This exciting collection on a new movement in urban archaeology investigates the historical archaeology of urban slums. The material that is dug up - broken dinner plates, glass grog bottles, and innumerable tonnes of building debris, nails and plaster samples - will not quickly find its way into museum collections. But, properly interpreted, it yields evidence of lives and communities that have left little in the way of written records. Including eleven case studies, five on cities in the United States and one each on London and Sheffield, and futher chapters on Cape Town, Sydney, Melbourne and Quebec City, it maps out a new field, which will attract the attention of a range of students and scholars outside archaeology, in particular historical sociologists and historians.