Preface

Representing the first substantial English-language text on industrial archaeology in a decade, this volume comes at a time when the global impact of industrialization is being reassessed in terms of its legacy of climate change, mechanization, urbanization, the forced migration of peoples, particularly enslaved Africans, and labour relations. Critical debates around the beginning of a new geological era—the Anthropocene—have emerged over the last decade. Their central focus interrogates the widespread exploitation of natural resources that underpins industrialization from its early emergence in eighteenth-century northern Europe to its contemporary ubiquity in our globalized world.

The rise of carbon-based economies is at the heart of industrialization. With its emphasis on the physical remains of the human past—from pots and knives to buildings and landscapes—archaeology is uniquely placed to provide both a broad and a detailed understanding of how the processes of industrialization emerged and evolved. In 2007, for the first time in human history, the majority of the world’s population were found to be living in industrialized cities and towns, the largest urban areas being located in Japan, India, China, Brazil, and Mexico (https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#number-of-people-living-in-urban-areas). These population conglomerates have arisen through more than three centuries of industrialization, with intricate networks of resource exploitation, labour organization, and goods trans-shipment. Thus, understanding the origins, processes, and development of industrialization through its physical remains, and the consequences of this shift in human terms—both the good and the bad—is vital for understanding our modern world of the third decade of the twenty-first century.

The themes discussed in this volume extend and augment many of the issues raised in previous publications (Palmer et al. 2012; Casella and Symonds 2005; Horning and Palmer 2009), reflecting a vibrant diversity of research over the past decade, which has expanded the scope and geographical focus of industrial archaeology. This volume explores the dynamics of industrialization within European, American, and Australasian worlds from the early eighteenth century through to the late twentieth century. Recognizing the original role of Britain as the world’s first industrial nation, our volume seeks to document the historic influences and social/economic realities of industrial societies. We respectfully acknowledge the grim industrial past: the essential roles of unfree and under-waged labour; the commodification of humans, animals, and natural landscapes; the origins of modern prisons, workhouses, and asylums; and the stark brutalities of African, Asian, and Indigenous slavery as the backbone of Europe’s capitalist global trade. This volume also explores the spectacular engineering achievements of industrialization, especially its astounding improvements to basic living standards, public health and sanitation, universal literacy, and poverty reduction. We ultimately recognize the complex industrial legacy as an intricate story of production, distribution, and consumption. It is one that travels from UNESCO World Heritage Sites to local sites of significance, linking them all into the economic, political, social, and racial dynamics that continue to forge our contemporary world.

Understanding the material remains of industrialization is the major aim of our volume. As a social process, industrial archaeology is not something that can be boxed off as a study of technological process or transfer. It crosses the traditional divides of historical, post-medieval, and contemporary archaeology, as well as the specialist subfields of engineering, architectural, social, and economic histories. To address this broad scope, this handbook is divided into three sections, beginning with a section on technological innovation, and then widening the study to include archaeologies of distribution and consumption. It concludes with a final section on the wider impacts on society in terms of rural and urban landscapes, and the reshaping of the social structures of communities, towns, cities, and landscapes. All the authors have taken explicitly archaeological approaches to their subjects. This allows for a series of detailed case studies on the many aspects of industrialization that should be applicable wherever the process can be found.

The first classic wave of industrialization is reflected in the initial section on extraction and production, the core of the European and North American experiences of industrialization. This covers twenty-one chapters including sections on power supplies (coal, water, gas); mineral extraction and processing (iron and steel, slate, gold and silver mining, non-ferrous mining); manufacturing (ceramic, cotton processing, linen and wool, glass, mechanical engineering, car production); food production (enclosure, timber, whaling, food processing). It also includes studies of industrial waste, colonial land settlement, and nuclear power, topics that illuminate the consequences of the global carbon economy.

The second section explores the new patterns of distribution and consumption that were needed to support the pivotal transition from a rural, agrarian society, to an industrial, urban-based one. Nine chapters explore the archaeology of moving goods and people—from the terrestrial roads, bridges, and railways, to the canals, inland waterways, ports, and maritime shipping routes that transported commodities to ever-expanding markets. The material nature and handling of these commercial goods are covered in studies of warehouses, processed foods, ceramics, and domestic storage containers. This section concludes with case studies on urban patterns of consumption and telecommunications, the latter industry serving as the origin of today’s digital world.

A final section explores industrialized worlds of society and space. Here, twelve chapters detail the legacy of industrialization by showcasing new research on workers’ housing, churches and chapels, and burial landscapes. Themes of social ‘improvement’ are brought out with studies of public baths, mechanics institutes, bars and pubs, and temperance institutions. The industrialization of conflict is reflected in a study of the archaeology of the Cold War, while its broader implications are explored through a close analysis of the everyday lives and livelihoods of coal miners. Closing with a chapter on the material lives of women and children within industrial-era communities, this final section of the volume explicitly highlights the diverse legacies of industrialization to help understand the prevailing engine of change within our modern world.

The links between industrial archaeology and industrial heritage (both the preservation and maintenance of our industrial legacy) remain very strong. Nevertheless, the archaeological study of industrialization is more than just one of engineering history and museum displays. It is about the tracking of a social process—a fundamental shift from a rural, agrarian society to an urban-based industrial one, as read through its physical remains. Although these revolutionary transformations began in early eighteenth-century Britain and northwestern Europe, industrialization has since spread around the globe. It is the heart of our modern globalized economy. We hope that the research covered in this handbook reflects the continuing vibrancy of discovery taking place in industrial archaeological research of the early twenty-first century.

Eleanor Casella (University of Tasmania, Australia)

Michael Nevell (Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and the University of Salford, UK), and

Hanna Steyne (University of Manchester, UK)

October 2020.