 2006 series.

She has contributed a number of articles on her specialist field, editing and writing other works. In 2003 she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. She is also a regional member of the Council of Rescue: The British Archaeological Trust.

Geake is married with two sons and a daughter, and lives in Suffolk. She is a cousin of the late John E Geake, for whom the asteroid 9298 Geake is named.

Selected works

• The Use of Grave Goods in conversion-Period England c.600-c.850, British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 1997. ISBN 0860549178
• 'Why were hanging bowls deposited in Anglo-Saxon graves?' in Medieval Archaeology vol. 43, 1999.
• Early Deira: Archaeological Studies of the East Riding in the Fourth to Ninth Centuries AD (editor, with Jonathan Kenny), Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2000. ISBN 1900188902
• 'Persistent problems in seventh-century burial', in S. Lucy and A. Reynolds (eds.), Burial in Early Medieval England, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 17, W.S. Maney and Son, London, 2002. ISBN 1902653653
• 'The control of burial practice in Anglo-Saxon England' in Martin Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: : Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300, York Medieval Press, 2003. ISBN 1843831252

References

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