Bridging the Past: Life in Medieval and Post-Medieval Southwark: Excavations along the Route of Thameslink Borough Viaduct and at London Bridge Station.

going into some depth about the context and operation of different periods of investigation of Sheffield Castle and some of the individuals involved, as well as covering the site’s relationship tomore recent community archaeology initiatives. It sits alongside an online archive hosted by the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) that allows readers to engage directly with some of the material resulting from historic work on the site: (https:// archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/sheffieldcastle_uos_2020/). The extensive ‘Acknowledgements’ section is well worth looking over just to understand the effort over many years that has gone into this publication and appreciate the number of people who have been involved in the project. It’s easy enough to get the feeling that Sheffield Castle represents a key moment in the archaeology of Sheffield, especially poignant given the University’s recent decision to close down their archaeology department. After an introductory chapter setting out the known history of Sheffield Castle, Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the earlier 20th century work of Leslie Armstrong and Joseph B. Himsworth, who observed and recorded parts of the former castle that were uncovered during construction work on the castle site. Chapter 2 looks at recording methods, and the differences between the Armstrong and Himsworth archives, while Chapter 3 provides an interpretation of the site based on their work. Chapters 5 and 6 look at the mid-20th-century work of Leslie Butcher, whose fantastic recording work on site enabled finds to be considered within their stratigraphic contextfor the first time, but has also enabled reinterpretation of the earlier work of Armstrong and Himsworth. Butcher’s isometric drawings (e.g. Fig 5.31) are a highlight of the book. Chapter 7 covers the finds on the site and Chapter 8 discusses the more recent work on the site by ARCUS, a period of work whose main protagonists will be well known to many UK archaeologists. Chapter 9 widens the discussion to include the ‘lordly landscape’ of a nearby medieval deer park and hunting lodge. The excellent Chapter 10, ‘The Persistence of Place’, looks at how Sheffield Castle has remained present since its demolition in the 17th century, through street names, community projects and so on. It serves as a fascinating example of the ways that buried archaeology can have real impact on the above-ground world, the daily lives of a city and its inhabitants. The associated archive is a great partner to the published book, featuring site diaries, photographs, lecture notes and archaeological from across Sheffield Castle’s time as a site of archaeological interest. It’s well worth spending some time on the material contained within it and not solely cross-referencing from the book. Sheffield Castle is a very good publication on its own terms, but I hope it will inspire other towns and cities to pull together similar publication-archive hybrids where information is currently spread across numerous locations and often hard-to-find publications, including where nationally important archaeology is sitting unpublished except as grey literature. Finally, how great it is that this volume has been made available online for free. Surely its impact and inspiration will be much the greater for that.