Men of Good Timber: An Archaeological Investigation of Labor in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Author(s): Aaron Howe

Year: 2015

Summary

 

Questions of labor and everyday life have been commonplace in archaeology.  At Coalwood, a cordwood camp that operated from 1901-1912 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, these issues become especially important since labor experienced a dramatic transformation when the camp shifted from housing a large number of male laborers to being organized by individual households.  In this paper I use archaeological evidence to examine the social relations these laborers were engaged in that produced and reproduced their everyday life as well as the broader patterns of capitalistic production.  In doing so, I hope to show how a focus on labor helps to explicate the very workings of capitalism.

Cite this Record

Men of Good Timber: An Archaeological Investigation of Labor in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Aaron Howe. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 433971)

Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Early 20th Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 209