Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings," at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Heritage is increasingly expanding beyond traditional value systems to encompass new stakeholder groups as well as forgotten or ignored historical legacies. In this session, we discuss approaches archaeologists are using in the growing field of working class heritage, including the aspects of the field that make it unique amongst heritage- and/or community-based projects. Utilizing an archaeological perspective when presenting working class heritage to a non-specialist audience offers new opportunities for discussing these legacies and ensuring that these histories are not lost. Bringing together public and community archaeology projects and the ways working class heritage is communicated to various stakeholder groups allows for a synthesis of ideas and insights that will serve to strengthen our methods and guide this type of heritage interpretation into the future. Heritage is about people: the papers in this session will help develop best practices for making working class heritage relevant and useful to people today.

Other Keywords
heritage • working class heritage • Logging • Industrial Archaeology • Local History • Public Archaeology • Lumber Camps • landscapes • Working Class • modern material culture

Temporal Keywords
20th Century • 19th and 20th Century • 1850-Present • 19th - 20th Century • 19th and 20th centuries • 1850's-Present

Geographic Keywords
Massachusetts (State / Territory) • New York (State / Territory) • New Hampshire (State / Territory) • Idaho (State / Territory) • Maine (State / Territory) • Wisconsin (State / Territory) • Michigan (State / Territory) • Washington (State / Territory) • Minnesota (State / Territory) • Vermont (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)

  • Documents (7)
Documents
  • Connecting Working Class History with Working Class Culture: Activist Archaeology in the Portland Neighborhood (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Jay Stottman.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Is working class history being forgotten?  What is working class heritage to the working class today?  This paper will examine the relationship between working class people and their history.  It also will critically analyze academia’s role in preserving this history and its inherent...

  • Digging Deeper: Engaging High School Students with Working Class Heritage in Northeastern Pennsylvania (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Boyle. Dorothy Canevari.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Anthracite Heritage Project seeks to develop critical thinking skills in high school students through archaeological work at Eckley Miners’ Village Museum, located near Hazleton, Pennsylvania. At Eckley, students work alongside undergraduate and graduate students as they investigate...

  • Into the Lumberjacks Life: An Archaeological Study of Quebec’s 20th Century Lumber Camps (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurence Bolduc.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. I present the preliminary results of an archaeological investigation conducted at a 1940s lumber camp site in the Temiscouata region of eastern Québec. Combining archaeology and oral history, I capture the daily life and struggles faced by the communities of lumberjacks, as the industrial...

  • The Landscape is a Machine: Transnational and Labor Heritage Landscapes of the Anthracite Coal Region (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael P Roller.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the nineteenth century, migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe settled in Northeast Pennsylvania to work in Anthracite coal mines. In places such as the margins of the company town of Lattimer, they created intimate landscapes with a spatial logic defined both by ethnic values, but...

  • Memory and Relevance: Local History and Outreach by the Anthracite Heritage Project at Eckley Miners’ Village (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyla Cools.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Eckley Miners’ Village in Luzerne County, PA is a living history museum that holds significance to many residents of the surrounding area. Preserving and interpreting the homes and buildings that once made up an anthracite coal mining patch town, the site retains ties to many in the area...

  • Sharing the Buried History of the Apperson Community, Menifee County, Kentucky (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim A. McBride. Wayna L Adams.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. About 1941-1943, as the Cumberland (now Daniel Boone) National Forest, was forming, the occupants of two rural domestic sites in Menifee County, Kentucky left, most eventually to find work in factories of Ohio and Michigan.   Recent historical and archaeological study of these sites has...

  • Staying True to Our Roots… in Public: Critical Public Archaeology As Working Class Activism (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only V. Camille Westmont.

    This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. American working class and labor history is a history of resistance and discontent, with many of the most recognizable names – Cesar Chavez, Mother Jones, Joe Hill – having achieved notoriety specifically because they refused to follow the status quo. As archaeologists tasked with...