A Look At Violence In A Western Mining District
Author(s): Robert McQueen
Year: 2016
Summary
Mining districts are inherently violent places. Deaths, accidents, and injuries are topics that appear liberally in historic literature; period newspapers almost gleefully reported on deaths caused by accidents and foul play. Suicide, however, was a form of death often accompanied by stigma, and frequently reported with overtones of pity. Rarely does violence manifest itself in the archaeological record. This paper discusses the unexpected discovery of a Depression-era suicide in a central Nevada mining camp. It will look at death in the camp in general, as well as the circumstances of his death compared to miners’ suicides from earlier and later eras. The analysis shows a disturbing trend toward suicide in miner’s lives.
Cite this Record
A Look At Violence In A Western Mining District. Robert McQueen. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434657)
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Keywords
General
Mining
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Nevada
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suicide
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Temporal Keywords
1930-1940
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): 67