Martin Carver

Martin Oswald Hugh Carver FSA (born 8 July 1941), 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 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.

After a 15 year career as an army officer in the Royal Tank Regiment Carver practised as a free-lance archaeologist (1973-1986), setting up the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU), now called Birmingham Archaeology at the University of Birmingham to carry out archaeological contract work. He also set up Field Archaeology Specialists Ltd. (FAS), now FAS-Heritage, in 1992. FAS-Heritage is currently based in York and carries out archaeological research and heritage work in England and Scotland [1]. Carver was the first secretary of the Institute of Field Archaeology, now Institute for Archaeologists.

Martin Carver has developed a number of procedures for archaeological investigation and analytical methods for writing up excavations.^[1] 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.

His recent publications include Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (BMP), Sutton Hoo: A Seventh-Century Princely Burial Ground and Its Context (BMP), (ed) The Age of Sutton Hoo (Boydell Press), Archaeological Value and Evaluation (SAP, Mantova), (ed.) The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300 (ed.) (Boydell Press, 2003), Portmahomack Monastery of the Picts (EUP), and Archaeological Investigation (Routledge, 2009).

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

See alse

• CARVER matrix - military term named CARVER matrix
• Harris matrix - Archaeology term

References

1. ^ Martin Carver Archaeological Investigation (Routledge 2009)

External links

• Official dedicatory website profiling Martin Carver's career
• Webpage at the University of York
• History of Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit/Birmingham Archaeology

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Name	Carver, Martin
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Date of birth	8 July 1941
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