Alasdair Brooks quoth:
"I've never felt that a periodised 'industrial archaeology' adequately
covers the archaeology of - to take one example - domestic rural sites
in
18th and 19th century Britain. A Welsh cottage may produce artefact
assemblages containing industrially-mass produced artefacts, but it's a
stretch to call it an industrial site."
A small picky nit - a good deal of early industrial activity, as defined by
capital distribution was involved in the "puttin out" system, important both
in the UK and the US. In this circumstance, even domestic rural sites that
might yield few or no "industrial" artifacts - if the loom parts don't
survive - might in fact have been industrial sites in a systemic sense.
This is why social and economic context is so important, to some of us at
least, and the "periodization by artifacts" approach is fatally flawed.
Tim T.