Without wanting to seem too rude, I cannot understand why there is this
persistence in tying industrial archaeology to a set period of time
especially when, in its current formulation (i.e. what practitioners
actually do), it clearly doesn’t have the broad focus that historical
archaeology in Australia, New Zealand and North America does. So why try and
make it cover historical archaeology – why not call it “historical
archaeology”- it won’t hurt? Then you could have industrial archaeology as a
specialist area or skill set within the broad church of historical
archaeology.

Is this why there is the trendy flirtation with adopting social theory,
because industrial archaeology in the UK is really historical archaeology??


Personally I am more in favour of defining the subject as the archaeology of
work (because in Australia the archaeology of labour would have political
overtones) because of its simplicity and inclusiveness. 

My issue with Industrial Heritage really stemmed with people writing about
archaeological excavations on industrial sites as being this novel idea –
and I worry whether by going down the industrial heritage route, the
archaeological focus of the field had been misplaced somewhere. 

Yours

 

Dr Iain Stuart

JCIS Consultants

 

P.O. Box 2397

Burwood North

ph/fx  (02)  97010191

HYPERLINK "mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]

HYPERLINK "mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]

Check out the website at  HYPERLINK "http://www.jcis.net.au"www.jcis.net.au

 

 


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