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Life on the fence line. Early 20th-century life in Ross Acreage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2020

Haeden Stewart ,
Kendra Jungkind  and
Robert Losey
Haeden Stewart*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
Kendra Jungkind
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Robert Losey
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
*
Emails: hestewart@umass.edu; kjungkin@ualberta.ca; robert.losey@ualberta.ca
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Abstract

Despite widespread attention to the recent past as an archaeological topic, few archaeologists have attended to the particular social and ecological stakes of one of the most defining material features of contemporary life: the long-term effects of toxic industrial waste. Identifying the present era as the high Capitalocene, this article highlights the contemporary as a period caught between the boom-and-bust cycles of capitalist production and the persistence of industrial waste. Drawing on an archaeological case study from Edmonton, Alberta, we outline how the working-class shanty town community of Ross Acreage (occupied 1900–1950) was formed in relation to the industrial waste that suffused its landscape. Drawing on data from both archaeological excavation and environmental testing, this article argues that the community of Ross Acreage was defined materially by its long-term relationship with industrial waste, what we term a ‘fence-line community’.

Keywords

Industrial archaeologyAnthropoceneCapitalocenetoxicityarchaeology of pollutionenvironmental justicewestern Canadahistorical archaeology
Type
Articles
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , June 2020 , pp. 57 - 77
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

References

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Spradley, J., 1970: You owe yourself a drunk. An ethnography of urban nomads, Long Grove, IL.Google Scholar
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City of Edmonton Archives (CEA)Google Scholar
Peels Prairie Province Online Archive (PPP)Google Scholar
Alloway, B.J., and Ayres, D., 1997: Chemical principles of environmental pollution, London.Google Scholar
Auge, M., 2009: Non-places. An introduction to supermodernity, London.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, P., Welch, A.H., Stollenwerk, K.G., McLaughlin, M.J., Bundschuh, J., Panullah, G., 2012: Arsenic in the environment. Biology and chemistry, Science of the total environment 379 (2), 109–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blunt, A., and Wills, J., 2013: Dissident geographies, London.Google Scholar
Buchli, V., and Lucas, G., 2001: Archaeologies of the contemporary past, London.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, D., 2009: The climate of history. Four theses, Critical inquiry 35 (2), 197–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Y., Wu, F., Liu, M., Parvez, F., Slavkovich, V. and Eunus, M., 2013: A prospective study of arsenic exposure, arsenic methylation capacity, and risk of cardiovascular disease in Bangladesh, Environmental health perspectives 115 (6), 917–923.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, T., 2015: Ecocritism on the edge. The anthropocene as a threshold concept, London.Google Scholar
Cooper, R., and Harrison, A., 2009: The uses and adverse effects of beryllium on health, Indian journal of occupational environmental medicine 13 (2), 65–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Croucher, S., 2015: Capitalism and cloves. An archaeology of plantation life on nineteenth-century Zanzibar, New York.Google Scholar
Davies, P., and Lawrence, S., 2019: Engineered landscapes of the southern Murray–Darling basin. Anthropocene archaeology in Australia, Anthropocene review 6 (3), 179–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawdy, S., 2008: The taphonomy of disaster and the (re)formation of New Orleans, American anthropologist 108, 719–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawdy, S., 2010: Clockpunk anthropology and the ruins of modernity, Current anthropology 51 (6), 761–793.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Leon, J., 2015: Land of open graves, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duke, P., and Saitta, D., 1998: An emancipatory archaeology for the working class, Assemblage 4, at https://assemblagejournal.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/duke-and-saitta-1998-an-emancipatory-archaeology-for-the-working-class.pdf.Google Scholar
Eckersley, R., 2017: Geopolitan democracy in the Anthropocene, Political studies 65 (4), 983–999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisler, R., 1988: Arsenic hazards to fish, wildlife, and invertebrates. A synoptic review, Contaminant hazard reviews report 14, 1–65.Google Scholar
González-Ruibal, A., 2009: Time to destroy. An archaeology of supermodernity, Current anthropology 49 (2), 247–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
González-Ruibal, A., 2019: An archaeology of the contemporary era, London.Google Scholar
Goyette, L., 2004: Edmonton in our own words, Edmonton.Google Scholar
Gravelle, R., 2015: Hooverville and the unemployed. Seattle during the Great Depression, Seattle.Google Scholar
Harrison, R., and Schofield, J., 2010: After modernity, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hedges, C., 2012: Days of destruction, days of revolt, New York.Google Scholar
Ironside, R.G., and Hamilton, S., 1973: Historical geography of coal mining in the Edmonton district, Alberta historical review 20, 6–16.Google Scholar
Johnson, M., 1996. An archaeology of capitalism, Oxford.Google Scholar
Kirksey, E., 2016: Emergent ecologies, Durham.Google Scholar
Kirksey, E., Shapiro, N. and Brodine, M., 2013. Hope in blasted landscapes, Social science information 52 (2), 228–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolker, A., Palmer, C., Bragg, L. and Bunnell, J., 2006. Arsenic in coal, USGS Fact Sheet 2005–3152.Google Scholar
Lawrence, S., and Davies, P., 2012. Learning about landscape. Archaeology of water management in colonial Victoria, Australian archaeology 74, 47–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, S., and Davies, P., 2018: Archaeology and the Anthropocene in the study of settler Australia, in Torres de Souza, M. and Costa, D. (eds), Historical archaeology and environment, Cham, 229–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemly, D., 2009: Aquatic hazard of selenium pollution from coal mining, in Fosdyke, G. (ed.), Coal mining. Research, technology and safety, New York, 167–183.Google Scholar
Leone, M., 1995: A historical archaeology of capitalism, American anthropologist 97 (2), 251–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, S., 2010: Sacrifice zones, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, F., Li, X., Hou, L. and Shao, A., 2018: Impact of the coal mining on the spatial distribution of potentially toxic metals in farmland tillage soil, Scientific reports 8, 14925, at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33132-4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGuire, R., 2008: Archaeology as political action, Berkeley.Google Scholar
McGuire, R., and Reckner, P., 2003: Building a working-class archaeology. The Colorado Coal Field War Project, Industrial archaeology review 25 (2), 83–95.Google Scholar
Matthews, C., 2010: The archaeology of American capitalism, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Mels, T., 2014: Primitive accumulation and the production of abstract space. Nineteenth-century mire reclamation on Gotland, Antipode 46 (4), 1113–1133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monto, T., 2008: Old Strathcona before the Great Depression, Edmonton.Google Scholar
Moore, J.W. (ed.), 2016: Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, history and the crisis of capitalism, Oakland.Google Scholar
Moterjemi, Y., 2014: Encyclopaedia of food safety, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Mrozowski, S., 2006: The archaeology of class in urban America, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mullins, P., 2011: The archaeology of consumption, Annual review of anthropology 40, 133–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nassaney, M.S., and Abel, M.R., 1993: The political and social contexts of cutlery production in the Connecticut valley, Dialectical archaeology 18, 247–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Research Council (NRC), 2008: Managing health effects of beryllium exposure, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Nichols, P., and Selvig, W., 1932: Clinker formation as related to the fusibility of coal ash, U.S. Bureau of Mines, bulletin 364, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Nixon, R., 2011: Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, J., 2016: Scona lives. A history of the riverlots 13, 15, and 17, Edmonton.Google Scholar
Orser, C., 1996: A historical archaeology of the modern world, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paynter, R., 1989: Archaeology of equality and inequality, Annual review of anthropology 18, 369–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ., 2017: Climate change? Archaeology and the Anthropocene, Archaeological dialogues 24 (2), 175–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ., 2020: Anticipated futures? Knowing the heritage of drift matter, International journal of heritage studies 26 (1), 87–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ratneike, R., 2003: Acute and chronic arsenic toxicity, Postgraduate medical journal 79, 391–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, D., 2014: Cigarette marketing and smoke culture in 1930s Canada, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 25 (1), 63–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, B., 2002: Heavy metals in the environment, Boca Raton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayer, D., 2015: Alienation, praxis, and significant social transformations through historical archaeology, in Leone, M. and Knaupf, J. (eds), Historical archaeologies of capitalism, New York, 51–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schofield, J., 2005: Combat archaeology. Material culture and modern conflict, London.Google Scholar
Shackel, P., 2000: Craft to wage labor. Agency and resistance in American historical archaeology, in Dobres, M.-A. and Robb, J. (eds), Agency in archaeology, New York, 232–246.Google Scholar
Shackel, P., 2009: The archaeology of labour and working-class life, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Smith, N., 2010: Uneven development. Nature, capital, and the production of space, Athens, GA.Google Scholar
Spradley, J., 1970: You owe yourself a drunk. An ethnography of urban nomads, Long Grove, IL.Google Scholar
Swyngedouw, E., 2011: Whose environment? The end of nature, climate change and the process of post-politicization, Ambiente & sociedade 14 (2), 67–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starbuck, D., 2004: Neither plain nor simple. New perspectives on the Canterbury Shakers, Lebanon, NH.Google Scholar
Tingley, K., 2005: In the heart of the city. A history of Cloverdale from Gallagher-Hulls to the village in the park, Edmonton.Google Scholar
Tsing, A., 2005: Friction, Princeton, NJ.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Gan, E. and Bubandt, N. (eds), 2017: Arts of living on a damaged planet, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Vilches, F., 2016: Welcome to the desert of the real. Industry and capital in the Atacama, 1880–2015, in Resco, P. (ed.), Archaeology and neoliberalism, Madrid, 203–212.Google Scholar
Wurst, L., 2015: The historical archaeology of capitalist dispossession, Capital and class 39 (1), 33–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, L., and Welch, J., 2011: Displaced and barely visible. Archaeology and the material culture of homelessness, Historical archaeology 45 (1), 67–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar