Construction Zones: Understanding Space at an Early Twentieth-Century Western Work Camp

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Associated with canal construction on the Powell Tract of the Big Lost River Irrigation (Carey Act) Project, a network of work camps is situated entirely within the bounds of the present-day Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in southeastern Idaho. The largest of these work camps are characterized by a large artifact assemblage and the presence of at least one domed basalt rock oven, commonly associated with immigrant labor groups from Italy and Greece. These components provide an opportunity for inquiry regarding interaction between the contracting construction company, their employees, and the other camp occupants in the context of both organization of space within a camp as well as variation between camps across the project landscape. However, short-term occupation of work camps can result in archaeological signatures not captured effectively by feature driven recording methods. Expanding on methods applied previously at western work camps, a systematic grid-based recording method of the surface assemblages, along with a multi-level artifact classification, provides a dataset for distinguishing activity areas previously not discernable within the camp. Application of this method offers potential to examine differing functional roles of work camps in the network, as well as the relationships between them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53239