Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2019
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages," at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Urban sites have fascinated archaeologists for decades, if no other reason than cities produce both an abundance and diversity of material culture. Cities also are in the business of building, which can be a motor for a great deal of archaeological research as new construction exposes buried archaeological deposits. While this is a very productive approach for archaeology, this session considers another way to think archaeologically about the urban process. Instead of looking stratigraphically at what was buried in the past and later exposed by new works, we look at the urban landscape as a contested memorial assemblage to see what was erased in the making of modern cities and how and why these spaces and structures became dispensable. The main question is what the removal of sites in the past and present means for understanding cities and the people who live in them today.
Other Keywords
Urban •
Displacement •
Politics •
bioarchaeology •
Race •
Urban Development •
Tuberculosis •
Labor •
Suburbs •
Urban Renewal
Temporal Keywords
20th Century •
Nineteenth Century •
1800s •
Contemporary •
19th-21st centuries •
Post-Emancipation and Modern era
Geographic Keywords
Coahuila (State / Territory) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory) •
Sonora (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Chihuahua (State / Territory) •
Nuevo Leon (State / Territory) •
Delaware (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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Ephemeral Urban Structures and the Archaeology of Homelessness (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As urbanism emerged in the United States so too did contemporary forms of homelessness. Urban homelessness, a phenomenon defined by transience and ephemerality, is omnipresent within the modern urban landscape. Homelessness is an issue few politicians dare to address and a "social problem" that no one seems to be able to clearly...
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Erasing Lines of Class and Color in Storyville(s), New Orleans (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1941, the Housing Authority of New Orleans opened the Iberville Housing Project, one of a series of federally funded public housing developments built as components of a slum clearance effort happening all over the city. Iberville was unique among these developments, in that its footprint almost precisely coincided with the...
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Haunting, Urban Restructuring, and the Spectropolitics of Consumptive Spaces in San Francisco (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 19th century San Francisco, tuberculosis infected nearly one in ten individuals. Unlike other racially charged epidemics, tuberculous ostensibly targeted individuals across all classed, gendered, and racialized groups. This, combined with tuberculosis’ spatial indeterminacy and geographic mutability, rendered consumptive spaces and...
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Imagining the Black Landscape: The Materiality of Gentrification and African American Heritage (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Most American cities like Indianapolis, Indiana have historically African American neighborhoods that are today distinguished by vacant spaces and ruination reflecting state demolition programs, displacement, and ill-conceived modernist construction. While much of the historical landscape has been razed, planners routinely invoke and...
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In the Name of Progress": Urban Renewal and Baltimore’s "Highway to Nowhere (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The nation-wide wave of urban highway construction of the postwar era dramatically changed the appearance and structure of American cities. Throughout the 1950s-1970s, highway construction cut through inner-cities across the country, devastating entire neighborhoods, and dislocating hundreds of thousands of residents—overwhelmingly...
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"It’s What’s Best for the City": Moral Authority, Power Relations and Urban Erasure in Transit Corridors (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Santa Rosa, California has experienced two waves of transit-driven landscape change over the past century. The first occurred when the 101 freeway was constructed through the downtown adjacent to its 19th-century railroad corridor in the 1940s. The second is occurring now, with the development of high density housing zones along the...
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"Kept on the Run": Urban Erasures in Essex County, NJ (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Essex County in northern New Jersey experienced dramatic urban development and change in the second half the 20th century. Essex is home to Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, as well as 21 other municipalities that range from poor and densely packed cities to affluent and amenity-rich suburbs. This paper examines how urban spaces are...
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"A Monumental Blunder": The Challenging History and Uncertain Future of the Virginia State Penitentiary Collection (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Virginia State Penitentiary (1804-1991) loomed over the Falls of the James River and was a feared site of solitary confinement, carceral labor, and capital punishment. Designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the penitentiary was notorious for its inhumane treatment and poor management in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Fieldwork in...
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The Political Waves of Displacement: Heritage and Neoliberal Urban Renewal (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the 19th and 20th centuries in the US, some urbanization methods included displacement of the working-class and communities of color. Discriminatory housing policies delineated communities to the periphery of the urban landscape, many to industrial zones or fringe housing stock. Largely forgotten, these communities now find...
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Urban Displacement in Detroit and the Erasure of African American Communities (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Urban historical archaeology has been practiced in Detroit by professionals for over 60 years now. So why is it that less than a handful of sites or landscapes associated with the city’s African American communities, (who make up over 80% of the population), have ever been examined archaeologically? The answers are partly rooted in a...