Rarely awarded Honorary MA degree for Cambridge Archaeologist Christopher Evans

At a Congregation in the Senate House on Saturday 29 November, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, conferred an MA honoris causa on Chris Evans, former Director of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit.  This honorary award, which was approved by both the University’s Council and by the Regent House, is only rarely given and marks an outstanding contribution to the University, or City or County of Cambridge.  

Paraphrasing from his Latin speech, composed to present Mr Evans to graduate, the University’s Orator, Dr Rupert Thompson, described how whenever a major construction project has been about to take place, then to the benefit of both City and University,

Having conducted and directed digs elsewhere in the United Kingdom as well as around the world,  Mr Evans, who completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto and later studied at the Institute of Archaeology in London, co-founded the Cambridge Unit with Professor Ian Hodder in 1990 and directed it until he retired in 2021.  

The Unit is now a leading player amongst such excavating teams operating commercially but attached to an academic department and under his leadership it has transformed the teaching of the subject within the University, building on a worldwide reputation for theory by evolving practical and interpretative skills through fieldwork to balance and strengthen it.  

A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the British Academy who has served on the editorial boards of academic and professional journals,  Evans has, in the words of  the Orator, “…led the subject out of the ivory towers of the library and into the field, and by forever changing the way it is taught here breathed life into it anew.”