Cities in the modern world

The archaeology of modern cities has grown enormously over the past half-century, driven in large part by developer-funded urban renewal. This activity has utilized a diverse array of methodological approaches, research paradigms and scales of analysis — a diversity increasingly reflected in the pages of Post-Medieval Archaeology. In this paper, we review the development of urban archaeology, with a particular focus on material remains from the past two or three centuries. We emphasize the role played by commercial archaeology and the growing importance of community engagement, along with changing theoretical models and the emergence of new analytical technologies.