18-20 April, 2002

Venue: Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton Southampton SO17 1BF www.spma.org.uk

This year (2002) the annual conference of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology is directed at a theme of international interest, Cities in the World, 1500-2000.

This conference sets out to investigate the range of new archaeological and historical approaches to the development of large towns and cities in Britain, Europe and the World, 1500-2000. The conference will examine all aspects of urban life during the last five hundred years, with particular attention to international contexts and comparisons, to generate comparative perspectives on the relationship between urban places and the wider world.

Speakers from North America, Africa and Australia will provide a contemporary international perspective on recent research in urban historical archaeology. Post-medieval archaeologists working in European contexts should find much of interest in the experiences, investigations and interpretations of nineteenth and twentieth century cities such as New York and Sydney.

The conference is organized on broad thematic lines with the aim of encouraging an interdisciplinary and mixed-media approach. The 38 papers being presented over three days are divided into themes which include the longevity of medieval cities, questions of modernisation and globalisation, the role of urban places in regional contexts, industrial cities, planned towns, international interactions and colonial contexts. Specific topics include: the urban landscape, domestic, institutional and commercial buildings, material culture studies, social interactions, civic culture, migrations, health and death.

The third day of the conference offers the possibility of visiting, discussing and discovering new research directions for two understudied and also very different early modern and modern cities, Southampton and Portsmouth.