Not that my opinion counts for much, but labels like "industrial
archaeology", "historical archaeology", "industrial heritage", etc., are
kind of meaningless and their deployment is more akin to marketing and
symbolic jockeying for position rather than actual disciplinary boundaries.
"Industrial Archaeology" is a lot like using the word "blues" to pigeonhole
a particular musical genre and the culture that produces and consumes a
music: it's a label slapped onto a constellation of beliefs, behaviors, and
communication styles that allows the music and culture to be communicated
about and sold (via bin cards in record stores and ad campaigns). It just
goes to the point that archaeology is a tool for understanding human
behavior that may be used by historians, anthropologists, engineers, et al.,
and not a unified discipline. Archaeologists cannot assert ownership rights
(physical or intellectual) to the material they excavate and the barriers to
entry into the archaeology market are fairly low: anyone with an interest
and assets (some tools and access to an archaeological site or artifact) can
be an archaeologist, whether the folks with Ph.D.s and RPAs behind their
names validate the behavior or not.

David Rotenstein