A lifelong associate of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Martin studied pre-Columbian cultures of the Southwestern United States.
Martin attained a modest B- average grade and found his true calling, anthropology, only in the end of his undergraduate studies.
[10] His first article has set a standard for the rest of his life: Martin the scientist was later known for prompt publication of collected field data.
[10] Martin seriously dedicated himself to Mesoamerican studies, but in 1929 his long-term plans were cut short by an acute bout of tropical diseases.
[10] The medics ruled out further field work in the jungle, and Martin had to limit his scientific career to continental United States.
In 1928 Martin had already begun his ten-year research in Montezuma County, Colorado but in the summer of 1929 the Department of the Interior denied him permission to excavate Lowry Pueblo.
[2] In the first season his team of six diggers excavated thirty rooms, four kivas, eight towers and twelve waste heaps at Cutthroat Castle.
Martin practiced novel Chicago excavation methode and mining technologies learned from Cole and Morley, recorded everything on film,[17] but did not take care to reinforce the exposed walls.
[18] The summer of 1931 brought many celebrated finds: "sixty or seventy pieces of pottery, many sherds, bone tools, minor objects, and about one hundred excellent negatives..." "unlike anything in the area".
[19] In the end of his life Martin himself wrote that "Mostly, we dug out of curiosity, for fun, for specimens, and to write the historical details for these sites and for this time period ...
[23] He decided to move from pure field archaeology into "greener intellectual pastures" and concentrated on the Mogollon culture of Arizona and New Mexico, which was discovered by Emil Haury in 1936.
[6] Martin preserved and shipped to Chicago the artifacts that he himself deemed exhibition-worthy; other, less significant, finds were recorded and then abandoned in the field.
Increased interaction with his peers in Chicago area resulted in a turn to historical analysis of prehistoric society: "how the former inhabitants of the village lived, how they grouped themselves socially, how they solved their subsistence problems, whether they had any religious concepts, and what their particular interests were.
[29] In 1952 Martin and Rinaldo proposed a new, three-phase classification of pre-Columbian material culture, starting with the earliest one known to them - the Pine Lawn Phase that started around 150 B. C.[29] Martin reasoned that the changes from one phase to another were caused by the diffusion of people and the increase in their dependence on wild, rather than cultivated, plants that coincided with a decrease in hunting.
[30] Studies of food habits brought Martin in tighter contact with biologists; his associate Hugh Cutter coined the term cultural ecology in 1956.
[32] He gradually stepped aside from field archaeology; his former authoritative management style became democratic and forgiving, and he even allowed women to archaeologists' camps.
[32] In 1957 and 1958 he managed excavation in Little Ortega, Laguna Salada and Table Rock Pueblo, but reports on this research were written primarily by Rinaldo.
[32] In 1960 Martin obtained a National Science Foundation research grant that had, in retrospect, significantly changed the scope of archaeology at the Field Museum.
[32] Martin admitted that he did not really know what to make of it; actual research was carried out by James Schoenwetter who concluded that around 1000 A. D. the American Southwest witnessed a radical climate change.
Martin wrote that "I have dumped all my research prior to 1962" and that his lengthy field reports produced over thirty years were just "boring repetitions of minute detail".