The catalogue of the archaeological finds from the Amstel riverbed, excavated for Amsterdam's North/South metro line between 2003 and 2012 on the Damrak and the Rokin, up to twenty-five metres below ground. In the old days people dumped their refuse in the water and objects sank into the muddy bed; the excavations produced almost 700,000 finds. The book gathers them into a material history of the city, in a series of 15,000 photographs by Harold Strak, documented with his unmatched eye for detail, colour and texture, which can be read in a number of ways, from a never-ending stream of more or less recognisable objects to a portrait of the city and its inhabitants.