If this message already made it to the list I apologize for a duplicate posting.

Praetzellis wrote:

> No argument with me on this one. But I think you miss the point. My initial
> question was (1) can *archaeology* help us understand these changes and (2)
> if so, how? How will digging the foundation
> of a cupola or a casting floor help us to crack the mysteries of the old
> timey foundries?
>
> If there's valuable info to be had, let's go dig! I don't want to write off
> these sites and have been known to look out of the window of my ivory tower
> just long enough to defend them. But I also want to be critical
> in my decisions. The alternative scenario is that (1) we archaeologists
> lose all credibility with client, officials, and public, (2) eventually
> someone in authority catches on and (3)...

I don't know a great deal about 19C foundries.  My area of interest is 17/18C
furnaces.  I suspect that there are very few people alive today who do know a
great deal about 19C foundries.

Given the relative dearth of archaeological information on iron production sites
(vis-a-vis 19C domestic sites), digging more is an excellent idea.  The more we
excavate the more we will understand what is available to recover.  19C sites
also have the added advantage that they very often have company documents.  Some
of the information you could recover from such a site might include:
1- what kind of metal they were running.
2- The temperatures of the furnaces.
3- Varieties of casting techniques being used.
4- Recover pieces of failed products, to better understand the production
process.
5- Problems with the process
6- pieces of machinery/plant would allow for a better understanding of the
operation.  It is one thing to have a diagram of what a particular facility
"looked" like.  It is at least as valuable to have parts of the physical plant
to analyze.  This would help to understand the stresses of the operation and the
real as opposed to idealized facility.

Certainly some sites are more valuable than others.  But, there has been very
little industrial archaeology done in the US.  Rather than just bulldoze it, we
need to at a minimum record it.  In Europe it was often the case that Classical
and Medieval Archaeologists (for instance) machined out the 19/20C deposits.
Some Classicists even machined out the pre-Classical strata so they could get on
with digging  "the good stuff".  Now we are coming to realize that there is a
lot about Victorian England or Napoleonic France, for instance, that we do not
understand as well as we thought.  Unfortunately many of the answers lie in the
back dirt piles.

JH Brothers IV