Michael McCormick

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts ~Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History. Foremost archaeologist among the world's medievalist historians. By requiring graduate students to do at least some digging at medieval sites, not only remodeled the historical field, but made Harvard the North American leader in the study and teaching of medieval history. Chairs the Science of the Human Past, an innovative research and teaching network that brings together scientists, humanists, and social scientists from across Harvard to illuminate major questions of human history through the power of the life, environmental, material, and computer sciences. Results of his discoveries are published as Five Hundred Unknown Glosses from the Palatine Virgil (1993), which casts a bright light on the problem of classical continuity, and Charlemagne's Survey of the Holy Land (2011). Books Eternal Victory (1986) and Origins of the European Economy (2001) are fundamental studies with field-changing significance. By insisting on evidence of communications, Origins, which received the Haskins Medal and the Ranki Prize, argues that the foundations of a European civilization date from the eighth and ninth centuries, not the eleventh and twelfth. Co-directs archaeological projects in Belgium and France. Corresponding Member, Académie royale de Belgique, Brussels; and the Monumenta Germaniae historica, Munich. Fellow, Society of Antiquaries, London; the American Philosophical Society; and the Medieval Academy of America.~~