Bottles, Blue Jeans, and a Boat: Material Traces of Contemporary Migration in Western Sicily

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Sicilian Channel receives global attention as a major migratory route for undocumented people entering Europe clandestinely, a tragic nexus of transnational displacement and desperation. While the plight of massively overloaded and unseaworthy boats of people justifiably receives media attention, there is a less documented movement that occurs and has occurred for thousands of years: small boats expertly transporting handfuls of people back and forth across the Channel between Tunisia and western Sicily. Material traces of these border crossings share some features with the migrant material culture strewn along the border zone of the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. These include migrants’ strategic triangulation of speed, invisibility and survival in deciding what to bring and the tactical triage of gear en route. Further, the political and economic injustices that are catalysts for the movements are comparable, as is the criminalization of the migrants which has done more to endanger than dissuade them. However the exigencies of sea crossing require a distinct set of material culture and technologies of mobility, shedding new light on migrant choices and challenges. This paper explores the material vestiges of these cross-Channel migrations through assemblages identified during fieldwork along the southwest coast of Sicily in Summer 2018.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23559