‘Carmelo’s Cabinet’: The Material Culture of Collections in the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania

Summary

Personal collections of objects reflect individual orderings of the material world, particularly when they encompass the realms of work, domestic life, health, aesthetics and religion. As complete sets, they are like an idealized version of an archaeological assemblage: intact, curated, annotated, and often traceable to an individual life trajectory and historical period. Carmelo Fierro was an Italian immigrant who came to American in 1902, carrying with him a small cabinet packed with small objects that evolved to reflect his life as a coal miner and then a grocer in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. Each object was carefully catalogued, identified, and photographed and the chronology of the collection is being reconstructed. The cabinet serves both as a comparative sample for excavated materials from the Lattimer Archaeology Project and also as a glimpse into the ways in which a life is constructed materially across time and space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Poster Session 1

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 338