• Introduction
• Awarded M.S. Theses
• Faculty
• Curriculum
• Resources
• Applying to the Program
• Financial Support
• Job Prospects for Graduates
• Questions

Introduction

Broadly speaking, Industrial Archaeology (IA) is the recording, study, interpretation, and preservation of the physical remains of industrially-related artifacts, sites, and systems within their cultural and historical contexts. These remains may be as old as a seventeenth-century bloomery forge, or as recent as an abandoned mid-twentieth-century steel mill. In practice, IA in the US and UK generally focuses on the period of the industrial revolution and later, though there is a strong connection to the study of earlier technologies, particularly in the area of archaeometallurgy.

Industrial Archaeology emerged as a distinct field of study in the United Kingdom in the 1940s and 50s, when historians, preservationists, archaeologists, and engineers became concerned that many of the key relics of Britain's industrial heritage were disappearing. By the 1960s and 70s, the IA movement had spread across the Atlantic to the United States, as well as continental Europe, spawning several journals, and a number of professional associations, including the Society for Industrial Archeology, based here at Michigan Technological University.

Master of Science in Industrial Archaeology at Michigan Tech

The M.S. Industrial Archaeology Program at Michigan Technological University is unique in the United States, and one of the few in the world to explicitly study industrial archaeology. The IA program emphasizes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the field, fusing the academic perspectives of archaeology, historic preservation, history of technology, and anthropology. Students complete course work in all of these areas, in addition to approved electives of the Department of Social Sciences or other Departments at Michigan Tech. Most students complete the program in two academic years, using the summers to fulfill the program's archaeological fieldwork and thesis requirements. Click here for a list of theses written by program graduates.