The Sourcebook for Garden Archaeology addresses the increasing need among archaeologists, who discover a garden during their own excavation project, for advice and update on current issues in garden archaeology. It also aims at stimulating broader interest in garden archaeology. Archaeologists with no specific training in garden archaeology will read about specific problems of soil archaeology with a handful of well-developed techniques, critical discussions and a number of extremely different uses. Methods are described in sufficient detail for any archaeologist to engage into field work, adapt them to their own context and develop their own methodology. While the Sourcebook aims at bringing together different disciplines related to garden archaeology and providing an overview of present knowledge, it also hopes to encourage development of new directions for the future.

Amina-Aïcha Malek is researcher at the CNRS laboratory « Archéologies d’Orient et d’Occident et textes anciens » (AOROC) of the École Normale Supérieure (UMR 8546 CNRS-ENS) in Paris, France. Special Garden Archaeology Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks from 1999 to 2002, she has collaborated to several garden excavations, such as the Petra Pool and Garden Project in Jordan, and the garden at the Villa Arianna in Stabiae and the garden of Horace’s Villa in Licenza, Italy. She is co-founder and current vice-chair of the Society for Garden Archaeology.