The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 226 • John Schofield
phenomenon. Though small towns in England, Wales or Scotland were largely the built expressions
of local interests, they were part of a larger European picture with many regional variations.
This historical model (and there are several others) is, however, ultimately unsatisfactory. Towns
refuse to be pinned down and categorized simply, and other scholars have argued that there is
nothing special about towns, no independent city variable: towns are sites where more general
structures of power and struggles for power are dramatically expressed. It is true that the town
can be profitably discussed as a social form in which larger systems of social relations are
concentrated and intensified. What is fascinating is to see how this intensification brings out
specialized forms of housing, ways of coping with density of settlement and its problems, and
the consequences of variety in occupations or ethnic groups.
Some archaeologists (Carver 1987; Schofield and Vince 1994) have begun to construct a model
that starts with the mountain of data now dug up from British towns. Let the data speak; see what
it has to say. The extraordinary value of waterfront archaeology, the most important product of
post-war excavations in European towns, has revolutionized the study of material medieval culture.
It has shown how archaeology, aided by spectacular preservation of artefacts and the development
of dendrochronology, has constructed a whole new area of study and debate with historians, and
on its own terms.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my students Vicky Snelling, Tom Dodd and Graham Cushmay for criticism of
this chapter in draft.
KEY TEXTS
Aston, M. and Bond, J., 1974. The landscape of towns. London: Dent.
Clarke, H., 1984. The archaeology of medieval England. London: British Museum.
Dyer, C., 1989. Standards of living in the later Middle Ages: social change in England c 1200–1520. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Platt, C., 1976. The English medieval town. London: Secker and Warburg.
Schofield, J. and Vince, A., 1994. Medieval towns. London: Pinter Press.
Steane, J.M., 1985. The archaeology of medieval England and Wales. Beckenham: Croom Helm.
Bibliography
Atkin, M., 1985. ‘Excavations on Alms Lane’, in Atkin, M., Carter, A. and Evans, D.H., Excavations in
Norwich 1971–78, Part II. Gressenhall: East Anglian Archaeology 26, 144–260.
Biddle, M. (ed.) 1990. Object and economy in medieval Winchester. Oxford: Winchester Studies 7.ii.
Blair, J. and Ramsay, N. (eds) 1991. English medieval industries. London: Hambledon Press.
Braudel, F., 1979. Capitalism and material life 1400–1800. London: Fontana.
Carver, M.O.H., 1980. ‘Medieval Worcester: an archaeological framework’, Transactions of the Worcestershire
Archaeological Society 7.
Carver, M.O.H., 1987. ‘The nature of urban deposits’, in Schofield, J. and Leech, R. (eds) Urban archaeology
in Britain. London: Council for British Archaeology Research Report 61, 9–26.
Clarke, H.B. and Simms, A. (eds) 1985. The comparative history of urban origins in non-Roman Europe, Oxford:
British Archaeological Reports 255.
Crowfoot, E., Pritchard, F. and Staniland, K., 1992. Textiles and clothing c 1150-c 1450, =Medieval finds from
excavations in London 4. London: HMSO.
Daniels, R., 1990. ‘The development of medieval Hartlepool: excavations at Church Close, 1984–5’,
Archaeological Journal 147, 337–410.
Egan, G. and Pritchard, F., 1991. Dress accessories =Medieval finds from excavations in London 3. London:
HMSO.