Archaeology, Economy and Society: England from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Century.

Books should, on the whole, be judged by the targets their authors set for themselves rather than by the expectations of reviewers. David A. Hinton's aims and aspirations in Archaeology, Economy and Society. England from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Century (London: Seaby, 1990; pp. 245. Pb. [pound]14.95) are to explore the contribution of archaeology to the development of medieval England from the beginning of the English settlement to the Renaissance. To an archaeologist this might, at first sight, seem prosaic, but when one remembers, as this reviewer does, the view of a senior medieval historian expressed at a conference that twenty years of archaeology in medieval towns had …