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Archaeology and the History of British Towns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

Urban archaeology in Britain is still in its infancy, conditioned on the one hand by a concentration on the Roman period to the detriment of later centuries, on the other by a lack of close co-operation between historians and archaeologists. Only since the last war has archaeology begun to be accepted in Britain as an important source of evidence for the history of towns. This growth of interest in urban archaeology is partly due to the example set by European scholars working in the same field.

Many of our important towns were founded during the Roman occupation and this has given to their archaeology a character wholly different from that typical of the towns of northern Europe. The needs of Romano-British archaeology have dominated the excavation of towns, partly because classical studies have been fundamental to British education, and partly because medieval historians have not regarded archaeology as relevant to their interests.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1968

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References

* The Society for Medieval Archaeology was founded in 1957, and the first volume of Medieval Archaeology published in 1958. The first lectureships in medieval archaeology were established at English universities in the early sixties.