How do excavations enable archaeologists to reconstruct Leicester's Roman and medieval past? What can they tell us about over two thousand years of history beneath the city's streets? Visions of Ancient Leicester contains a collection of paintings by artist Mike Codd which evocatively bring to life what it would have been like to live in Leicester between the 1st century BC and the 16th century AD.

The aim of this book is to explore how medieval life was actually lived - how people were born and grew old, how they dressed, how they inhabited their homes, the rituals that gave meaning to their lives and how they prepared for death and the afterlife. Its fresh and original approach uses archaeological evidence to reconstruct the material practices of medieval life, death and the afterlife. Previous historical studies of the medieval "lifecycle" begin with birth and end with death. Here, in contrast, the concept of life course theory is developed for the first time in a detailed archaeological case study. The author argues that medieval Christian understanding of the "life course" commenced with conception and extended through the entirety of life, to include death and the afterlife. Five thematic case studies present the archaeology of medieval England (c.1050-1540 CE) in terms of the body, the household, the parish church and cemetery, and the relationship between the lives of people and objects. A wide range of sources is critically employed: osteology, costume, material culture, iconography and evidence excavated from houses, churches and cemeteries in the medieval English town and countryside. Medieval Life reveals the intimate and everyday relations between age groups, between the living and the dead, and between people and things.

A new perspective on lordship in England between the Norman Conquest and Magna Carta. Multiple lordship- that is, holding land or owing allegiance to more than one lord simultaneously- was long regarded under the western European "feudal" model as a potentially dangerous aberration, and a sign of decline in the structure of lordship. Through an analysis of the minor lords of Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire during the long twelfth century, this study demonstrates, conversely, that multiple lordship was at least as common as single lordship in this period and regarded as a normal practice, and explores how these minor lords used the flexibility of lordship structures to construct localised centres of authority in the landscape and become important actors in their own right. Lordship was, moreover, only one of several forces which minor lords had to navigate. Regional society in this period was profoundly shaped by overlapping ties of lordship, kinship, and locality, each of which could have a fundamental impact on relationships and behaviour. These issues are studied within and across lords' honours, around religious houses and urban areas, and in a close case study of the abbey of Burton-upon-Trent. This book thus contextualises lordship within a wider landscape of power and influence.

Historical archaeology studies once relied upon a binary view of colonialism: colonizers and colonized, the colonial period and the postcolonial period. The contributors to this volume scrutinize imperialism and expansionism through an alternative lens that rejects simple dualities and explores the variously gendered, racialized, and occupied peoples of a multitude of faiths, desires, associations, and constraints. Colonialism is not a phase in the chronology of a people but a continuous phenomenon that spans the Old and New Worlds. Most important, the contributors argue that its impacts—and, in some instances, even the same processes set in place by the likes of Columbus—are ongoing. Inciting a critical examination of the lasting consequences of ancient and modern colonialism on descendant communities, this wide-ranging volume includes essays on Roman Britain, slavery in Brazil, and contemporary Native Americans. In its efforts to define the scope of colonialism and the comparability of its features, this collection challenges the field to go beyond familiar geographical and historical boundaries and draws attention to unfolding colonial futures.

Roman Nottinghamshire is an authoritative yet accessible examination of the evidence of Roman civilisation in the county, and a fascinating narrative of how this evidence came to light and has been (mis)interpreted over the years, sometimes leading to controversy. Patterson is driven by a sense of wonder at the influence that the ghosts of ancient Romans continue to exert on the Nottinghamshire landscape:

The fascinating story of Britain’s Roman Baths right up to the present day.