Random Transect

Modern celebrities foreshadowed in the ancient Mediterranean

2008-07-25T19:34:00.001-07:00

These were posted on Neatorama and are doing the rounds. I couldn't resist. I really have no pride.

Obviously we have The King here. As far as the actual object goes, I have no idea what I am looking at, but that is an honest-to-god D.A. .

Jacko himself, right down to the nose.

Archaeology, company towns, and consensus history

2008-07-19T20:34:00.001-07:00

I have many voices in my head, but the one that asks "why is 'class' a dirty word?" over and over is one of the loudest. This little article in the Chicago Tribune set that voice off.

Students search for 'Old Chicago' in Pullman neighborhood.
It is about a field school excavating the 1880s shopping arcade in the former company town of Pullman (now part of Chicago). That it is an 1880s arcade is interesting in itself (although I am not sure what the archaeology will contribute other than illustrative knick knacks), but the Pullman connection is what caught my attention.

Pullman was the company town for the workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company, who manufactured, yes, Pullman cars (on which, incidentally, one found Pullman porters). Pullman was the very model of a model company town, quite an early experiment in corporate paternalism. George Pullman was a firm and early believer that labor struggle was the result of an unpleasant environment, writing

that such advantages and surroundings made better workmen by removing from them the feeling of discontent and desire for change which so generally characterize the American workman; thus protecting the employer from loss of time and money consequent upon intemperance, labor strikes, and dissatisfaction which generally result from poverty and uncongenial home surroundings.

He apparently spared no expense--the town was formally laid out and had all the amenities, including the shopping arcade. And the Pullman company maintained iron control over their workers' lives.

The workers never forgot that, however nice the houses in Pullman were, they were not their houses--"We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shops, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman Church, and when we die we shall go to the Pullman Hell." In 1894, Pullman was the epicenter of the Pullman or American Railroad Union (ARU) Strike. To make a long and interesting story short and boring, Federal troops were called out, the ARU was broken, and its president, Eugene Debs, did jail time. It was this strike that launched Debs on his political career and helped make the Socialist Party a genuine, but very brief, threat in the 1912 election.

So that's Pullman--a powder keg of class antagonism, but a very nicely painted one.

None of that was even hinted at in this article.

Foundation [the Historic Pullman Foundation] President Michael Shymanski said the arcade once was a place where executives and laborers shopped together, and that equality was emblematic of the town's ideals of living in harmony.
...
"Everything was big, beautiful, ornate," Baxter said. "This was the place everyone in Pullman came, which is why it's so interesting to us."

Whoa.

Now admittedly the article is very brief and reporters do have a tendency to rephrase things they don't understand into thing they do understand. So I am not sure what was really said or intended, but these two quotes really made me wonder what was going here. Why was the company town history of Pullman not mentioned?

What are some possibilities?

The archaeology and the foundation are probably part of neighborhood revitalization (read gentrification). There may be marketing and image reasons not to highlight the darker aspects of Pullman's history--yuppies, like archaeologists, love ethnic, but they do NOT like unions and strikes.
It may just be the usual US middle-class-professional obliviousness to class--the ingrained idea that there is a natural harmony of interests between capital and labor. And here that harmony is apparently expressed through consumerism...in an early mall too, thus we are doubly, maybe even triply, blessed.
Another is that nobody wanted to get too controversial with the reporter, certain kinds of historical facts being inherently controversial.
Or, most likely, the reporter just selectively picked the happy quotes. Even then it still highlights the weird fugue state middle-class Americans go into when the "C" word comes up.

Northern California fires

2008-07-05T14:07:00.001-07:00

The was the scene on 101 in Mendocino County last weekend. I haven't actually seen any fires, but the smoke has been incredible.

NPR podcasts--The Geopolitics of Archaeology

2008-07-04T14:12:00.001-07:00

Chicago Public Radio has a series of podcasts up titled The Geopolitics of Archaeology.

The accompanying blurb is:

We explore the politics swirling around the fields of archaeology, anthropology and history. We’ll dig up the forgotten roots of “Western Civilization,” and we’ll find out what happens when stolen antiquities end up in museums and universities. You’ll hear the voices of scholars you won’t hear anywhere else as we explore a new model of archaeology looking past imperial, national and ethno-centric worldviews to explore our shared heritage.

The segments are:

Biblical Archaeology --Sandra Scham
Repatriation of Native American Remains and Artifacts -- Tamara Bray
Global Market for Stolen Antiquities -- Neil Brodie and Richard Leventhal
Stolen Antiquities and the Law -- Patty Gerstenblith
The Origins of Western Civilization (2 Parts)-- Martin Bernal
Archaeological Tourism's Effect on People and Heritage -- Lynn Meskell
Creating a New Paradigm for Archaeology -- Phil Duke and Yannis Hamilakis

So far I've listened to Repatriation, Biblical Archaeology, and The New Paradigm ones. I liked the Biblical archaeology one. Especially timely after the Nadia Abu El Haj lynchfest. Sandra Scham is the editor of a forthcoming book Forgotten Past: Reader in the Archaeology of Palestine by Palestinians. That'll go on the wishlist. The repatriation one was a bit bland and measured (I suppose that shouldn't be a criticism), but it covered the main bases. Phil and Yannis Hamilakis didn't pull any punches, but I am not sure how it would come across to the average non-archaeologist. It was also a bit disappointing that the big example of a politically-engaged archaeology was working with neopagans at Stonehenge. But they did have a good critique of CRM and its facade of apoliticism.

"Slum" archaeology in York

2008-07-01T20:17:00.001-07:00

Current Archaeology has a nice article (The archaeology of modern poverty) on the archaeological project at Hungate, which will apparently be the largest project undertaken in York for the past 25 years. Not too shabby for a 19th- and early 20th-century urban working class neighbourhood (read "slum"). One nice thing, the archaeologists seem to be well over the idea of an undifferentiated working-class "blob" and are seeing distinctions within the neighborhood. At this stage the differences are in architecture, which is probably the first thing you will pick up on during fieldwork, but it will be interesting to see how the analysis goes.

The archaeologists are really fortunate in that Hungate was part of a seminal 1899-1901survey of urban porverty by Benjamin Rowntree (of the chocolate Rowntrees).

During his 1899 York survey (the first of three), investigators visited every working class home in the city, making records on 11,560 families or 46,754 individuals. Rowntree established a measure of poverty in terms of a minimum weekly sum of money ‘necessary to enable families … to secure the minimum necessaries of a healthy life’. These included fuel, lighting, rent, food, clothing, and household and personal items, according to family size.

The critical thing for Rowntree was whether income was sufficient to ensure the minimum calorific intake and nutritional balance necessary to avoid illness or weight-loss. According to this measure, 27.84% of the total population of York lived below ‘the poverty line’ (a concept Rowntree invented). Of these, 9.91% lived in ‘primary poverty’, which meant they lacked the income to meet basic needs, and 17.73% in ‘secondary poverty’, which meant that income was sufficient but too much was being spent on other things. A subtlety of Rowntree’s analysis was his appreciation that people tended to move in and out of poverty during their lives, often being poor in early childhood or old age, but better-off when of working age – an observation which gave rise to his concept of ‘the poverty cycle’.

I hadn't heard of the Rowntree survey, but have just become the proud possessor of a 13.4meg PDF of the book courtesy of Google Books (As far as I am concerned Google can have my private information--it's not interesting and they earn it repeatedly). I will read it IMCFT.

Somewhere I also have Margaret Byington's 1910 study of Homestead (Homestead: the Households of a Mill Town). I picked it up to try and get some idea of diet, rent, and household budgeting and priorities. It's a pity I wasn't working in Pittsburgh at the time or even in a steeltown, but it still gave me a lot to think about with the assemblages I was dealing with. These late 19th/early 20th-century middle-class reformers are easily sneered at, especially, as I found, when they are women. But they weren't idiots, and the quantitative information they sometimes gathered is astonishing. Of course all the usual caveats about source criticism apply. Regardless, I don't think there is anything on the scale of Rowntree's study in the US.

The Hungate work looks like one of those cases where the more historical documentation there is, the more the archaeology has to contribute.

And this is another case where a comparison between UK and US working class conditions would be (a) feasible and (b) probably eye-opening.

Byington, Margaret

1910 Homestead: the Households of a Mill Town. New York: Arno and the New York Times.

Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm

1908 Poverty: A Study of Town Life. London: Macmillan.

Labor archaeology

2008-06-30T21:34:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading James Green's Taking History to Heart. For some reason I've been reading more personal accounts melding some sort of Left politics and history (and archaeology). Part of the reason is that engagements over public history tend to have a personal flavor that is hard, or even inappropriate, to convey in an academic article. Debates and outcomes have as much to do with quirks of individual biography and personalities as they do with large-scale social processes. That actually comes through better in more informal narratives.

Anyhow, James Green is labor historian who a long history of public engagement, particularly in regards to the labor movement. Among other things, he was involved in the creation of the National Park Service Labor History Theme Study. His encounter with the NRHP Criteria and Integrity certainly got some sympathetic noises from me. But one paragraph that struck me, and would strike any archaeologist was the following:

A survey of potential labor history labor history landmarks for the National Park Service included few extant sites that could signify the lives of these forgotten men and women who toiled in the fields and the factories, the mines and mills that produced the region's wealth.

Few of these structures survived and even fewer were preserved for their national significance or architectural value. Workers passed through the coal and textile towns, the turpentine and timber camps, the dockyard and railyard districts leaving few material traces of their lives.Long gone are the storefront meeting halls and the holiness chapels were workers congregated, "the unsteepled places" they made "their own" and where there was room for free voices to discuss "democratic experiments,"as E.P. Thompson once put it.

It is easier to find places where they died and were buried than places where they lived, worked, and associated. (p.151)

Any archaeologist (well, any historical archaeologist) would sit up straight on reading this; "Whaddaya MEAN 'few extant sites'?! I done DOZENS of those sites!" Yes...and no. Labor history is obviously something to which archaeology can make a real contribution. This quote makes that clear. However as a group we are not well-equipped , or even particularly interested in, in addressing labor. Labor history is a whole new kind of history we don't have time to learn about. "Talk about consumer choice and call it good." This is changing, there are more archaeologists looking at workers as workers these days, and even saying the "C" word. But the real action on these sites will come from CRM (let's face it, I don't see the NSF or NEH funding the archaeology of 19th- and 20th-century labor sites anytime soon) and that is where the sea-change needs to happen

Green, James R.

2000 Taking History to Heart: The Power of the Past in Building Social Movements. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Archaeologists on strike

2008-06-14T12:09:00.001-07:00

I dropped the ball on this one, but the Museum of London Archaeological Services (MoLAS) workers staged a one-day strike on the 9th.

A June 5th press release announcing the strike is on the Past Horizons' Weblog .

A letter from Anthony Francis, the Chair of the MoLAS branch of Prospect was posted on the British Archaeological Jobs and Resources Forum on the 12th, and I've quoted some relevant sections.

This was the first time the Museum's archaeology service (MoLAS) has ever gone on strike and the first time a strike has extended across the entire Museum of London group. The strike was over our pay award for the last financial year. It was 13 months late and less than half the rate of current RPI inflation. Ironically, our employer has the money to pay us more and wants to pay us more, but their hands have been tied by the government's 2% pay cap.
...
The strike closed at least ten MoLAS sites across the capital, including three sites where the entire archaeological workforce joined the union and went on strike. The few sites that did open did so with a much reduced workforce. A picket line was maintained at MoLAS HQ at Mortimer Wheeler House in Hackney where executive management contracted in extra (non-unionised) security to guard what was virtually an empty building.
....
After the rally, many union members went to the TUC ' Speak up for public services event at Westminster. There we heard that there are hundreds of thousands of workers in the same boat as us, worried about housing costs, the cost of food and travel and also subject to below-inflation pay awards. The big unions are galvanising for further strike action later in the year against poverty pay . It is a fight for us all.

The full letter is here.

This reminded me of the nasty 1998 Indiana State University/Caesar's casino strike. So I went hunting through the HISTARCH archives. I found a couple of things, but I know there is more out there in the various listserv archives. Someday I'd like to write something up on that strike; something like that deserves to be remembered.

Field Tech Picket Shuts Down Caesars/ISU Site

Massive Firings on Ceasars/ISU Project!

Although the United Archaeological Field Technicians (UAFT) seems to be pretty much defunct, there have been rumblings to revitalize the field tech union, which I hope come through. While they were going, the UAFT put the fear of god into the CRM industry, but my sense is that those lessons are being forgotten. I am sure you can insert insert your own long rant about sleazy companies here.

In solidarity.

MoLAS working at Spitalfields

2008-06-12T21:51:00.001-07:00

This post by Nigel Jeffries on the Museum of London blog made me come over all faint. It's not technical or detailed--it's not meant to be; it's a public "what we do" sort of post. But there's enough there that I really want to get hold of the reports when they are done. Why? Let me tell you. The Museum of London Archaeological Service has been working in Spitalfields, and they have deposits from silk weaver households from the 1820 to the 1850s. Even a US historical archaeologist will probably encounter something about the Spitalfields silk weavers at least once in their life; usually in the form of a graduate school encounter with E.P.Thompson. They are sort of a labor history icon.

Reading this sent me digging around for my Making of the English Working Class to refresh my what's left of my memory, then digging around for other source, because Making is too big and the index was not helpful. To sum, Spitalfields became an major silk-weaving centre after the arrival of Huguenot refugees in the late 17th century, with Irish and Jewish weavers following on. The weavers were sufficiently militant to get the Spitalfields Act passed in 1765, which made silk-weaving a protected industry and allowed magistrates to regulate wages (Goodway 1982:185-189).

This act was repealed in 1824...with drastic consequences for the weavers. .

Many historians, especially since EPT, see the immiseration of the Spitalfield silk weavers, the decline of Spitalfields from relative prosperity into a dangerous "slum," and the struggles of the weavers to organize as part of well...the making of the English working class. One reason the archaeological work is exciting is that much of the historical debate about the weavers involves the decline in the material conditions and standards of living. Even at the time, the period when the Spitalfields Act was in force (and when there were no mechanized looms) was seen as a type of "Golden Age"--a memory to which the weavers could appeal. The features MoLAS have apparently date to right after the 1824 repeal, when the weavers and Spitalfields by most accounts went into freefall. Material conditions, standards of living--that's the sort of stuff archaeologists can do.

Silk weavers aside, I'd just like to find out more about English and European working class sites to compare to US sites. What were conditions like compared to the US? The US working class was largely recent immigrants, and there is mythologizing tied up with that. "Immigrants came to America seeking a better life"--sure we can say that...and we do. Do we ever. But did immigrants find a "better life"? That, I am not so sure.

Anon. Silk, Watches and Money. Communities - Huguenot and French London - Central Criminal Court. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Huguenot.jsp#silkwatches.

Goodway, David. 1982. London Chartism, 1838-1848. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Jeffries, Nigel. Linking 19th-century archaeological finds with 19th-century lives: A genealogical approach for Spitalfields. The working life of the Museum of London . http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/linking-19th-century-finds-with-19th-century-lives-a-geneological-approach-for-spitalfields/.

Thompson, E.P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books.

Ancient burial ground near Rome offers rare look into laborers' lives - USATODAY.com

2008-06-10T06:48:00.001-07:00

USA Today had a report on an early imperial Roman cemetery at Ponte Galeria, near Rome . The archaeologists are interpreting it as a burial ground for longshoremen and manual laborers. 300 mostly male burials, lots of evidence of heavy labor. Obviously there's a going to be a lot more to be said about this that won't be in a a US Today article. I know little about Roman archaeology, but I did do some work on 19th-century longshoremen in California. I should probably revisit that work. I am sure I can make some connections...

Archaeology of the recent past on BBC3

2008-05-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

Some time-sensitive information. BBC3 has a "series of personal essays about the archaeology of the recent past." They ran/will run on May 26th, 27th, and today, (May 28th) and tomorrow. They'll be available on-line for 7 days after airing.

The first <link> is an interesting discussion by Beth O'Leary at UNM about trying to get the Tranquility Base site (the Apollo 11 landing site, yes, the site on the Moon) listed on the National Register. No go, oddly enough.

The second <link>, which I really liked was Laura McAtackney, a historical archaeologist and Ph.D. student at Bristol, talking about Long Kesh/Maze Prison near Belfast. This is where 10 IRA prisoners died in 1981 during hunger strikes. (Wikepedia:Long Kesh and the 1981 hunger Strikes).

The hunger strikers:From left to right, clockwise: Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Ray McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee, Michael Devine.

Long Kesh/Maze Prison
(images from www.irishfreedomcommittee.net)

She talks about the prison as a site of memory, and how its importance can't be disentangled from its political meaning.

What do you do with a site like that? The usual apparently; "a 5,000-seat indoor arena; a rural excellence and equestrian zone featuring an international exhibition centre and showgrounds; an hotel; offices; cafés and restaurants and a multi-screen cinema alongside an industrial zone with the potential for up to 6,000 jobs; housing and parkland." (First peek at Maze masterplan, BBC News Jan 30 2007).

The third and fourth talks aren't up yet, but are on (a) culturally-marked trees in Britain (so probably not involving Basque Shepherd porn) and (b) a Long wave radio station.

Archaeology and catastrophe

2008-05-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

I saw this on Boingboing this morning. Photographer Philip Toledano has been photographing the offices of bankrupt companies (Link).

"When I started shooting bankrupt offices I found it to be more archaeology than photography. Everywhere I went I found signs of life interrupted."

We seem to be living in times of abandonment.

On a related and actually better note, once again at Middle Savagery--The Great Abandonment

Slow Saturday

2008-05-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Theory and CRM (part 2): Smell Bacon?

2008-05-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

It isn't possible to operate without theoretical commitments, not really. So there is a dominant theory in CRM, we just don't admit it. If I had to describe this theory, it is a mix of Baconian inductivism and, well, animism. I'll tackle animism later, so first: Baconian inductivism. Lots of syllables, simple idea. Insofar as we have a disciplinary commitment, beyond regulatory hoop-jumping, it can be summed up as total description ("grokking the site in its fullness" to quote the late Ned Heite) and adding to the dataset of sites. We don't need theory because we are simply describing, using standard methods--thought is unnecessary when action is guided solely by procedure.

The people who will need theory are the proverbial "future archaeologists," the obsessed unfortunates who will read all our reports, see the patterns in the data, synthesize them, and, long after we are dead, finally give our professional careers meaning. There will be jet packs in the future too.

Thus ethical concerns in CRM often find shape, not in the hope for social justice or a better society, but in the nervously detailed recording of assorted variables that are chosen, not for their contribution to research, but because "future archaeologists might want to know." Our professional careers can be Kafkaesque exercises where we are forever accumulating evidence to defend ourselves before a tribunal that doesn't yet exist, whose charges we don't know, and whose needs we can't understand. No wonder we drink so much.

Josef K, Lena, and the "dataset" (The Trial 1962)

Theory and CRM (Part 1): We don't need no steenking theory.

2008-05-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

[This is the first of probably many (somewhat frustrated) posts on CRM and its relation to archaeological thought. They are an effort to capture dominant attitudes--a broad-brush "archaeologist-on- the-street" picture. As such, I am trying to make a coherent text out of attitudes that are unconscious and usually not coherent, and will almost certainly be refining my thoughts as I go.]

The bulk of archaeologists in CRM usually have little use for theory. We are, after all, too busy in the trenches, doing archaeology in the real world, to have time for abstract academic issues like theory. We regard theory at best as a luxury, at worst with outright mistrust. We can do archaeology without theory.

This is a delusional belief, yet I would say it is the dominant attitude in CRM, and CRM suffers for it. Theory is simply being open about one's assumptions--ideology made explicit. One is always operating theoretically (or, failing that, ideologically).

But how do we maintain the illusion of atheoreticism?

By its nature CRM is procedural. If, as I do, one sees CRM's ultimate purpose as establishing some sort of landscape of social memory, then one is resigned to the idea that CRM is irredeemably messy, noisy, and argumentative (or would be if anyone really cared). However we operate in in a regulatory setting, overseen by bureaucrats who are responsible to a variety of insititutional funding bodies (from agencies to developers), and our business depends on making sure clients' projects pass through regulatory digestive tract as smoothly as possible. In a situation like that, nobody wants messy, noisy, and argumentative. What is good is predictability and regularity, and final products of a certain consistency that land where they should, never to be seen again. I'm about to loose control of this metaphor, but my point is that CRM's emphasis on procedure and predictability is a major factor that make the illusion of atheoreticism possible.

A second and related factor is social isolation: routinized research conducted in a good old boy (or girl) echo-chamber is hardly conducive to introspection. With very few exceptions, the results of CRM projects are relevant only to other CRM projects--our reports disappear into the grey-literature morass, possibility to achieve some sort of use as citations in other grey-literature reports. The social "push" to argue a site's meaning or importance beyond the rote research questions of one's immediate circle of CRM cronies just isn't there. I don't know how many projects ever see any sort of publication or public dissemination--but not many. We sneer at isolated ivory-tower of academia, but I am not sure an isolated mushroom-encrusted basement is any better.

Mountain Misery

2008-05-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

This is a shot of my foot, while I was collapsed exhausted during a survey in the Sierra foothills.

There is lead and arsenic in the soil in some areas (the residue of hard-rock gold-mining) so we are wearing coveralls. We strip them off at the end of the day and don't take the dust back to civilization with us. Ditto for the poison oak oil.
Note the duct tape "puttees." I'd always wondered if puttees served a practical purpose. They do. They keep ants out of your trouser legs and off the doodads. We figured this out the first day.
The green stuff all over my boot is pine pollen. We are covered in the stuff.
The plant is apparently called "Mountain Misery." I don't know what it's real name is. I was told it got this name from continually getting tangled in wagon wheels--that has a real 1930s "pioneerin' lore" feel to me, but ok. The stuff is pretty tiresome. It smells like artichoke, and has tripped me badly twice.

No meth labs yet. That's good.

Archaeology and Migrants

2008-05-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

Migrant pea pickers camp in the rain. California.
(Dorothea Lange 1936, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Colleen Morgan, on her blog Middle Savagery, had an interesting post about material abandoned by illegal immigrants along the US-Mexico border ("Borderlands Archaeology"). It was sparked by a Fox News story on the (*ahem*) "millions" of dollars the cleanup is costing. The story closes with a quote by the head of the Minute Men "Truly, it's a national disaster of our cherished outdoor areas."

Hmm...

Lying assholes.

Where was I? Oh, right, archaeology. Colleen Morgan makes the point that these deposits could be studied archaeologically to see what people left behind when push came to shove. The Fox article quotes a BLM staffer "Blankets, airline tickets, Bibles, wedding pictures, photos of children, school reports, because clearly people don't tend to throw away everything they've brought with them — they're forced to." It's rather sad--alot of small tragedies.

Some archaeologists have been trying to work on archaeological approaches to migrant and transient labor, which has a long history in the West. It's not easy. Few personal possessions, very little appearance in the documentary record (migrant labor is often undocumented labor), and hidden, out-of-the-way, sites. "Giving voice to the people without history" (or some other such phrasing) is often a standard justification for historical archaeology, but seems to be true as long as those people had enough "stuff" to study. Looking at transient assemblages from the point of view of what is NOT there may be a good way to go. The modern borderlands assemblages may give some indication of what people had, and wanted to bring, but ultimately could not.

Conversely small personal items found on migrant labor sites beyond the border would acquire that much more weight since they were retained under difficult or even desperate circumstances. For example David Parkin (1999) discussed the objects refugees take with them. There are the practical objects; then there are the ones that in some sense signify and carry memories of social relations ("mementoes") that might serve to reconstitute a somewhat familiar sense of identity in a foreign place.

As an archaeologist, I've always loved the passage from The Grapes of Wrath when the Joads are choosing what goes to California and what is burnt. It is too big to ever quote in a paper or article, so I'll do it here.

When everything that could be sold was sold, stoves and bedsteads, chairs and tables, little corner cupboards, tubs and tanks, still there were piles of possessions; and the women sat among them, turning them over and looking of beyond and back, pictures, square glasses, and here's a vase.

Now you know well what we can take and what we can't take. We'll be camping out--a few pots to cook and wash in, and mattresses and comforts, lantern and buckets, and a piece of canvas. Use that for a tent. This kerosene can. Know what that is? That's the stove. And clothes--take all the clothes. And--the rifle? Wouldn't go out naked of a rifle. When the shoes and clothes and food, when even hope is gone, we'll have the rifle. Nothing else. That goes. And a bottle for water. That just about fills us. Right up the sides of the trailer, and the kids can set in the trailer, and granma on a mattress. Tools, a shovel and saw and wrench and pliers. An ax, too. We had that ax forty years. Look how she's wore down. And ropes, of course. Leave it--or burn it up.

And the children came.

If Mary takes that doll, that dirty rag doll, I got to take my Injun bow. I got to. An ' this roun' stick--big as me. I might need this stick. I had this stick so long--a month, or maybe a year. I got to take it. And what's it like in California?

The women sat among the doomed things, turning them over and looking past them and back. This book. My father had it. He liked a book. Pilgrim's Progress. Used to read it. Got his name in it. and his pipe--still smells rank. And this picture--an angel. I looked at that before the fust three come--didn't seem to do much good. Think we could get this china dog in? Aunt Sadie brought it from the St. Louis Fair. See? Wrote right on it. No, I guess not. Here's a letter my brother wrote the day before he died. Here's an old-time hat. These feathers--never got to use them. No, there isn't room.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.
(Steinbeck 1939:88)

Parkin, David J.
1999 “Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Human Displacement.” Journal of Material Culture 4.3: 303-320.

Steinbeck, John
1939 The Grapes of Wrath. New York, NY: Penguin Books, (rep. 2002) .

Who am I? What is this?

2008-05-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

I'm a historical archaeologist living and working in the U.S. West. I earn a living doing contract archaeology (CRM--"Cultural Resource Management") and trying to write a dissertation in my copious free time.

I really intend this blog to be a kind of "stretching exercise" before doing the writing I should be doing--writing what I want so I can then move on to writing what I should. I have no clear agenda for the blog, but the various moles I intend to whack will generally pop up of the theory and practice of archaeology, particularly within CRM.