Helen Geake
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 where she originally trained as a secretary. However, reading archaeology books and attending lectures by Mick Aston led her to study 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. 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, replacing Carenza Lewis. 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.
Geake is married and has two sons. She lives in Suffolk.
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. ISBN1900188902