Meandering Paths of Archival Memory: Placing the Mountain Meadows Massacre on Disturbed Landscapes

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Although the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre site, where approximately 120 emigrants were murdered by Mormon militia in Utah, is considered a seminal event in American history, the accurate location of the event was not well understood. This, along with a highly conflicted and suspect historic record, allowed interpretation to remain ambiguous or purposely misinterpreted, manipulating the narrative and redirecting blame toward Native Americans. Since 1990, additional interpretive memorials have been constructed, creating a built landscape and archival memory. Such memorials are vital to encapsulating memories and focusing mourning, but only when their locations have been faithfully ascertained. This paper discusses how a critical reassessment of a tainted historic record and a new archaeological analysis of the landscape allowed identification of the massacre locations and two mass burials. Whether the memorials and narrative that informs shifts to more accurately place this event in the physical world remains to seen.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow