Long-Term Collaboration and Advocacy around the Ludlow Massacre

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The 1913–1914 southern Colorado coalfield strike and Ludlow Massacre had lasting impacts on labor law reforms that occurred in Colorado and the United States over the subsequent decades. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeological Project (CCWAP) worked with the United Mine Workers of America union to focus an archaeological lens on the social and material conditions leading up to the strike and massacre and their aftermath. A decade after the project concluded, the Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission formed to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the strike and massacre. Work by the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project and Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission offers a longitudinal example of the power of collaborative public scholarship. In this conversation, we discuss issues around identifying appropriate descendant communities and other stakeholders with which to collaborate, the importance of building and maintaining relationships within and beyond academia, and the political nature and power of public archaeology, advocacy, and stewardship. While the collaborative experiences described here were unique, the lessons are widely applicable. The goal in sharing these ideas is to illustrate the importance of maintaining relationships with descendant communities after the end of project funding and exemplify the wide impact of well-designed collaborative public archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36663.0