Colorado Coalfield Research Articles

The Power of Collaborative Public Scholarship

Work conducted by the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project and Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission offers a longitudinal example of the power of collaborative public scholarship. After defining collaborative public archaeology, the article discusses issues around identifying descendant communities and other stakeholders, building and maintaining relationships, and the political nature of public archaeology and stewardship. While the collaborative experiences described here were unique, the lessons are widely applicable. The goal in sharing these lessons is to illustrate the importance of maintaining relationships with descendant communities after the completion of a project and exemplify the wide impact of well-designed collaborative public archaeology.

Introduction to Special issue

Introduction to Special issue

Decolonizing Ludlow: A Study in Participatory Archaeology

Anthropology and museum scholarship has benefited from using decolonizing methodologies. Professionals practicing a decolonizing methodology have recognized their historic roles in creating and perpetuating imperialist epistemologies and have actively worked to disengage from this practice and shift their approaches. However, archaeologists in industrial contexts have not generally engaged in research methodologies that utilize a decolonizing approach, even when the historical contexts suggest these methodologies may be appropriate. This paper illustrates the value in utilizing decolonizing methodologies in appropriate industrial contexts by focusing on the work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project and the Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission.

The Public Archaeology of Class Warfare: The Colorado Coalfield War Project

The Public Archaeology of Class Warfare: The Colorado Coalfield War Project

From Goats to Gardens: Feeding Southern Colorado’s Working-Class Poor

The events of the 1913–1914 southern Colorado coal strike and the cooperative work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project provide the opportunity to explore archaeology’s relationship to poverty, hunger, and social justice. This article considers poverty in evidence of worker foodways. I consider what kinds of foods were promoted, what foods were available and from where, what foods were eaten, and how they were prepared. This article includes a comparison of prestrike, strike, and poststrike contexts. In so doing, it reveals the futility of dichotomous categories of deserving and undeserving poor as they relate to a transformative project of working-class poverty. It suggests that the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor has been and continues to be about justifying particular sorts of intervention in people’s lives meant to sustain exploitation of their labor.

“From the Eye to the Soul”: Industrial Labor's Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and the Rhetorics of Display

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was among the U.S. industrial labor movement's savviest practitioners of visual politics to champion human rights for workers. This article focuses on two key features of Jones's exploitation of the power of “the eye” for persuasive ends: first, was her keen appreciation of the rhetorical potency of the camera as an emerging technology with differing force for varied audiences, and second, was her trademark spectacles ritualizing rebellion, showcasing workers' resolve, and generating publicity. To mine these visual features, this essay situates them within two significant historical episodes: the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913–14, especially the Ludlow Massacre, and the Children's Marches of 1903 she led to lobby for child labor reforms.

Respectable Rags: Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal Strike

This article uses the events of the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal strike and the cooperative work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project to explore emergent historical narratives of working-class poverty and the role they play in shaping contemporary ideologies and public policy. It uses clothing as an entree into discussions of the deserving and undeserving poor, and asks how competing groups used dress in the context of the 1913–14 southern Colorado coal strike to fashion subjects in particular ways. In so doing, it demonstrates the ineffectiveness of either-or dichotomies of deserving and undeserving that still influence current public policy.

The Archaeology of class war: the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914

The Archaeology of class war: the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914

The archaeology of collective action

Saitta examines historical archaeology's success in reconstructing collective social action in the past and considers the implications of these reconstructions for society today. Recognizing that studies of the past can serve different social interests, creating knowledge that can be used to oppress or emancipate elements of society, Saitta argues that historical archaeology needs to move beyond its emphasis on recovering the individual to acknowledging and asserting its power to effect social change. Developing a theoretical and methodological approach to the archaeology of collective action, Saitta reviews some of the progress archaeologists have made in illuminating race-, gender-, and class-based forms of collective action in shaping the American experience. He then provides a case study illustrating the methods and insights archaeology brings to research on the Ludlow Massacre and the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-14. Throughout, Saitta frames key issues and definitions in a clear, accessible style and offers compelling and persuasive arguments for the epistemological reorientation of the discipline of historical archaeology. Notably, the book makes explicit the tie between the archaeological past and the political present. Excavations of the strikers' tent colony site at Ludlow, Colorado, provided novel insights into the survival tactics and resistance strategies of ordinary people locked in struggle with state and corporate power. The site became a powerful living memorial, resonating in contemporary labor struggles. Saitta's book will thus have special interest for the audience of scholars, students, and citizens who see archaeology as both a source of historical truth and a comment on the contemporary human condition.

Building a Working-Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project

Building a Working-Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project

Building a Working-Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project

(2003). Building a Working-Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project. Industrial Archaeology Review: Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 83-95.

The Unromantic West: Labor, capital, and struggle

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.

Teaching the Craft of Archaeology: Theory, Practice, and the Field School

Field schools are a rite of passage for archaeologists, the first experience of what for many is the defining activity of the discipline: fieldwork. While teaching competence in practical techniques is the minimum goal of any field school, this technical training must be situated within the broader goals that drive the fieldwork. The University of Denver Archaeological Field School provides the fieldwork for the Colorado Coal Field War Archaeological Project. This project is an experiment in archaeology as political action in the present. It explores the possibility of an emancipatory archaeology through engagement with contemporary audiences and struggles. In this paper we discuss some of the ways we try to link technical training with the admittedly unusual theoretical and political goals of the project, teaching not only skills but an awareness of the responsibilities these skills should bring.