In regard to Ned Heite's comments on Industrial Archaeology:

(1) He is right that we disagree and he is also right that his usage of
the term "industrial archaeology" is closer to how the term is currently
used in the field. However (!), under this semantic debate are some basic
issues:

(2) The Industrialization of World Culture is a total process and it is
not possible to separate the technological foundation from the social,
political or ideological aspects or their archaeological manifestations.
You are welcome to call it all, "Historical Archaeology", as it is a subfield
of the archaeology of the Modern World. However, Industrial Archaeology
should not be antiquarian in focus or orientation, it should be cultural
and holistic. Factories, canals, farmsteads, churches, workers' housing,
mansions, and battlefields (etc. etc.) are all parts of the overall picture
of the Industrial Revolution and industrialization.

        The parallel I would draw is with Maya Archaeology when those
scholars focused only on temples and palaces and only later started to
look at the total settlement pattern (especially housemounds). The
earlier approach created a very incomplete and distorted view of Maya
Civilization.

        Factories do not exist in isolation and canals and railroads connect
people and places. On a deeper level the unity of industrial civilization
has to do with both the nature of such a society as an energy system and
the nature of industrial capitalism. As our English colleague pointed out,
many traditional patterns (e.g. farms) continue into the Industrial Period
but eventually the entire planet was drawn into or at least attached to
industrial civilization. One of the great strengths of historical
archaeology, among others, is the picture it may create of just these
differentials in the spread of the new relationships under industrialization.
Does a local area in Scotland, for example, in 1820 show in its material
remains its incorporation into the Industrial World, or not. When do
traditional cultures outside of areas like Western Europe and North America
start to
also show such transformations or, in contrast, continuities with their own
past. The remains might be direct (e.g. new technologies or work patterns on the
site) or quite indirect (e.g. new migrant labor patterns off of the site
or political disadvantage in the face of a contemporary, intrusive
industrial military force).Archaeology is a powerful tool for studying
just how global and regional patterns appear or do not appear locally.

Yes, it is all Historical Archaeology (i.e. the archaeology of the Modern
World) but, as a subfield, Industrial Archaeology needs to take in its
immedaite fieldwork and research design a holistic and cultural approach.
If a unified cultural subject is artifically divided - especailly if the
technological core of the system is pulled out [and as a materialist I
think that technology is the core] - so will the final synthesis or
interpretations be artifically divided and limited.

I stand with Pat Martin - and much earlier with Kenneth Hudson - on this
issue.
I do, however, realize that much of Industrial Archaeology has a some
distance to go to realize such a unified view.


                                  Robert L. Schuyler