Migration, Modernity and Memory: the Archaeology of the Twentieth Century in a Northeast Pennsylvania Coal Company Town, 1897-2014

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: MIGRATION, MODERNITY AND MEMORY: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IN A NORTHEAST PENNSYLVANIA COAL COMPANY TOWN, 1897-2014 Michael P. Roller, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Paul A. Shackel Department of Anthropology The Lattimer Massacre occurred in September of 1897 in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. It has been described as the bloodiest massacre of the nineteenth century. In this event, a company-sponsored sheriff and a posse of local businessmen shot into a crowd of striking Eastern European mine laborers, resulting in the deaths of at least nineteen. However, the great significance of the event is not in the body count but the material contexts of its occurrence as well as its pre- and post- histories. Moreover, while the event can be securely consigned to history, the capitalist processes punctuated by this instance of violence are present throughout the century since its occurrence. In the region, coal company towns materialized carefully maintained racialized labor hierarchies in which new immigrants were confined to shanty towns at the periphery. The dissertation operates on an archaeological scale stretched across the longue durée of the twentieth century, documenting the transformation of a shanty town into an American suburb over the course of a century. The archaeological evidence hails from three excavations including a survey of the site of the Massacre and excavations of lots in the shanty enclave. This dissertation examines the trajectory of these settlements across the entire span of the twentieth century. With its primary evidence derived from waste, ruins, surpluses and redundancies accumulated over time, archaeological tellings of history recognize these aspects not simply for their contingency, but their centrality within capitalist social life across the passage of time. In this dissertation, I propose that a critical historical archaeology can contribute substantially to a nuanced understanding of the ironic developments of late twentieth century political economy. Contradiction, sovereignty, governmentality, states of exception, surplus enjoyment, cycles of creative destruction and reterritorialization, renewal, and subjectivation are explored by juxtaposing, grafting and merging archaeological evidence with social theory, textual evidence, ethnographic data and interdisciplinary scholarship to present an archaeological history greater than the sum of its parts. The result is both a history of the community and a schematic for an archaeological history of the twentieth century. MIGRATION, MODERNITY AND MEMORY: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IN A NORTHEAST PENNSYLVANIA COAL COMPANY TOWN, 1897-2014 By Michael Roller Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Advisory Committee: Professor Paul Shackel, Chair Professor Stephen Brighton Professor Julie Greene Professor Mark Leone Dr. Matthew Palus © Copyright Michael P. Roller 2015 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are truly multitudes in this text who speak through their support and inspiration. I want to thank my committee members, Paul Shackel, Stephen Brighton, Julie Greene, Mark Leone and Matthew Palus, and many other faculty mentors that have shaped my ideas here through their own research, classes, and conversation. A special thanks goes to my advisor, Paul Shackel, who knew strategically exactly when to advise and when to trust me to “do the right thing”. This dissertation is exactly what it is because of his mentoring. I also want to thank the many thoughtful, dedicated students of the Department of Anthropology who thought with me through this, challenging, inspiring and encouraging me along the way. The same goes for friends and family, without whom I would be lost. A special dedication goes to my parents Peter and Akiko Roller, whose life trajectory as immigrants propelled my interest in the subject. Another special thanks goes out to field school students and volunteers from all over who helped in the gathering, documenting and analyzing of this research. As archaeology is always only a team sport, I could not have done this without you. The same goes for Dan Sivilich and BRAVO. I must also thank the multitude of community supporters and collaborators (there is no distinction in my mind) for whom this work would not have been possible, at minimum for welcoming me as a guest to explore, and think with, their history. Lastly, a special thanks goes to my wife Adrienne and research collaborators Yoshi and Bella, for their enduring patience and love throughout this long process. ii iii Preface Migration, Modernity and Memory: Historical Archaeology of an Anthracite Coal Company Town 1880-2014 …it includes the whole century. We took it as a sort of symbolic day on which is unleashed… all the conditioning, all the needed facts, just because the day itself has happened. But it does not only contain the past; it also contains the future. Bernardo Bertolucci (1975: 12). The Lattimer Massacre occurred in September of 1897 in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. It has been described as the bloodiest massacre of the nineteenth century (Beik 1999). In this event shaded with brutality and the persistent fog of forgetting, a company-sponsored sheriff and a posse of local businessmen shot into a crowd of striking mine laborers of Eastern European origin. At least nineteen were killed instantly and more than forty were injured in addition (Pinkowski 1950; Novak 1996). The marchers were among a diverse group of immigrant laborers from Southern and Eastern Europe striking in the region for over a month for better wages, just and humane treatment, and better working and living conditions despite their status as new immigrants. Carrying the American flag on their march, they sought these rights as aspiring citizens of their newly adopted country. In the century since its occurrence, the Lattimer Massacre has been monumentalized, recalled, suppressed, reinterpreted, evoked, forgotten and rediscovered. Frequently, the memory of the event operates as a kind of critical iv constellation of social realities, reflecting contemporary discourses of class antagonism, capitalism and inequality, citizenship, and pluralist identity. While the archaeology, archival documentation and personal stories recounted in this dissertation range across the twentieth century and into the present, it is shot through with the image and memory of the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the milieu of racialized class tension that surrounds it. Naturally, the great significance of the event is not the body count but the circumstances of its occurrence and its memory: its pre- and post- history. Like the opening quote from Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento, an epic film about the growth of historical consciousness in the Italian peasantry, it is a day that, “…does not only contain the past; it also contains the future” (Bertolucci 1975: 12). Within the region at the time, coal mining company towns materialized carefully maintained racialized labor hierarchies. New immigrants were confined to shanty towns at the periphery, marking difference through distinctions of space, architecture and infrastructure. In this dissertation I propose that these material realities made it all too easy for violence to be perpetrated. Theorist Slavoj Žižek (2008:2) suggests that focusing on moments of explicit subjective violence can mislead us from recognizing the presence of subtler forms of ideological violence he describes as symbolic and systemic consisting of the antagonism at the heart of language and other forms of representation. In the context of this research I interpret this notion of representation as the construction of social identifications including those of race and ethnicity, which depend upon material and semiotic content for their construction and v maintenance. While Žižek hints at the materiality inherent in these dimensions of violence, it is clear he does not have access to the kinds of evidence archaeologists are privy to through their particular epistemological approach. Archaeological data is central to the aims of this research in three ways. First, in critically recognizing the material manifestations of power, domination and its contestations, this history is situated in the dynamics of grounded moments and settings (Leone 2005, 2010; Leone et al. 1987: 284; Matthews 2002; Palus et al. 2006). Secondly, the material investigations presence or materialize lost or suppressed memories of forgotten and difficult histories for the public (Buchli and Lucas 2001). This engagement, in turn presents the research further opportunities to explore the interactions between memory and materials fundamental to the investigation. A third role for material evidence is in adding alternative avenues of analysis and discourse to histories that continue to have implications for present communities (Little 1994; Mayne 2008; Shackel and Chambers 2004; Shackel and Gadsby 2011). The first chapter of the dissertation provides contextual information for the dissertation including an explanation of the, perhaps unusual temporal structure of the dissertation. This explanation proceeds by providing both a contemporary context for research as well as a theoretical foundation for the seven chapters that follow. The second chapter provides a history of the anthracite industry of Northeast Pennsylvania,

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