Like Larry Buhr, I have explored brickmaking and other technologies as part
of "standard" archaeological surveys and published the results in the
"archaeological" press. Industrial process studies can, as Buhr suggests,
provide evidence to answer "orthodox" anthropological questions, but only
if the questions are stated within the context of industrial archaeology
(i.e., the archaeology of industrial process).

Industrialization commonly is characterized by separation of residence from
workplace; it follows that our disciplines should shadow the bifurcation.
The archaeology of the industrialized workplace is radically different from
that of the domestic site, even when the domestic site may include a
workplace.

Once we begin studying the industrial workplace as an  archaeological site,
we should automatically acquire collaborators who are not archaeologists,
either by training or by inclination. The role of these craft collaborators
is so profound that they should be listed as co-authors on the title pages
of our reports, which is not uncommon in industrial archaeology.

When I look around at my fellow industrial archaeologists, I see this mix.
There are tool collectors, retired industrial workers, students of
industrial processes, and people who simply like to look at big cast-iron
noisemakers. Most of us fit into that latter category as well, I might add.
Professions include engineers, historians, architects, architectural
historians, industrial museum curators, economic historians, and of course,
archaeologists.

This mix is essential to the interpretation of our industrial heritage.
When I was digging a cannery, I sought collaboration of a historical craft
tinsmith and a physician who had catalogued all the canneries in my state
as part of his historical hobby. They got billing as contributors to the
final report. It was my job to interpret the economic and social historical
aspects of the site, but I could never have done it without the full
participation of two very talented people outside our narrow professional
confines.

Yes, industrial archaeology should be a separate sub-discipline of
archaeology, but it must not be shoe-horned into anthropology unless we
choose to define anthropology in its broadest sense, as any study of people
in groups.

The penultimate paragraph of this diatribe pretty well reduces the whole
debate to silly semantics, doesn't it?




      _____
 ____(_____)__          Spam is a perfectly good ham product.
  |Baby the\            We need a better name for unwanted
  |1969 Land\_|===|_    electronic mail. Why not call it
  |  ___Rover   ___ |o  "Budweiser," or "sliced bread," or
  |_/ . \______/ . ||   something else disgusting?
  ___\_/________\_/____________________________________________
  Ned Heite, Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html