Phil Harding (archaeologist)

Phil Harding
Phil Harding sifting for flint in 2009
Born	Philip Harding (1950-01-25) 25 January 1950 (age 67) Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Occupation	Archaeologist
Years active	1971–present
Known for	Time Team

Philip 'Phil' Harding, FSA (born 25 January 1950) is a British field archaeologist. He has become a familiar face on the Channel 4 television series Time Team. Trained on excavations with the Bristol University Extra Mural Department and other bodies from 1966, he has been a professional archaeologist since 1971.

Born in Oxford on 25 January 1950 and brought up in Wexcombe,Wiltshire, Phil Harding was educated at Marlborough Royal Free Grammar School in Marlborough. As a young boy, Harding became fascinated with the Stone Age period, and it was then he learned flint-knapping from his Uncle Fred, and within only a few months became a skilled knapper, crafting many different hunting tools from pieces of flint. He also made his first archaeological finds digging up his parents' garden, much to the annoyance of his mother Elsie. In 1966, while still at school, he attended a training excavation by Bristol University Extra Mural Department in Fyfield and West Overton. Since then he has dug every year, though at first his archaeological activities had to be fitted into holidays and any spare time.

After Harding left school he worked in a puppet factory in Marlborough, until he became a full-time archaeologist in 1971. He worked initially for the Southampton City Council Archaeology Unit, combining this with five seasons of excavations run by the British Museum at the Neolithic flint mines of Grimes Graves, Norfolk. He has since become an acknowledged expert on flint-knapping and is skilled in lithic reduction using both percussive techniques and pressure flaking, in which instead of striking the flint with blows, pressure is exerted on the edges to shape the tool.