With The Archaeology of the Logging Industry, John G. Franzen has undertaken the first serious attempt to summarize and synthesize the woefully underreported, geographically widely dispersed, and often extremely cursory archaeological investigations into what William B. Greeley, former chief forester of the US Forest Service, once called “the most American of our manufacturing industries” (Greeley, Some Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber Industry, 1917:60). Logging, and the vast supply of lumber and tree products it provided, sat at the very root of industrial and domestic development in the United States between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, underpinning the growth of mining, manufacturing, railroading, and settlement across the continent. The widespread deforestation and environmental devastation that followed, in turn, laid the foundation for eventual US governmental forest control and the modern national forest system.
The physical remnants of logging activities are ubiquitous on National Forest lands, and it is within this setting that most archaeological research has taken place. As Franzen points out, this is because government agencies are required, under Section 106 of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), to inventory and consider their effects on historic properties located on federal lands, whereas previously logged private lands are rarely subjected to archaeological research. As a result, very little published material is available in any format, because most information is hidden within the archaeological gray literature—the “unpublished manuscripts, technical reports, theses, or dissertations on file with various federal and state agencies or universities but not readily available to researchers” (p. 54). This makes Franzen's efforts all the more valiant since, despite the often-limited data present (the result of many federal archaeologists concentrating on facilitating “flag-and-avoid” cultural resource management rather than research), he has managed to cultivate a focused and robust overview that is of anthropological, social, historical, and environmental interest. Importantly, the book also places the discipline of historical archaeology in prime position to inform and critique ongoing historical analyses of the logging industry, as well as global efforts to navigate the difficulties of climate change and the “Anthropocene.”
Franzen's divides his book into nine chapters, each tackling an important element or theme of the archaeology of the logging industry. Beginning with Chapter 1, Franzen situates logging within its historical and modern cultural contexts, including its place as a factor in regional and global environmental changes. He introduces the concept of the “Anthropocene,” a term borrowed from geological discourse, as a potentially effective (although admittedly problematic) framework for analyzing the lasting effects of logging practices. Franzen also leverages historical archaeology as a powerful and incomparable tool for studying the environmental impacts of the industry, as well as anthropological issues that are frequently missing or distorted in traditional historical accounts, such as technological adaptation, landscape systems, social life, and class and ethnicity (each theme forming the basis of Chapters 4–7).
Chapter 2 presents a well-researched and relatively comprehensive history of the logging industry in the United States, from its origins in the Northeast states to its “full flowering” (Cox, The Lumberman's Frontier: Three Centuries of Land Use, Society, and Change in America's Forests, 2010:149) in the Great Lakes region and major subsequent migrations to the South and the Pacific Northwest. In Chapter 3, Franzen goes into depth regarding the methodology of historical archaeology as a tool for studying logging and also focuses a critique on issues of sampling bias and the depth and accessibility of information. Chapters 4–7, as mentioned, address the separate themes of technology, landscape and environment, social organization, and class and ethnicity, respectively. With Chapter 8, Franzen explores historical archaeology in practice with his case study analysis of two rare Camboose Shanty camp sites in northern Michigan. Finally, Chapter 9 presents a look toward the future, with a short reflection on the place of logging archaeology within the larger scope of Anthropocene studies.
The bookend arguments for using the Anthropocene concept as a framework for Franzen's archaeological analysis are well reasoned and passionate; however, throughout the remainder of the book, this idea is barely referenced, appearing in only one short section at the end of Chapter 5. Franzen's normally excellent use of archaeological examples to support his arguments feels underdeveloped at this point as well, as if the “framework” he is discussing were actually more of an afterthought. Still, the call for a more meaningful, environmentally engaged and conscious approach is noble and commendable. Altogether, Franzen's book is a remarkably well researched and thorough overview of the state of research, with a compelling argument for the power of historical archaeology for both lay readers and possible policy makers. For professional archaeologists, the extensive bibliography and well-referenced text function almost like a first-of-its-kind annotated bibliography, which will be an indispensable tool for guiding future research on the archaeology of forestry and logging.
