Mary Kitson Clark

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". 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". ==Personal life==

During her involvement in the 1929 excavations in Palestine, Kitson Clark met her future husband Derwas James Chitty (1901–1971); he was also an archaeologist and an Anglican priest. ==Honours==

On 13 January 1938, Kitson Clark was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA): at the time of her death she was the "last surviving fellow elected before the Second World War". In 1985, a conference was held in her honour by British Romanists; the proceedings of this conference were later published as Recent Research in Roman Yorkshire: studies in honour of Mary Kitson Clark (Mrs Derwas Chitty) (1988). ==Selected works==

• Kitson Clark, M. 1931. "Iron Age sites in the Vale of Pickering", Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. 30. 157–172. • • Kitson Clark, M. 1933. "Some Invasions of Yorkshire", Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 31. 320–330. • Kiston Clark, M. 1939. "Where were the Brigantes", Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 34. 80–87. • Myers, J. N. L, Steer, K. A., and Chitty, A. H. M. 1962. "The Defences of Isurium Brigantum (Alborough)", Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 40, 1–79. • • ==References==