Martin Carver: A few words about Medieval Archaeology…

Professor Martin Carver talks about the latest Society for Medieval Archaeology volume discussing the wealth of papers and topics that are published within, and more generally introduces us to Europe’s pivotal period, the Middle Ages …

Martin Carver is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York, England, director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project and a leading exponent of new methods in excavation and survey. He specialises in the archaeology of early Medieval Europe. He has an international reputation for his excavations at Sutton Hoo, on behalf of the British Museum and the replica uhren Society of Antiquaries and at the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack Tarbat, Easter Ross, Scotland. He has undertaken archaeological research in England, Scotland, France, Italy and Algeria.

Martin Carver has developed a number of procedures for archaeological investigation and analytical methods for writing up excavations. Like Ed Harris he uses contexts numbered and defined on site as the basic elements of an excavated sequence, but adds higher order groupings ("feature" and "structure") to increase the interpretive power.

Martin Carver is currently editor of the world archaeology journal "Antiquity".