A parting shot:

        (1) The issues involved in this discussion are no simply semantic.
How one defines what one is doing professionally has significant
implications for a discipline and its success or failure.

        (2) Yes, Industrial Archaeology indeed has as a major focus the
study of industrial processes and their material remains; however, such
proceeses need to be approached and understood within the totality of
culture. The arguments that such studies involve expertise which may
involve researchers outside of archaeology is certainly true (e.g. an
appropriate engineer would certainly help in studying a 19th century dam)
but this interdisciplinary factor is actually found across all of
archaeology (e.g. faunal experts, dendrochronologists, archaeologists or
others with a much stronger knowledge of architecture or lithic
technology than most of their colleagues). I do not exclude or reject the
poisitions of the other commentators on this issue but I still see
Industrial Archaeology as a holistic field - cultural not antiquarian in
its basic approach.

        (3) This view of Industrial Archaeology is not a "period"-based
argument. Industrialization (or the  Industrial Revolution) is a major
phase in human culture history. Its temporal boundaries are secondary
and derived. The cultural processes involved in industrialization are
complex and varied across space and time with only vague outer boundaries
(ca. 1800 to the present). Again, archaeology, it seems to me is a
powerful tool for studying not only the internal nature of
industrialization but also just these complexities of interaction between
pre-industrial and industrial cultures (or variation internal to the
industrial process itself) at specific points in time and space.

        Well, that is enough for this round. I did get some good sources
out of this discussion as well as some good ideas.

                                        Bob Schuyler

PS. We hope to see you all in Quebec.