Martyn Jope

Edward Martyn Jope (28 December 1915 – 14 November 1996) was an English archaeologist and chemist. He worked temporarily during the Second World War as a biochemist. Following the war, he returned to working in archaeology, first as a medievalist and later as a prehistorian.

Martyn Jope studied at Oriel College, Oxford. While studying for his first degree in chemistry, he worked intensively on the archaeology of the city of Oxford. Soon he joined the Oxford University Archaeological Society and in due course became secretary and president.

His first appointment was in 1938 by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Until the outbreak of World War II, he excavated the medieval settlement of Bere together with R. I. Threlfall, near the village of North Tawton on the River Taw in Devon and created one of the first recorded plans of an English medieval farmhouse.

During World War II, he temporarily gave up the archaeology and received in 1940 a grant from the Nuffield Foundation for the study of haemoglobins in human blood at the London Hospital in Whitechapel. Later, the Medical Research Council supported his research on the application of spectroscopic methods and chemical-biological spectro-microscopy for biological studies, but later he moved back towards archaeology. In 1946, Jope was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

In 1949, Jope received a call for a new post as a lecturer of Archaeology at Queen's University Belfast at the suggestion of geography Professor Emyr Estyn Evans. This lectureship has evolved into a department under Jope, first as a lecturer from 1954 to 1963, and then as professor from 1963 until his retirement in 1981.

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