This is a very well-produced excavation report combining the necessary technical detail with a most readable text. The printing of the volume is of a high standard, with many colour illustrations. The editing, undertaken by Susan Hirst, is also excellent. The excavations described here were undertaken in advance of the redevelopment of a large area on the south side of the medieval city of Bath, Somerset, and to the south of the well-known Roman baths. The detailed evidence for the prehistoric, Roman to medieval, and post-medieval to modern periods is set out in a series of sections devoted to the archaeological sequence followed in turn by a very useful series of thematic discussions, again arranged by period. Accompanying the report is a CD containing detailed data, including a catalogue of selected glass items, extensive geo-archaeological data, plots of the distribution of the Mesolithic artefacts and tables of data for a wide range of finds and environmental material.

The approach taken to the project as a whole is best described as visionary, setting the history and archaeology of Bath in the context of the development of the floodplain of the River Avon over 12 millennia, its beginnings extending well beyond the familiar worlds of Roman or eighteenth-century Bath. Hunter-gatherer occupation of the banks of the River Avon between c. 9000 and 7000 BP was characterised by a spread of more than 16 000 lithic artefacts—“unusual if not unique” (p. 178). Evidence, by contrast, for the Roman period was disappointingly slight, and missing from the report is any discussion of Gerrard's (Reference Gerrard2007) research establishing a late fifth-century date for the demolition of the Temple of Sulis Minerva. One senses that the excavators had possibly hoped that this would be an area of cemeteries or settlement to the south of the Roman baths. Similarly, it might have been hoped that archaeological investigation would provide good evidence for the character of the Saxon and medieval suburbs to the south of the walled town. In fact, excavation “produced no definitive evidence for the function of specific buildings” (p. 189). The thematic discussion of the medieval period necessarily focuses mainly on environmental archaeology and the evidence for diet and economy.

The thematic discussion of the post-medieval and modern periods is one of the strongest sections of the report, with much useful correlation of the documentary and archaeological evidence. Particularly interesting sections are those examining the evidence for the Civil War defences of the seventeenth century and the development of pipe making on a large scale at the north end of Southgate Street in the early eighteenth century. There is much scope here for the historian of consumerism in Bath to make use of the data obtained from the archaeological excavations in Southgate Street, ranging from ceramics, clay tobacco pipes and pipeclay wig curlers to toothbrushes and glass. The thorough and detailed reports on particular categories of finds will make this a very useful report for historical archaeologists in Britain, North America and elsewhere. Particularly noteworthy are the well-researched and excellently written reports on the medieval and post-medieval pottery and glass by Nigel Jeffries and Lyn Blackmore respectively.

This volume is number 68 in the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) monograph series. Collectively, these monographs are a remarkable record of that organisation's timely publication of archaeological excavations, not often matched elsewhere. This particular volume is dedicated to the memory of two of the contributors, Richard Bluer and Christopher Philpotts, who together with another of the contributors, Geoff Eagan, died before its completion. We can presume that all three would have been well pleased with the final report.