Mary Kitson Clark

Anna Mary Hawthorn Kitson Clark, (14 May 1905 – 1 February 2005), married name Mary Chitty, was an English archaeologist, curator, and independent scholar. She specialised in the archaeology of Romano-British Northern England but was also involved in excavations outside the United Kingdom and the Roman period. Her 1935 work, A Gazetteer of Roman Remains in East Yorkshire, "remains one of the starting points for any study of the Romans in the north of England". Early life and education Kitson Clark was born on 14 May 1905 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. She was the youngest of three children born to Edwin Kitson Clark (1866–1943) and Georgina Kitson Clark (née Bidder); an elder brother was the historian George Kitson Clark. Her paternal grandfather was Edwin Charles Clark, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge University, and her maternal great-grandfather was George Parker Bidder, an eminent engineer. Kitson Clark was first educated at home and then at Leeds Girls' High School, a selective private school in Leeds. She then matriculated into Girton College, Cambridge to study the history tripos. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree, she remained at the University of Cambridge to study for the one-year diploma in archaeology. Career Kitson Clark belonged to the generation of amateur archaeologists who remained as independent scholars; over her lifetime she "witnessed the decline in influence of the amateur, independent scholar, and the rise of a professional class of archaeologist and historian". From 1929 to 1943, she was secretary of the Roman Antiquities Committee for Yorkshire; her father had been its treasurer. During this time, she published her magnum opus, A Gazetteer of Roman Remains in East Yorkshire (1935). It was described in 1990 as a "well-loved, well-thumbed classic", and according to her obituary in The Independent "remains one of the starting points for any study of the Romans in the north of England". From 1941 to 1943, she was also the curator of Roman Antiquities at the Yorkshire Museum in York.