ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises some of the results of a continuing long-term landscape study into the history and archaeology of modern Tameside as a response to a widespread call for archaeology to make a distinctive theoretical contribution to the study of the era of industrialisation. One difficulty that arose from taking this social context approach was the certainty of assigning ownership of sites to the right class. The Manchester Methodology provides one way of archaeologically charting this growth through the number and rate of introduction of new monument types, though full application of the methodology to the historic township of Manchester is still at an early stage. Surprisingly, the pattern of development in archaeological sites follows that laid down by the earlier social structure of the lords, freeholder and tenant. A fundamental part of the Manchester Methodology has been to link this descriptive archaeological approach to the contemporary social structure.
