Urban landscapes surveys: a view from the end

This volume has, to me, revealed an exciting vitality to the study of what might be termed a ‘discarded’ urban past. I say ‘discarded’ in the sense that the majority of the sites explored in this publication and explored by a mass of skilled workers on the ground are ‘lost’ or, in other words, ‘failed’ sites. The label can seem applicable when such sites are visited – often the fragments of buildings are scattered and discarded in their landscape, sometimes near their original setting, but often shifted, and, in other cases, reused in medieval to modern contexts, whether houses, field walls or terracing. But what all these papers do is to relocate these discards, to trace their settings, and to breathe life into these lost towns. [Opening paragraph]