During this time Carter joined the University of Pennsylvania Museum in 1950, serving as research assistant and excavation team member under Director Froelich Rainey, an affiliation she would continue throughout her career.
[2] Theresa Howard Carter was one of the most important female archaeologists of the early 20th century, working at some of the greatest excavations in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and North Africa.
[5] Carter is known for taking the first photographs of a tomb believed to be that of King Midas at Gordion in Turkey in the summer of 1957, working with director Rodney Young and his team from the University of Pennsylvania.
[6] She served as the director or co-director of multiple excavations, including Sybaris in Calabria, Italy; Leptis Magna in Libya; Elmali in Turkey; the Euphrates Valley in Syria; Tell Al-Rimah in Iraq; and Failaka in Kuwait.
Carter was at Failaka, an island off Kuwait, during the Iraq-Iran war, less than 80 miles away from the fighting, when she refused to stop digging in the ruins of a Greek settlement more than 2,000 years old, until it became impossible to continue.