The Industrial Archaeologists

Abstract

The term ‘industrial archaeology’ seems to have been invented at some time in the early 1950s, probably by Donald Dudley, who at that time was Director of Extra-Mural Studies in the University of Birmingham and who later went on to become Professor of Latin in the same University. Mr Dudley had become interested in archaeology through his classical studies and it was no doubt the beauties of nineteenth-century Birmingham and the Black Country, somewhat battered by wartime bombing, which made him feel that industry was as entitled as any other form of human activity to its archaeology. One of his colleagues, Michael Rix, offered the idea to the world in an article which he wrote in 1955 for The Amateur Historian, defining the scope of the subject as ‘the steam-engines and locomotives that made possible the provision of power, the first metal-framed buildings, cast-iron aqueducts and bridges, the pioneering attempts at railways, locks and canals’. All these, together with factories, mills and workers’ housing, represented, he believed, ‘a fascinating, interlocking field of study, whole tracts of which are virtually unexplored’.