Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- One: Introduction -- Archaeological Scholarship of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Finding a Name -- Recent Repositioning -- Does it Matter? -- Building a New Later Historical Archaeology -- 'Marxism' and its Limits in Later Historical Archaeology -- The Idea of Improvement -- Improvement and the Idea of Progress -- Genealogies of Improvement -- Some Notes and Omissions -- Why Such a Wide Focus? -- Why Such a Narrow Focus? -- But is it Archaeology? -- The Time Span -- The Layout and Organisation of this Book -- Two: Agricultural improvement -- Farming 1750-1850 -- The Agricultural Revolution -- Enclosure -- Strategies of Improvement -- Draining Bogs -- Grubbing Up Furze and Fern -- Soil Improvement -- Consolidation of Land Tenure -- Field Drainage -- Cultivation and Machinery -- Stock -- Three: The improved rural landscape -- New Buildings, New Settlements -- New Lanark -- Beauty and Utility -- Hafod -- 'Improving' the Rural Landscape: The Highland Clearances -- Improvement? -- Four: Towns and civic improvement -- The Changing Town -- The Mechanisms of Urban Improvement -- Improvement and the Classical Style -- A Moral Urban Population -- Dirt, Disorder and Disease -- Fiat Lux -- Clean Water -- Street Cleaning -- A Healthful Breeze -- The Suburban Cemetery -- Local and National -- Royal Leamington Spa -- Five: Improving the people -- Improving the People -- The Rural Workforce -- Poverty in the Town -- Institutions -- Workhouses -- The Architecture of the Workhouse -- Prisons -- The Principles of the Penitentiary -- The Buildings -- Mechanics' Institutes -- Taking Stock -- Six: The right stuff -- Bleachworks -- Window Glass -- Manufacture -- Seeing in, Seeing out, Lighting up the Gloom -- Transfer-Printed Wares -- Rubbish Pits.

Seven: Final thoughts -- Points and Considerations -- Improvement is a Distinctively Modern Ethic that Informs Many Fields of Practice and Discourse -- Improvement is Ideological rather than Purely a Rational Response to Economic Circumstances -- Attempts to Effect Improvements are not Always Reducible to the Pursuit of Social or Political Advantage -- Belief in Improvement had a Complicated Relationship to Class and Geographical Identities -- Archaeological Work in this period is Hampered by a Belief that, because it is Modern, we Already Understand it -- Poor Communication has also Handicapped the Development of Critical and Three-Dimensional Ways of Telling the Past -- Questions and Ambiguities -- Why did the Ethic of Improvement Come to Such Prominence in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries? -- How did Improvement Change Over that Time? -- How can we Distinguish Between a Rejection of the Ethic of Improvement and a Rejection of any Particular 'Improving' Measure? -- How does Religion - both Theologically and Through the Structures of Churches - Relate to Projects of Improvement? -- To what Extent did the Labouring Classes Value Improvement as an Abstract Ideal? Was the Ethic of Improvement an Empowering Ideology or a Legitimatory Tool of Social Control? -- Finally -- References -- Index.