International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2023
The mass distribution of advertising and information via radio propelled capitalism into a new lo... more The mass distribution of advertising and information via radio propelled capitalism into a new logic of accumulation, penetrating private spaces with the collection and distribution of commodified information. Archaeological, ethnographic, and archival evidence about the heterogenous ways radio has been deployed, received, resisted, and adopted reveals that our system of monopolized mass media and surveillance capitalism is not an inevitable extension of technological advancement. Rather it is a choice, accommodation, and contingency brokered by hegemonic forces and diverse publics. Examples of radio usage from throughout history, however, demonstrates that cracks in the capitalist disimagination machine have been present since the beginning.
Using evidence of historical changes in landscape, community life, and material culture from a co... more Using evidence of historical changes in landscape, community life, and material culture from a coal mining company town in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania, Michael Roller introduces an archaeological approach to the structural violence on workers, citizens, and consumers that developed across the twentieth century. The study begins with an analysis of a moment of explicit violence at the end of the nineteenth century, an event known as the Lattimer Massacre, in which as many as nineteen immigrant miners were shot by a posse of local businessmen. From this touchstone, material history and theoretical contexts across the twentieth century are documented in a manner both locally specific and broadly generalizable. Historical archaeology is used strategically, opportunistically, and dialectically, supported, amplified, and illuminated by archival and ethnographic research, spatial analysis, and social theory. In the process, attention is brought to contradictions, ironies, and absences in our understandings of this formative era in labor history. This study illuminates the development of systematized violence and soft forms of social control enacted by the collusion of state and capital through materialities such as infrastructure, urban redevelopment, mass consumerism, governmentality, biopolitics, and the shifting boundaries of sovereign power. Varied in its use of sources, the study returns again and again to the material life and the shifting landscapes of the company towns and shanty enclaves of the region, as well as the violence of the Massacre. This archaeology of the recent past shows us the unconscious material foundations for present social troubles.
Critical Theory was first used in historical archaeology in the 1980s as a way of commenting upon... more Critical Theory was first used in historical archaeology in the 1980s as a way of commenting upon the ideological character of modern global capitalism. At the time, neither the work of Walter Benjamin nor Slavoj Žižek were integrated into archaeology. Their work can be combined to form a complementary understanding of rapid consumption and disposal in modern culture, forming a new basis for excavation in historical archaeology. Benjamin concentrates on wide-scale discard, connecting it to ever faster cycles of consumption and production. Žižek analyzes the world of objects, both three-dimensional and psychological objectifications, to understand the inability of modern humans to see the difference between their creations and evanescent meanings. This paper takes these definitions and applies them to slave quarters in Maryland, and spent shell casings from a labour massacre in Pennsylvania, making frequently dismissed remains into images showing how modern societies constantly make ...
There is a moment in the archaeological record, sometime within the 1920s, when the household was... more There is a moment in the archaeological record, sometime within the 1920s, when the household waste we uncover resembles our own trash more than that of previous eras. The Machine Age or the Interwar Period (1917–1940) yielded transformations in materiality and political economy producing new relationships between individuals, objects, and collective bodies. Their introduction at this time reinforced the development of particular forms of infrastructure and materiality, economic and political policy, and subjectifying practices that endure in their structuring effects to this day. Two major crises confronted the nation at the turn of the century. The first stemmed from anxieties held by the middle class over social fragmentation connected to immigration and labor strife. The second came in the form of unmet demand for excess production. An effort to confront these crises would find rationale and methods from an unlikely intellectual source, in the psychology of masses, crowds, and publics adapted out of psychoanalysis. The engineering of mass consumerism starting in the Interwar Period provided the nation’s business and political leaders with a parsimonious and diabolical solution to these crises. To understand the ironies and contradictions of the late twentieth century, we can build theory directly out of objects as Walter Benjamin intended through the materialist pedagogy of his work in the 1920s and 1930s. Observations from research conducted in the anthracite coal region of Northeast Pennsylvania by the Lattimer Archaeology Project furnish examples of object types materializing these changes in capitalism.
Chapter 6 takes up the changing spatial landscape explored first in chapter 4 in a much-altered p... more Chapter 6 takes up the changing spatial landscape explored first in chapter 4 in a much-altered political and economic environment, the decline of the anthracite coal industry in mid-century. This is also a period of emancipation for the company town accompanied by the development of new forms of identification and immigration of a different sort than that covered in previous chapters. Attention to the material record suggests that this emancipation from industrial control signalled the development of new forms of collectively organized communal improvements through direct democracy. Landscape archaeology also suggests that the intersection of contemporary subjectivity and space such as aspects of privacy, ownership, and differentiation also begin to take hold in this period.
Several planning documents connected to redevelopment efforts of the last quarter of the twentiet... more Several planning documents connected to redevelopment efforts of the last quarter of the twentieth century are examined in chapter 7 in combination with drastic changes in the landscape of the town and altered community social interactions. I assert that urban renewal resulted not only in drastic changes in the material and economic landscape, but more importantly, was also a process of subjectivization. Increasingly residents subjected each other to bureaucratic demands suggesting that, at least tactically, they had adopted the language of neoliberalism--renewal, and management--enunciating a new community comprised of atomized individuals adopting entrepreneurial attitudes to space, labor, and governance. At stake was the capacity for the materiality of landscape to remember, reproduce, and channel social relations in a manner responsive to the exigencies of uncertain economy.
Chapter 4 examines the material dimensions of structural violence underpinning the explicit subje... more Chapter 4 examines the material dimensions of structural violence underpinning the explicit subjective violence of the massacre. The chapter outlines the history of migration to the Anthracite region’s company towns, explicating the material and spatial factors creating and maintaining the racialized labor hierarchy. Specifically, the chapter describes the development of shanty towns on the periphery of company-built housing around the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This chapter concludes 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 exigencies of the industry, economic depression, stiff competition, and an increasingly organized craft labor force.
Chapter 5 examines the rise of what I describe as machinic mass consumerism on a national context... more Chapter 5 examines the rise of what I describe as machinic mass consumerism on a national context as well as its materialization in the local community. The chapter outlines a context for its rise in the latter half of the twentieth century, beginning with structural changes in political economy and national infrastructure during the Interwar Period. Specifically, the chapter connects the efforts of industrialists and social scientists concerned with the suppression of radical behavior and the profiteering of surplus production by the development of a consumer democracy. The archaeological evidence used in the chapter, from a shanty in Lattimer No. 2, contributes to a multiscalar analysis examining the implications of mass consumerism for the class positions of these most prototypical of producers, immigrant laborers and their families.
Chapter 1 provides a broad theoretical, historical, and ethnographic context to the research, and... more Chapter 1 provides a broad theoretical, historical, and ethnographic context to the research, and an overview of the major research questions addressed in the book. Topics such as the approach to the structural violence of everyday life in the twentieth century, the relationship between migrants and the sovereignty of political states, racialization, and the labor needs of late industrial capitalism are addressed. Relevant theoretical concepts from scholars such as Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin and Karl Marx are introduced here. The ethnographic and discursive context of immigrant discrimination in the present, and the manner in which it informs the broad trajectory of the research is presented. Lastly, the manner in which interdisciplinary data is applied to this research is also presented.
International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2023
The mass distribution of advertising and information via radio propelled capitalism into a new lo... more The mass distribution of advertising and information via radio propelled capitalism into a new logic of accumulation, penetrating private spaces with the collection and distribution of commodified information. Archaeological, ethnographic, and archival evidence about the heterogenous ways radio has been deployed, received, resisted, and adopted reveals that our system of monopolized mass media and surveillance capitalism is not an inevitable extension of technological advancement. Rather it is a choice, accommodation, and contingency brokered by hegemonic forces and diverse publics. Examples of radio usage from throughout history, however, demonstrates that cracks in the capitalist disimagination machine have been present since the beginning.
Using evidence of historical changes in landscape, community life, and material culture from a co... more Using evidence of historical changes in landscape, community life, and material culture from a coal mining company town in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania, Michael Roller introduces an archaeological approach to the structural violence on workers, citizens, and consumers that developed across the twentieth century. The study begins with an analysis of a moment of explicit violence at the end of the nineteenth century, an event known as the Lattimer Massacre, in which as many as nineteen immigrant miners were shot by a posse of local businessmen. From this touchstone, material history and theoretical contexts across the twentieth century are documented in a manner both locally specific and broadly generalizable. Historical archaeology is used strategically, opportunistically, and dialectically, supported, amplified, and illuminated by archival and ethnographic research, spatial analysis, and social theory. In the process, attention is brought to contradictions, ironies, and absences in our understandings of this formative era in labor history. This study illuminates the development of systematized violence and soft forms of social control enacted by the collusion of state and capital through materialities such as infrastructure, urban redevelopment, mass consumerism, governmentality, biopolitics, and the shifting boundaries of sovereign power. Varied in its use of sources, the study returns again and again to the material life and the shifting landscapes of the company towns and shanty enclaves of the region, as well as the violence of the Massacre. This archaeology of the recent past shows us the unconscious material foundations for present social troubles.
Critical Theory was first used in historical archaeology in the 1980s as a way of commenting upon... more Critical Theory was first used in historical archaeology in the 1980s as a way of commenting upon the ideological character of modern global capitalism. At the time, neither the work of Walter Benjamin nor Slavoj Žižek were integrated into archaeology. Their work can be combined to form a complementary understanding of rapid consumption and disposal in modern culture, forming a new basis for excavation in historical archaeology. Benjamin concentrates on wide-scale discard, connecting it to ever faster cycles of consumption and production. Žižek analyzes the world of objects, both three-dimensional and psychological objectifications, to understand the inability of modern humans to see the difference between their creations and evanescent meanings. This paper takes these definitions and applies them to slave quarters in Maryland, and spent shell casings from a labour massacre in Pennsylvania, making frequently dismissed remains into images showing how modern societies constantly make ...
There is a moment in the archaeological record, sometime within the 1920s, when the household was... more There is a moment in the archaeological record, sometime within the 1920s, when the household waste we uncover resembles our own trash more than that of previous eras. The Machine Age or the Interwar Period (1917–1940) yielded transformations in materiality and political economy producing new relationships between individuals, objects, and collective bodies. Their introduction at this time reinforced the development of particular forms of infrastructure and materiality, economic and political policy, and subjectifying practices that endure in their structuring effects to this day. Two major crises confronted the nation at the turn of the century. The first stemmed from anxieties held by the middle class over social fragmentation connected to immigration and labor strife. The second came in the form of unmet demand for excess production. An effort to confront these crises would find rationale and methods from an unlikely intellectual source, in the psychology of masses, crowds, and publics adapted out of psychoanalysis. The engineering of mass consumerism starting in the Interwar Period provided the nation’s business and political leaders with a parsimonious and diabolical solution to these crises. To understand the ironies and contradictions of the late twentieth century, we can build theory directly out of objects as Walter Benjamin intended through the materialist pedagogy of his work in the 1920s and 1930s. Observations from research conducted in the anthracite coal region of Northeast Pennsylvania by the Lattimer Archaeology Project furnish examples of object types materializing these changes in capitalism.
Chapter 6 takes up the changing spatial landscape explored first in chapter 4 in a much-altered p... more Chapter 6 takes up the changing spatial landscape explored first in chapter 4 in a much-altered political and economic environment, the decline of the anthracite coal industry in mid-century. This is also a period of emancipation for the company town accompanied by the development of new forms of identification and immigration of a different sort than that covered in previous chapters. Attention to the material record suggests that this emancipation from industrial control signalled the development of new forms of collectively organized communal improvements through direct democracy. Landscape archaeology also suggests that the intersection of contemporary subjectivity and space such as aspects of privacy, ownership, and differentiation also begin to take hold in this period.
Several planning documents connected to redevelopment efforts of the last quarter of the twentiet... more Several planning documents connected to redevelopment efforts of the last quarter of the twentieth century are examined in chapter 7 in combination with drastic changes in the landscape of the town and altered community social interactions. I assert that urban renewal resulted not only in drastic changes in the material and economic landscape, but more importantly, was also a process of subjectivization. Increasingly residents subjected each other to bureaucratic demands suggesting that, at least tactically, they had adopted the language of neoliberalism--renewal, and management--enunciating a new community comprised of atomized individuals adopting entrepreneurial attitudes to space, labor, and governance. At stake was the capacity for the materiality of landscape to remember, reproduce, and channel social relations in a manner responsive to the exigencies of uncertain economy.
Chapter 4 examines the material dimensions of structural violence underpinning the explicit subje... more Chapter 4 examines the material dimensions of structural violence underpinning the explicit subjective violence of the massacre. The chapter outlines the history of migration to the Anthracite region’s company towns, explicating the material and spatial factors creating and maintaining the racialized labor hierarchy. Specifically, the chapter describes the development of shanty towns on the periphery of company-built housing around the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This chapter concludes 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 exigencies of the industry, economic depression, stiff competition, and an increasingly organized craft labor force.
Chapter 5 examines the rise of what I describe as machinic mass consumerism on a national context... more Chapter 5 examines the rise of what I describe as machinic mass consumerism on a national context as well as its materialization in the local community. The chapter outlines a context for its rise in the latter half of the twentieth century, beginning with structural changes in political economy and national infrastructure during the Interwar Period. Specifically, the chapter connects the efforts of industrialists and social scientists concerned with the suppression of radical behavior and the profiteering of surplus production by the development of a consumer democracy. The archaeological evidence used in the chapter, from a shanty in Lattimer No. 2, contributes to a multiscalar analysis examining the implications of mass consumerism for the class positions of these most prototypical of producers, immigrant laborers and their families.
Chapter 1 provides a broad theoretical, historical, and ethnographic context to the research, and... more Chapter 1 provides a broad theoretical, historical, and ethnographic context to the research, and an overview of the major research questions addressed in the book. Topics such as the approach to the structural violence of everyday life in the twentieth century, the relationship between migrants and the sovereignty of political states, racialization, and the labor needs of late industrial capitalism are addressed. Relevant theoretical concepts from scholars such as Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin and Karl Marx are introduced here. The ethnographic and discursive context of immigrant discrimination in the present, and the manner in which it informs the broad trajectory of the research is presented. Lastly, the manner in which interdisciplinary data is applied to this research is also presented.
Uploads
Papers