Industrial Archaeology or Railway Anthropology?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-07-01

This talk shall discuss the application of industrial archaeology to the study of railway artefacts in their broader physical context, and whether ‘railway anthropology’ could be a more suitable term.
Since the first publication of the term by Michael Rix in the journal The Amateur Historian in 1955 Industrial Archaeology has wrangled with its identity as an academic discipline in balancing the responsibilities of understanding human endeavour in industry and as a rallying call for industrial heritage conservation. Often in application to railways industrial archaeology becomes limited by scientific explanation and heritage; the preservation of a locomotive, for example. This risks the loss of the artefact’s cultural significance in its broader physical and socio-historic context. Post-processual archaeology calls for anthropological approaches to artefacts; does the study of railways need a new term – ‘railway anthropology’? Or has the definition of industrial archaeology been misinterpreted as the study and preservation of technology, rather than of the society in which it was created? If so, could anthropological approaches to railway studies be the truest application of industrial archaeology, meaning a new term is not required but that the original methodologies be correctly applied?

Siobhan Osgood (Trinity College Dublin)

TAG Deva 2018 
Session: Steaming Plant or Steam Punk? Researching Industrial Archaeology and Heritage in the 21st Century