Labor (Other Keyword)

76-100 (107 Records)

The Pistol in the Privy: Myths and Contexts of Southern Italian Violence in the Anthracite Coalfields of Northeast Pennsylvania (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael P Roller.

The discovery of a revolver in the privy deposits of a home in a coal company town in the anthracite region of Northeast Pennsylvania evokes a long history of Southern Italian racialization as violent and vindictive by dominating groups. These imagined characteristics mobilized the privileged to fear, and thereby act to contain or exclude Southern Italian laborers wherever they lived. At the same time a transnational context reveals complex historical continuities when considered through...


"Poor White" Economic (In)Activity and the Politics of Work in Barbados (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Reilly.

Situated on the fringes of the plantation landscape, the "poor whites" of Barbados occupied unique spaces within local and global capitalist networks during and after the period of slavery.  Historically and contemporarily portrayed as being irrelevant within broader economic systems of production, a discourse of marginalization coupled with stereotypes of idleness has severed them from broader Barbadian and global socioeconomics.  This paper addresses the power dynamics inherent in identifying,...


A Proposal for Investigating Identity, Class, and Labor in Washington State Worker Settlements (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only David R Carlson.

This paper will propose research to address the formation of ethnic identity and class consciousness as manifested in the material remains of workers and administrators in Washington State working camps. From the mid-1800s to the Great Depression, logging and mining camps and company towns formed a critical part of Washington’s and the Pacific Northwest’s economies. The archaeology of labor-related sites in this region and period has been historically under-researched, and the relationship...


Railroad Camps in the High Sierras (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only John P. Molenda.

Railroad construction camps occupied by Chinese laborers have been investigated archaeologically since the 1960s. The upcoming 150 year anniversary of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad has spurred renewed interest in these sites. This paper will discuss what we have learned from previous studies of railroad work camps and how they inform current interpretations, with special emphasis on drawing connections between the archaeological record and theoretical frameworks for...


Remaining on the Estate: Post-Emancipation Tenantry at St. Nicholas Abbey Sugar Plantation, St. Peter, Barbados (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Frederick Smith.

Archaeological investigations at St. Nicholas Abbey sugar plantation, St. Peter, Barbados are providing new insights into the changes that occurred in Barbados during the transition from slavery to freedom. In the late eighteenth century, members of St. Nicholas Abey's enslaved population lived in a village surrounded by sugarcane fields on Crab Hill. Many of the former enslaved workers remained at Crab Hill during the tenatry period that followed emancipation in 1834. Archaeological evidence...


Rights to Land and Labor in Yucatán during Pre-Conquest and Colonial Times (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia McAnany. Maia Dedrick.

Land and labor are particularly integral to agrarian economies. The extent to which either is exchanged, sold, inherited, or privatized can shape the dynamics of hierarchy, habitation, and migration as well as exchange. The diverse perspectives on Yucatec possession of land—from assertions of private property to denial of property as a relevant concept—are reviewed for both pre-Conquest and Colonial times. Relevant data include land plot demarcations, historical documentation of land struggles,...


The Shovelbum Economy (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Norton. Eva Hulse.

It has long been common knowledge that “most” archaeologists attain gainful employment in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) related fields rather than in academic institutions. By and large there is an accepted idea of what such a career trajectory looks like- there are many archaeologists who have built successful careers in CRM while adding to scientific knowledge and policy, or who have built laudable businesses. The vast majority of those employed in CRM, however, are low-level field and...


Social and Economic Contexts of the Coromandel Coast of South India in the Colonial Period and the Indian Diaspora Formation (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only V. Selvakumar. Mark Hauser.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Coromandel coast in South India, which was in the continuous focus of the European maritime powers, had a dynamic role in the political and commercial activities of the Indian Ocean region from the 16th to early 20th centuries. This paper focuses on the socio-economic contexts in areas surrounding Dutch, Danish, English and...


The Social Life of Employment Contracts (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant) (2020)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Ilana Gershon.

This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Even as unemployment rates fall, contract and freelance work is on the rise, and job tenures are short - the current median tenure is 4.2 years. The changes in work follow a historical shift in how Americans understand the employment contract. Under contemporary capitalism, people increasingly see themselves in business terms: they are the "CEO of me." In this perspective, hiring resembles a...


Structural racism and archaeological practice - the archaeology of razed African American industrial communities. (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert DeMuth.

The coal company towns found throughout West Virginia and Central Appalachia were compact, racially diverse communities housing African Americans, white americans, and various european immigrant groups.  However, when the industry contracted after World War II, racial firing practices meant that many African American families were forced to leave the area. These newly vacant lots were often repurposed for further industrial use, effectively destroying the material record of many of the African...


Surf and Turf: Understanding Montaukett Economic Strategies through the Whaling Era (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison J.M. McGovern.

This paper explores the daily practices within two 19th century Native Algonquin households at Indian Fields, a Montaukett village in eastern Long Island, New York. Though geographically distant from the white settlements of East Hampton Town, the Montaukett residents of these households were intimately entangled in local and global economic activities and social networks. Their participation in whaling, seafaring, and agriculture, the dominant economic activities, often led to absences from...


Susquehanna Urban Cultural Park: Feasibility Study (1980)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Planning / Environmental Research Consultants.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.


"Take Heede When Ye Wash": Laundry and Slavery on a Virginia Plantation (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen E. McIlvoy.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Enslavement" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Before the invention and spread of the modern washing machine, the task of laundry was an arduous process that took days to complete and usually fell to the women of the household. However, despite the ubiquity of their task, enslaved washerwomen generally have been disregarded in the historical study of plantation labor. During the recent reanalysis of...


Thinking About Urban Approaches to Interpreting Class in the 19thC: Labor, Residence and Economic Choice at Rock Hall, Lawrence, NY. (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Wallace Coplin.

During the first half of 19th C, dramatic economic changes are evident at the household level. Straddling the urban-suburban divide, residents of Rock Hall on the South Shore of Long Island hybridized farming and summer tourism as they sought to improve their family’s position.  A microcosm of economic choices, this household combined labor and residence in ways that used, and rendered them beholden to, the urban juggernaut of the City while remaining rooted in a distinct local economic...


Transient Labor and the North American West (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Walker.

The organization of labor is a defining element of society.  In the case of the North American West this defining element is often marked by a reliance on seasonal and transient rural labor. In this paper I briefly characterize the transient workforce, discuss its archaeological signatures, and how we might incorporate these marginalized histories into our work. For all its historical importance, rural labor is not an easy topic of study, for reasons ranging from the structures and practices of...


The Underground (1993 Issues) (1993)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Elliot Helmer. Travis Corwin.

Issues of the The Underground zine published in 1993. Note: No available copies of Issue 2


The Underground (1994 Issues) (1994)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Elliot Helmer. Travis Corwin.

Issues of the Underground Zine published in 1994. Note: No available copies of Issue 13.


The Underground (1995 Issues) (1995)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Elliot Helmer. Travis Corwin.

Issues of The Underground zine from 1995.


The Underground Digital Archive
PROJECT Uploaded by: Elliot Helmer

The Underground Digital Archive contains scanned copies of The Underground, a zine created by and for archaeological field technicians in the 1990s, along with related ephemera curated by the zine's original editor. The Archive is currently in progress, and additional materials will continue to be added as funds are available.


Wearisome Work: Mapping Labor Routines at a Small-Scale Gold Mill (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul J White.

Archaeological investigations of industrial workplaces have often revealed the existence of unique technological arrangements, yet a gap remains in translating this to the laboring experience. The difficulty rests partly upon the divide between principles and practice—in which knowing a machine’s operating mechanics is not the same as knowing how to work a machine. This poster summarizes archaeological investigations at the Gold Cord Mine, a small-scale family operated gold mine in southcentral...


What is There for Remembrance?: Finding Significance and Integrity at Places of Labor Conflict and Violence (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael P Roller.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Hidden Battlefields: Power, Memory, and Preservation of Sites of Armed Conflict" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. For as long as work and inequality have been intertwined, there has been conflict over the issues of working and living conditions, pay, competition, power, and sovereignty. While often peaceful, sometimes this conflict has erupted into lengthy extensive violence between opposing sides. Place-...


(What’s) Left of the Commodity: Archaeology and the Creative Resuscitation of Spent Goods (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin E. Uehlein.

Hobo jungles and other transient laborer and homelessness related sites present a sustained material critique of Capitalism. These kinds of sites provide insight into the creative strategies people employ to circumvent commodity markets when capital is not available. Whether residual evidence of an intentional statement against an oppressive system, or of a means to persist in the most desperate of situations, the assemblages left behind by people who reside on the fringes of...


When Men Cannot Work; Camp Au Train a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Josef T Iwanicki.

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Great Depression represents the collapse of the economic conditions of capitalism. This meant millions of Americans were out of jobs, a situation that had real ramifications for men whose social roles were defined by their work. This crisis of masculinity devastated all men, but Government attempts to deal with it varied by age. Programs for young men were geared toward keeping...


When the Light Goes Out: The Importance of Women’s Labor in the Household Economy (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria O'Donovan.

Archaeologists have contributed important insights into gender, particularly in relation to the impact of differences in class, race, and ethnicity.  Studies have challenged the relevance of 19th century gender ideals for those outside the middle class and have explored the ways middle class women’s lives defied these ideals.  The picture that has emerged is one that emphasizes the importance of women’s productive labor and the complexities of real lived experience.  The story of one household...


Who is "Free" Today?: Negotiating the documentary record of labor history for archaeology (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael P Roller.

Beginning with Marx, labor history was founded upon illuminating the role the working class can play in challenging our system of political economy. As vogelfrei (literally "bird-free") or rightless, unprotected bodies condemned to only sell their labor, the lives of the working class have been imagined to inhabit a kind of empty raw inertia propelling mass social change. Labor history has responded to this basic idea throughout its disciplinary history, changing with material, political,...