The Archaeology of American Mining by White Paul J.;

Author:White, Paul J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2019-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.5. Ludlow tent colony after the massacre on April 20, 1914. Photograph by Bain News Service. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIGggbain-15859.

Archaeological investigations at Ludlow (Larkin and McGuire 2009; Reckner 2009; Saitta 2007) found surface evidence for approximately one-quarter of the strike camp’s historical extent (Saitta 2007: 68–69). Residents had dug shallow ditches and berms around the perimeter wall of their tents, which revealed not only the gridded arrangement of the camp but also the location of specific tent sites. In addition to mapping the site, archaeologists sought to investigate how the strike situation influenced the expression of identity. Ludlow’s strikers had resettled from company camps where ethnic neighborhoods existed. Although oral histories collected decades after the massacre noted that people “all got along,” interviewers did not record the voices of Hispanic, Asian, and African American families also present during the strike. Paul Reckner’s (2009: 313–23) analysis of interview transcripts suggests that some social distance may have existed, given that whites tended to be identified by personal names and nonwhites by ethnic terms.

Recovered artifacts suggest the presence of several ethnic groups. Excavations at a tent site in the northwestern part of the colony, for instance, identified suspender buckles inscribed with “Society of Tyrolean Alpinists” and a medicine bottle with embossed Italian writing that implies that the tent residents were Italian (Saitta 2007: 73). The recovery of a Knights of Pythias pin, among other fraternal pins recovered from excavations (Reckner 2009: 423–25), draws attention to the operation of multiple identities in the camp and, ultimately, suggests that even contradictory identities could reside within an individual. Had the pin belonged to Louis Tikas, a member of the fraternity killed during the massacre, he might have introduced himself to us variously as an American citizen and a Greek citizen, as a citizen who had been shot once before in the defense of citizens’ rights, as a miner who worked as a strikebreaker before becoming a labor organizer, and as a member of a union that espoused racial equality and a member of a fraternity that did not.

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