labor archaeology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Shackel.

Labor studies in the twenty first century are at a crucial turning point. As labor has steadily lost influence in the United States, labor organizations have been increasingly memorializing crucial moments in labor history. These moments are often clashes between labor and capital in which any victory, and sometimes losses, were hard fought. The new National Historic Landmark study of labor archaeology provides guidelines to help us identify significant sites and provide a new way to contribute...

DOCUMENT Citation Only V. Camille Westmont. Mikaela Girard.

Historical archaeology has an opportunity to tell histories that have been obscured, overlooked, or forgotten, purposefully or otherwise, through the passage of time; however, some of these facets of the past continue to ring true in the present. Archaeologists from the University of Maryland have documented patterns and stories of domestic violence in small company "patch" towns in Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Anthracite coal region covering nearly 100 years of history. Oral histories with town...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Carl DeMuth.

This paper reviews recent archaeological research at Tams, WV – a former coal company town – which revealed a significant number of children's toys such as marbles and dolls/figurines. Artifacts such as these can offer important insights into the lives of children in company towns, an aspect that is often overlooked in labor archaeology. In terms of community involvement, these artifacts are both important as well as interesting. Most former residents interested in the project only lived in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Walker. Whitney McClellan.

In its work in the neighborhoods in the South of Market area of San Francisco the Anthropological Studies Center of Sonoma State University acquired a database of 14 assemblages from households associated with the maritime sector of San Francisco’s economy. Because of this sector’s centrality within the city’s economy, maritime workers are a dominant element in social and labor histories of the city. They are not, however, so visible in the archaeological record. In this paper, we present recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyla Cools.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Bodies and Persons: Health and Medicine in Historic Social Context" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Coal mining is an industry which has historically exposed laborers to a variety of environmental and occupational health hazards which resulted in injury and/or physical disability. These health hazards however, did not impact all laborers involved in coal mining equally. As a coal mining company town...