The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Archaeology

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. This approach interrogates the widespread exploitation of natural resources that forged industrialization from its early emergence in eighteenth-century northern Europe to its contemporary ubiquity, environmental impacts, and social legacy within our globalized world. Through a broad international and multi-period set of chapters, this volume explores the complex origins, processes, and development of industrialization through its physical remains and human consequences - both the good and the bad. It provides a diverse material framework for understanding our modern world from its industrial origins through its future paths over the third decade of the twenty-first century.