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Moving on from holes and corners: recent currents in urban archaeology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Extract

Urban archaeology offers distinctive readings of urban histories: we have too few of those to ignore fresh insights. Half a dozen recent books offer a sample from a fertile field. The pressures of modern urban development, with the fundamental incompatibility of today's foundations with the ‘soft fill’ of archaeological deposits, have obliged urban archaeology to be a public discipline. Urban archaeology has stayed in the limelight, not only through sympathetic coverage on television and radio over continuing crises, like the recent unpredicted discoveries at the Rose Playhouse site, but also through popular books — like Richard Hall's glossy paperback on York's Coppergate excavations. Much of this material, however, does more than demonstrate how far passion can make urban excavations into journalistic copy. Methodologies, research priorities and interpretations are all subject to argument. Urban archaeology offers an approach to the urban past, but it is also an urban phenomenon in its own right.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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Footnotes

*

See notes section, p. 10, for details of publications to which this article refers.

References

Notes

Carver, Martin, Underneath English Towns: Interpreting Urban Archaeology. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1987. 160 pp. Maps, plans, plates. Hardback £19.95, paperback £12.95.Google Scholar

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1 Further collections of essays that sample current debates include: Hodges, R. and Hobley, B. (eds), The Rebirth of Towns in the West, AD 700–1050. Council for British Archaeology Research Report, 68 (1988)Google Scholar; Cunliffe, B. (ed.), ‘Urbanization’, special issue of World Archaeology, 19 (1987)Google Scholar; Grew, F. and Hobley, B. (eds), Roman Urban Topography in Britain and the Western Empire. Council for British Archaeology Research Report, 59 (1985).Google Scholar

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6 These goals build on the research designs for Winchester and York that were developed in the 1960s. Biddle, M., ‘The study of Winchester: archaeology and history in a British town, 1961–1983’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 69 (1983), 93129Google Scholar; Andrews, G., ‘Archaeology in York: an assessment’ in Addyman, and Black, , Archaeological Papers from York, 173208.Google Scholar

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12 These are passing references to Dublin's environmental evidence. The paucity of Irish references remain despite T.E. O'Neill's suggestive work on that very ‘English’ urban phenomenon, the medieval Earldom of Ulster, and its caput at Carrickfergus: O'Neill, , Anglo-Norman Ulster: The history and archaeology of an Irish barony, 1177–1400 (1980).Google Scholar

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19 S. Mrozowski, ‘Exploring New England's evolving urban landscape’ in Staski, Living in Cities.

20 S.L. Henry, ‘A chicken in every pot: the urban settlement pattern in turn-of-the-century Phoenix, Arizona’; A. Praetzellis et al., ‘Artifacts as symbols of identity: an example from Sacramento's gold rush era Chinese community’ and E. Staski, ‘Border city, border culture: assimilation and change in late 19th century El Paso’, all in Staski, Living in Cities.

21 Donald A. Brown, ‘French Toronto — urban archaeology and cultural pride’, in Staski, Living in Cities.

22 J.A. Bense, ‘Development of a management system for archaeological resources in Pensacola, Florida’, in Staski, Living in Cities.

23 Bradly, J. (ed.), Viking Dublin Exposed: The Wood Quay Saga (1984), 47–8.Google Scholar Police estimates of 17,800 are quoted here and by Heffernan, but both use ‘accepted’ estimates of 20,000. Heffernan comments that this is roughly one in fifty Dubliners.

24 Toynbee, J.M.C., The Roman Art Treasures from the Temple of Mithras. London and Middlesex Archaeological Society: Special Papers, 7 (1986).Google Scholar Professor Toynbee's discussion of a sculptured Bacchic group found in the immediate vicinity of the Mithraeum incorporates an understated comment by the excavator. Several modern breaks were due to ‘the unwarranted introduction of two workmen … with the avowed object of hastening the final stages of the work’, ibid., 41; cf. Grimes, W.F., The Excavation of Roman and Medieval London (1968), 229–37.Google Scholar

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31 The phrase is a chapter heading in Sizemore, C.W., A Female Vision of the City: London in the novels of five British women (1989)Google Scholar: ‘The city as archaeological dig: Maureen Duffy’.

32 Emmott, K., ‘A child's perspective on the past: influences of home, media and school’ in Who Needs the Past? Indigenous values and archaeology, ed. Layton, R. (1989), 2144 at 24.Google Scholar Cf. Gregory, T., ‘Whose fault is treasure-hunting?’ in Archaeology, Politics and the Public, eds Dobinson, C. and Gilchrist, R.. York University, Archaeological Publications, 5 (1986) 25–7.Google Scholar

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35 Biddle, , ‘The Study of Winchester’, 105.Google Scholar

36 Gradwohl, D.M. and Osborn, N.M., Exploring Buried Buxton: Archaeology of an abandoned Iowa coal mining town with a large black population (1984)Google Scholar; Thompson, B.E. and Rathje, W.L., ‘The Milwaukee garbage project: archaeology of household solid wastes’ in Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for Pattern and Process, ed. Dickens, R.S. Jr (1982), 399461.Google Scholar Both Biddle, Martin's ‘The Rose Reviewed: a comedy (?) of errors’, Antiquity, 63 (1989), 753–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Orton, Clive's ‘A tale of two sites’, London Archaeologist, 6 (1989), 5965Google Scholar did not reach me until this article was in press. The confused official responses that they report to the opportunities offered by the Rose and Huggin Hill sites suggest that the prospects for research in urban archaeology are far gloomier than I assume here.