Industrial Archaeology

• Main Authors: Gordon, Robert B., Malone, Patrick M.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 1994
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195058857.003.0006

The prominence of industry in the culture of the North Atlantic nations has provoked thoughtful people to ask penetrating questions about the roots of innovation and the social and environmental consequences of industrial technology. One cluster of questions, long of interest to scholars, focuses on how and by whom new technologies were created and how their selection, use, or rejection has been influenced by cultural values. In the past quarter century, the impact of technologies and industries on the environment has become a widespread concern among citizens of the industrialized nations. People are raising questions about the past and present uses of natural resources and how their availability influences economic growth. They are concerned about the consequences of releasing industrial wastes and effluents into the air and water. They are also exploring their personal experiences with mechanisms and technological devices—how these artifacts enter work, play, and art, and how they express cultural values. Because the field of the history of technology is relatively new, scholars have approached it within the framework of established disciplines. The work of historians with the written record and of economists with numerical data is securely established in the academic world. We would add to these the material record, the domain of the industrial archaeologist. Evidence from artifacts is particularly important for the study of workers (because the written record is sparse), of inventors (because much of the secondary literature simplifies the complexities of invention), and of the industrial landscape. To discover the texture of industry, we need to examine both the documentary and the material record; artifacts as well as documents must speak for the experiences ot past workers. An artifact, in the words of historian Brooke Hindle, is “a solid piece of the past in a way that no quotation can ever be.”' Students of industry must rely heavily on material evidence because few participants in industry left ...