Early life Born in
Oxford on 25 January 1950 and brought up in
Wexcombe, Wiltshire, Harding was educated at
Marlborough Royal Free Grammar School in
Marlborough. As a young boy, he became fascinated with the
Stone Age. He learned
flint-knapping from his uncle, Fred, and in only a few months became a skilled knapper, crafting many hunting tools from pieces of
flint. He 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.
Career filming
Time Team 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 (1972–1976) 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. From the mid-1970s, he worked on excavations in
Berkshire,
Hampshire,
Dorset, Wiltshire and the
Isle of Wight for the
Department of the Environment (DOE). In 1979, the archaeological section of the DOE for the region became
Wessex Archaeology, a non-profit organisation which is one of the biggest archaeological practices in the country. He continues to work for Wessex Archaeology. He has been a member of the
Institute of Field Archaeologists since 1985, and in 2006 was elected a Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries of London. On 24 July 2008, he received an
honorary doctorate from the
University of Southampton in archaeology. As a qualified SCUBA diver, he is the president of the
Nautical Archaeology Society, a
Portsmouth-based charity formed to further interest in nautical cultural heritage. Since 2015, Harding has been an archaeological supervisor for the veteran support charity Waterloo Uncovered, which conducts archaeology on the battlefield of
Waterloo alongside veterans and serving personnel. In 2010, the radio series
A History of the World in 100 Objects featured Harding speaking on the creation of pre-historic stone tools.
Television In 1991, Harding took part in the series
Time Signs, which was produced by
Tim Taylor, who went on to create
Channel 4's popular archaeology series
Time Team. Harding was a regular on
Time Team from the first series in 1994 until its cancellation in 2013. He also took part in the various spin-off series such as
Time Team Extra (1998),
Time Team Digs (2002) and
Time Team Live. In addition, he has appeared in episodes of
Meet the Ancestors (2003) and ''
Chris Moyles' Quiz Night'' (2009). He appeared in an episode of BBC's
Digging for Britain in December 2016. ==Honours==