Affiliation: Northwestern University
Professor Matthew Johnson is with the Anthropology Department of Northwestern University, and received his Ph.D. from Cambridge.
“I am an archaeologist specializing in the complex societies of Britain and Europe, AD1200-1800. I have written on castles, traditional houses, ‘polite’ architecture, and landscape, and on contributions to understanding historical archaeology around the world. My theoretical orientation has stressed interdisciplinary and interpretive approaches, the theory of medieval and historical archaeology, and archaeology in its cultural context. I have always worked to bring these strands together, in studies of the archaeological record that are both theoretically and empirically informed. Much of my work has been concentrated in book-length studies, taking a complex body of empirical material (houses, fields, castles) and placing it in its theoretical context.”
He has published extensively, including English Houses 1300-1800: Vernacular Architecture, Social Life (2010), Archaeological Theory: An Introduction (second revised edition 2010), Ideas of Landscape (2006), and Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance (2002). Professor Johnson is conducting fieldwork in south-east England in collaboration with the University of Southampton and the National Trust; in 2013, they will be working at the great medieval houses of Knole and Ightham.
