Archaeology, from its beginnings in the Renaissance and earlymodern science, provided trappings of a past to charter a present of capitalist expansion. Its first phase, deployed by mercantile capitalism, produced pure white marble forms of youths and women and columned temples, exemplars of exalted taste unsullied by blood, sweat, or tears. Its second phase, serving industrial capitalism, turned to anonymous quantities of mundane tools, flint blades and potsherds, to chart the rise of civilisation through technological progress. The final third of the 20th century’s massive decline in manufacturing employment – humans replaced by robotic programs, and jobs for humans primarily in assembling components or serving the wealthier – necessarily must elicit a newer sociological charter.