"Investigations of Craft and Industrial Enterprise," compiled with an Introduction by Christopher C. Fennell.

The Society for Historical Archaeology’s “Perspectives from Historical Archaeology” publication series provides subject and regional readers on a variety of topics of interest to archaeologists and scholars in related fields. Each volume includes an introduction by the compiler that reviews historical archaeology’s work on the topic. “Perspectives” volumes are available in both perfect bound and pdf formats, and sales proceeds benefit the Society’s educational and research missions. "Investigations of Craft and Industrial Enterprise," includes an introduction by Fennell that reviews the field and 23 articles selected from the "Historical Archaeology" journal.  A table of contents and abstracts is set out below. You can obtain volumes from the “Perspectives” Series online at: http://stores.lulu.com/shabookstore. This volume should be available online in late December.

Part I.  Introduction

1.  Manufacturing Relationships in Industry, Craft, and Heritage
Christopher C. Fennell

Abstract: This introduction to Perspectives from Historical Archaeology: Investigations of Craft and Industrial Enterprise provides a summary of trends in the archaeology of craft and industrial enterprises over the past several decades, outlines ongoing development of theories, research questions, and interpretative frameworks, and provides an overview of the selected readings included in this volume. Industrial archaeology projects provide highly valuable contributions to scientific knowledge and heritage initiatives. [pp. 9–30]

Part II.  Labor and Landscapes

2.  Labor’s Heritage: Remembering the American Industrial Landscape
Paul A. Shackel

Abstract: Archaeology at industrial sites provides some of the greatest opportunities to tell the story of the impact of industrialization on workers and their communities. Archaeologists working on industrial sites have a long tradition of interpreting technology and industrial landscapes while issues related to labor are overlooked or glossed over. Other historical archaeologists have laid the groundwork for understanding labor relations and daily life in industrial contexts. An overview of the current state of industrial archaeology is provided, and a renewed call for addressing an archaeology of labor is issued. Work performed at industrial sites needs to address issues related to labor. The draft National Historic Landmark study by the National Park Service on labor archaeology serves as a good framework to deal with these ideas. Additional avenues of inquiry are also explored.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 38(4): 44–58 (2004)  [pp. 33–47]

3.  Social Status and Landscape in a Nineteenth-Century Planned Industrial Alternative Community: Archaeology and Geography of Feltville, New Jersey
Matthew S. Tomaso, Richard F. Veit, Carissa A. DeRooy, and Stanley L. Walling

Abstract: Feltville is located in Union County, New Jersey. This small scale planned industrial village was designed and operated by David Felt, a liberal Unitarian printer and stationer, from 1845 to 1860. Archaeological and documentary materials recovered over six years paint a picture of conditions in Felt’s rural industrial reformist alternative and provide a glimpse into the worldview of the community architect. Examination of Feltville and its historical context allows for the evaluation of the potential practical and theoretical contributions of historical archaeology in the study of utopian movements. Specifically, the diversity of sociopolitical ideals expressed prior to the advent of Marxian socialism calls into question the conflation of communalist and utopian social designs in some contemporary treatments. HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 40(1): 20–36 (2006)  [pp. 49–65]

4.  Creating and Domesticating Hungary’s Socialist Industrial Landscape: From Dunapentele to Sztálinváros, 1950-1958
Mark Pittaway

Abstract: Eastern Europe’s socialist new cities have been seen as embodying “politicized landscapes”; in other words, landscapes created by socialist dictatorships according to their own ideological purposes. The region’s socialist new cities were indeed identified as distinctively socialist landscapes, but the processes by which they came to be understood as such by the citizens of socialist states were far more complex than top-down accounts allow. The reactions of both builders and residents of the Hungarian new city of Sztálinváros (Stalin City) to the urban form are examined in order to show how the city came to be seen as a distinctively socialist industrial landscape. An approach based on a dialogue between the methods of historical archaeology and social history is employed, demonstrating that an examination of popular responses to material culture can reveal much about state socialism in Eastern Europe and its nature.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 39(3): 75–93 (2005)  [pp. 67–85]

5.  Industry, Entrepreneurship, and Patronage: Lewis Wernwag and the Development of Virginius Island
Paul A. Shackel and Matthew Palus

Abstract: In the 19th century, Virginius Island developed as a center for craft, industry, and service facilities that supported the United States Armory complex at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The earliest phase of development in this community is represented at one tract of land that is associated with the family of engineer and entrepreneur Lewis Wernwag. Wernwag was an inventor, bridge builder, and machinist. A landscape and archaeological analysis shows the contradictions of living in a community transitioning to an industrial capitalist economy. While the landscape that Wernwag created reflects the traditional craft ethos—one that does not reinforce the separations of domestic and work life—the family’s household assemblage shows that they did participate in modern consumerism and they reinforced separations around the table and between groups. An analysis of the Wernwags’ property and assemblage shows how this family embraced emerging technological rationalities through material things.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 44(2): 97–112 (2010)  [pp. 87–102]

Part III.  Extractive Industries

6.  Industrial and Domestic Landscapes of a California Oil Field
R. Scott Baxter

Abstract: By the turn of the 19th century, the United States was a heavily industrialized nation in the midst of the Victorian period. A series of intertwined values developed concerning the appropriate use of space both in and out of the work place and home. While the majority pursued these standards, individuals working in extractive industries were often on society’s periphery. Squaw Flat is an isolated oil field in Ventura County, California, occupied from ca. 1912–1954. In a remote location with limited choices, workers at Squaw Flat were able to use the landscape to express societal values concerning professional, domestic, public, and private space.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 36(3): 18–27 (2002) [pp. 105–114]

7.  The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital, and Struggle
Randall H. McGuire and Paul Reckner

Abstract: A gang of historians has gunned down the “romantic West.” They have dismissed the notion of the West as a frontier of opportunity for all comers. The American West has been redefined as an arena of struggle involving complex relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Western work camps and company towns existed as extensions of a global economy centered on the eastern United States. From the mid-19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, capital and people flowed into the West from Europe, Asia, and Mexico. In this internal periphery of U.S. capitalism, workers experienced the same type of exploitation and engaged in the same struggles as their brethren in other parts of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the coalfields of Colorado. The work camps and company towns that archaeologists excavate were loci of struggle, and historians cannot claim to understand them without considering these conflicts.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 36(3): 44–58 (2002) [pp. 115–129]

8.  Mining Landscapes and Colonial Rule in Early-Twentieth-Century Cyprus
Michael Given

Abstract: In the early 20th century the large-scale copper and asbestos mines of Cyprus were intimately associated with colonial rule, both in their ideologies and in their actual operations. For the Cypriot miners, this represented a major disruption of long-standing values and required a new negotiation of their relationship with their British colonizers. Attempts to control mining landscapes and communities interplayed with a range of actions from submission to everyday resistance to strikes and riots. These dynamics are most clearly seen by examining the entire landscape. Particularly revealing aspects include the naming of mining landscapes, the surveillance of miners, the complex relationship between mining and agriculture, the actual and symbolic manipulation of artifacts, the expression of control and resistance in miners’ housing, and shifting concepts of community.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 39(3): 49–60 (2005)  [pp. 131–142]

9.  When Daddy Was a Shanty Boy: The Role of Gender in the Organization of the Logging West Virginia
Janet G. Brashler

Abstract: Literature and oral history of late 19th- and early 20th century logging camps are replete with stories about lusty loggers who lived rigorous lives in the woods. Photo documentation in many of the logging histories supports the idea that logging was a single-gender, masculine activity. However, it is clear from recent work at the Monongahela National Forest and elsewhere in the East that women and children were present in some logging contexts. This article looks at the historic logging industry in West Virginia using gender as an organizing principle.   HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 25(4): 54–68 (1991)   [pp. 143–157]

Part IV.  Commodity Production

10.  Curiosities and Conundrums: Deciphering Social Relations and the Material World at the Ben Schroeder Saddletree Factory and Residence in Madison, Indiana.
Deborah L. Rotman and John M. Staicer

Abstract: As a locus of hand-craft production during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ben Schroeder Saddletree Factory and Residence began as a single structure and evolved into an eclectic arrangement of industrial and domestic buildings. At first glance, the site and its residents appear to be aberrations, “exceptions to the rule,” perhaps even cautionary tales in historical archaeology. Upon closer inspection, however, it does not appear that this site is remarkably different from other loci of specialty production from this era. The Schroeder family, along with the documentary and material records that are their legacy, are a lens through which to view social relations at specialty production firms and the use of the material world by factory owners, particularly during times of major economic crisis.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 36(2): 92–110 (2002) [pp. 161–179]

11.  The Dynamite Factory: An Industrial Landscape in Late-Nineteenth-Century South Africa
Joanna Behrens

Abstract: The development of deep-level mining on the Witwatersrand, South Africa, in the mid-1880s and the concomitant increase in demands for blasting explosives led to the establishment, in 1895, of a dynamite factory at Modderfontein, northeast of Johannesburg. Staffed by laborers drawn from across the African subcontinent and professionals and artisans recruited from established European dynamite factories, the community was highly cosmopolitan in nature, a microcosm of burgeoning Johannesburg. At Modderfontein, however, corporate interpretation of this social diversity was particular. Perceptions of ethnic complexity and their appropriate jointing were seminal in the organizations and mediations of communities and are harnessed in a reading of the landscape. Although premised on European design theories, Modderfontein must be understood as a distinct colonial articulation, a specific late-19th-century interpretation of local and global historical trajectories.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 39(3): 61–74 (2005)  [pp. 181–194]

12.  Landscapes of Resistance: A View of the Nineteenth-Century Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery
Bradford Botwick and Debra A. McClane

Abstract: The introduction of industrialized harvesting techniques to the Chesapeake Bay oyster fishery in the 19th century was resisted by communities of oyster tongers who represented traditional fishing methods. Maryland oyster tongers contested the advancement of industrial harvesting through various means. Important to this opposition was the development of an occupational identity that promoted traditional values and fishing practices and rejected wage labor. Natural and cultural landscapes of the working and domestic spheres helped shape and reproduce this occupational identity in part by placing constraints on aspects of the lifeways of oyster tonging communities. Ultimately, these landscapes became emblems of the distinctive life and economic choices of oyster tongers.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 39(3): 94–112 (2005)  [pp. 195–213]

13.  Archaeology of the Strangford Lough Kelp Industry in the Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth Centuries
Thomas C. McErlean

Abstract: An archaeological survey of the maritime cultural landscape of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland found rich and varied remains of structures relating to the kelp industry. Adding this information to historical documentation provided great insight into the rapid rise of an economic asset in the 18th century and its equally rapid decline in the early-19th century. Kelp provided an essential material for major industries of the industrial revolution and was a major source of income in coastal Ireland. This paper traces the imprint left on the foreshore and coastal archaeology of an Irish Sea lough by the exploitation of seaweed for making kelp.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 41(3): 76–93 (2007)  [pp. 215–232]

14.  Making Cheese: Archaeology of a 19th Century Rural Industry
James G. Gibb, David J. Bernstein, and Daniel F. Cassedy

Abstract: The concept of production strategies is employed to analyze the variety of organizational forms and technologies created by 19th century rural cheese makers. Archaeologically recovered data and historic documents are used to reconstruct the sequence of production strategies utilized at the Columbus Center Cheese Factory site in south-central New York State. Information on six changing aspects of plant operation is provided. These include ownership and management, marketing, materials procurement, manufacturing processes, expansion of production, and disposition of by-products.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 24(1): 18–33 (1990)  [pp. 233–248]

15.  There’s Trouble a-Brewin’: The Brewing and Bottling Industries at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
Deborah A. Hull-Walski and Frank L. Walski

Abstract: During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a brewery and bottling plant operated in the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Archaeological excavations recovered beer and soft drink bottles once used by these industries. Considering that the brewery was operational in Harpers Ferry for over 10 years and bottled soft drinks and beer, it was surprising that relatively few bottles attributable to the brewery were recovered from the excavations. In order to understand this phenomenon, this study examines the historical context of the brewery, its associated bottling plant, and the people who worked in these industries. The Harpers Ferry brewery bottles recovered from the excavations are described and compared with bottles from regional breweries and bottling plants. Various possibilities for the lack of bottles are considered, including financial problems of the brewery, popularity of the product, and temperance.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 28(4): 106–121 (1994)  [pp. 249–264]

16.  The Role of Technological Transitions in the Development of American Ceramic Industries: Elijah Cornell and the Shift from Redware to Stoneware Production
Sophia E. Kelly

Abstract: In the mid-1800s, the construction of canal and rail networks profoundly affected ceramic manufacturing in New York State by lowering the cost of transporting stoneware clay and finished vessels. Consumer demand for stoneware storage containers, energized by lower prices and increased availability, spurred the development stoneware potteries across the state. Many American earthenware potters shifted partially or entirely over to stoneware production. This paper contends that the difficult transition between ceramic manufacturing technologies played a role in the decline of the handicraft pottery industry in the early 20th century. Stoneware production required firsthand instruction, large capital investments and resource networks, new labor structures, and an understanding of changing consumer expectations. The analysis uses documentary and archaeological evidence from the potter Elijah Cornell as a case study of technological change in the operation of a traditional American earthenware business.   HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 47(4): 45–70 (2013)  [pp. 265–290]

Part V.  Transport Enterprises

17.  On The Archaeology of Early Canals: Research on the Patowmack Canal in Great Falls, Virginia
Richard J. Dent

Abstract: The Patowmack Canal is an important artifact of early post-colonial development in the United States. Under construction in 1785, the canal system utilized the channel of the Potomac River in conjunction with five canals built to by-pass rapids and falls. This paper examines the historical context of this undertaking along with archaeological investigations at the Great Falls by-pass canal in Virginia. Archaeological excavations were employed to reveal the various technological elements of this first generation canal system. This technology is also shown to be a reflection of the institutional milieu which produced this artifact.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 20(1): 50–62 (1986)  [pp. 293–305]

18.  The Material Culture of an Industrial Artifact: Interpreting Control, Defiance, and Everyday Resistance at the New South Wales Eveleigh Railway Workshops
Lucy Taksa

Abstract: The Eveleigh Railway Workshops operated between the 1880s and the late 1980s in Sydney, Australia. Using an interpretive approach and drawing on the concept of the cultural landscape, the relationship between the spatial arrangement of Eveleigh’s nonportable structures, its operations management strategies, and the material-cultural practices of its employees are investigated. In addition, archival and oral sources are related to the site’s material culture in order to explain how patterns of work and interaction gave rise to discourses and practices of control and defiance. On this basis, attention to such intangible and ephemeral dimensions of the archaeological record as workers’ resistance can provide an effective means for understanding how one group of people actively shaped their physical environment.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 39(3): 8–27 (2005)  [pp. 307–326]

19.  Interpreting Chinese Worker Camps on the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah
Michael R. Polk

Abstract: The first transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869. Unique to this construction was the employment of thousands of ethnic Chinese railroad workers. The Promontory Mountains portion of the route had the largest concentration of railroad construction camps. Of 19 camps recorded during an inventory of the Golden Spike National Historic Site, four appear to be of Chinese ethnic origin. These camps were smaller than European American camps, with fewer features. Both Chinese and European American artifacts were found at Chinese worker camps, revealing the practicality of and need for locally produced and railroad-issued items, as well as the workers’ desire to use ethnically familiar items. A comparison with Chinese construction camps in Nevada and California reveals important similarities, suggesting that up to 500 Chinese construction laborers may have lived at the four Utah sites. A multifaceted explanation is provided for the separation of Chinese camps from other workers’ camps.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 49(1): 59–70 (2015)  [pp. 337–338]

20.  Rails Built of the Ancestors’ Bones: The Bioarchaeology of the Overseas Chinese Experience
Ryan P. Harrod and John J. Crandall

Abstract: Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese immigrants came to the United States to construct the transcontinental railroad. Their impact went beyond labor and helped to develop the social and economic landscape of the country through their ingenuity. Archaeological analyses are especially important for understanding the Chinese in historical America because of the lack of written records. Bioarchaeology can contribute by providing a glimpse into the lives of these resourceful and diverse laborers who toiled to contribute to the development of the railways in the 19th century. The reanalysis of the remains of 13 Chinese men recovered from a cemetery in Carlin, Nevada, reveals that most individuals exhibited widespread musculoskeletal development suggesting frequent, repeated bodily strain. Additionally, all 13 individuals exhibited skeletal trauma or pathologies. The men recovered from Carlin reveal the extent to which Chinese railroad workers endured exploitative oppression and racism, while simultaneously embodying resilience.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 49(1): 148–161 (2015)  [pp. 339–352]

Part VI.  Kilns and Metallurgy

21.  The Spanish Colonial Kiln Tradition of Moquegua, Peru
Prudence M. Rice and Sara L. Van Beck

Abstract: Twenty-six kiln locations have been identified in association with Spanish colonial bodegas (wineries) in the Moquegua valley of southern Peru. The kilns are variable in size, design, and construction, and their differences may relate to the two probable functions of the kilns: firing earthenware vessels used in fermenting and transporting wine and brandy, and calcining calcium minerals or other materials. The Moquegua kilns show similarities to the hornos arabes (Moorish kilns) of Spain, as well as some features common to Spanish technological transfer in the New World.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 27(4): 65–81 (1993)
[pp. 355–372]

22.  Fur Trade Era Blacksmith Shops at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, North Dakota
Steven L. DeVore

Abstract: Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, North Dakota, represents the major outpost of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri between 1829 and 1867. Seven seasons of archaeological excavations conducted at the site for the purpose of obtaining structural information blacksmithing tools and features. Historical and field data indicate that four different locations were occupied by the blacksmith shops during the fort’s existence. The present discussion is concerned with the structural layout and associated artifacts recovered from the 1850s blacksmith shop and the final smithy, built by the U.S. Army in 1864.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 24(3): 1–23 (1990)  [pp. 373–395]

23.  Contours of Labor and History: A Diachronic Perspective on Andean Mineral Production and the Making of Landscapes in Porco, Bolivia
Mary Van Buren and Brendan J. M. Weaver

Abstract: The first Spanish silver mines in South America were located in Porco, Bolivia, and while these were rapidly eclipsed by the spectacular output from nearby Potosí, Porco has remained an important mining center until the present. The long-term history of mineral production is embodied in the landscape, which bears evidence of a diverse set of labor practices and technologies deployed at different scales to process ore. A decade of archaeological research at Porco demonstrates the role this landscape has played in mediating the relationship between indigenous workers and the broader political and economic forces that prevailed under the Inka, Spanish, and Republican regimes.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 46(3): 79–101 (2012)  [pp. 397–419]

24.  Seventeenth-Century Metal Production at San Marcos Pueblo, North-Central New Mexico
Ann F. Ramenofsky, C. David Vaughan, and Michael N. Spilde

Abstract: Histories of the early colonial period of the remote New Mexican colony (A.D. 1540-1680) are framed in terms of pueblo conversion, conflicts between church and state, and accommodation-resistance between the pueblos and the colonizers. Missing from these histories are detailed discussions of mining and metal production, even though it is widely recognized that Spaniards came north looking for metal beginning with Coronado’s entrada in A.D. 1540. Accumulating archaeological evidence is beginning to change historical understanding of this neglected part of colonization history. In north-central New Mexico, San Marcos Pueblo is a microcosm of early colonial mining activity in the colony. To elucidate the San Marcos story, relevant histories, geology, archaeology, and materials are used. This broad methodological approach helps reveal the pattern of 17th-century metal production in the colony. The results are important for building knowledge about metal production in the New Mexico colony and for expanding scholarly understanding about this significant part of Spanish colonization on the far northern frontier.  HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 42(4): 105–131 (2008)  [pp. 421–447]