Meaning beyond Capital: Life in a Twentieth-Century Mining Town

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As industrial economies developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the push for ever increasing profits reshaped the social and economic landscapes of America. The landscape of the American Southwest in particular was marked by industrial towns that experienced great boom and bust cycles following the flow of capital. This poster presents the result of analysis conducted on the material culture of one such town, Ruby, Arizona, which swelled in population as its lead and zinc deposits fueled war efforts in the twentieth century and was abandoned when ore veins dried up after the 1930s. Typical of mining towns at the time, Ruby was a company run town and the Eagle-Picher company that ran the mine exerted heavy influence over the lives of its employees. The historical record and data collected from four units in the eastern tent city neighborhood of Ruby, populated primarily by Mexican laborers, paint a vivid picture of the hardships of miners and their families living in such a heavy industrial setting. Yet artifacts including pieces from radios, instruments, and children’s toy, also tell a story of people trying to find comfort and small moments of joy in that harsh world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36736.0