This volume is the product of more than fifteen years of systematic data-gathering and scholarly synthesis by Nigel Baker, supported by the Shropshire Archaeology Service and Shropshire County Council, and funded by English Heritage, as part of their 1992 Urban Archaeological Database (UAD) initiative. The volume presents a summary, review and synthesis of current archaeological and historical knowledge about Shrewsbury, together with an assessment of its significance within British urban archaeology. It not only makes a major contribution to our understanding of the significance of this hitherto understudied provincial town, but also illustrates the ways in which urban archaeology itself has been transformed over the past thirty years, through the development of interdisciplinary methodologies, the integration of above- and below-ground archaeological data, and the harnessing of emerging technologies to provide new and exciting ways of presenting and communicating this data to professional planners, scholars and the general public. It is important, when reviewing this volume, to understand the specific remit of the project from which it emerged. This helps to explain both the structure, content and tone of the volume, which at times seems caught between making a major contribution to scholarship, or merely setting the scene for future research and policy-making.

The Shrewsbury volume is divided into three main sections. The first of these provides a reasonably conventional outline of the historiography of archaeological and historical research in the town. This is followed by a series of chapters that present the different ‘data sets’ from which a model of the archaeological resource can be constructed. Geological influences on topography and morphology, particularly the terracing of Shrewsbury, are first considered (Chapter 3), on to which the below-ground deposits are then layered (Chapter 4). These are then brought together with a survey of the character of the ‘structural archaeology’ of Shrewsbury's standing buildings (Chapter 5). These chapters are significant because they reflect the ways in which the methodologies of urban archaeology have developed over the past twenty years through the use of deposit modelling and technologies such as GIS, but also through interdisciplinary research and the inclusion of antiquarian research and standing buildings recording. But Baker's first chapter in this section also reminds us that Shrewsbury itself has been at the heart of innovation in urban archaeology since the pioneering work of Professor Martin Carver and the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit here in the 1980s. These chapters benefit greatly from Baker's comprehensive knowledge of urban archaeology in the UK. They also incorporate new observations from ongoing research and a fieldwork pilot project funded by English Heritage in 1995. My only criticism is that the wider significance of each data set could have been emphasized more clearly in concluding sections.

The second major section of the volume consists of a chronological narrative of the development of Shrewsbury from its origins in the early post-Roman period through to the twentieth century. One suspects that this will actually be the starting point of the volume for many readers interested in the ‘story’ of Shrewsbury itself. The chapters in this section are structured thematically and written in an engaging and accessible style, unencumbered by extensive references to the primary archaeological data. Although the project itself did not involve extensive new research, it is evident that a great deal of new information and insight has emerged from the process of scholarly review and synthesis. Once again, these sections are greatly enhanced by Baker's extensive knowledge of the current research agenda in urban archaeology, material culture studies and buildings archaeology. In each period the major sites, monuments and artefacts are linked back to broader questions within historical archaeology, and often compared with the findings from excavations in other provincial towns.

The third section of the volume highlights the broad themes as well as the gaps in knowledge emerging from the Shrewsbury project as a whole, reviews the significance of the project's findings, and develops a research agenda for future work in the town. While this section provides the kind of ‘executive summary’ which is so popular with modern policy-makers, I would suggest that there is a danger that the absence of clear statements of significance and conclusions to Parts i and ii of the volume downplay or simplify the intellectual achievements and detailed research questions generated by the primary data sets and the chronological narrative in these sections. Shrewsbury: an archaeological assessment makes a compelling case for the need for, and potential of, publicly funded research into the archaeological significance of the UK's urban heritage ‘assets’. Writing in 2012, following the latest wave of changes to the UK's planning system, the need for this kind of research to inform planning policy and development seems more pressing than ever.