The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 284 • Kate Clark
Industrial archaeology also shows that there are
some types of historical question that physical
evidence can address, and some that are best left to
documentary historians. Industrial archaeologists can
rarely see the work of individuals or the large-scale
changes in economic output cited by economic
historians. However, field evidence does demonstrate
processes such as the take up of innovations, or the
decisions made by industrialists in siting industries.
It shows how industrial complexes changed through
time, and stresses the importance of links not only
between different industries, but between different
aspects of the economy, such as settlement and
industry, or transport and urbanization.
This agenda remains largely empirical, and there
have been relatively few attempts to set out a
theoretical agenda for industrial archaeology. One
possibility is to look towards other disciplines for
theoretical modelling such as mainstream history,
where there has been an emphasis on the role of
social history, and in particular domestic patterns
of work in understanding industry. However this area
is rarely well documented, and small-scale
archaeological investigations of individual houses or
communities and their use of space and material
goods might provide an alternative view of such
Figure 16.2 The Iron Bridge, Shropshire: the first iron patterns. Architectural history has in the past been
bridge in the world.
dominated by traditions of documentary research,
Source: Ben Osborne
connoisseurship and attribution; the analysis of the
fabric of structures of the industrial period, whether factories, country houses or furnaces, may
provide a complementary source of evidence.
Prehistoric and later archaeology might provide a source of theoretical approaches for industrial
archaeology, although when writing about a period with such good documentary evidence it is
difficult to make assertions about hierarchies, power, symbols or conflict based on archaeology
alone look anything other than mundane.
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Pre-industrial landscape of Britain
Archaeology suggests that the changes in British industry in the latter half of the eighteenth
century were neither sudden nor particularly revolutionary. However, they did take place on a
large scale, and in order to understand precisely what happened, it is necessary to look first at the
archaeology of Britain in the years before 1750. As Trinder notes, Britain presented a ‘busy,
thriving, trading and manufacturing nation’ (Trinder 1987, 51), with a variety of industries scattered
about the countryside. Pottery and glass-making, woollen textiles production, ironworking and
non-ferrous metals were all well established, some in expanding market towns and ports serving
overseas trade, whilst other industries, such as fulling in the countryside, made use of water