Introduction

NORWICH has been described as ‘the best case from Britain of archaeologists, in conjunction with historians, elucidating the early development of a town’. This passage drew attention to a research policy where hypotheses had been formulated, tested, rejected where necessary and elsewhere developed, in order to increase understanding of the medieval city. It was a policy rooted in the work of the Norwich Survey of the Centre for East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s, and one which has informed much research since.

The great walled city that was medieval Norwich by the mid-fourteenth century is particularly well-suited to archaeological analysis. This urban complex had and retains a richness and diversity which facilitates investigation. This is not to say that there is necessarily always a great deal that survives of the physical fabric of medieval Norwich – I have indicated recently that proportionately very little does survive of the built heritage of the medieval city.2 Nevertheless, despite much loss of standing buildings – and much later restoration and adaptation of that which is left – the very environment of the city has a ‘time-depth’ to it. This paper seeks to demonstrate how this can be explored archaeologically in order not only to increase understanding of its physical and chronological development but also to provide a broader understanding of the economic implications of urban growth (and occasional decay) and the social consequences of settlement activity.

Approach

Initially, it is perhaps necessary to define terms, specifically with regard to ‘archaeological investigation’. Archaeology is the investigation of material culture and the impact of that culture upon the environment – it can involve excavation but need not necessarily do so. This paper will draw upon excavated material but it will also utilise information from buildings archaeology, where careful analysis of structures can reveal data concerning utilisation and control of space, social relationships and economic drivers, and the wider urban topography.

The intention, however, is emphatically not merely to inventorise the urban environment. Adoption of such an approach would be relatively straightforward, examining as it does the physical geography, the imposition of urban forms and the diversity of monuments in order to reveal complexity and diversity. It is, of course, an approach which has merit in that it can provide snapshots of the urban resource, inviting analysis.