Archaeology and the standing fabric: recent studies at Lichfield Cathedral

Abstract

With the great 19th-century restorations of British cathedrals went the first great campaigns of cathedral archaeology. British cathedrals are, characteristically, multiperiod structures where major elements of earlier phases have been swallowed into a later-medieval or post-medieval fabric. So an important element in cathedral studies in the last century was the close observation of clues within the standing building. It remains a major element, in which new methods like the oak dendrochronology for medieval England run alongside that oldest archaeological tool, the observant eye.