ABSTRACT
Industrial Archaeology has been in business for over forty years, and a certain amount of stock-taking is appropriate. The academic impact of Industrial Archaeology remains disappointingly slight, as it has never managed to win recognition as an academic discipline in its own right. Open-air industrial museums such as Beamish and Ironbridge have demonstrated the enormous educational potential so such experiences, as has also every working steam engine and spinning mule available to public inspection. Industrial Archaeology has arrived, and it is no longer necessary to make a case ab initio for the preservation of industrial monuments. Industrial landscapes are by their nature dynamic concepts undergoing continuous change, so that it is unrealistic to attempt to preserve in their entirety all the functions associated with any particular period. But industrial archaeological landscapes are by definition relict landscapes, dealing with the remains of industrial processes and transport systems that have already become obsolete, or have lost their original function.
