The article is devoted to the 80^th birth anniversary of the renowned archeologist and ethnographer Vladimir Nikolaevich Martyanov. It contains a short outline of his creative scientific career, first as an ethnographer studying Mordovial folk art and as archaeologist starting the 1970s. The importance of Martyanov’s works for the medieval archaeology and ethnography of the Mordovian people is accentuated. The significance of the field investigations carried out by V.N. Martyanov, who has discovered dozens of archaeological sites dated by the 3^rd – XVth centuries in the southern part of Nizhniy Novgorod Oblast, is especially emphasized.