The coincidence between the archaeology of mining in Cyprus and my new (albeit small) research interest in the archaeology of work camps in western North Dakota is exciting. I spent the weekend reading some relatively recent publications from Bernard Knapp and his team who excavated the site of Politiko-Phorades in the eastern Troodos mountains of Cyprus (see here and here).
The site itself was a Late Bronze Age copper smelting site in impressive state of preservation. Discovered in the course of the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project and that team has worked to associated the site with larger systems established to support the extraction of copper from the Troodos mountains. Knapp argued that the site probably only functioned seasonally and was worked by individuals who also contributed to the local agricultural economy. A nearby settlement with access to arable land, then, provided agricultural support for the resource extraction. The system described by Knapp understands mining as a practice that functions at the physical margins of economic systems and remained dependent on longstanding subsistence practices. The emergence of large Late Bronze Age centers like Kition and Enkomi, however, almost certainly influenced the settlement patters that supported the extraction of mineral resources.
In a 2003 article in the American Journal of Archaeology, Knapp seeks to take this analysis a step further by exploring how these patterns of production have shaped communities. Drawing on evidence and models from world archaeology, Knapp reflected on the impermanence and marginal status of the Politiko-Phorades production site and its productive and ideational relationship to the surrounding landscape. The marginal position of mining communities forged a tension between social and economic isolation and profound dependence on “other places”. No one is from a mining community, but, at the same time, these places must have both generated and depended upon social understandings. Knapp regards the forms of habitus that emerge in these contexts as central to the formation of “imagined communities” necessary to ensure both social cohesion and economic productivity at industrial sites.
The archaeology of mining communities poses another unique set of problems. The disjunction between the social life of a community and the material reality of these sites is particular profound in that the sites are typically occupied for short periods of time and received minimal investments in features that would enable archaeologists to analyze social organization of the community. In fact, the handful of pottery recovered from the site of Politiko-Phorades that could have been associated with domestic activities does not seem to have received anything more than cursory analysis in Knapp’s preliminary publications of the site. In other words, the small amount of fine wares that probably derived from basic domestic activities at the site, primarily speak to “the specialized nature of the site” rather than providing the basis for understanding the efforts of Bronze Age metal workers to preserve ties to “the outside world” of socially constructed relationships. In the preliminary analysis and in the preserved evidence, then, the economic world of the mining community seems to overwrite the scant evidence for a social life.
Knapp concludes his 2003 article with a series of recommendations for the archaeology of community in an industrial context and suggests that three steps remain necessary:
At least three steps are needed to develop further an archaeology of communities:
1. to engage studies of place in examining the relationship between locality and community.
2. to refine and elaborate the concerted of the “imagined community”
3. to examine more closely and understand more fully the association among people, locality, community, and material culture as the outcome of specific social and historical processes.
In western North Dakota, the massive influx of workers in support of the oil industry has energized new discussions on the nature of communities in these otherwise sleepy (and we can say marginal) regions. The attitudes of longtime residents in these areas have centered on the disruptive effects of these new arrivals and this new industry on their communities. There has been less attention, however, on the communities that have formed among the new arrival to western North Dakota.
We know, however, that workers in western North Dakota follow longstanding practices common to mining and industrial communities. The investment in habitation is minimal and reflects an interest in maximizing the economic return on their efforts and the limited expectations for the long term sustainability of their activities. The boom in both sanctioned and unsanctioned work camps and the appearance of well-defined work sites provide a material locus for at least some activities central to social organization. There are complemented by less clearly defined areas such ranging from the bars, strip clubs, and restaurants that have grown up to serve the influx of works to jails, schools, churches, and town centers which have become places for the interaction between pre-existing communities and new arrivals.
The changes in western North Dakota have led both longtime residents and new comers to re-imagine their communities and establish new ways of viewing the local landscape and their own sense of place. While both groups recognized the local landscape as fundamentally productive (whether in terms of its mineral wealth or in terms of its agricultural potential), they nevertheless recognized fundamentally different relationships between lands, economy, and community. The ties between community and productive space which Knapp underscored in his articles have become contested as both sides read the landscape in an effort to legitimize their own practices and policies.
An archaeology of community in the context of western North Dakota will invariably consider the relationship between material objects, settlement, and social organization as set against changing notions of community and the physical and productive landscape.
