Hi,
I think you are correct in your perception.
My personal impression is that there are a variety of interests in 20th
century archaeology. There is a long-standing interest in WWII and then
there is the 'contemporary' strand which generally relates to the post
WWII period. There is also a more recent interest in WWI linked to its
centenary and a lot of classic i'industrial archaeology' that inludes
the 20th century. This does leave a bit of a vacuum for the rest of the
early 20th century, at least in terms of people with a specific research
interest.
In the developer-funded work that I am most familiar with the 19th
century is now relatively generally accepted as 'proper' archaeology
although there are still some hold-outs, but the 20th century is more
ambiguous. I think that there has been a fair bit of work in London by
MOLA (eg. Crosse and Blackwell 1830-1921: A British food manufacturer in
London's West End) and at Hungate in York that bridges the 19th-20th
century. Here in Cambridgeshire we only rarely encounter early 20th
century material but I have published two 1920s-30s assemblages (a
department store group from Cambridge in IJHA and a household from St.
Neots in the local county journal).
One other thing that immediately comes to mind is the Alderley Sandhills
Project by Eleanor Casella.
> Morning all,
>
> I'm currently pulling together a project proposal to look at the
> archaeology and landscape of the Great Depression in north-east
> England. In the process of doing this it is becoming increasingly
> apparent that in Britain whilst there has been a real burgeoning of
> interest in the archaeology of the recent past, the majority of this
> has focused on the post-WWII period. I've seen relatively few broadly
> archaeological interventions into inter-war period (1918-39), although
> obviously there is a lot of fairly straight architectural/historical
> material. This seems a real contrast to the situation in the
> US/Australia
> Given this I was wondering
>
> (a) Is this perception correct? Am I missing loads of great
> archaeology of the 1920s/30s? Any examples would be great!
>
> (b) If I am right, why is there this lacuna? Why do we find it easier
> to engage with the material landscapes of the modern day than with the
> earlier 20th century?
>
> cheers
> David -------------------------- contemp-hist-arch is a list for news
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contemp-hist-arch is a list for news and events
in contemporary and historical archaeology, and
for announcements relating to the CHAT conference group.
-------
For email subscription options see:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/contemp-hist-arch.html
-------
Visit the CHAT website for more information and for future meeting dates:
http://www.contemp-hist-arch.ac.uk
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