‘What’s in a Name?’ – Concepts, Practice and Prejudice in Industrial Archaeology
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-06-21

For a discipline that has established itself and grown for more than half a century, it is surprising that it is still often hardly understood outside of the academic cocoon. While post-industrial communities are eager to reconnect with their past (in its heritage version or through urban explorers’ photography) regardless of the name its scientific research may have, the name of the discipline helps us bring forward a set of concepts and practices that identify industrial archaeology in the field. But, as experience in Portugal shows, this set of tools isn’t still widespread enough to be known by other areas of archaeology or most archaeologists in the field, damaging the record, regardless of any effects it may have in the affirmation of a name.

Leonor Medeiros (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

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