This paper uses 16 years of targeted fieldwork on excavating workers’ housing in the Manchester region, UK, to assess a variety of research approaches to the investigation of urban industrial housing of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Manchester was one of the ‘shock’ cities of industrial Britain, and a honey pot for social commentary during the Victorian period. Using data from more than 30 excavation sites, it looks at the way in which archaeological evidence can be used to explore issues around house build quality, overcrowding, sanitation and disease, and reconstructing households from their material remains. Manchester's reputation for poor living conditions during the industrialising period was crystallised around the comments of contemporary social commentators from Engels to Gaskell. Yet, the archaeological evidence reviewed in this article demonstrates the value of archaeological approaches in challenging and testing such views through detailed case studies. More importantly, it shows that archaeological material can be used to study directly features of the new industrialised form of urban living, providing a set of research questions applicable across the industrial urban workers’ housing of Britain.

中文翻译：

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挖掘“人间地狱”以建立工人住房考古调查的研究框架：来自英国曼彻斯特的案例研究

本文使用 16 年在英国曼彻斯特地区挖掘工人住房的有针对性的实地调查，评估了对 18 世纪末、19 世纪和 20 世纪初城市工业住房调查的各种研究方法。曼彻斯特是英国工业化的“震撼”城市之一，也是维多利亚时期社会评论的蜜罐。使用来自 30 多个挖掘地点的数据，它着眼于如何使用考古证据来探索围绕房屋建造质量、过度拥挤、卫生和疾病以及从他们的物质遗骸重建家庭等问题。曼彻斯特在工业化时期生活条件恶劣的声誉在从恩格斯到加斯凯尔的当代社会评论家的评论中得到了体现。然而，本文回顾的考古证据证明了考古方法在通过详细的案例研究挑战和检验这些观点方面的价值。更重要的是，它表明考古材料可用于直接研究新型工业化城市生活形式的特征，提供了一套适用于英国工业城市工人住房的研究问题。