ABSTRACT
The British government’s ‘Urban Renaissance’ initiative has established ambitious targets for the recycling of urban land in the UK. The resulting wave of regeneration has led to a marked increase in the amount of commercial archaeological work that is being carried out on previously developed land, or so-called ‘brownfield’ sites. There is, however, an enduring tendency among both town planners and archaeologists to regard brownfield sites as being either archaeologically sterile, or else too heavily polluted to allow formal archaeological investigation. This perception stems in part from the traditional monument-centred approach to the conservation of the industrial heritage, but is also influenced by a belief that archaeology has little of value to say about the recent past. In this paper 1 argue that brownfield sites can contain significant archaeological deposits, and that the investigation of such sites, although technically daunting, should be seen as an important opportunity to further our understanding of everyday life in the early industrial age.
