City and Country in the American West:Post-1848 Historical Archaeologies of Denver and Los Angeles

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "City and Country in the American West:Post-1848 Historical Archaeologies of Denver and Los Angeles" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Western United States following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo represents a distinctive opportunity for historical archaeology. Rapidly-transforming social, political, and economic conditions, shaped by variation in climate and resources, produced radically different regional circumstances. Over time, however, these “differences” evolved under the influences of processes working at a national and international scale. Although comparative analysis is increasingly unfashionable in historical archaeology, there remains value in looking at contemporary processes playing out in different (but related) places. This session presents current research from two regional centers of the post-1848 American West—Denver and Los Angeles—to highlight opportunities and challenges in tracing common “themes” via archaeological evidence. Topics include gender, identity, health, and infrastructure. Collectively, these papers also signal interconnection between city and country to these topics, highlighting the importance of scale in studying human lives in such distinctive historical circumstances.