Stewart Ainsworth

Stewart Ainsworth (born 26 June 1951) is a British archaeological investigator who was regularly seen on Time Team, the Channel 4 archaeological television series he joined in 1995. He has since appeared in more than two hundred episodes.

Life and career After reading, in his youth, a book about Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, and visiting the Tower of London, he formed an interest in the history of landscapes.

He trained as a surveyor before entering the Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey. In that role, he was responsible for updating the map depictions of many archaeological sites in Britain and abroad (notably on a number of Caribbean islands). In 1985, the OS Archaeology Division was incorporated into the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (which was itself incorporated into English Heritage in 1999), and Ainsworth relocated to Keele. He later moved to become Head of RCHME's Landscape Investigation Team (North), based in York, England.

He was affectionately called Time Team'''s "lumps and bumps" man by Professor Mick Aston, and works with the team alongside his day job, travelling the country surveying, recording and investigating archaeological sites. Regarding Time Team'' 's potential return, which was realised in 2022 after an eight-year hiatus, Ainsworth said:

As of 2010, Ainsworth has been affiliated with the history and archaeology department at the University of Chester, where he is a visiting professor.

He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the world's oldest archaeological society. For some years, he was president of the Friends of Epiacum (also called Whitley Castle), a Roman fort on the southern edge of Northumberland, which he has surveyed and studied in depth as part of a more extensive project focusing on the development of industry and farming in this part of the North Pennines. He is closely involved in several other projects around England and regularly gives public talks.