https://www.linkedin.com/in/toby-martin-2a9988180Dr Toby Martin obtained his BA in Archaeology and Anthropology and his MSt in European Archaeology from the University of Oxford. His PhD was awarded by the University of Sheffield, specialising in early medieval archaeology and material culture. Since 2013, Toby has worked variously in commercial archaeology and universities, including as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Departmental Lecturer at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology. Since 2016, Toby has fulfilled several roles at Oxford Lifelong Learning, including as a Director of Studies and Departmental Lecturer in Archaeology, and as Director of the Short Online Course programme, Oxford University’s largest portfolio of online courses. Toby is now Assistant Director at Oxford Lifelong Learning, with oversight of all award-bearing courses and all accredited short courses offered by the Department.
Dr Toby Martin
Assistant Director (Award-Bearing and Accredited)
Dr Toby Martin is a specialist in digital education, with extensive experience of running and developing fully online course portfolios. He chairs Oxford University’s Digital Education Technologies Steering Group, which has oversight of the major digital educational tools and platforms used by the university. Toby is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Toby specialises in the teaching of early medieval archaeology between the fifth and seventh centuries CE, particularly early Anglo-Saxon burial archaeology, artefacts, and art, as well as more generally material culture method and theory. Most of his teaching is currently at the doctoral level, and he also supervises taught postgraduate and undergraduate projects and dissertations. He is very happy to consider taking on supervision of these kinds of projects, including DPhils.
Present DPhil projects:
- Holly Brown “Richly furnished female burial during the Conversion period: a comparative study of England and the Paris basin”
- Linden Ellicott: “Enmeshed antiquarians: the contribution of entanglements on the developing mid to late 19th-century archaeological discipline”
Toby’s research focuses on early medieval archaeology, particularly cemeteries and material culture across Europe during fifth to seventh centuries CE. Fundamentally, his research investigates material culture and society, linking social theory with quantitative and scientific methods. He has published widely on early medieval artefacts and art, on themes including identity and gender, through to networks and materiality.
During his career Toby has also worked in developer-funded archaeology both as a field archaeologist as well as in post-excavation analysis. He has published and contributed to a number of site reports in this capacity, and is currently working on a number of early Anglo-Saxon cemetery publications with industry partners.
Books
- Ladd, S. and Martin, T. F. (in press). The Roman and Early Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries at Hatherdene Close, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge. East Anglian Archaeology Series.
- Allen, T. and Martin, T. F. 2021. The Castle Hill Brickworks and Somerhill Estate. Oxford Archaeology Monograph 33. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
- Martin, T. F. and Morrison, W. (eds.) 2020. Barbaric Splendour: The Use of Image Before and After Rome. Oxford: Archaeopress. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1zcm0nn.
- Martin, T. F. and Weetch, R. (eds.) 2017. Dress and Society: Contributions from Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow.
- Martin, T. F. 2015. The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.
Academic articles and book chapters
- Hamerow, H., Harrison, S., Kershaw, J., Martin, T.F. (in press). ‘England and Scandinavia between the fifth to eighth centuries’, in L. Hedeager, K. Kristiansen and C. Presctt (eds) Oxford Handbook of Scandinavian Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
- Martin, T.F. and Ponting, M. 2026. ‘Quality from Kent: Preliminary results from the analysis of fifth- to seventh-century silver alloys’. Archaeometry 68 (Suppl. 4), S10-S38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/arcm.13092.
- Martin, T. F. 2026. ‘The North Sea and Baltic worlds’, in Aimone, M. (ed.) The Wyvern Collection V: Byzantine and Early Medieval Jewels and Insignia. London and New York: Thames and Hudson.
- Martin, T. F. 2020. ‘Casting the net wider: network approaches to artefact variation in post-Roman Europe’. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-019-09441-x
- Martin, T. F. 2021. ‘Everyday objects’, in Lund, J. and Semple, S. (eds) Cultural History of Medieval Objects. London: Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474206891
- Martin, T. F. 2020. “Barbaric Tendencies? Iron Age and Early Medieval Art in Comparison.” In Martin, T. F. and Morrison, W. (eds) Barbaric Splendour: The Use of Image Before and After Rome (Oxford: Archaeopress), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1zcm0nn.
- Martin, T. F. 2019. ‘A matter of scale: some impediments to broad archaeological perspectives on post-Roman European bow brooches’. Neue Studien zur Sachsenforschung 6, 139-146.
- Martin, T. F. 2013. ‘Women, knowledge and power: the iconography of early Anglo-Saxon cruciform brooches’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 18, 1-17.
- Martin, T. F. 2016. ‘The lives and deaths of people and things: biographical approaches to dress in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Smith, R. and Watson, G. (eds) Writing the Lives of People and Things AD 500–1700: A Multidisciplinary Future for Biography (Farnham: Ashgate Press), 67-87.
- Martin, T. F. 2014. ‘(Ad)Dressing the Anglo-Saxon body: corporeal meanings and artefacts in early England’, in Blinkhorn, P. And Cumberpatch, C. (eds.) The Chiming of Crack’d Bells: Current Approaches to Artefacts in Archaeology (Oxford: Archaeopress), 27-38.
- Martin, T. F. 2012. ‘Riveting biographies: the repair, re-use and modification of early Anglo-Saxon brooches’, in B. Jervis and A. Kyle (eds.) Make do and Mend: Archaeologies of Compromise, Repair and Reuse, (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 2408), 59-73.
