Urban Archaeology - Historic Development

Historic Development

Archaeological excavation within historic cities therefore often produces a thick stratigraphy dating back to the original foundation and telling the story of its history. The City of London for example, sits on a tel which preserves a layer of dark material attributed to the burning of the city by Boudica in 60 AD.

The dense stratigraphy of such cities posed problems for the archaeologists who first excavated them. Earlier excavations were generally limited to rural areas, or towns which had been long abandoned. Open area excavation was feasible as there was plenty of space and the archaeology could often be exposed just in plan. In working cities however, space for excavation is usually limited to the size of the open plot and one layer of archaeology needs to be excavated before the next one can be exposed.

Issues such as this had appeared before, at Pompeii or at multiphase rural sites but the move towards the investigation of cities, which began in Europe following the Second World War when bomb damage left areas open for investigation, meant that there was a necessity in finding a new method of excavating.