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An Archaeology of Structural Violence
Michael P. Roller
Foreword by Paul A. Shackel
23 22 21 20 19 18 6 5 4 3 2 1
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University
System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University,
Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University,
New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University
of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
List of Illustrations ix
Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
1. An Archaeology of the Twentieth Century in the Anthracite Coal
Region of Northeast Pennsylvania 7
2. History of the Anthracite Region, 1830 to 1897 31
3. The Memory of Violence: The Lattimer Massacre of 1897 51
4. Migration, Part 1: The Social and Material Landscape of the
Company Town 77
5. The Archaeology of Machinic Mass Consumerism and the
Logistics of the Factory Floor in Everyday Life 105
6. Migration, Part 2: Emancipation and Catastrophe 136
7. The Destructive Character: Renewal and Memory 163
8. Conclusion 189
Notes 207
References 209
Index 231
illustrations
There are truly multitudes in this text who speak through their support,
knowledge, and inspiration. I want to thank my colleagues and mentors
at the University of Maryland who have shaped my ideas here through
their own research, classes, and conversation. A special thanks goes to
my colleague and coach, Paul Shackel, who always trusted me to “do
the right thing” throughout the course of this project. I am grateful for
the conversations I have had with Mark Leone which gave structure to
this work. He initiated the pursuit of a critical archaeology in the 1980s
and continues to push its boundaries. Thanks also goes to the review-
ers of this manuscript, particularly Dan Sayers of American University,
who helped me focus its sprawling wilderness into what you see today.
As archaeology is always only a team sport, thanks goes out to the
many field school students, volunteers, and collaborators who helped
in the gathering, documenting, and analyzing of this research. I could
not have done this without you. There are too many to name, but a
special thanks goes out to Justin Uehlein, Kristin Sullivan, Dan Siv-
ilich and BRAVO, Camille Westmont, Myles Schaller, Katie Nyulassy,
and Judy Joklik. Lastly, I will always be grateful to the community of
collaborators and supporters of Hazleton, Lattimer, and Pardeesville,
without whom this work would not have been possible. At minimum,
they welcomed me as a guest to share, explore, and think through their
history. A special thanks goes out to Joe and Barbara Michel, Angela
Fierro, Maurice DeLorenzo and the DeLorenzo family, Robert Burczy,
and Kent Jackson.
Finally, this book goes out to all those working in pursuit of justice
and a better world. I hope what I have written here can inspire you.
Introduction
The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are “still”
possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is
not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is the knowledge that the view
of history that gives rise to it is untenable.
Walter Benjamin (1970: 259)
the reasons behind the collapse of the local coal economy, the dissolu-
tion of community bonds, and relentless local government corruption.
In time, I came to view these emphatic acts of collecting and organiz-
ing not as remnant traces of a fading way of life, but as contemporary,
patterned collective responses to the trauma of the recent past.
Like much historical archaeology, the vernacular bricolage of mem-
ory work in the region concatenates the personal, the regional, and
the political, overlapping individual, familial, and community memo-
ries into collective presentations of the past. Such a glocalized heritage
seemed amenable to the methods of my discipline. With its primary
evidence derived from waste, ruins, surpluses, and redundancies, archaeo-
logical tellings of history recognize these aspects of material life not
simply for their contingency, but for their centrality within capitalist life
across the passage of time. In this recognition, the great ironies of the
twentieth century become patently visible, as an era marked by social
and material progress, human achievement, and communal growth,
but also by inequality, violence, social fragmentation, and nostalgia
(Hobsbawm 1994).
To answer our research questions, I chose to use the evidence at hand
to investigate the intervening years between the Massacre and today.
Archaeology is used strategically, opportunistically, and dialectically:
supported, amplified, and illuminated by archival and ethnographic
research, spatial analysis, and social theory. Varied in its use of sources,
it nonetheless returns again and again to the violence within everyday
material life. Nearly every chapter explores the changing landscape of
the company towns of Lattimer and Pardeesville and the shanties on
their periphery, as well as the leitmotif of the Massacre.
the chaPters
and historical contexts explored in detail in the rest of the book. The
often-antagonistic relationship between labor and immigration is pre-
sented in separate sections covering historic and contemporary milieu.
Theoretical sections cover the relationship between sovereign boundar-
ies and migrants in the past and present and the development, in the
latter half of the twentieth century, of vertically integrated neoliberal
and governmental subjectivities.
Chapter 2 provides a historical context of the anthracite region
against the background of industrialization, modernity, and mass im-
migration. In this chapter the development of the anthracite industry
is interminably linked to broader historical contingencies. Global de-
pressions, political developments, and mass migrations are all demon-
strated to have shaped the social and economic patterns in the region.
Chapter 3 describes the historical context of the Lattimer Massacre,
followed by a recounting of the event and the trial that followed. Next
there is an account of the archaeological survey conducted in the au-
tumn of 2011 with the members of BRAVO (Battlefield Research and
Volunteer Organization) of Monmouth, New Jersey. The archaeologi-
cal account of the Lattimer Massacre described in this chapter exem-
plifies the capacity for archaeological evidence to be simultaneously
concrete and ambiguous.
Chapter 4 examines the objective violence of the company town
landscape, the setting for the antagonistic work and living conditions
that gave rise to the Massacre. The chapter outlines the history of mi-
gration to the region, explicating the material and spatial factors gov-
erning “new immigrant” labor. Specifically, the chapter describes the
development of shanty enclaves on the periphery of company-built
housing during the turn of the twentieth century. This chapter con-
cludes that these ethnic enclaves mark out new spaces of exception
in the landscape of the town. Their presence materializes ownership’s
new dependence upon immigrant surplus labor pools and mechanized
work processes to capitalize upon the fickle industry despite economic
depressions, fluctuating markets, and an increasingly organized craft
labor force.
Chapter 5 examines the motivations, characteristics, and material-
ity of what I term machinic mass consumerism on the national and local
scale. The chapter outlines the rise of this phenomenon in the middle
of the twentieth century, beginning with structural changes in political
Introduction · 5
Map 1.1. Map showing the location of Hazleton and Lattimer, where the re-
search took place (map by author).