Hi James
I certainly apologize if I misinterpreted you.  Industrial archaeology is
certainly important but it is simply a different kind of animal from
archaeologies of slavery and gender.  A problem here is that "paradigm
shifts" don't happen on their own.  They have a social and political context
that drives them--different social and political conditions lead to
different questions. For example, the realization of the importance of
slaves and women was driven by civil rights and feminism.  Just as a side
note, this happened in history as well as archaeology.  Slaves and women are
not invisible in the historical record. They simply weren't being looked for.

But this is why archaeologies slavery and gender are important today--they
speak, I think for most of the archaeologists involved in them, against
racism and sexism. Your paradigm shift is not going to happen simply because
of evolution or because it is industrial archaeology's turn.  What is the
critical component of industrial archaeology? Or what are the political
conditions that would lead to a similar high profile for industrial
archaeology?  Does industrial archaeology neeed to change, undergo its own
paradigm shift?

On your claim that most work at industrial sites focuses on the workers, I'd
have to agree with Karen Metheny and say the reverse is true.  A couple of
years ago I tried compiling a bibliography of "worker-oriented"
archaeological work on company towns and industrial communities and the
result was actually quite pitiful.  It would be easily buried under just the
mining technology industrial archaeological literature. In another setting,
if you just look at public history, how many museums are devoted to
industrial technology without even mentioning the workers?  Here in Colorado
there are lots of mining museums, heavy corporate sponsorship--all
technological history, no labor history.

But I do think you're right.  You can't look at the lives and struggles of
industrial workers without looking at the technology of their industry..and
how this technology was used against them, or how the workers used this
technology in turn.  But conversely it doesn't make sense to look at the
technology without considering the workers and the struggle over their
labor.  In Kuhnian terms, the paradigms of the archaeologists looking at
workers and the archaeologists looking at technology need to be
commensurable, otherwise they are just going to be speaking different
languages, which is what I think may have happened.

Regards

Mark


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--Mark Walker--
The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project
Department of Anthropology
University of Denver
Denver, CO 80208-2406
http://www.du.edu/~markwalk/fieldschool.html
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Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
                                Bertolt Brecht