Archaeology of conflict and the interpretation of Palmares, a runaway settlement

54 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 37(3) 55

Douglas D. Scott

Oral Tradition and Archaeology: Conflict and Concordance Examples from Two Indian War Sites

ABSTRACT

The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the 1877 Nez Perce War, Battle of the Big Hole, abound in oral tradition and historical sources. Archaeological investigations at both sites have yielded substantial numbers of battle-related artifacts. The physical evidence supports and modifies the historical record in both cases. The Big Hole battle’s oral traditions were substantiated by the archaeological work as well. However, the Sand Creek Massacre’s oral tradition of the site location is in direct conflict with reanalysis of the historic documents and the archaeological findings. The two cases are contrasted to vividly point out how groups accept or reject evidence gathered using the scientific method when it either agrees or disagrees with their preconceived notions of cultural truth.

Introduction

We all know the records and documents that historical archaeologists utilize, especially first-hand accounts of historical events, are tantamount to eyewitness testimony. They provide the mate-rial for generating hypotheses that can be tested in the archaeological record. They also furnish the basis by which archaeologically observed patterns can be assigned historically meaningful identities. The archaeological record contains historical clues in the form of physical remains, including artifacts, features, and their contextual relationships. These material and spatial rela-tionships, or patterns, can reveal a great deal about the activities that occurred at a site. The historical archaeologist continually compares both sets of data as work progresses in order to best explain the events under scrutiny. Sometimes the insights of history and archaeology may be at odds, necessitating, on occasion, significant revi-sions in current perceptions of historical events.

Here, two separate events of the American Indian wars of the 19th century are briefly described and the different meanings each site

has for its constituent group are considered. How those meanings are either supported by or contradicted by conclusions drawn from archaeological findings will be discussed. The two sites—the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 involving the Cheyenne and Arapaho against the Colorado Volunteer Cavalry, and the 1877 Battle of the Big Hole, which pitched Nez Perce against the Seventh U.S. Infantry—have achieved a sacredness to the descendants of the native peoples who fought and died there. That sacredness manifests itself in a number of ways. Foremost is the overriding need to see the sites as memorials to past injustices. There is little conflict among today’s visitors to the sites regarding such an interpretation of the past. How other meanings manifest themselves is the primary focus of this contribution.

The archaeological data collected and used in this article is more fully reported in two publi-cations by Douglas D. Scott (1994, 2000). The primary data collection method employed was metal detecting inventory. Full explanations of the theory of battlefield archaeology and method can be found in Scott and Richard Fox (1987) and Scott et al. (1989), operating under the umbrella model advocated by Fox and Scott (1991) and the methods discussed by Melissa Connor and Scott (1998).

Battle of the Big Hole, Montana—1877

The year 1877 was a tragic one for the Nez Perce. Broken promises, misunderstood treaties, and conservative factions on both sides resulted in open warfare between the Nez Perce and the United States government. In July the Nez Perce fled Idaho, at first to find refuge in Montana with the Crow. In a final desperate bid for freedom, they attempted to reach Canada. This trek became an epic event in American history. The flight ended in October 1877, at Snake Creek near Bear Paw, Montana, with the surrender of most of the Nez Perce under the leadership of Chief Joseph. The Nez Perce fought several skirmishes and at least six pitched battles with the army along the way, effectively winning all but the last. A number of the battle sites along the Nez Perce flight route are now preserved

Historical Archaeology, 2003, 37(3):55–65.Permission to reprint required.

56 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 37(3) 57DOUGLAS D. SCOTT—Oral Tradition and Archaeology: Conflict and Examples from Two Indian War Sites

and interpreted as memorials by various state and federal agencies. One of those sites is Big Hole National Battlefield in southwestern Mon-tana. The site of the Battle of the Big Hole is now ascribed a sacredness by the Nez Perce for the events that occurred there on 9 and 10 August 1877. As a memorial, the site high-lights the tragic outcome of hostile relationships between two cultures.

An outline of the events leading to the Big Hole battle and the sequence of the battle as described in the primary sources (Howard 1881; Shields 1889; Beal 1963; Brown 1982) as well as from the synthetic work of Aubrey Haines (1991) is presented here.

The Nez Perce had agreed in 1877 to a reduced reservation area as a result of increased Euro-American settlement of Idaho and Washing-ton (Haines 1991). There was disagreement and hard feelings among and between tribal bands and individuals regarding the loss of ancestral lands. Some bands, particularly Joseph’s were reluctant to give up their lands, but they planned to do so. Some Nez Perce bands requested an extension for moving to the new reservation due to the need to assemble all their members and associated stock. The government denied the extension, thereby exacerbating an already tense situation. As anxi-ety built over preparations for leaving their home-land, a taunt by one or more tribal members over not revenging the death of his father at the hands of a local rancher led a young warrior, Wah-Lit-its to act (Howard 1881; Shields 1889; Beal 1963; Brown 1982; Haines 1991). Wah-Lit-its and two cousins went in search of the white settler responsible for the death. Not finding the settler, they raided a number of ranches and homesteads, killing several people, in the Carson’s Prairie and Salmon River, Idaho, area. This incident cre-ated an unalterable cycle of events that led to the open hostilities between the Nez Perce and the U.S. Army. The Nez Perce fled the area with the intent of finding sanctuary with their Montana-based Crow friends. The flight of the Nez Perce is an epic event in their history.

After fighting several pitched battles, the Nez Perce made their way into Montana and contin-ued on their trek to find the Crow. In the mean-time, Colonel John Gibbon began to assemble his scattered Seventh Infantry. Gibbon, commanding the District of Montana, pulled his under-strength companies from their scattered posts. They

reached Missoula 3 August and left for the field the next day to find the Nez Perce (Brown 1982; Haines 1991).

Gibbon’s column, less the wagons and a guard, rode about 3.5 mi. from the battlefield and found the Nez Perce camp late in the afternoon of 8 August. At eleven o’clock that night, the com-mand of 17 officers, 132 enlisted men, and 34 volunteers started down the mountain toward the village in the valley.

Gibbon moved his men along an old trail down into the valley. Passing over a wooded point of land (an old alluvial fan), Gibbon noted it as a good defense point should a retrograde movement become necessary. In hindsight, it was a wise observation, as it would later become known as the Siege Area. Gibbon passed on north of the fan and deployed his men along the trail that is situated on a steep hillside above the swampy willow-covered land west of the river. The Nez Perce village was arrayed in a slightly V-shaped line along the east side of the river in a camas meadow (Howard 1881; Shields 1889; Haines 1991).

Gibbon’s plan was to charge the village at day-light (Shields 1889). However, a lone Nez Perce was seen coming out of the village just before dawn, and he was fired upon by a volunteer. This killing opened the battle. The command fired volleys into the sleeping camp and then charged across the river.

The Nez Perce were surprised and initially confused (Haines 1991). Many men grabbed their arms and (moving to the north, south, and east) found refuge in the willows, along river meanders, and on the terraces east of the camp. Some Nez Perce, reportedly mostly women and children, ran across the meadow to the terraces to the east of the village. The warriors quickly returned fire from their cover.

Although the attack was initially success-ful in taking most of the village by surprise, the soldiers were still under fire from the Nez Perce. Gibbon committed his reserves (Haines 1991) and left his command position along the western hillside to ride into the village. In order to deprive the Nez Perce of shelter and other amenities, the command attempted to burn the tepees. The army’s assumption was that with-out horses and shelter, the Nez Perce would be destitute and would return to the reservation a humbled group.


The Nez Perce were rallied by the exhorta-tions of their leaders, like Looking Glass, and they poured heavy fire into the village (Brown 1982). Within an hour, Gibbon realized his position in the village was untenable. The command was ordered to fall back across the river and through the willows to the timber-covered point of land he had noted earlier. As the demoralized command began to retreat, the Nez Perce warriors pressed the battle. The soldiers bunched up, causing a halting retreat. There was some hand-to-hand fighting along the retreat, and several more soldiers were killed. The retreat became somewhat chaotic.

As the command reached the old alluvial fan, they were met by several Nez Perce who began to fire upon them (Haines 1991). The soldiers charged up the fan’s steep toe and pushed the Nez Perce across the gulch that dissected the fan and up the hills on either side of the fan. Upon reaching the fan, Gibbon deployed his men. As some men began dragging in logs to form firing positions, the men of companies A and I, who had trowel bayonets, began to dig rifle pits. Others used knives and makeshift tools to create cover. The Nez Perce, in the timber on the south side of the fan as well as on the hill slopes above the soldiers, continued their fire.

A well-known warrior, Five Wounds, was at or near the Siege Area when he learned that his war mate Rainbow had been killed. A pledge to die on the same day had to be honored, and Five Wounds took a partially loaded magazine rifle and rushed up the mouth of Battle Gulch. He nearly gained the lip of the gulch when he was cut down in a hail of bullets. His body was not recovered by the Nez Perce, and it was later mutilated by General O. O. Howard’s Ban-nock scouts (Howard 1881; Haines 1991).

The Nez Perce essentially surrounded the rifle pits. They fired from the timber to the east and west of the entrenchments as well as from the hillsides to the north and west (Brown 1982; Haines 1991). Some warriors in a stand of pines south of the entrenchments and opposite the mouth of Battle Gulch were able to direct their fire very effectively. From the heights of the hill to the north of the rifle pits, the war-riors used trees as cover to fire at the soldiers and volunteers.

While some warriors were engaged in fight-ing the entrenched soldiers, other Nez Perce

returned to the village. The surviving women and children also returned. The Nez Perce began to mourn and bury their dead. Some were apparently buried in camas ovens that had been prepared for roasting the locally abundant camas root. Others were buried along the riv-erbank, and still others were carried away and buried by their surviving families. As the dead were buried, the Nez Perce attempted to salvage what they could from the village.

During the night of 9 August, the Nez Perce warriors continued to fire harassing shots at the soldiers (Haines 1991). The main body in the camp packed what belongings they could find and prepared to depart. With the sunrise, most of the people left the valley, departing to the east. A few warriors, perhaps 15, were left behind to keep the soldiers at bay. They did so until about eleven o’clock the night of 10 August, when they fired a departing volley and left.

These warriors joined their grieving families on a trek that would take them on a route south into Idaho and then east through Yellowstone National Park, and two months later, to the final battle on Snake Creek near Bear Paw, Montana. There the majority of the surviving Nez Perce, under the general leadership of Chief Joseph, surrendered on 5 October, bringing to a close the Nez Perce War.

Digging in and Fighting in the Siege Area: The Archaeological Evidence

The physical evidence of the battle is extensive (Scott 1994) (Figure 1). The entrenchments or rifle pits dug by Gibbon’s men are clearly evident in the Siege Area today (Scott 1994). There are visible signs of at least 23 rifle pits of different sizes in the Siege Area, arranged in a roughly shaped rectangle (Figure 2). There are several isolated pits, three along the sides of Battle Gulch and one to the northeast of the main group. An old prospectors pit, west of Battle Gulch, was used by some of the volun-teers during the fight (Haines 1991).

The Siege Area contains significant archaeo-logical evidence (Scott 1994) of the combat that occurred there. It is also an area that has received the most intense post-battle use and that has undoubtedly affected some of the archaeological patterns related to the fight. At one time, there was a U.S. Forest Service barn


and a museum building on the site as well as associated water and electrical lines. The Forest Service and, later, the National Park Service also maintained residences and associated outbuild-ings to the west of the site. In addition, there was once a parking lot and a number of picnic sites situated in or adjacent to the Siege Area. Despite these impacts, the archaeological data has survived surprisingly well.

Buttons, pieces of equipment, cartridge cases, and bullets were found in the Siege Area (Scott 1994). Fifty-nine cartridge cases (.45–70 caliber) were recovered in the area. These cases represent 26 individual Springfield firearms. The majority of cases cross match with others. The .50–70-caliber cartridge cases found in the Siege Area entrenchments tend to concentrate in the western rifle pits. This distribution is consistent with the historically documented location of most of the volunteers during the latter stages of the battle. A single .44-caliber rimfire cartridge case fired in a Model 1860 Colt Conversion was also found in this area, as was a .50–70-caliber cartridge case fired in a Remington Rolling Block rifle.

Bullets of various calibers were found in and around the entrenchments as well as in the areas historically identified as Nez Perce posi-tions. The .45–70-caliber bullets were found throughout the Siege Area. A few were found among the entrenchments, but most were outside the entrenchment proper. A large concentration was noted on the northeastern edge of the fan, and smaller concentrations to the south and up the slope about 250 yd. to the west.

The other caliber bullets, those more likely fired in Nez Perce guns have a similar distribu-tion. However, more lead scraps (unidentified bullets and bullet fragments) as well as .50–70-caliber and .44-caliber bullets were found among the entrenchments than the .45–70-caliber bullets. Many of the other caliber bullets were found embedded in the fan edge or to the northeast.

The fight in the Siege Area is exceptionally well documented in the source materials (Howard 1881; Shields 1889; Haines 1991). Not only did surviving soldiers and volunteers identify which shelter pit they occupied, they also pointed out trees and other areas where the Nez Perce took shelter.

The Nez Perce also vividly recalled the names of the warrior participants and which individual

FIGURE 2. Detail of the Big Hole Battlefield Siege Area showing the rifle pits and the .45-caliber and .50-caliber bullet distribution. Note the two bullet concentrations in Battle Gulch near the Five Wounds death site. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Midwest Archeological Center.)

FIGURE 1. Big Hole National Battlefield showing the primary features of the park and the distribution of the artifacts recovered during the archaeological investiga-tions. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Midwest Archeological Center.)


trees they utilized for cover (McWhorter 1986; 1991). This makes the Siege Area one of the most thoroughly documented battle sites in the West. The archaeological evidence is somewhat biased due to the intensity of post-battle occupa-tion and site use, but the archaeological data con-firms the historic documentation at a surprising level of confidence (Scott 1994). The distribu-tion of .45–70 cartridge cases demonstrates that the army gained the Siege Area under fire and then entrenched. There was little movement of the soldiers and volunteers after that episode.

The Nez Perce cartridge case and bullet distri-butions indicate that the soldiers were definitely under fire from most directions during the remainder of the battle. While extensive, the Nez Perce fire appears to have originated from a limited number of firearms. There may have been four different .44-caliber rimfire Henry or Model 1866 Winchesters used at the Siege Area: one or more Sharps, a Spencer, captured .45–70-caliber army weapons, and .50–70-caliber Springfields as well as at least one Remington Rolling Block rifle. While the army believed they were under fire by numerous Nez Perce during the latter part of 9 August and during 10 August, the Nez Perce indicated that less than 15 warriors kept the army at bay during 10 August (McWhorter 1986; 1991). The cartridge case evidence suggests at least eight firearms used by the Nez Perce were employed against the soldiers. This number represents about one-half the number of Nez Perces identified by Yellow Wolf (Haines 1991:99) and is certainly in agree-ment with the Nez Perce accounts. It is also consistent with the percentage of army firearms represented in the archaeological recorded as discussed previously.

One of the more dramatic accounts of the battle, from either side, is the death of Path-katos Owyeen (Five Wounds) during a suicide charge up Battle Gulch (McWhorter 1986). The specific site is commemorated today with a wooden feather interpretive device. Two con-centrations of .45–70-caliber bullets (containing six and five, respectively) were found embedded on eastern side of Battle Gulch. The group of five is within 5 m of the feather interpretive device, and the group of six is about 8 m from the marker. Either group could be associated with the death of Five Wounds or some other

episode in the battle. However, the proximity of the bullet concentrations to the historically documented location of Five Wounds death site is another intriguing coincidence of archaeologi-cal evidence and history converging.

The Five Wounds death site interpretive maker is surrounded by Nez Perce offerings. Many were placed by the family that frequently visits the site. In fact, at the time the archaeological investigations were undertaken, the great grand-son of Five Wounds was employed as a park interpreter. When the two clusters of .45–70-caliber army bullets were discovered, the Five Wounds descendent was present. In one of the more poignant moments of my career, the descendent sat down among the bullets and said to me, “Thank you, Doug. I now know where my great-grandfather died.”

A scientifically defensible and responsible inter-pretation of those bullet clusters is simply that the bullets’ distribution is evidence of close-range fighting in the Siege Area and is consistent with the oral tradition of the Nez Perce regarding the death site of Five Wounds. On the other hand, the Nez Perce people accept the bullet clusters as definitive proof of their oral history, and archae-ology has made this particular site even more important and sacred because it is proven at a level of reasonable scientific certainty. Regard-less of how historical archaeologists see the data, these bullets and their context have achieved another level of meaning and importance to the Nez Perce.

Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado—1864

The Sand Creek Massacre is one of the most significant and tragic events in American history (National Park Service 2000). On 29 November 1864 Colonel John M. Chivington led a group of approximately 700 soldiers of the Colorado First and Third Volunteers from old Fort Lyon (near present-day Lamar, Colorado) to an Indian village of more than 100 lodges on Sand Creek, which was then also known as the “Big Sandy.” Approximately 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indi-ans under the general leadership of the Cheyenne peace chief, Black Kettle, were camped at this village, believing they were under U.S. Army protection (Greene 2000). As instructed by Colorado Governor John Evans, the Indians had


earlier presented themselves to the U.S. Army at Fort Lyon, at which time they were told to remain at their Sand Creek camp. The Indian camp was at the edge of the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation that had been established by the 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise. Nevertheless, volunteer troops led by Chivington, all eager to take vengeance on any available Indians for dep-redations to eastern Colorado settlers, launched a surprise attack upon the village. The strike began at dawn when the soldiers fired upon the Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment with small arms and cannon.

Many of the villagers who survived this ini-tial attack fled to the north, upstream. Approxi-mately one mile above the village, according to most accounts of the massacre, the Indians shel-tered themselves in hastily dug trenches along the banks of the creek. This area, known as the “sandpits,” was one of the areas of fiercest fighting. The army troops brought at least two 12-pounder mountain howitzers into use there.

By day’s end, at least 150 Indians—mainly women, children, and elderly people—had been killed. On the army’s side, 10 soldiers died and 38 were wounded. Although Chivington’s troops returned to a heroes’ welcome in Denver, the Sand Creek Massacre was soon recognized for what it was—a national disgrace. It was investigated and condemned by two congres-sional committees and a military commission. Chivington lost his command and territorial Governor John Evans was forced to resign. The event also loosed a pent-up anger among the Cheyenne and Arapaho that erupted in near full-scale war for several years.

Sand Creek remains to this day an impor-tant sacred site to the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples. The site embodies disenfranchise-ment and the loss of life they suffered due to U.S. government policy toward them in the 19th century. Through a series of rather involved steps and actions, the Northern and Southern Cheyenne Tribes and the Northern and Southern Arapaho Tribes moved to have the site acquired by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site (National Park Ser-vice 2000). In 1998 Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell introduced Senate Bill 1695. The bill passed the Senate on 21 July 1998, passed the House of Representatives on 18 September 1998, and was signed by President William

Clinton on 6 October 1998, as Public Law 105-243. Known as the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site Study Act of 1998, the legislation directed the National Park Service in consultation with the State of Colorado, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and the North-ern Arapaho Tribe to “identify the location and extent of the massacre area and the suitability and feasibility of designating the site as a unit of the National Park Service system.”

The primary research question to be answered with the archaeological data was whether any evidence of the village attacked by Chivington existed in the study area. An archaeological project was undertaken in May 1999 with great success (Scott 2000). The artifacts, their dis-tribution on the landscape (Figure 3), and the context in which they were recovered provided the answer.

The artifact analysis and description clearly demonstrated the majority of recovered artifacts do indeed date to the mid-19th century for origin and use. While no individual artifact can be said to have been made and exclusively used in 1864, the composite assemblage is consistent with items manufactured and used at that time period. The majority of artifacts fall easily within the range of use for 1864 (Scott 2000).

Artifacts of the 1864 period were found scat-tered all along the Sand Creek drainage extend-ing from the traditional location of the village site (Figures 3 and 4) at the Dawson South Bend and continuing northerly for several miles along Sand Creek. There was only one significant concentration of artifacts in that 3.5 mile length of the creek, and that was on the eastern side of the creek about one mile north of the traditional village site.

The site traditionally identified as the village site, the Dawson South Bend, yielded only about a dozen 1864 period artifacts. While indicating some activity or activities occurred in this bend of Sand Creek about 1864, the artifacts did constitute evidence of the campsite. The more northerly areas along Sand Creek yielded only a few artifacts of the 1864 era as well. That evidence was found in the form of bullets and a cannonball fragment. These combat-related materials are widely scattered along either side of the creek, and there is no definitive evidence of camp debris of the 1864 period. However, the


scattered period artifacts do indicate that these lands played a role in the 1864 event.

The largest concentration of 1864-era artifacts (about 400) was found on the eastern side of Sand Creek about one mile north of the traditional

site. The artifact concentration, situated on an eastern terrace above Sand Creek, is about 450 m long, trending southeasterly to northwesterly and about 160 m wide. The artifacts found in the concentration represent common 19th-century Native American camp debris and include tin cups, tin cans, horseshoes, horseshoe nails, plates, bowls, knives, fork, spoons, barrel hoops, a coffee grinder, a coffee pot, iron arrowheads as well as combat items such as bullets and cannonball fragments (Scott 2000).

The concentration includes artifacts that are usually considered unique to Native American sites of the 19th century. Besides the arrow-heads, some of which are in an unfinished state, there are a variety of iron objects modified for Native American uses. These artifacts include knives altered to awls, iron wire altered to awls, fleshers or hide scrapers, strap iron altered by filed serrations as hide preparation devices, and several iron objects altered by filing to serve an as-yet-unidentified cutting or scraping purpose.

The presence of a Native American campsite with artifacts dating to about 1864 begs the ques-tion: Is this the Cheyenne and Arapaho village occupied by Black Kettle? Short of finding an item with a known 1864 camp resident name glyph scratched on it, other lines of evidence must be used to make the identification. There is a wealth of comparative data from Cheyenne and Arapaho annuity requests, annuity lists, and other correspondence that provides a set of com-parative data (Scott 2000). The Cheyenne and Arapaho were parties to several treaties with the U.S. government, which obligated the gov-ernment to supply the tribes with a variety of goods. These annuity payments were made to the tribes beginning in the 1850s and continued until well after 1864.

The annuity lists, requests, and correspondence were researched and clearly demonstrate that most of the artifact types found are the same types as listed for the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Tin cups, bowls, plates, coffee grinders, coffee pots, kettles, pans, knives, forks, spoons, fleshers, axes, butcher knives, horse tack, guns, lead, and bullets are consistently listed. These are the durable goods, the ones that can be expected to survive in the archaeological record and, indeed, were found during the field investigations. There are many more items of a perishable nature, such as flour, sugar, salt, dresses, etc.,

FIGURE 4. George Bent’s map of the Sand Creek vil-lage site The numbers on the map correspond to the handwritten legend: (1–6) the camp distribution, (7) the bluff area, (8–9) the sandpits where some of the heaviest fighting occurred after the village was abandoned, (10) the soldiers’ deployment, (11) Colonel Chivington’s trail, (12) the artillery placements, and (13) Sand Creek. (Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.)

FIGURE 3. The distribution of artifacts found at the Sand Creek Massacre Site, Colorado. Contour interval is 100 ft. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Midwest Archeo-logical Center.)


that would leave only minor or no traces in the archaeological record.

Ideally, there should be a list of goods cap-tured and destroyed by the Colorado Volunteer Cavalry at Sand Creek compiled after the attack on the village. But, given the unit’s laxity of military protocol on any number of fronts, per-haps it is not surprising that no such list has surfaced during the documentary research. The closest to a list is a brief statement by cavalry-man Morse Coffin describing the aftermath of the attack, “and the other [tepees], together with the many tons of Indian supplies which the village contained, were piled and burned … . There must have been tons of dried buffalo meat, and large and numerous packages of coffee, sugar, dried cherries, … saddles, bridles, and lariats, robes, and skins, … numerous new axes, … many well-filled medicine bags” (Wegman-French and Whitacre 1999)

Other comparable sources were also consulted. These included lists of captured and destroyed goods from three other Cheyenne camps dating to within five years of the Sand Creek event (Afton 1997; Scott 2000). Two of those sites (Pawnee Fork, Kansas, and the Washita battle-field, Oklahoma) had also been archaeologically studied. The lists and archaeological data show a remarkable degree of correspondence and indi-cate that the concentration of artifacts found at Sand Creek are consistent with a Native Ameri-can camp of the 1860s era.

Another issue addressed was whether or not there is evidence in the archaeological record that this is the village attacked by the Colo-rado Volunteer Cavalry. Two lines of evidence confirm that this was the village attacked and destroyed by Colonel Chivington’s forces. First is the evidence of arms and munitions (Scott 2000). The village site yielded bullets for vari-ous calibers and types of firearms. Among the ammunition components are bullets for the .52 Sharps rifle or carbine, .54-caliber Starr carbine, the .54-caliber musket, .58-caliber musket, .36-caliber revolver, and .44-caliber revolver. These weapon types and calibers were used during the American Civil War and can be readily dated and identified. Lists of ordnance used by the First and Third Colorado Volunteer Cavalry units during late 1864 exist (Scott 2000). The concor-dance of the archaeological munitions finds and the list of weapons in the volunteers’ hands is

quite remarkable. Additional support comes from some limited archaeological investigation at one of the Colorado Volunteer campsites in eastern Colorado at Russville (Masich n.d.). Among the artifacts recovered at the site are numerous bul-lets of the types known to fit the handguns and shoulder arms of the First and Third Regiments. The Russville archaeological collection and the Sand Creek collection also show a very high degree of similarity.

Perhaps the single most important artifact type that can definitively identify this village as being attacked are cannonball fragments (Scott 2000). The Colorado Volunteers employed four 12-pound Mountain Howitzers during their attack. Cannon-ball fragments from 12-pound Mountain Howitzer spherical case rounds were recovered in the vil-lage and nearby. They are nearly unequivocal evidence in their own right that this is the site of the Sand Creek Massacre.

The firearms artifact distribution also adds to the story. There are two concentrations of firearms’ artifacts and several widely dispersed bullets (Scott 2000). The first concentration consists of bullets found in the village site. These bullets are both fired and unfired items. Almost all calibers associated with the Colorado Volunteer units are present. The unfired rounds quite probably represent bullets dropped or lost by the soldiers as they moved around the camp. Some rounds were probably dropped in the heat of the attack; others may have simply fallen from open cartridge boxes as the soldiers moved about. Another possibility is that some of the rounds rep-resent soldiers throwing away bullets after using the powder as fire starters, either during the time they camped in the abandoned village or while trying to burn and destroy the camp contents. A 12-pound howitzer case fragment was also found in the village. It provides mute testimony to the fact the artillery shelled the camp.

The second concentration of firearms artifacts was found on the west side of Sand Creek and about 300 m directly opposite the village. The firearms artifacts were found along a line about 300 m long. Sharps and Starr bullets were found as were three 12-pound case fragments. These bullets and cannonball fragments probably repre-sent rounds that overshot their intended targets in the camp or were simply ricochets from the firing on the camp. Another possibility is that the bullets and cannonball fragments represent


rounds fired at fleeing Cheyenne and Arapaho tribesmen. However, the narrow linear distri-bution more likely reflects overshot or ricochet rounds falling to earth once their maximum range was reached. This artifact distribution probably reflects firing along nearly the entire length of the camp and, as such, is another strong indica-tor that the camp was attacked and fired upon (Scott 2000).

The other widely dispersed firearms artifacts are quite literally found east of the camp rang-ing from 300 to 600 m and north of the camp ranging from a few tens of meters to well over 2.5 mi. Among the bullets closest to the camp are also mingled bits of village items, like the coffee grinder, that may reflect attempts to sal-vage a treasured item at the time the Cheyenne and Arapaho fled the attack on the camp. The distribution of these fired bullets and two pri-vately collected cannonball fragments clearly show the line of the flight for survival by the fleeing villagers and the pursuit by the Colorado troops (Scott 2000).

The firearms data is particularly striking in one respect, and that is the absence of bullets or other weaponry evidence of resistance in the camp itself. Bullets representing weapon types that can be reasonably associated with the Cheyenne and Arapaho are singularly absent from the artifact collection from the campsite. The absence of definitive artifacts of resistance sup-ports the Native American oral tradition that the attack came as a complete surprise. Evidence of combat or armed resistance by the Cheyenne and Arapaho is not great but is present in the fire-arms artifacts found along the flight for survival route, suggesting some village survivors escaped with their personal weapons (Scott 2000).

The final bit of evidence that identifies this site as Black Kettle’s village is the condition of the artifacts found in the camp. Every spoon, the fork, all tin cups, plates, bowls, and con-tainers (buckets, pots, and kettles) have all been crushed and flattened. Even the tin cans are crushed. The cast iron pieces (kettles, pots, and skillet) are broken. The patterns of crushing and breakage point to the intentional destruction of the camp equipage so as to make it unserviceable to its owners, as was standard military practice of the era.

Through a multidisciplinary approach that included historical research, tribal oral histories

and traditional methods (Roberts 2000), and archaeological investigations, the National Park Service Sand Creek Massacre Site Location Study resulted in the definitive identification of the massacre site. For the first time, there is conclusive physical evidence of the Sand Creek Massacre, as over 400 massacre-related artifacts have been located and identified. In addition, the Site Location Study brought together the most comprehensive research to date regard-ing the massacre’s location, including original maps, diaries, congressional testimony, newspa-per articles, interviews, and aerial photographic analysis. Moreover, the project also resulted in the recordation of numerous Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories on the Sand Creek Mas-sacre (Scott 2000).

As with any historical event, our understand-ing of the Sand Creek Massacre is still limited and obscured through time. Thus, although the length and extent of the Sand Creek Massacre have been conclusively identified with physical evidence, there are differing views regarding some of the specifics of the massacre within that boundary. As has been noted, the Sand Creek Massacre Site Location Study was prepared by the National Park Service in consultation with the Colorado Historical Society, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and the Northern Arapaho Tribe. All the groups concur on the massacre boundary. They also believe that all the primary elements of the massacre, including the Indian encamp-ment and the sandpits, are within the boundary. However, the groups have differing interpretations of the meaning of the evidence regarding the location of some of the specific elements.

The National Park Service, based on a prepon-derance of evidence and conclusion of reasonable scientific certainty, believes that the Indian village that was attacked by Chivington’s troops on 29 November 1864 is definitely identified. A reas-sessment of the historical record completed prior to the archaeological study included an analysis of an 1868 military map of the Sand Creek Mas-sacre Site that had only recently been found in the National Archives. The map indicated that an area north of the traditional site, the Dawson South Bend of Sand Creek, was more likely the site of the encampment (Greene 2000). The archaeological survey found approximately 400 artifacts concentrated in this same area.


The Northern Arapaho Tribe generally concurs with the National Park Service on the location of the village and sandpits. The other tribes disagree with those conclusions. Those tribes believe there are several lines of evidence that support their oral history that the site was in the Dawson South Bend of Sand Creek. George Bent, a mixed-blood Cheyenne survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, had drawn several maps at the turn of the 20th century that identified the Sand Creek Massacre Site in the bend of the creek (Figure 4) (Greene 2000; Roberts 2000). Two of the maps show the village within the crux of a 90-degree bend of Sand Creek. The tribes believe Bent’s maps match the configura-tion of the Dawson South Bend and are signifi-cant evidence that the village was located in that area. Three of 35 Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories indicate that the Dawson South Bend was the village site (Roberts 2000). Moreover, the Cheyenne Arrow Keeper, who is the tribe’s highest spiritual leader, blessed the Dawson South Bend as “Cheyenne Earth” in 1978, thereby des-ignating it as the Sand Creek Massacre site. For the Cheyenne, there is no more powerful evidence that the Dawson South Bend is the Sand Creek Massacre site than that designation bestowed upon it by the Arrow Keeper. While the tribes accept the study area as containing the massacre site, the historical and archaeological identification of the village site is rejected by most of the tribes because the data do not fit neatly with their oral tradition. Thus, for some of the tribes the power of oral tradition takes precedent over historical and archaeological data in this case.

Conclusions

These two case examples provide an interesting juxtaposition on the cultural meaning ascribed to place and the role of “objective” scientific study of past events and places. On the one hand is the Big Hole battle example. There we have an ideal example of how archaeology, history, and oral tradition support one another. At the Big Hole battlefield, archaeological evidence melded nicely with historical documentation and Nez Perce oral tradition. There were few conflicts in interpreting the data. In the Five Wounds death site example, all lines of evidence converged to add more immediacy to the Nez Perce meaning of that particular spot. The National Park

Service uses this “new” information in some of its interpretation. Certainly, the archaeological data has added detail to the interpretation of the event as it has clarified the location and movements of several of the army elements, has shown that the Nez Perce testimony and oral tradition is more accurate than the Army after-action reports, and has provided physical evidence of the battle in the form of camp debris, firearms and ammunition components, and personal items that can be used for display purposes.

The Sand Creek case provides us with a jar-ring example of another reality, that not every-one shares the same cultural values nor ascribes the same weight to disparate lines of evidence. To those of us trained in scientific methods of analysis, the answer seems simple. Three lines of evidence, historical documentation, archaeo-logical data, and oral tradition are evaluated and a conclusion drawn. Where one part of one line of evidence, oral tradition, diverges from the others, we explain it as the failure of memory to be passed accurately through three to five generations. Thus we accept the preponderance of scientific evidence and emerge with a reason-able and scientifically defensible conclusion. In the Sands Creek case, however, we have failed to consider the deep-seated cultural values and meanings placed on the traditional site by tra-ditional Native American religious and cultural practitioners. The National Park Service does not yet own nor manage the Sand Creek Massacre site. No formal interpretive agenda is planned at present. The decision on how the site will be interpreted is open, and one of the most vexing issues will be the resolution of the historic and archaeological evidence versus the oral traditions of the Cheyenne and Arapaho.

The lesson to be drawn from these examples is neither earthshaking nor a leap forward in theo-retical explanation. Rather it is a reminder to those of us trained in and practicing the scientific method that not all people share our viewpoint of the infallibility of the deductive method. We must all remain aware and be sensitive to the views and opinions of others. There, of course, is nothing particularly insightful in that state-ment. Rather it is more important to remember that meaning is imposed by our cultural percep-tions and background. When that meaning is confirmed by another source, then all is good and, in the Big Hole example, a greater trust is


developed between the parties. When that mean-ing is contradicted, each party retreats to their cultural belief system as a mainstay for support of their position. Most historical archaeologists are trained as anthropologists, and it is appropri-ate that we are reminded from time to time that not all peoples share the same values or beliefs. One should not be too surprised that there are disparate points of view, particularly when one is studying the anthropology of war.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my appreciation to Paul Shackel for inviting me to present an earlier version of this paper at the University of Maryland’s conference on Landscapes of Conflict. Comments offered by conference attendees and later by three anonymous reviewers were very helpful in strengthening the points made in the paper. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either the National Park Service or the Department of the Interior.

REFERENCES

AFTON, JEAN, DAVID FRIDTJOF HALAAS, ANDREW W. MASICH, WITH RICHARD N. ELLIS

1997 Cheyenne Dog Soldiers: A Ledgerbook History of Coups and Combat. Colorado State Historical Society and University of Colorado Press, Niwot.

BEAL, MERRILL D.1963 “I Will Fight No More Forever.” University of

Washington Press, Seattle.

BROWN, MARK H.1982 The Flight of the Nez Perce. Bison Books, Lincoln,

NE.

CONNOR, MELISSA, AND DOUGLAS D. SCOTT1998 Metal Detector Use in Archaeology: An Introduction.

Historical Archaeology, 32(4):73–82.

FOX, RICHARD A., JR., AND DOUGLAS D. SCOTT1991 The Post-Civil War Battlefield Pattern. Historical

Archaeology, 25(2):92–103.

GREENE, JEROME A.2000 Report on the Historical Documentation of the Location

and Extent of the Sand Creek Massacre Site. Sand Creek Massacre Site Location Study, Intermountain Regional Office, National Park Service, Denver, CO.

HAINES, AUBREY1991 An Elusive Victory: The Battle of the Big Hole. Glacier

Natural History Association, West Glacier, MT.

HOWARD, O. O.1881 Nez Perce Joseph. Reprinted in 1972 by DaCapra

Press, New York, NY.

MASICH, ANDREW E.n.d. Russville Archaeology Project: A Preliminary Report

on Ammunition and Ammunition Components. Manuscript, Office of the State Archaeologist, Colorado Historical Society, Denver.

MCWHORTER, L. V.1986 Hear Me My Chiefs! Nez Perce History and Legend,

Ruth Bordin, editor. Caxton Printers, Caldwell, ID.1991 Yellow Wolf: His Own Story. Caxton Printers, Caldwell,

ID.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE2000 Sand Creek Massacre Site Location Study.

Intermountain Regional Office, National Park Service, Denver, CO.

ROBERTS, ALEXA2000 Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal Oral Histories and

Traditional Tribal Methods Regarding the Location of the Sand Creek Massacre. Sand Creek Massacre Site Location Study, Intermountain Regional Office, National Park Service, Denver, CO.

SCOTT, DOUGLAS D.1994 A Sharp Little Affair: The Archeology of the Big Hole

Battlefield. Reprints in Anthropology, Volume 45. J and L Reprint, Lincoln, NE.

2000 Identifying the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre Site through Archeological Reconnaissance. Sand Creek Massacre Site Location Study, Intermountain Regional Office, National Park Service, Denver, CO.

SCOTT, DOUGLAS D., AND RICHARD A. FOX, JR.1987 Archaeological Insights into the Custer Battle.

University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

SCOTT, DOUGLAS D., RICHARD A. FOX, JR., MELISSA A. CONNOR, AND DICK HARMON

1989 Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

SHIELDS, GEORGE O.1889 Battle of the Big Hole. Rand McNally Co., Chicago.

WEGMAN-FRENCH, LYSA, AND CHRISTINE WHITACRE1999 Interim Report No. 2, Historical Research on

the Location of the Sand Creek Massacre Site. Intermountain Regional Office, National Park Service, Denver, CO.

WOODRUFF, C. A.1910 The Battle of the Big Hole. Contributions to the

Historical Society of Montana, 7:97–116.

DOUGLAS D. SCOTTGREAT PLAINS TEAM LEADERMIDWEST ARCHEOLOGICAL CENTERNATIONAL PARK SERVICE

LINCOLN, NE 68508

66 67MARK WALKER—The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado

Historical Archaeology, 2003, 37(3):66–80.Permission to reprint required.

Mark Walker

The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado

ABSTRACT

Because battlefields can be potent symbols in the construction of historical memory, they can remain sites of struggle for as long as that memory is important. History professionals, such as archaeologists, participate fully in these struggles. The commemoration of the Ludlow Massacre Site, a battlefield in the industrial wars of the early-20th century is discussed. The commemoration of Ludlow highlights the role of class interest in the construction of historical memory. Doing archaeology at Ludlow entails acknowledging these interests, both ours, as archaeologists, and those of the working class people who guard the memory of Ludlow.

Introduction

One is not permitted to speak of one’s wartime remi-niscences today, nor is one under any impulse to do so. It is an area of general reticence: an unmentionable subject among younger friends, and perhaps of mild ridicule among those of radical opinions. All this is understood. And one understands also why it is so.

It is so, in part, because Chapman Pincher and his like have made an uncontested take-over of all the moral assets of that period; have coined the war into Holly-wood blockbusters and spooky paper-backs and televi-sion media; have attributed all the value of that moment to the mythic virtues of an authoritarian Right which is now, supposedly the proper inheritor and guardian of the present nation’s interests.

I walk in my garden, or stand cooking at the stove, and muse on how this came about. My memories of that war are very different (Thompson 1980).

This passage, published 35 years after World War II, illustrates the fragility of and the role of power in the construction of social memory. Although Thompson’s memories remain alive, they are exiled from public airing and discussion, confined to a private realm. This is a familiar pattern. As the present becomes the past, people impose narrative structure where before there was none. Their confusing, contradictory, and disparate memories and experiences are filtered,

ordered, and disciplined to create coherent and meaningful narratives. Some narratives dominate and flourish, while others are stifled, driven out of the public realm and into extinction or at least in to their proponents’ homes. These latter become the property of cranks and special interest groups, at best interesting sidelights to the central “real” story, no longer quite history but memory or tradition. While exiled to the margins of mainstream memory, these alterna-tive visions can still maintain a living presence, private and local but, nonetheless, vital. And as political-economic conditions and alliances shift, these submerged histories may re-emerge or provide the seeds for changes in the domi-nant histories.

Submerged histories are not static fossil forms existing in isolation from the dominant historical narratives. Like the dominant forms, they are bound up with contemporary issues and struggles (Popular Memory Group 1982). The reason they survive is that they are important, and they are useful in the present. The histories of conflict highlight this process. That “history is written by the victors” is a truism. In battles and wars, it is a given that there are going to be at least two sets of interpretations. To follow from Thompson’s World War II example, the military personnel on Axis and Allied sides will have two different sets of recollections. But it is more than simply a case of victors and vanquished. Privates will have very different recollections from generals, and soldiers from civilians. Those who were civilians in Rotterdam, Dresden, or Nagasaki will not remember the war in the same way as those in New York, nor in the same way as the pilots and bombardiers in the planes that flew overhead (McGuire 1992; Linenthal and Engelhardt 1996).

Many of the papers in this volume deal with battles and how these are commemorated or remembered on the landscape, particularly through archaeology. In this article, a rather different kind of battle in a different kind of war is discussed. It was sparked by work on a multiyear archaeological project, the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project, in which sites associated with a particularly brutal labor strike in Southern Colorado are being investigated

66 67MARK WALKER—The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado

(Ludlow Collective 2000; Walker 2000). The defining moment of this strike in popular consciousness was the Ludlow Massacre, in which the Colorado National Guard killed more than 20 people in an attack on a tent colony of striking coal miners. You won’t read about Ludlow in military history. In fact, you’re rather unusual if you have read about it in any history. This is because the conflict was an industrial one, between corporations and a state government on one hand and striking workers and their families on the other. This article centers on the silencing of labor conflict in American public history and how workers in southern Colorado struggle to keep the memory of one such conflict alive. Archaeology can play a creative and important role in this struggle.

The Colorado Coal War and its Aftermath

The Colorado Coal Strike of 1913–1914 was one of the most violent strikes in United States history. Although they were ultimately defeated, the coal miners in this strike held out for 14 months in makeshift tent colonies on the Colo-rado prairie. Although the miners lost the Colo-rado strike, it was and still is seen as a victory in a broad sense for the union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) (Foner 1980; Fox 1990). The Coal War was a shocking event, one that galvanized U.S. public opinion, turned John D. Rockefeller, Jr., into a national villain, and eventually came to symbolize the wave of indus-trial violence that led to the “progressive” era reforms in labor relations (Adams 1966; Gitelman 1988; Crawford 1995). Coal mineFrs in Colo-rado did ultimately see some material gains.

The center of the strike was in Las Animas and Huerfano counties in the Southern Coalfield of Colorado (Figure 1). The coal seams occur in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The Southern Coalfield supplied high-grade bitu-minous coal, primarily used for coking coal for the steel industry, which supplied rails for the expanding western rail network. Because of the interest of the railroads in maintaining a steady supply of coking coal, the southern field was heavily industrialized, dominated by a few large-scale corporate operations. The largest of these operations was the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I). Founded in 1880 by John Osgood, CF&I produced 75% of

Colorado’s coal by 1892. CF&I was acquired by the Rockefeller and Gould interests in 1903 (Scamehorn 1992). In 1906, The Engineer-ing and Mining Journal estimated that 10% of Colorado’s population depended on CF&I for their livelihoods (Whiteside 1990:8–9).

Obviously, CF&I wielded formidable political clout in early 20th-century Colorado. Its control over the political life of Las Animas and Huer-fano Counties was nearly total. The Colorado mines themselves were notoriously unsafe, second only to Utah as the most dangerous in the nation. Miners died in Colorado coal mines at more than twice the national average (McGovern and Gut-tridge 1972:66; Whiteside 1990:74–75). In 95 coal mine deaths from 1904–1914 in Huerfano County, hand-picked coroner’s juries absolved the coal companies of responsibility in every case except one (Whiteside 1990:22).

The coal mines in the Southern Coalfield were located up canyons where the coal seams were exposed by erosion. Most of the miners lived in these canyons in company towns, in company

FIGURE 1. Map of the 1913–1914 strike zone showing the main coal camps and approximate location of the known strike camps.

68 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 37(3) 69MARK WALKER—The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado

houses, and bought food and equipment at company stores and alcohol at company saloons. The doctors, priests, schoolteachers, and law enforcement, such as it was, were all company employees. The entries to the camps were gated and guarded by deputized armed guards (Beshoar 1957:2; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:23; Foner 1980:196–198; Papanikolas 1982:39–40).

The workforce itself was largely immigrant labor from southern and eastern Europe, who had been brought in as strikebreakers in 1903 (Beshoar 1957:1; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:50; Papanikolas 1982:40). Before the strike, the UMWA counted 24 distinct languages in the Southern Coalfield camps. In 1912, 61% of the Colorado’s coal miners were of “non-Western European origin” (Whiteside 1990:48). This obviously had consequences for organizing the miners and maintaining discipline among them during the strike. It also resulted in the strike and its violence being popularly seen as a result of Greek and Balkan culture, rather than the conditions in the coalfields.

In 1903, the UMWA led a strike in the Colo-rado coalfields. This strike was successful in the Northern Coalfield of Colorado, but failed in the Southern. In 1910, the Northern opera-tors refused to renew the contract, and the miners struck for the next three years. In September 1913 the UMWA, which had been secretly organizing the Southern Coalfield, announced a strike there when the operators would not meet a list of seven demands (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:102):

1. Recognition of the union.

2. A 10 percent increase in wages on the tonnage rates. Each miner was paid by the ton of coal he mined, not by the hour.

3. An eight-hour work day.

4. Payment for “dead work.” Since miners were only paid for the coal they mined, work such as shoring, timbering, and laying track was not paid work.

5. The right to elect their own check-weighmen. Miners suspected, generally with good reason, that they were being cheated at the scales that weighed their coal. They wanted a miner to check the scales.

6. The right to trade in any store, to choose their own boarding places, and to choose their own doctors.

7. Enforcement of Colorado mining laws and abolition of the company guard system.

The crucial demand was recognition of the union.

Approximately 90% of the workforce struck, 10–12,000 miners plus their families (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:107). Those who lived in the camps were evicted, and on 23 September the striker families hauled their possessions through rain and snow out of the canyons to about a dozen sites rented in advance by the UMWA to house them. The UMWA supplied tents and ovens and organized the strikers into the tent colonies. The colonies were located at strategic spots covering the entrances to the canyons in order to intercept strikebreak-ers (Figure 1). Ludlow, with about 200 tents holding 1,200 miners and their families, was the largest of these colonies (Reed 1955:94–95; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:106; Papanikolas 1982:79–81).

The operators reacted quickly, bringing in strikebreakers. Like the strikers’ tents, which were fresh from the Paint and Cabin Creek Strike in West Virginia, the operators brought in the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, which specialized in breaking coal-mining strikes. The detective agency and the coal operators initiated a campaign of harassment against the strikers. The harassment took the form of high-powered searchlights playing over the colonies at night, murders, beatings, and the use of the “death special,” an improvised armored car that would periodically spray selected colonies with machine-gun fire. The purpose of this harassment was to goad the strikers into vio-lent action, which would provide a pretext for the Colorado governor to call out the National Guard, thus shifting a considerable financial burden from the operators to the state. Amid steadily escalating violence in the coalfields and pressure from the operators, Governor Ammons duly called out the National Guard, which arrived in the coalfields in October 1913 (Reed 1955:103–105; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:120–134; Papanikolas 1982:79–105).

After a brief honeymoon, the Militia commander General Chase, a Denver opthalmologist who had been involved in breaking the 1904 Cripple Creek Strike, essentially declared martial law in the strike zone. Highlights of this period of unofficial martial law included the suspension of habeas corpus, mass jailings of strikers, a cavalry charge on a demonstration by miners’


wives and children, the torture and beating of prisoners, and the demolition of one of the tent colonies at Forbes. Chase also enlisted a considerable number of mine guards as militiamen (Reed 1955:107; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:135–148; Sunsieri 1972; Papanikolas 1982:107–123; Long 1985).

As the cost of supporting a force of 695 enlisted men and 397 officers in the field bankrupted the state, all but two of the militia companies were withdrawn after six months. The militia companies that remained were made up primarily of mine guards. At about 9:00 A.M. on 20 April, the day after the miners at Ludlow had celebrated Greek Easter, gunfire broke out at the colony. The exact circumstances are uncertain. Those miners who were armed (how many, isn’t known) took positions in a railroad cut and in prepared foxholes to draw fire away from the colony. The militia sprayed

the tent colony with machine-gun and rifle fire. By the end of the day, the force facing the miners consisted of 177 militia, including two machine guns. In the evening, the arrival of a train between the militia and the tent colony permitted most of the people to escape. By 7:00 P.M. the tent colony was in flames and was being looted by the militia (Figure 2). The leader of the colony, Louis Tikas, was captured by the militia and summarily executed, along with two other miners. Casualty figures vary, sometimes wildly, but a good estimate is 25 fatalities by the end of the day, including three militiamen, one uninvolved passerby, and 12 children. During the battle, 4 women and 11 children took refuge in a pit dug beneath a tent. All but two, Mary Petrucci and Alcarita Pedregone, suffocated when the tent above them was burned. The dead included Petrucci’s three children and Pedregone’s two children. This pit

FIGURE 2. Ludlow shortly after the massacre. The wrecked stoves on the prairie still serve as an icon of Ludlow. (Denver Public Library, Western History and Genealogy Division.)


has been preserved and is now known as the Death Pit (Reed 1955; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:210–231; Foner 1980; Papanikolas 1982:207–237; Long 1989).

When news of Ludlow spread, the striking miners at the other colonies went to war. For 10 days they attacked and destroyed mines, fighting pitched battles with mine guards and militia along the 40 miles from Trinidad to Walsenberg. The fighting ceased when the desperate governor of Colorado asked for fed-eral intervention. After Ludlow and the 10-Day War, the strike dragged on for another seven months, ending in defeat for the UMWA in December 1914 (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:232–249; Papanikolas 1982:239–255).

After the strike ended, mass arrests were made of the miners, 408 in total, with 332 being indicted for murder, including the main strike leader, John Lawson. These trials dragged on until 1920. All arrests were eventually quashed with most cases never coming to trial, prob-ably due to Rockefeller’s influence, as he was anxious to see an end to the fallout from the strike. In contrast, 10 officers and 12 enlisted men were court-martialed for actions in Ludlow by the Colorado National Guard and exonerated (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:269–292).

Although it ended in the defeat of the union, the Ludlow Massacre focused national attention on the conditions in the Colorado coal camps and in labor conditions throughout the U.S. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was singled out and excoriated in the press and in a spectacular series of public hearings before the Commission on Industrial Relations (Adams 1966; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:312–332). The strike did lead to some significant changes, including a general shift on the part of corporate managers from violent confrontation with organized labor to a policy more of co-optation. It is also generally accepted wisdom that company town conditions improved throughout the U.S. as a result of the Coal War (Gitelman 1988; Roth 1992; Crawford 1995).

For the UMWA, Ludlow came to serve as an icon of industrial conflict. It was felt to mark a turning point in the struggle for union recognition. As a result of the increasing labor violence at the turn of the century, there was a growing belief among all classes of American society that the industrial system was in need

of, if not fundamental reform, some reform to stave off class warfare (Adams 1966).

The Construction of Memory

Archaeology is an inherently political enter-prise, bound up in, for example, ideologies of nationalism and colonialism (Trigger 1984, 1989; Gathercole and Lowenthal 1989; Layton 1989; Leone and Preucel 1992; Kohl and Faw-cett 1995a; Schmidt and Patterson 1995; Kohl 1998), of gender (Conkey 1991; Gero and Conkey 1991; Wylie 1992; Spector 1993), race (Leone 1995; McDavid and Babson 1997), and class (Leone et al. 1987; Duke and Saitta 1998; McGuire and Walker 1999; Patterson 1999). Archaeologists, drawn largely from the middle class, have tended to draw on interpretive models that reflect the interests and concerns of that class, models that ignore conflict and contradiction within the social order, empha-sizing instead its homogeneity, continuity, and the harmonious functioning of its various parts (Shanks and Tilley 1987; Paynter and McGuire 1991; McGuire 1992; Funari, this volume).

But archaeology can emancipate as well as legitimate or oppress. Through the archaeol-ogy project at Ludlow, an emancipatory and class-based archaeology was sought, “develop-ing an archaeology of, and for, the working class” (Duke and Saitta 1998). As a goal of the Ludlow project is to create an archaeology that is relevant for the working classes, one that extends beyond the middle-class orientation of archaeology, members of the project are part of a growing movement in archaeology that seeks dia-logues with groups that fall outside archaeology’s traditional audience (Leone 1995; McDavid and Babson 1997; Logan 1998).

However, doing an archaeology like this is easier said than done, especially if there is mistrust or simply polite bewilderment about what you are trying to do. The Ludlow project deals with a very different audience than archaeology’s traditional one. The United Archaeological Field Technicians aside, archaeology and organized labor have not often crossed paths. Those working on the Ludlow project have been confronted with the fact that many of the people who have the greatest interest in the site, for whom the memory of Ludlow is most important, are people who really don’t have much use for


archaeology, at least not archaeology as usual. Reaction among the mineworkers to the proposed work was at best cautious, generally ranging from polite bewilderment to outright antagonism. The antagonism is probably due to the doubt that academic professionals could contribute anything worth knowing to the story of Ludlow, although the actual expression of this reservation was somewhat earthier (Duke and Saitta 1998).

There is a very real awareness of the politics of history on the part of the miners. It is not every archaeology project where an important first step is convincing the landowner that you are not a Republican. The need for this was explained to the researchers as “History can be written a lot of ways and Ludlow is sacred ground for the mineworkers.” Ludlow is sacred ground and has been ever since the massacre. The interest of the mineworkers in Ludlow is not an abstract or neutral one, for that would render Ludlow and its memory meaningless.

The important point here is that the histories of Ludlow are not simply lying in the ground waiting for archaeologists to dig them up. They precede our arrival on the scene and are rooted in different interests from ours. For the project to be at all meaningful to the local community, archaeologists must understand and engage these histories and interests (Brecher 1986; Duggan 1986; Green 1986; Leone 1986; Shopes 1986; Bishir 1989; Leone and Preucel 1992; Shanks and McGuire 1996; Potter 1998). Research-ers moved from the study of history to that of memory and history making, leaving the familiar practices and attitudes of academic professionals and entering a terrain where the past is intimate, explicitly useful, and its meanings are jealously guarded (Popular Memory Group 1982; Thelen 1990; Portelli 1991; Hamilton 1994; Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998).

Unsurprisingly, discussions of memory mirror some of the debates over the nature of ideology. Much of the debate has been framed in terms of dichotomies that revolve around the opposi-tion between dominant and submerged sets of narratives and practices—official vs. vernacular, public vs. private, national vs. local, or history vs. memory. These dichotomies do highlight the existence of real underlying processes of power and domination (Hamilton 1994:12) and are useful for some projects (Bodnar 1992). However, they are inadequate when researchers

wish to look at the histories of these narratives or consider them in any detail. People do not contain within themselves different historical consciousnesses deriving from different forms of historical narrative that run along on sepa-rate but parallel tracks. Rather, these sources or narratives are pulled together, interpreted, and made coherent through preexisting understand-ings and experiences.

This coherent individual understanding of his-tory, where personal experience and formal his-torical narratives are integrated into a practical historical consciousness, is historical memory. It is a relation constructed through the interaction of a diverse set of historical sources, narratives, and practices (Figure 3), both public and private or informal, and through political-economic inter-ests, such as class, race, or gender.

The active negotiation of these sets of interests and narratives creates a personal but socially embedded understanding of the past that structures and provides both practical (action-oriented) understandings of identity and agency and also guidance in planning and anticipating the present and future (Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998:18). Historical memory is not an imposed dominant ideology, although dominant concep-tions through the historical public sphere do play a role in constructing it. The incorporation of these different narratives is not uncritical or passive. People do absorb and retain elements and narratives from official or dominant sources and may even do so in an unquestioning manner (Frisch 1990), but they interpret these narratives and assign meaning to them through their own

FIGURE 3. The construction of historical memory.


interests and experiences (Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998:22–32).

Archaeology is part of the historical public sphere, a constellation of media and institutions that serve to create national historical memory; institutions such as schools, historical sites, television programs, commemorative activities, and museums (Habermas 1991; Bodnar 1992:15, 19). These institutions act together, although not necessarily in concert, to create and com-municate the heritage that largely defines the nation (Bommes and Wright 1982:260). This historical public sphere is an arena with a set of rules within which public historical argumen-tation and, thus, political and social argumenta-tion take place through the creation of historical memory (Bommes and Wright 1982; Popular Memory Group 1982). The past becomes a theater for the enactment of dramas, presenting a primordial unity that denies social and political contradictions in the present. Within historical archaeology, for example, certain sites represent the nation, being our heritage, our history, and our past, while others represent the heritage of special interest groups within the nation.

The historical public sphere is an arena for debate but debates that are often structured by inequalities (Bodnar 1992:15–19). These structuring inequalities can be as crass as flows of money or interlocking directorates between corporate and historical boards and as subtle as the attitudes of the middle-class professionals who largely referee the debates (Bodnar 1992:15; Beik 1998). There are broad similarities in the narratives that tend to dominate in the end. These narratives are nationalistic and patriotic, emphasizing citizen duties over citizen rights. They emphasize social unity, the continuity of the social order, and gloss over periods of trans-formation and rupture (Bodnar 1992:13–19).

Public memory is still the result of negotia-tion and debate, albeit between opponents who are often mismatched. The domination of official histories is not total. The same historical event will be experienced, perceived, and interpreted in many ways, generating pasts as contradictory and heterogeneous as the social relations that ulti-mately spawned them (McGuire 1992: 816–817). Some of these pasts flourish, propagating through official commemorations and interpretations, school textbooks, and the mass media (Trouillot 1995). But the other pasts do not necessarily

disappear. The past is remembered through many means—photo albums, family conversations, and local commemorations of histories that have been excluded or marginalized within official history (Popular Memory Group 1982; Bodnar 1992; Funari 1993; Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998).

Remembering Ludlow

As early as 1916, letters, editorials, and cartoons in the United Mine Workers Journal were expressing the not unjustified concern that Ludlow would be erased from public memory. The memory of Ludlow became a battleground almost immediately after the massacre. In addi-tion to Ludlow’s seminal role in labor history, Rockefeller’s campaign to rehabilitate his image afterwards and to control the public perception of Ludlow led to its gaining a special place in U.S. history as a birthplace of professional public rela-tions (Gitelman 1988; Cockburn 1996; Martinson 1996). The response of the mine workers was immediate and effective. The pamphlet they put out in 1914 (Fink 1914) fixed the name as the “Ludlow Massacre,” rather than the “Battle of Ludlow,” or the “Ludlow Incident.” At the time, defending the idea that Ludlow was an atroc-ity committed by people as opposed to a battle between evenly matched sides or an unfortunate accident that just happened was not a difficult argument.

The UMWA bought the 40 acres surround-ing the site of the Ludlow colony before 1916 (Hayes 1916). John White, the president of the UMWA, officially proposed a memorial for the site at the 1916 UMWA convention (White 1916:35). The convention passed the proposal. Later that year several hundred coalminers met at the site of Ludlow and joined the union (United Mine Workers Journal [UMWJ] 1916). Regular commemorations seem to have been held at the site thereafter. The monument was finally dedi-cated 30 May 1918 (UMWJ 1918b) (Figure 4). The Death Pit was also preserved and consists of a concrete-lined pit into which people can still descend.

In subsequent strikes in Southern Colorado, the memory of Ludlow was invoked in mass meetings at the site. For one thing, being owned by the UMWA made it safe ground for miners to meet during strikes. During a strike in 1921, the UMWA erected four tents on the site


of Ludlow in symbolic defiance of an order by the Colorado Rangers not to erect tent colonies (Pogliano 1921). The Rangers were aware of the inflammatory symbolism of the tent colony. The International Workers of the World (the IWW or Wobblies), a rival union to the UMWA, also legitimated a major strike in 1927 by hold-ing a meeting at the site of Ludlow (Whiteside 1990:129).

In the time work has been done at Ludlow, the United Steelworkers have been participating in the UMWA annual memorial service at Ludlow. They are currently on strike at the CF&I (now Oregon Steel) plant in Pueblo. The steelworkers obviously delight in the historical parallels between the strike of 1913 and today’s. In 1998 and 1999 about 400 of them marched to Ludlow carrying a banner listing all the strikers killed there. In 1999 they also held a week-long series of community educational events prior to the memorial service, with speakers, exhibits, and labor-related movies.

The memory of Ludlow remains an important one to working-class people and organized labor and is still annually commemorated.

But Ludlow is vulnerable to forgetting for pre-cisely the reason that its memory is important to organized labor. It flies in the face of dominant middle-class conceptions of American society. Many of the cover illustrations and the corre-spondence from the United Mine Workers Journal after the Ludlow Massacre revolve around the contradiction between what happened at Ludlow and dominant conceptions of U.S. society.

For example, the cartoon in Figure 5 critiques the idea of the U.S. as a classless society. The heading on this cartoon, “Oh yes, we are part-ners,” refers to one of the reforms that came out of the massacre and its aftermath. Under the influence of his advisor, Mackenzie King (who later became Prime Minister of Canada), Rockefeller argued that labor and capital were, in fact, equal partners in industrial enterprises and should cooperate, an argument that still has resonance today, even among the leadership of some unions. He established the Colorado Industrial Plan, which was one of the first com-pany unions (Gitelman 1988). This cartoon is making the point that the partnership is, in fact, FIGURE 4. The Ludlow Massacre Memorial. Dedicated

30 May 1918.

FIGURE 5. “Oh! Yes, We are Partners.” For many middle-class Americans, Ludlow was the first hint that the rhetoric and reality of life in industrial America did not mesh (United Mine Workers Journal, 1 October 1914).


unequal—in living conditions, the profits from the enterprise, and the right to organize and form associations.

While the UMWA’s memorialization of Ludlow was an effort to maintain a history in danger of being submerged, this effort was itself the prod-uct of power struggles and differentials within the union, which highlights the difficulty in pigeon-holing dominant and submerged histories. Union politics and the residue of bitterness between the UMWA International Executive and the miners of Southern Colorado, who felt that they had been abandoned, led to two of the 1913 strike leaders, John Lawson and Ed Doyle, forming a separate and rival union in Southern Colorado (Hayes et al. 1918a, 1918b; UMWJ 1918a, 1918c). The dedication of the Ludlow Monument by the UMWA in 1918 (UMWJ 1918b) took place in the midst of this controversy. The monument and the dedication permitted the UMWA Interna-tional to lay claim to the history of Ludlow and prevents its use by the dual unionists. There are submerged histories within submerged histories. This part of the history of Ludlow has, other than archival traces, all but disappeared.

Forgetting Ludlow

Labor struggle and the life of labor is promi-nent, if that is the word, among those events and sites that are silenced in the historical public sphere, being instead commemorated by labor unions and working people themselves (Foote 1997:296). Given the sorts of interests that tend to drive and dominate public history, the silencing of labor struggle is unsurpris-ing. In the dominant mythology, the U.S. is a classless society—“we are all middle class.” Events that bear a resemblance to class warfare or that even point to the presence of class are not easily incorporated with this mythology. A second factor for the silencing is that labor struggle lacks a resolution or, to put it another way, historical distance (Foote 1997:300). Labor struggles continue today. They cannot be effec-tively quarantined in the past and “antiquarian-ized.” The problems that gave rise to them have not been resolved, and unions remain an uneasy and ambiguous presence on the fringes of middle-class consciousness.

The silencing of labor struggle can also have more obviously economic underpinnings. In

Southern Colorado, the remembered past needs to be considered in the context of deindustri-alization, the decline of coal mining, and local attempts to re-create the economic base of the area through heritage tourism. The dominant history of the area is that of the Old West. Trinidad, the largest town near Ludlow, is on the Santa Fe Trail. Its history is replete with cowboys, pioneers, Indian attacks, and figures such as Kit Carson, Dick Wootten, Black Jack Ketchum, and Bat Masterson. The attraction of this history is powerful. It provides a link not only to national histories of westward expansion and growth but to a mythology that, through Hollywood, has a truly global appeal. The his-tories of coal mining, company towns, and labor struggle pale in comparison (Papanikolas 1995:73–90; McGuire and Reckner 1998).

But these histories are not erased totally. They are too big a part of the past and the landscape, evident in the giant slack heaps and graveyards throughout the region. Although the last mine closed in 1996, coal mining is still a significant part of the experience of the local community, and its commemoration is increasingly prominent. In 1998 a coal miners’ memorial was erected in Trinidad’s historic district. The monument was erected by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the ceremony was strikingly pro-union (Bee 1997). Compared to similar such monuments, it appears to have been relatively uncontrover-sial. For example, a miners’ memorial in Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of considerable, although covert, political tensions (Scott 1995) and was ultimately demolished by civic authori-ties. This was also the case with a 1997 miners’ memorial designed to commemorate those who had died in local mines in Windber, Pennsylvania (Beik 1999).

As coal mining and coal miners recede into history, it becomes likely that there will be more official interpretation of this history and a softening of this history, a trend that we can see in other deindustrializing regions of the United States, such as the coal mining and steel towns of Pennsylvania (Abrams 1994; Mondale 1994; Staub 1994; Brant 1996; Stewart 1997). As industries leave the United States for overseas plants or become economically unfeasible, their histories are often sanitized, romanticized, and redefined as “heritage” (Lowenthal 1996; Karaim 1997; Brooke 1998), a trend that one journalist


aptly characterized as “Unemployment: The Theme Park” (Brant 1996). There is generally little room for labor history or the interpretation of labor struggle in this heritage of technological progress, entrepreneurs, and impressive, but, nonetheless, fetishized industrial artifacts and processes.

Archaeology and Memory

While many archaeologists may appreciate it theoretically, the political nature of the past is something that archaeologists have been dragged into in real life—generally reluctantly. Archae-ologists have found themselves embroiled with communities that, rather than being passive con-sumers of the pasts that archaeologists produce, challenged the right of archaeologists to produce those pasts without the involvement of the com-munity or even their right to produce these pasts at all (Condori 1989; Zimmerman 1989; McGuire 1992; Epperson 1997; LaRoche and Blakey 1997; Patten 1997).

As archaeologists, we know history matters, but it also matters to people outside the guild, people who may have different interests from ours—interests often rooted in some familiar issues such as ethnicity, race, gender, and class. Our findings and interpretations are sometimes used or rejected in unexpected ways and for unexpected reasons. Our audience is not homo-geneous. There are segments of this audience that are interested in the same things professional archaeologists are interested in and are content to accept our findings. But, as we are increasingly finding, there are other segments that, while they may be vitally interested in the past, may find our research questions irrelevant or even offen-sive (LaRoche and Blakey 1997).

Archaeologists and their audiences are pre-dominantly white and middle class. It doesn’t take intricate or obscure textual analyses to see this orientation in a lot of historical archaeol-ogy—for example, the celebrations of consumer-ism, the melting pot models of acculturation, or the discomfort with the idea of class (Wurst and Fitts 1999). The issue is not whether archaeol-ogy should be made political or relevant. It already is political and relevant. The question is for whom?

In the work at Ludlow, an audience was chosen and some decisions were made. Public interpre-

tive responsibilities at this site lie with organized labor, not only because the United Mine Workers owns the site of Ludlow and researchers work there at their pleasure but because of our own theoretical and practical concerns. Archaeology possesses considerable public appeal, although for exactly which public and why is open to inves-tigation. We can use the appeal of archaeology to reach audiences who are largely unfamiliar with labor history and, conversely, by making ourselves useful to organized labor, broaden the awareness of archaeology.

It is by making ourselves useful, not by displaying the intrinsic “objective” worth of archaeology, that the initial suspicion has been overcome and a dialogue with organized labor has been established. Of major interest to organized labor in Southern Colorado was simply raising public awareness of the massacre. This has been done through on-site tours, newspaper articles, talks and lectures, and a traveling exhibit. Members of the project spoke and maintained an exhibit at a series of community events on the Ludlow Massacre held by the United Steelworkers of America in Pueblo who were, and at the time of writing still are, on strike against Colorado Fuel & Iron. Kim Manajek, a student in the University of Denver’s Museum Studies program, designed and installed an interpretive kiosk at the site (Manajek 1999). The UMWA Local Women’s Auxiliary, which was largely responsible for the maintenance of the monument, reviewed the design of the kiosk. Their suggestions centered on strengthening the connection between the Ludlow Massacre and contemporary labor struggles in the area, thus ensuring that Ludlow was not consigned to a dead past—something the very presence of archaeologists may tend to suggest. In addition, Dean Saitta designed and organized a K–12 Teachers’ Institute in order to try to bring labor history into the school curriculum.

Interpreting the Ludlow Massacre to people who have little or no awareness of labor his-tory is not an unexpected benefit of the proj-ect to organized labor. The exhibit and the archaeological work have also been a way for unions to educate their members about their his-tory and about the sacrifices of union members. The exhibit was shown at the UMWA Ludlow Memorial Services in 1999 and 2000 and, as the project is covered in the national labor press


(Green 1999; UMWJ 1999), there has been recent interest in taking the exhibit to union halls.

Conclusion Ludlow is very recent for an archaeologi-

cal study, for many archaeologists shockingly so. But Ludlow does confront us with a site where archaeologists are forced to engage with audiences, audiences who will take our findings quite seriously. Ludlow highlights the political nature of history and archaeology. It is obvious that just looking at a site like this is a politi-cal statement. But what is less obvious is that it is just as much a political statement to not look at sites like this. The silencing of labor history sites and events, such as Ludlow, Blair Mountain, Lattimer, and Homestead, as well as their commemoration is bound up with histori-cal struggles and class interests. Histories are themselves historical, changing as struggles and alliances between interest groups shift as they change and are changed by the social terrain on which their struggles take place. The erasing or trivialization of labor struggle within the histori-cal public sphere involves a number of related processes and interests at local and national scales, from the conscious public relations cam-paigns of wealthy capitalists to middle-class atti-tudes towards labor and labor unions, from the disciplinary practices of academic professionals to the anxiousness of civic leaders anticipating tourist interests and desires.

Archaeology is an act of commemoration. It participates in the creation of historical memory, creating visions of the past that are rooted in present-day interests: not just our interests but also those of our audiences (Shanks and McGuire 1996). Engaging in dialogues with those outside the guild enriches archaeological and historical discourse by making us aware of the silences in the pasts we have been creating; thus, we open up new directions of research. This is not to deny the existence of a real past. Ludlow did happen. And as archaeologists, the skills and specialized knowledge we bring will provide important information on what happened at Ludlow. But the carefully mapped, expended bullets scattered among the charcoal staining, broken plates, toys, and buttons touch us in ways that go beyond the evidence. Knowing the importance of the past lies in knowing what

these “ways” are and why they came to be. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot notes, the authenticity of the past lies in the struggles of the pres-ent. An authentic past is one that engages us as witnesses, actors, and commentators (Trouillot 1995:150–151).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is product of many people’s work. In looking after the children, Ginette Walker worked harder on this article than I did. I wish to thank Randy McGuire, Dean Saitta, and Phil Duke for allowing me to participate in this project. I also wish to thank them, Pedro Funari, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on this article. Conversations with many others have contributed to my thoughts, prominent among them the staff and students of the University of Denver Summer Field Schools at Ludlow and Berwind. I am grateful to Paul Shackel for the opportunity to participate in the Commemoration, Conflict, and the American Landscape Conference at the University of Maryland in 1999. We work at Ludlow with the gracious permission of District 22 and Local Union 9856 of the United Mine Workers of America. They have kept the memory of Ludlow alive. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project is funded by the Colorado Historical Society, State Historical Fund.

REFERENCES

ABRAMS, JAMES F.1994 Lost Frames of Reference: Sightings of History and

Memory in Pennsylvania’s Documentary Landscape. In Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage, Mary Hufford, editor, pp. 24–38. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

ADAMS, GRAHAM1966 The Age of Industrial Violence, 1910–1915: The

Activities and Findings of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.

BEE, TANJA1997 Coal Miners Memorial: Five-Year Effort Culminates

in Dedication of Memorial in Honor of Area Miners. Trinidad Colorado. <http://www.trinidadco.com/stories/features/minermem.html> 4 August [viewed August 2001].

BEIK, MILDRED A.1998 Who Owns the Past? Windber, Pennsylvania, and

the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company. Paper presented at the Oral History Association Annual Meeting, Buffalo, NY.

1999 Commemoration and Contestation: Remembering the Unsung Miners of Windber Pennsylvania. Paper presented at the North American Labor History Conference, Detroit, MI.


BESHOAR, BARRON B.1957 Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a

Labor Leader. Colorado Historical Commission & Denver Trades & Labor Assembly, Denver, CO.

BISHIR, CATHERINE1989 Yuppies, Bubbas, and the Politics of Culture. In

Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman, editors, pp. 8–15. University of Missouri Press, Columbia.

BODNAR, JOHN1992 Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration,

and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

BOMMES, MICHAEL, AND PATRICK WRIGHT1982 “Charms of Residence”: The Public and the Past. In

Making Histories: Studies in History Writing and Politics, Richard Johnson, Gregor McLennan, Bill Schwarz, and David Sutton, editors, pp. 253–302. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

BRANT, JOHN1996 Unemployment: The Theme Park. New York Times

Magazine, 28 January:46–47.

BRECHER, JEREMY1986 A Report on Doing History from Below: The Brass

Workers History Project. In Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, editors, pp. 267–277. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA.

BROOKE, JAMES1998 West Celebrates Mining’s Past, But Not Its Future.

New York Times, October 4.

COCKBURN, ALEXANDER1996 Money Smoothed Troubled Oil; Public Relations in

the Petroleum Industry. The Nation, 263(19):10.

CONDORI, CARLOS MAMANI1989 History and Prehistory in Bolivia: What about the

Indians? In Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, Robert Layton, editor, pp. 46–59. Unwin Hyman, Boston, MA

CONKEY, MARGARET1991 Original Narratives: The Political Economy of

Gender in Archaeology. In Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, Micaela di Leonardo, editor, pp. 102–139. University of California Press, Berkeley.

CRAWFORD, MARGARET1995 Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of

American Company Towns. Verso, London.

DUGGAN, LISA1986 History’s Gay Ghetto: The Contradictions of Growth

in Lesbian and Gay History. In Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, editors, pp. 281–290. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA.

DUKE, PHILIP, AND DEAN J. SAITTA1998 An Emancipatory Archaeology for the Working Class.

Assemblage, 4 <http://www.shef.ac.uk./assem/4/4duk_sai.html> October [viewed August 2001].

EPPERSON, TERRENCE W.1997 The Politics of “Race” and Cultural Identity at the

African Burial Ground Excavations, New York City. World Archaeological Bulletin, 7:108–117.

FINK, WALTER H.1914 The Ludlow Massacre. District No. 15, United Mine

Workers of America, Denver, CO.

FONER, PHILIP S.1980 History of the Labor Movement in the United States,

Volume V: The AFL in the Progressive Era, 1910–1915. International Publishers, New York, NY.

FOOTE, KENNETH E.1997 Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscape of Violence

and Tragedy. University of Texas Press, Austin.

FOX, MAIER BRYAN1990 United We Stand: The United Mine Workers of America,

1890–1990. International Union, United Mine Workers of America, Washington, DC.

FRISCH, MICHAEL1990 American History and the Structures of Collective

Memory: A Modest Exercise in Empirical Iconography. In Memory and American History, David Thelen, editor, pp.1–26. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

FUNARI, PEDRO1993 Graphic Caricature and the Ethos of Ordinary People

at Pompeii. Journal of European Archaeology, 1(2):133–150.

GATHERCOLE, PETER, AND DAVID LOWENTHAL (EDITORS)1989 The Politics of the Past. Unwin Hyman, London.

GERO, JOAN M., AND MARGARET W. CONKEY (EDITORS)1991 Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory.

Blackwell, London.

GITELMAN, HOWARD M.1988 Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American

Industrial Relations. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

GREEN, ARLEE1999 UMWA Highlights Ludlow Massacre. America@Work,

November/December:23.


GREEN, JAMES R.1986 Engaging in People’s History: The Massachusetts

History Workshop. In Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, editors, pp. 339–359. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA.

HABERMAS, JÜRGEN1991 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An

Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Thomas Burger, translator. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

HAMILTON, PAULA1994 The Knife Edge: Debates about Memory and History.

In Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, Kate Darrian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, editors, pp. 9–32. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia.

HAYES, FRANK J.1916 Report of the International Vice President Frank J.

Hayes. The United Mine Workers Journal, 20 January:40–42.

HAYES, FRANK J., JOHN L. LEWIS, AND AL GREEN1918a Official Notice: To All of the United Mine Workers

of America. District 15 Correspondence, D15 1918-Apr–Dec, United Mine Workers of America Archives, Pennsylvania State University, State College.

1918b Official Notice to the Colorado Mine Workers. United Mine Workers Journal, May 2:10.

KARAIM, REED1997 Time out of Mine: Airstreams, Aging Hippies, and

UFOs Meet the Ghosts of Miners Past in a Well-Preserved Arizona Desert Town. Preservation, March/April:83–86.

KOHL, PHILIP L.1998 Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions

of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote Past. Annual Reviews in Anthropology, 27:2232–46.

KOHL, PHILIP L., AND CLARE FAWCETT (EDITORS)1995a Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

LAROCHE, CHERYL J., AND MICHAEL L. BLAKEY1997 Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New

York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology, 31(3):84–106.

LAYTON, ROBERT (EDITOR)1989 Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions. Unwin

Hyman, London.

LEONE, MARK P.1986 Symbolic, Structural, and Critical Archaeology. In

American Archaeology Past and Future: A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology, 1935–1985, Don P. Fowler, David J. Meltzer, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, editors, pp. 415–438. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

1995 A Historical Archaeology of Capitalism. American Anthropologist, 97(2):251–268.

LEONE, MARK P., JR., PARKER B. POTTER, AND PAUL A. SHACKEL

1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology, 28(3):283–302.

LEONE, MARK P., AND ROBERT PREUCEL1992 Archaeology in a Democratic Society: A Critical

Perspective. In Quandaries and Quests: Visions of Archaeology’s Future, LuAnn Wandsnider, editor, pp. 15–135. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

LINENTHAL, EDWARD T., AND TOM ENGELHARDT (EDITORS)1996 History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for

the American Past. Henry Holt, Metropolitan Books, New York, NY.

LOGAN, GEORGE C.1998 Archaeologists, Residents, and Visitors: Creating

a Community-Based Program in African-American Archaeology. In Annapolis Pasts: Historical Archaeology in Annapolis, Maryland, Paul A. Shackel, Paul R. Mullins, and Mark S. Warner, editors, pp. 69–90. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

LONG, PRISCILLA1985 The Women of the C.F.I. Strike, 1913–1914. In Women,

Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, Ruth Milkman, editor, pp. 62–85. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

1989 The Voice of the Gun: Colorado’s Great Coalfield War of 1913–1914. Labor’s Heritage, 1(4):4–23.

LOWENTHAL, DAVID1996 Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the

Spoils of History. The Free Press, New York, NY.

LUDLOW COLLECTIVE 2000 Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War, 1913–

1914. In The Absent Present: Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, G. Lucas, editor. Routledge, London.

MANAJEK, KIM1999 Ludlow Massacre Interpretive Kiosk. Master’s thesis, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

MARTINSON, DAVID1996 “Truthfulness” in Communication Is Both a Reasonable

and Achievable Goal for Public Relations Practitioners. Public Relations Quarterly, 41(4):42.

MCDAVID, CAROL, AND DAVID W. BABSON (EDITORS)1997 In the Realm of Politics: Prospects for Public

Participation in African-American and Plantation Archaeology. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA.

MCGOVERN, GEORGE S., AND LEONARD F. GUTTRIDGE1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin Company,

Boston, MA.


MCGUIRE, RANDALL H.1992 Archaeology and the First Americans. American

Anthropologist, 94(4):816–863.

MCGUIRE, RANDALL H., AND PAUL E. RECKNER1998 The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital and Struggle.

Paper presented at the 32nd Annual Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Salt Lake City, UT.

MCGUIRE, RANDALL H., AND MARK WALKER1999 Class Confrontations in Archaeology. In Confronting

Class, LouAnn Wurst and Robert K. Fitts, editors, pp. 159–183. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA.

MONDALE, CLARENCE1994 Conserving a Problematic Past. In Conserving Culture:

A New Discourse on Heritage, Mary Hufford, editor, pp. 15–23. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

PAPANIKOLAS, ZEECE1982 Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre.

University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.1995 Trickster in the Land of Dreams. University of Nebraska

Press, Lincoln.

PATTEN, M. DRAKE1997 Cheers of Protest? The Public, the Post, and the Parable

of Learning. In In the Realm of Politics: Prospects for Public Participation in African-American and Plantation Archaeology, Carol McDavid and David W. Babson, editors, pp. 132–139. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA.

PATTERSON, THOMAS C.1999 The Political Economy of Archaeology in the United

States. Annual Reviews in Anthropology, 28:155–74.

PAYNTER, ROBERT, AND RANDALL H. MCGUIRE1991 The Archaeology of Inequality: Material Culture,

Domination, and Resistance. In The Archaeology of Inequality, Randall McGuire and Robert Paynter, editors, pp. 1–27. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England.

POGLIANO, FELIX1921 Letter to Mr. Luke Brennan, International Executive

Board Member, District No. 15, U.M.W. of A. District 15 Correspondence. D15-1921, Nov–Dec, United Mine Workers of America Archives, Pennsylvania State University, State College.

POPULAR MEMORY GROUP1982 Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method. In Making

Histories: Studies in History Writing and Politics, Richard Johnson, Gregor McLennan, Bill Schwarz, and David Sutton, editors, pp. 205–252. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

PORTELLI, ALESSANDRO1991 The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form

and Meaning in Oral History. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.

POTTER, PARKER B., JR.1998 Ethnography in Annapolis. In Annapolis Pasts:

Historical Archaeology in Annapolis, Maryland, Paul A. Shackel, Paul R. Mullins, and Mark S. Warner, editors, pp. 35–48. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

REED, JOHN1955 The Colorado War. In The Education of John Reed, pp.

83–121. International Publishers, New York, NY.

ROSENZWEIG, ROY, AND DAVID THELEN1998 The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in

American Life. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.

ROTH, LELAND 1992 Company Towns in the Western United States. In The

Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age, John S. Garner, editor, pp. 173–205. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

SCAMEHORN, H. LEE1992 Mill & Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century.

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

SCHMIDT, PETER R., AND THOMAS C. PATTERSON (EDITORS)1995 Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of

Archaeology and History in Non Western Settings. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM.

SCOTT, SHAUNNA1995 Two Sides to Everything: The Cultural Construction

of Class Consciousness in Harlan County, Kentucky. State University of New York Press, Albany.

SHANKS, MICHAEL, AND RANDALL H. MCGUIRE1996 The Craft of Archaeology. American Antiquity, 61(1):

75–88.

SHANKS, MICHAEL, AND CHRISTOPHER TILLEY1987 Reconstructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

SHOPES, LINDA1986 Oral History and Community Involvement: The

Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project. In Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, editors, pp. 249–263. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA.

SPECTOR, JANET D.1993 What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at

a Wahpeton Dakota Village. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul.


STAUB, SHALOM1994 Cultural Conservation and Economic Recovery

Planning: The Pennsylvania Heritage Parks Program. In Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage, Mary Hufford, editor, pp. 229–244. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

STEWART, DOUG1997 Saving American Steel. Smithsonian, August:

86–93.

SUNSIERI, ALVIN R.1972 The Ludlow Massacre: A Study in the Misemployment

of the National Guard. Salvadore Books, Waterloo, IA.

THELEN, DAVID1990 Introduction: Memory and American History. In

Memory and American History, David Thelen, editor, pp. vii–xix. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

THOMPSON, E. P.1980 Writing by Candlelight. Merlin, London.

TRIGGER, BRUCE G.1984 Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist,

and Imperialist. Man, 19:355–370.1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge.

TROUILLOT, MICHEL-ROLPH1995 Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of

History. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.

UNITED MINE WORKERS JOURNAL (UMWJ)1916 The Way of the Cave-Man. The United Mine Workers

Journal, 2 November:7.1918a Ingratitude Like a Serpent’s Tooth! United Mine

Workers Journal, 21 March:4–6.1918b Memorial Day at Ludlow. The United Mine Workers

Journal, 6:4.1918c Stamp Out Secession. The United Mine Workers

Journal, 13 June:41999 Let We Forget ... : Ludlow Project Puts Massacre in

Spotlight. United Mine Workers Journal, March–April:12–13.

WALKER, MARK2000 Labor History at the Ground Level: Colorado Coalfield

War Archaeology Project. Labor’s Heritage, 11(1):58–75.

WHITE, JOHN P.1916 Report of the International President John P. White to

the Twenty-Fifth Consecutive and Second Biennial Convention. United Mine Workers Journal, January 20:35.

WHITESIDE, JAMES1990 Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety

in the Rocky Mountain Coal Industry. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

WURST, LOUANN, AND ROBERT K. FITTS (EDITORS)1999 Confronting Class. Society for Historical Archaeology,

California, PA.

WYLIE, ALISON1992 The Interplay of Evidential Constraints and Political

Interests: Recent Archaeological Research on Gender. American Antiquity, 57(1):15–35.

ZIMMERMAN, LARRY J.1989 Human Bones As Symbols of Power: Aboriginal

American Belief Systems and “Grave-Robbing” Archaeologists. In Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, Robert Layton, editor, pp. 211–216. Unwin Hyman, Boston, MA.

MARK WALKERDEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGYUNIVERSITY OF DENVERDENVER, CO 80208


Historical Archaeology, 2003, 37(3):81-92.Permission to reprint required.

Pedro Paulo A. Funari

Conflict and the Interpretation of Palmares, a Brazilian Runaway Polity

ABSTRACT

In recent years, historical archaeologists have become increas-ingly interested in exploring how to use material culture to study conflict and how the interpretation of their sites is affected by modern perception. Grounded in a dialectical epistemology, the experience of past peoples is considered part of an ongoing social confrontation between social actors. Archaeologists tend to consider cultures as neatly bounded homogeneous entities. The holistic, monolithic nature of cultures has been put into question by several empirical and theoretical studies. In northeastern Brazil, a large maroon kingdom called Palmares developed in the 17th century, and people have often interpreted it in two ways. Some prefer to stress the African character of the polity, while others emphasize the diversity within the community. Archaeologi-cal research at Palmares produced evidence of a heterogeneous society, an interpretive model that does not follow dominant epistemological schemes and prejudices.

Introduction

In recent years historical archaeologists have become increasingly interested in exploring how to use material culture to study conflicts and struggles. They have also become interested in how interpretation of the past is affected by modern perceptions. For instance, in 1999 volume 3 of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology dealt with “Archaeologies of Resistance in Britain and Ireland” and volume 33 (1) of Historical Archaeology was concerned with “Confronting Class.” A bit earlier, modern perceptions were the subject in Historical Archaeology 31 (1) in “In the Real of Politics: Prospects for Public Participation in African-American and Plantation Archaeology” and in “Archaeologists as Storytellers” (Historical Archaeology 32, 1). Both subjects are also at the heart of several chapters of an edited volume on historical archaeology (Funari et al. 1999), with contributions from all over the world. The same issues are also behind the initiative of a new scholarly archaeological

journal, Public Archaeology, spearheaded by the Institute of Archaeology (University College London). Conflicts in the past and conflicts in the interpretation of the past are thus a growing concern in the discipline.

Society is always characterized by conflict and grounded in a dialectical epistemology; the expe-rience of past peoples is considered as part of an ongoing social confrontation among social actors (McGuire and Saitta 1996:198–204). Historical archaeology, in particular, deals with societies split by class divisions, whereby the producers of surplus labor are distinct from the appropriators. Exploitation generates a continuous, open conflict and inner contradictions in society (Saitta 1992), and the forces of domination and resistance are ever-present (Frazer 1999:5). The interpretation of these conflicts is malleable and subjective (Rao 1994:154). Historical archaeologists can view the past as a set of complex texts, inter-twined to form a discourse (M. Hall 1994:168).

If conflict and subjectivity are part of both evi-dence and the interpretation of evidence, a variety of views are inevitable, and archaeologists cannot avoid taking a position. There are different ways of knowing the past, and historical archaeologists must address the question of who is entitled to know—who can participate in the process of giving meaning to the past (Mueller 1991:613). In this context, this article deals with academic and lay interpretations of a 17th-century maroon kingdom in Brazil (Palmares) and explores the different approaches to its past. Archaeology can be a powerful tool for uncovering subaltern histories (Franklin 1997:800) and for empowering people. The struggles over the interpretation of the runaway settlement provide a good example of archaeological relevance to society at large. As is usual with archaeological research, this paper probably poses as many questions as it answers (Delle 1999:32), but rather than propos-ing a supposedly correct interpretation, this paper fosters a pluralist discussion of the subject.

Documents, Archaeology, and Conflicts

Attempting to describe and interpret what occurred in past cultures requires the incorpora-tion of texts and artifacts (McKay 1976:95; Orser

82 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 37(3) 83PEDRO PAULO A. FUNARI—Conflict and the Interpretation of Palmares, a Brazilian Runaway Polity

1987:131; Ober 1995:111). The documentary and archaeological data may be thought of as interde-pendent, complementary, and contradictory, at the same time (Little 1992:4). It is often the case that many scholars are not aware of the existence of thousands of unpublished documents, most of them in vernacular languages. Many of them are in Latin, the lingua franca of the modern world until the very recent past (Lee and Markman 1977:57). To cope with the task of interpret-ing conflict within society, a multidisciplinary approach is necessary in order to combine textual analysis with such disciplines as sociology and anthropology, among others (Small 1995:15).

Traditionally, conflict has been interpreted by the dominant groups in a society (Moly-neaux 1994:3). Until 40 years ago, historical archaeologists directed their attention almost exclusively toward the wealthy and the famous, contributing to the maintenance and reinforce-ment of conservative ideologies (Orser 1998b:662). Gradually, archaeologists began to follow their colleagues in the humanities and the social sciences in turning their attention to subordi-nate groups (Orser 1998a:65). Examining the material evidence of subordinate groups offered the opportunity to have a more comprehensive access to traditionally underrepresented groups (Guimarães 1990; Funari 1993). Even though some scholars not well acquainted with mate-rial culture studies openly questioning historical archaeology’s ability to contribute to the under-standing of the past (Burke 1991), several books and papers published in recent years confirmed that material evidence is particularly important to the understanding of the intricacies of con-flicts in society (Fitts 1996:69).

How to interpret conflict in society depends directly on how we understand society itself. Traditionally, archaeologists considered that cul-tures are neatly bounded homogeneous entities (Mullins 1999:32). This idea comes from the well-known (and by now classic) definition cre-ated by Childe (1935:198): “Culture is a social heritage; it corresponds to a community sharing common institutions and a common way of life [emphasis added].” This definition implies har-mony and unity within society, a commonality of interest, and thus a lack of conflict (Jones 1997a:15–26). The roots of this understanding of social life lie, on the one hand, with Aristotle and his definition of society as a koinonia, that is, as a

partnership (Aristotle Politica1252a7).). Sharing values in a homogeneous culture means accepting generalizing features and common traits shared by everybody (Aristotle 1328a21).

Homogeneity is a concept informed by capi-talist nationalist movements (Handler 1988) and in direct opposition to an internationalist, pro-letarian Marxist approach, so clearly explained in the Communist Manifesto: Proletarier aller Länder, vereignt euch! (“Proletarians of all coun-tries, unite”) (Marx and Engels 1954). Cultures and nations were seen by bourgeois ideology as bounded, unified entities, and history was con-ceived as the product of the actions and events associated with such homogeneous entities. This bourgeois search for national solidarity was criti-cized time and again by Marx and Engels (Marx 1970), a point emphasized by several commenta-tors in recent studies commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto (Funari 1998; Löwy 1998).

In this context, the concept of archaeological culture can be understood. Bounded material complexes are assumed to be a product of past ethnic groups because, it is said, people within such groups shared a set of prescriptive norms of behavior that were learned at an early age, and, therefore, they produced a common cul-ture. The very notion of early-age indoctrina-tion is inspired by the use of schools for forging nationalist identities in a bourgeois perspective, as was most notable in the case of France after the French Revolution. Archaeological entities are interpreted in the same light as organic units equivalent to bourgeois nations. Contradictions and struggle in society are only epistemologically possible if society is heterogeneous, and the dia-lectic between homogeneity and heterogeneity in society can be seen in this light (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Hobsbawm 1992; Confino 1993; Penrose 1995).

In this context, generalizing implies homog-enizing, and there is a growing dissatisfaction with using this normative approach to interpret social life (Skidmore 1993:382). The holistic, monolithic nature of cultures and societies has been questioned by several empirical and theo-retical studies in the last decades (Bentley 1987; Jones 1997a). Homogeneity, order, and bound-edness have been associated with the a priori assumption that stability characterizes societies, rather than conflict, a clear conservative Weltan-


schauung (worldview). It is also a nonhistorical approach, implying that all Catholics are, were, and will be superstitious, or that all the Africans are, were, and will be gregarious. However, a growing body of evidence and critical scrutiny of social thought has challenged this traditional view, considering society as heterogeneous, with often-conflicting constructions of cultural iden-tity. The theory of contradictions at the root of Marxist dialectics is the key for criticizing both bourgeois individualism and artificial homoge-neous communities.

Heterogeneity, fluidity, and continuous change imply also that there are multiple entities that often change within society. Archaeology has a long tradition of identifying ethnic identities through material evidence, equating material culture, race, and language (Funari 1999a). This identification is grounded on a normative and homogeneous understanding of culture, being thus challenged by different studies. Ethno-archaeological research has shown that cultural traits, artifacts, or attributes are often poor indi-cators of ethnicity (DeCorse 1989:138), and the whole notion that a fixed, one-to-one relationship persisted between specific types of material cul-ture and a particular identity has been criticized (Jones 1997b:63). Material culture cannot thus be considered as a straightforward indicator of an ethnic group (Vansina 1995). It is in this over-all theoretical context that this paper deals with a unique African-Brazilian runaway settlement known as Palmares. The concept of a “Palmares archaeological culture” implies the runaway inhabitants shared a set of prescriptive norms of behavior that were learned at an early age and, therefore, they produced a common culture. When archaeologists reconstruct culture histories on the basis of material culture’s supposed homogene-ity, they are producing a representation of the maroon, which is suited to a nationalist perspec-tive, underplaying conflicts within Palmares itself. In this chapter, I look at how several identities were being formed through the selective use, by conflicting social groups, of particular aspects of the material world.

African-Brazilian Resistance: Palmares Slavery was prevalent and accepted in the

Christian and Islamic medieval world. Those who followed the customs of classical Antiquity

during the Renaissance also reinforced the institution of slavery. They all believed that the leisure provided by enslaved labor to an elite allowed civilization to flower (Wood 1989; Martínez 1995:86). In Africa, conquerors would enslave defeated enemies and neighbors (Thomas 1997). In Europe, bondage was widespread; serfdom being referred to in the learned documents of the period by the same word used to refer to slaves: servitus, serfdom and slavery at once (Verlinden 1974). Slavery was also widespread in Africa, and its growth and development were largely independent of the Atlantic trade (Thornton 1992:74). Slavery was introduced in Brazil in this overall context. The Portuguese colonizers first used native inhabitants and later introduced Africans to work on plantations and elsewhere in the colony.

The Portuguese developed sugar plantations in Brazil early in their colonial history, and by 1570 there were already several estates combining African and Native South American slave workforces. These Portuguese plantations were in the northeast of the South American colony, while sugar processing and financing was in the hands of the Dutch who managed to occupy Pernambuco in 1629, in the Northeast of Brazil, staying there until 1654. At the beginning of the 17th century, runaway slaves settled in the hilly forest area. The scattered hideouts, consisting of several villages, developed in the foothills from 45 to 75 mi. inland from the coastal plantations, stretching more than 100 mi., running roughly parallel to the coast (Figure 1). During its initial years, Palmares (palm groves

FIGURE 1. Map of Palmares settlements in the State of Alagaos, Brazil (Orser 1992b:13).


in Portuguese) derived its name from the many palmetto trees (Allen 1999:144).

The first expedition against Palmares in 1612 attests to the importance of the kingdom, already in its first years of development. The polity continued to grow, and the Dutch considered Palmares a serious danger, attacking it several times. In the mid-1640s, Palmares already was comprised of nine separate villages: Andalaqui-tuche, Macaco, Subupira, Aqualtene, Dambra-banga, Zumbi, Tabocas, Arotirene, and Amaro (Figure 2). Two place names are Amerindian (Subupira and Tabocas); one is Portuguese (Amaro); and the other six are Bantu (Funari 1999b:322). Macaco, the capital, was also known as Potbelly Hill (Oiteiro da Barriga or Serra da Barriga). After the Dutch left Brazil, the Portuguese carried out several expeditions against Palmares with a systematic campaign to destroy it, beginning in the 1670s (Funari 1999b). Between 1670 and 1687 under the rule of Ganga Zumba (great lord), there seems to have been an active trade between Palmares and coast settlers (Rowlands 1999:333). From the late 1670s a new ruler of the polity, King Zumbi (spirit in Bantu) was in charge of the defense of the maroon.

It is difficult to estimate the number of fugi-tives living in the maroon polity. Josiah Baro carried out a Dutch attack on the kingdom in 1644 and claimed that there were 6,000 people living in the main settlement alone. This settle-ment, at the Potbelly Hill, was described as a village, one-half-mile long (0.8 km), surrounded by a double-stake fence with two entrances and agricultural fields. Out of 31 maroon people cap-tured by Baro, seven were described as Amerin-dians with some mulatto children. The accounts suggest that some 20% of the maroon settlement population could be native in the mid century. In 1645 Jürgens Reijembach described the settle-ment of “Old Palmares” as a village with 1,500 people in 220 dwellings (Funari 1999b). In 1675 Manoel Lopes referred to 2,000 dwellings (Funari 1999b). None of these figures are reli-able, but between 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in the nine villages, a significant population for 17th-century Brazil. Pioneers from the south of Brazil, known as Paulistas or bandeirantes (flag holders), destroyed Macaco (the capital of Pal-mares) in 1694 and the following year executed its leaders, including Zumbi.

In the 1980s Serra da Barriga (Potbelly Hill) was declared a National Heritage Site and archaeological fieldwork was carried out by an international team. Recognition of the importance of Palmares and the shortcomings of biased documents, written by the enemies of the rebel polity, prompted the formation of the Palmares Archaeological Project in 1992 by Charles E. Orser, Jr., and Pedro Paulo A. Funari (Orser 1992). Michael Rowlands (1999) has also worked on Palmares, and Scott Allen (1999) has continued the fieldwork, using it as the subject of his master’s and PhD research (Figure 3).

FIGURE 2. Map of Palmares villages (Orser 1992b:12).

FIGURE 3. The location of sites found at the Serra da Barriga (Orser 1993:4).


Scholars interpret the social history of Palmares in two different ways. For several maroon experts, runaway slaves formed communities where they could keep their original African cultures alive (Escalante 1979:74). Palmares can be viewed as an African settlement, since many of the place names and institutions were of Bantu origin (Kent 1979:180–181; criticism in Funari 1999b). Colonial documents have been used to substantiate the claim that residents of Palmares lived in the same way as they did in Angola (Boxer 1973:140; Edwards 1979:239). This belief became ingrained in the histories of the place by the 19th century. For instance, the German historian Heinrich Handelmann (1987) wrote in 1860: “die innere Organisation des Quilombos, sowiet wir sie aus den spärlichen Nachrichten der Portugiesen erkennen können, erinnert durchaus an ein afrikanisches Sta-astwesen” (“the internal organization of the runaway polity, as far as the few references from the Portuguese allow us to know, betrays its complete African polity character” [empha-sis added]) (Moura 1990:141–182). The same assumption continued to be used in the last years of the 19th century by Nina Rodrigues (1976:77) who describes their state as “uncultivated as in Africa today.” Recently, several other scholars have also advocated the African character of Palmares (Santos 1991).

Another perspective emphasizes the heteroge-neous nature of Palmares. Several authors stress that African mores and traditions were suppressed in Palmares (Russel-Wood 1974:573), and that racism affected not only Africans (Skidmore 1993:31) but also Native Brazilians, Jews, Moors, and people of mixed heritage. Anthropologists studying religions of African origin in Brazil notice the synergetic nature of those religions, and maroon culture has been described as having a combination of African, European, and Amer-indian elements (Genovese 1981:53; Schwartz 1987:69). Native Brazilians were enslaved and worked side by side with Africans (Curtin 1990:103). Runaways, both Africans and natives, interacted with Indians living in the backlands (Price 1995:57; Cròs 1997:80). Those that ran from colonial society included Africans, Indians, and members of other oppressed groups excluded from the colonial order (Moura 1988:164), such as people accused of being Jewish, Moors, Her-etics, Sodomites, and witches.

Historians have found that at Rio de Janeiro, in the period from 1680 to 1729, Indians com-prised 97.9% of the workers in the first decade and remained 41.5% of the workforce in the last decade (45.9% being Africans and 12.6% mixed) (Marcondes 1998:148). Other studies have shown similarities between Portuguese and Angolan Welt-anschauungen: in the words of John Thornton (1981:188), “in most respects Kongo and Portu-gal were of the same world.” The construction of distinctly African-American mores and commu-nities is the result of the struggle of the exploited to build autonomous institutions (Glassman 1991:278). The archaeological material from the Serra da Barriga also produced evidence of a variety of cultural influences in the maroon settlement (Orser 1992, 1994; Allen 1999; Funari 1999b; Rowlands 1999). How can interpretive models and archaeology contribute to discussing conflict and heterogeneity at Palmares?

Heterogeneity and Conflict in Society in Palmares

Iberians, Portuguese, and Spanish were keen to Christianize the souls of new subjects (Hanke 1974:137) and enforce compliance with the Roman Catholic philosophy. Despite the efforts of the colonists to homogenize society, several European cultures coexisted in Brazil with dif-ferent cultural mores. Marvin Harris (1972:216), accepting that the forces of homogeneity were overwhelming, imagines that enslaved people were trained to be apathetic, while the elite stayed in otiose consumption. However, slaves were not “socially dead”; they did not necessarily internalize their master’s opinion that they were “brute beasts” (Glassman 1995:140).

In Africa, too, diversity was prevalent (Baland-ier 1970:61). Linguists argue that there were, for more than 3,000 years, several Bantu populations’ movements (Vansina 1995:18). Therefore, Bantu dialects are not mutually intelligible. In America, Africans and their descendants spoke, a fortiori, European languages (Tardieu 1989:323; Lipski 1997:159), albeit significantly changed by the users in the New World.

Because Africans themselves were active par-ticipants in the slave trade and because slavery was widespread in Africa, African societies were not without conflict themselves (Thornton 1992:6, 74). These tensions carried over to the New


World, as some Brazilian freedmen were slave owners in their own right (Klein and Paiva 1996: 932), just as there was a slave-owning elite in Angola (Ferreira 1995:69). In this context, at least one historian believes that there was a ruling elite in Palmares that had many privileges (Reis 1995:17).

Archaeological research at Palmares revealed a significant amount of pottery, including Native, European, and mixed style pottery. Native pot-tery is handmade, using the coil technique with a sand temper. The pottery may be undecorated and, if decorated, carving, brushing and incising are the techniques most often used. The most frequently used colors for painted vessels are brown and red. Allen (1999:151) has identified four ceramic wares as Tupiguarani. European-style pottery consists of four varieties of lead-glazed earthenware. These glazed ceramics have a distinctive kind of opaque glaze containing tin oxide (Figure 4). This kind of maiolica was commonly used in the Iberian Peninsula since the reconquest (Reconquista in both Portuguese and Spanish) of southern areas of the peninsula from the Moors. The Moors had originally introduced glazed ceramics, and the conquering Christians adopted this glazed earthenware. Maiolica is found in most sites in the Iberian colonial world. However, at Palmares there was not fine maiolica but utilitarian, ordinary glazed wares. Perhaps

they were produced in the coast of Brazil or even in Europe, but they were not intended for elite use, considering they are crudely made.

The third kind of pottery was locally made Palmares ware (Figure 5). It is not a known European type, and it is quite different from native wares. In 1645 Reijembach recorded that Palmares inhabitants manufactured pots (Carneiro 1988). The ware is wheel-thrown and low fired, and the vessels are small, shallow, flat-based bowls. Palmarino pottery does not have temper, and it is finger smoothed on the inside, resembling some colonowares found at slave quarters in the Old South of the United States (Ferguson 1992). Some large storage vessels found at the Serra da Barriga are not dissimilar to Tupinambá Native pottery, but it could also equally be related to storing jars used by the Ovimbundu in Angola (Rowlands 1999:336).

There is a prevalence of African, native, colo-nial, and imported wares at Palmares. If fluid-ity is ubiquitous, as recent anthropological and archaeological literature implies, then instead of searching for Tupinambá, Ovimbundu, or

FIGURE 5. Wheeled-turned pottery from the Serra da Barriga (Orser 1992b:35).

FIGURE 4. Banded maiolica found at the Serra da Barriga (Orser 1992b:37).


tout court “African” traits in pottery, it is more reasonable to discuss Palmares pottery. Glazed and unglazed maiolica and wheel-turned wares were found throughout Palmares. They were not Portuguese or Dutch imports but, rather, locally made wares used by ordinary people in the Portuguese colony. Hierarchy within the maroon community could also be seen in the differences within the settlement. Common pottery has been found in several sites, while a much less restricted distribution of glazed maiolica could indicate maroon elite areas. At one site in Potbelly Hill, imported wares appear with native and slave ceramics, suggesting that one section of the settlement may have been associated with an elite group. Judging from the ceramic evidence, the elite at Potbelly Hill were not homogeneous. They were a pluralistic elite, maintaining consistent and long-term trad-ing or barter links with ordinary colonists on the coast. Rowlands (1999:340) interprets the evi-dence as indicating that Palmares was neither a multiethnic society of fusion and assimilation nor one of ethnic difference. It could have a more pluralist structure with relatively little differentia-tion in the material culture but increasing elite distinction in a specific area of the settlement. This evidence does not deny identity building at Palmares. Rather, the people of Palmares had a positive sense of their community. They had a common consciousness of themselves as a rebel group. Their common enemy provided them with enough solidarity to resist several onslaughts over the 17th century. Solidarity, however, does not imply the absence of friction, divisions, or even inner contradictions. In any case, the archaeologi-cal evidence strengthens the perception that Pal-mares was far from being homogeneous, having social hierarchies and inner conflicts as well as conflicts with the outside world.

Popular Perceptions of Palmares

Perceptions of Palmares need to be examined within the context of Brazilian society. From its inception, Brazil has been authoritarian and patri-archal, dominated by patronage, a “hierarchizable society,” in the words of anthropologist Roberto DaMatta (1991a:399). Brazil has been described as a country with no citizens but with dependents (Schwartz 1997:2) and vassals (Velho 1996), privileges (DaMatta 1991b: 4) being granted to

people in power. The result is a most uneven society: the 10% richest people control 47% of the GDP, while the poorest 10% get only 0.8% (Natali 1998). Nowadays, Brazil boasts the 10th largest economy, just behind Spain and Canada, but it has an appalling distribution of income. Millions of poor people, indigenous peoples, landless peasants, and street children are looked upon as expendable (Pinheiro 1996). The social exclusion of indigenous peoples, homosexuals, landless peasants, and street children goes hand in hand with discrimination against several minorities and Brazilians of African descent who, despite accounting for roughly half the population, are conspicuously absent from positions of power and influence. This is due to several causes, not least a colonial heritage of patronage and patriarchal social relations. An aristocratic setting prevailed for the first centuries of the country’s development, and when capitalism and modernity were introduced in the mid-19th century, subaltern groups were absorbed by the dominating hierarchical ideology and habits. The country was ruled by the military from 1964 to 1985, and the end of the dictatorship led to formal expressions of freedom. From the 1960s, Palmares has been a potent focus of attention by academics, activists, and ordinary people in their struggle for reinterpreting the past.

Serra da Barriga was declared a National Heritage Site in the mid 1980s after a mobi-lization by the Black Civil Movement (Santos 1985). Since the 1970s, activists used Palmares as a model for a modern-day state. Abdias do Nascimento (1995:26) spearheaded the movement for the establishment of a National Maroon State, inspired by the 17th-century Palmares “Repub-lic,” as the rebel state was called in the historical documents of the period. A communist interpre-tation of Palmares, following a Soviet Proletkult style (Campos 1988), interpreted it as a people’s republic and Zumbi (the last leader of Palmares) as a people’s guide, a Black “iron man” or Stalin (iron man being the translation of the nickname Stalin). Zumbi has also been presented as a learned Catholic novice, well acquainted with classical Latin war literature (Schwartz 1987:82), and hailed as a mythic hero (Santos 1991). Recently, Luiz Mott (1995) proposed that the Black hero was also homosexual, leading a struggle against sexual prejudice. There has been a strong reaction by some leading Black


activists against this interpretation, for it could denigrate, in their opinion, the image of Zumbi. In 1995 President Cardoso addressed the coun-try and called for the interpretation of Palmares as a multiethnic state, struggling for freedom and serving as a model for a democratic Brazil (Bonalume 1995; Funari 1996).

All these popular perceptions were grounded in a search for, struggling for, a less conservative understanding of the past, an interpretation that recognized the Brazil oppressed. However, a leading historian was probably the best interpreter of the elite understanding of Palmares. Evaldo Cabral de Melo (Funari 1996) in a popular news magazine interview said that “Palmares was destroyed and I prefer that it was so. It was a Black polity and if it had survived, we would have in Brazil a Bantustan.” The preju-dice Cabral de Melo expressed, ex cathedra, his delenda Palmares call, even 300 years after its destruction, says a lot about the prevailing and official understanding of dissent. In this context, the archaeological study of Palmares has focused the attention of the media and introduced the subject even to school textbooks, whose authors usually shunned the issue of Palmares altogether. The controversies around the multiethnic rebel polity served the purpose of countering the tradi-tional and upper-class odium against popular dis-sent. The fight for freedom, be it interpreted by African-Brazilians or by the oppressed in general, is at the heart of the archaeology of Palmares.

Conclusion

Racism and discrimination against people of African descent is now widely acknowledged by several observers of Brazilian culture. Wage differentials persist today in Brazil, even after controlling for education and job experience, suggesting that labor markets are characterized by color-based wage discrimination (Lovell and Wood 1998:106). The popular myth found in Brazil, that this country is a color-blind democ-racy helps to mask, normalize, and internalize everyday racism (Goldstein 1999:573). How-ever, discrimination is not restricted to people of African descent. There is discrimination against people of Native Brazilian descent, along with a plethora of ethnic groups, includ-ing Jews and Arabs, to name only those groups already harassed in colonial times. Several other

discriminations may also be added to the list: against people from the poor areas of the country and against several ethnic groups of recent immi-gration to the country, like the Italians and the Koreans. Prejudices can also be found against women and homosexuals.

In this context, archaeological interpretation is relevant. If societies are heterogeneous, compris-ing different and malleable social groups, it is unreasonable to look for purity and homogeneity in the past. If all societies are driven by divi-sions and conflicts and if all historical societies are characterized by class division, it is illogi-cal to look for Edenic models in the past. The archaeological evidence from Palmares seems to confirm that heterogeneity existed in both colonial and maroon societies. Racism and dis-crimination led several activists to look for an African independent state as a model for state building. This reaction to upper-class mores and prejudices accepted some of their unreasonable tenets: homogeneity and racial purity. When archaeologists and engaged social activists accept racial purity and social homogeneity, they are simply using the same epistemological principles used by those they oppose. Archaeologists who defend Native Brazilian and African-Brazilian rights sometimes consider that pure Guaranis or Africans did actually exist and that their task, to defend their rights, includes the identification of pure ethnic markers. It also implies that dif-ferent ethnic groups really have different mores and different genes. Again, accepting ruling concepts means accepting ruling prejudices: Europeans are rational, Indians are lazy; Afri-cans are gregarious and good (subaltern) work-ers. Instead of this essentialism of bourgeois ideology, Marxism stresses internationalism and humanism (Levebvre 1988:87). The diversity of material evidence from Palmares does not seem to confirm purity or homogeneity, but this is no reason to deny its potential to challenge racial discrimination and hatred. Delenda Palmares can be challenged, not by finding racial purity but by exposing the social conflicts in a society that was so violent against different social groups that the only option was for them to flee.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe thanks to the following colleagues who forwarded papers (sometimes unpublished ones), exchanged


ideas, and helped me in different ways: Scott Joseph Allen, Maria Franklin, Jonathan Glassman, Carlos Magno Guimarães, Siân Jones, Leandro Karnal, David Keys, Barbara Little, Michael Löwy, Randall McGuire, Joseph Miller, Paul R. Mullins, Martin Hall, Charles E. Orser, Jr., Michael Rowlands, Dean J. Saitta, Jocélio Teles dos Santos, Paul A. Shackel, Michael Shanks, Thomas E. Skidmore, John Thornton, Caio Navarro de Toledo, Mark Walker, and Ellen Meiksins Wood. The ideas expressed here are my own, for which I alone am therefore responsible. I must also mention the institutional support from the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the World Archaeological Congress, Brazilian National Research Council, São Paulo State Research Foundation, and Campinas State University.

REFERENCES

ARISTOTLE1957 Politica. Claredon Press, Oxford, England.

ALLEN, SCOTT JOSEPH1999 A “Cultural Mosaic” at Palmares? Grappling with

the Historical Archaeology of a Seventeenth-Century Quilombo. In Cultura Material e Arqueologia Histórica (Material Culture and Historical Archaeology), Pedro Paulo A. Funari, editor, pp. 141–178. Universidade de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil.

BALANDIER, GEORGES1970 The Sociology of Black Africa. Social Dynamics in

Central Africa. Andre Deutsch Press, London.

BENTLEY, GEORG C.1987 Ethnicity and Practice. Comparative Studies in Society

and History, 29:24–55.

BONALUME NETO, RICARDO1995 O Pequeno Brasil de Palmares (The Little Brazil That

Was Palmares). Folha de São Paulo, 5 (4 July):16. São Paulo, Brazil.

BOXER, CHARLES RALPH1973 The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654. Claredon Press,

Oxford, England.

BURKE, PETER1991 Overture: The New History, Its Past and Its Future. In

New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Peter Burke, editor, pp. 1–23. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park.

CAMPOS, CLÁUDIA DE ARRUDA1988 Zumbi, Tiradentes. Perspectiva/Edusp, São Paulo,

Brazil.

CARNEIRO, ÉDISON1988 O Quilombo dos Palmares (Palmares, the Maroon).

Companhia Editora Nacional, São Paulo, Brazil.

CHILDE, VERE GORDON1935 Changing Methods and Aims in Prehistory, Presidential

Address for 1935. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 1:1–15.

CONFINO, ALON1993 The Nation As a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National

Memory, and the German Empire, 1871–1918. Memory and History, 5:42–86.

CRÒS, CLAUDI R.1997 La Civilisation Afro-Brésilienne (African-Brazilian

Civilization). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

CURTIN, PHILIP1990 The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex. Essays

in Atlantic History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

DAMATTA, ROBERTO1991a Religions and Modernity: Three Studies of Brazilian

Religiosity. Journal of Social History, 25:389–406.1991b Nepotismo e jeitinho brasileiro (Nepotism and the

Brazilian Way). Jornal da Tarde, Caderno de Sábado, 7 September:4–5. São Paulo, Brazil.

DECORSE, CHRISTOPHER R.1989 Material Aspects of Limba, Yalunka, and Kuranko

Ethnicity: Archaeological Research in North East Sierra Leone. In Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity, Stephen Shennan, editor, pp. 125–140. Unwin Hyman, London.

DELLE, JAMES A.1999 “A Good and Easy Speculation”: Spatial Conflict,

Collusion, and Resistance in Late-Sixteenth Century Munster, Ireland. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 3(1):11–35.

EDWARDS, BRYAN1979 Observation of the Disposition, Character, Manners,

and Habits of Life of the Maroon Negros of the Island of Jamaica. 1774. In Maroon Societies, Richard Price, editor, pp. 230–245. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

ESCALANTE, AQUILES1979 Palenques in Colombia. In Maroon Societies, Richard

Price, editor, pp. 74–81. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

FERGUSON, LELAND G.1992 Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African

America, 1650–1800. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

FERREIRA, ROQUINALDO AMARAL1995 O Significado e os Métodos do Tráfico Ilegal de

Africanos na Costa Ocidental da África, 1830–1860 (The Meaning and Methods of the Illegal Traffic of Africans in African West Coast, 1830–1860). Cadernos do LIPHS, 2:55–70. São Paulo, Brazil.


FITTS, ROBERT K.1996 The Landscapes of Northern Bondage. Historical

Archaeology, 30(2):54–73.

FRANKLIN, MARIA1997 Why Are There So Few Black American Archaeologists?

Antiquity, 71(4):799–801.

FRAZER, BILL1999 Reconceptualizing Resistance in the Historical

Archaeology of the British Isles: An Editorial. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 3(1):1–35.

FUNARI, PEDRO PAULO A.1993 Graphic Caricature and the Ethos of Ordinary People

at Pompeii. Journal of European Archaeology, 1(2):133–150.

1996 Novas Perspectivas Abertas Pela Arqueologia na Serra da Barriga (New Perspectives Offered by the Archaeology of Serra da Barriga). In Negras Imagens, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz and Letícia Vidor de Sousa Reis, editors, pp. 139–151, 228–230. Edusp/Estação Ciência, São Paulo, Brazil.

1998 O Manifesto e o Estudo da Antigüidade: A Atualidade da Crítica Marxista (The Manifesto and the Study of Antiquity: The Relevance of Marxist Critique). Crítica Marxista, 6:106–114.

1999a Lingüística e Arqueologia (Linguistics and Archaeology). DELTA (Revista de Estudos de Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada), 15 (1):161–176. São Paulo, Brazil.

1999b Maroon, Race, and Gender: Palmares Material Culture and Social Relations in a Runaway Settlement. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, editors, pp. 308–327. Routledge, London.

FUNARI, PEDRO PAULO A., MARTIN HALL, AND SIÂN JONES (EDITORS)

1999 Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Routledge, London.

GENOVESE, EUGENE D.1981 From Rebellion to Revolution. Afro-American Slave

Revolts in the Making of the Modern World. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.

GLASSMAN, JONATHAN1991 The Bondsman’s News Clothes: The Contradictory

Consciousness of Slave Resistance on the Swahili Coast. Journal of African History, 32: 277–321.

1995 No Words of Their Own. Slavery and Abolition, 16(1):131–145.

GOLDSTEIN, DONNA1999 “Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil:

Twin Concepts? American Anthropologist, 101(3):563–578.

GUIMARÃES, CARLOS MAGNO1990 O Quilombo do Ambrósio: Lenda, Documentos, e

Arqueologia (The Ambrosio Runaway Settlement: Legend, Documents, and Archaeology). Estudos Ibero-Americanos, 16:161–174. Porto Alegre, Brazil.

HALL, MARTIN1994 Lifting the Veil of Popular History: Archaeology and

Politics in Urban Cape Town. In Social Construction of the Past, Representation As Power, George C. Bond and Angella Gilliam, editors, pp. 167–184. Routledge, London.

HANDELMANN, HEINRICH1987 Geschichte von Brasilien (Brazilian History). Originally

published in 1860. Manesse, Zurich, Switzerland.

HANDLER, ROBERT1988 Nationalism and Politics of Culture in Quebec.

University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.

HANKE, LEWIS1974 The Theological Significance of the Discovery of

America. Revista de História, 100: 133–145. São Paulo, Brazil.

HARRIS, MARVIN1972 Portugal’s Contribution to the Understanding of Africa

and Brazil. In Protest and Resistance in Angola and Brazil, Richard H. Chilcote, editor, pp. 209–223. University of California Press, Berkeley.

HOBSBAWM, ERIC1992 Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Programme,

Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

HOBSBAWN, ERIC, AND THOMAS RANGER1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge.

JONES, SIÂN1997a The Archaeology of Ethnicity. Constructing Identities

in the Past and Present. Routledge, London. 1997b Nationalism, Archaeology, and the Interpretation of

Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine. Boletim do CPA, 3:49–80. Campinas, Brazil.

KENT, RICHARD K.1979 Palmares: Na African State in Brazil. In Maroon

Societies, Richard Price, editor, pp. 170–190. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

KLEIN, HERBERT S., AND CLOTILDE ANDRADE PAIVA1996 Freedmen in a Slave Economy: Minas Gerais in 1831.

Journal of Social History, 29(4):932–962.

LEE, THOMAS A., AND SIDNEY D. MARKMAN1977 The Coxoh Colonial Project and Coneta, Chiapas,

Mexico: A Provincial Maya Village under the Spanish Conquest. Historical Archaeology, 11(1):56–66.


LEVEBVRE, HENRI1988 Toward a Leftist Cultural Politics: Remarks Occasioned

by the Centenary of Marx’s Death. In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossbert, editors, pp. 75–88. McMillan Education, London.

LIPSKI, JOHN M.1997 El Lenguage de los Negros Congos de Panamá y

el Lumbalú Palenquero de Colombia: Función Sociolinguística de Criptoletos Afrohispánicos (The Language of the Black Congos of Panama and the Lumbalú from Colombian Maroons: Sociolinguistic Function of African-Hispanic Hidden Dialects). América Negra, 14:147–165.

LITTLE, BARBARA J.1992 Text-Aided Archaeology. In Text-Aided Archaeology,

Barbara J. Little, editor, pp. 1–6. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

LOVELL, PEGGY A., AND CHARLES H. WOOD1998 Skin Color, Racial Identity, and Life Chances in Brazil.

Latin American Perspectives, 100:90–109.

LÖWY, MICHAEL1998 Mundialização e Internacionalismo a Atualidade

do Manifesto Comunista (Globalization and Internationalism: The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto). In Ensaios sobre o Manifesto Comunista, Caio Navarro de Toledo, editor, pp. 115–126. Xamã, São Paulo, Brazil.

MARCONDES, RENATO LEITE1998 Uma Resenha da Riqueza Paulista por Meio de

Inventários (A Review of Wealth at São Paulo through Inventories). História Econômica e História das Empresas, 1(1):145–152. São Paulo, Brazil.

MARTÍNEZ, ROSA MARÍA1995 De la Reducción a la Plantación. La Utilización del

Esclavo Negro en las Haciendas Jesuitas de la América Española y Portuguesa (From Mission to Plantation: The Use of Black Slaves in Jesuit Plantations in Spanish and Portuguese America). Revista Complutensde de Historia de América, 21:85–122. Madrid, Spain.

MARX, KARL1970 Critique of the Gotha Programme. Internationa

Publishers, New York.

MARX, KARL, AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS1954 The Communist Manifesto. Henry Regnery, Chicago,

IL.

MCGUIRE, RANDALL H., AND DEAN J. SAITTA1996 Although They Have Petty Captains, They Obey

Them Badly: The Dialectics of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization. American Antiquity, 61(2):197–216.

MCKAY, JOYCE1976 The Coalescence of History and Archaeology.

Historical Archaeology, 10(1):93–98.

MOLYNEAUX, BRIAN L.1994 Introduction: The Represented Past. In The Presented

Past, Heritage, Museums, and Education, Peter G. Stone, and Brian L. Molyneaux, editors, pp. 1–13. Routledge, London.

MOTT, LUIZ1995 Um Caso de Homofobia Negra (A Case of Fear of

Gays by Blacks). Folha de São Paulo, 5(4 July):3.

MOURA, CLÓVIS1988 Sociologia do Negro Brasileiro (Sociology of the

Brazilian Black People). Ática, São Paulo, Brazil. 1990 As Injustiças de Clio: O Negro na Historiografia

Brasileira (The Injustices of Clio: Black People in Brazilian Historiography). Oficina de Livros, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

MUELLER, ROBERT G.1991 Review of Alf Lüdtke: Alltagsgeschichte: zur

Rekonstruktion Historischer Erfahrungen und Lebensweisen (History of Everyday Life: Experiences of Historical Reconstruction and Ways of Life). Journal of Social History, 24(3):613–165. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt.

MULLINS, PAUL R.1999 Race and Affluence. Na Archaeology of African America

and Consumer Culture. Kluwer/Plenum, New York, NY.

NASCIMENTO, ABDIAS DO1995 O Quilombismo (The Runaway Movement). Carta,

7:19–30. Brasília, Brazil.

NATALI, JOÃO BATISTA1998 Brasil é o País Mais Desigual da América Latina, Diz

BID (Brazil Is the Most Unequal Country in Latin America, says the BID). Folha de São Paulo, 11 April:14. São Paulo, Brazil.

OBER, JOSIAH1995 Greek Horoi: Artifactual Texts and the Contingency

of Meaning. In Historical and Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology, David Small, editor, pp. 91–123. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.

ORSER, CHARLES E., JR.1987 Plantation Status and Consumer Choice. A Materialist

Framework for Historical Archaeology. In Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology, Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, editor, pp. 121–137. Plennum Press, New York, NY.

1992 In Search of Zumbi: Preliminary Archaeological Research at the Serra da Barriga, State of Alagoas, Brazil. Illinois State University Press, Normal.


1993 In Search of Zumbi: The 1993 Season. Illinois State University Press, Normal.

1994 Toward a Global Historical Archaeology: An Example from Brazil. Historical Archaeology, 28(1):5–22.

1998a The Archaeology of the African Diaspora. Annual Review of Anthropology, 27: 63–82.

1998b The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology. American Anthropologist, 100(3):661–668.

PENROSE, JAN1995 Essential Constructions? The “Cultural Bases” of

Nationalist Movements. Nations and Nationalism, 1:391–417.

PINHEIRO, PAULO SERGIO1996 Brazil’s Bold Effort to Curb Police Violence. Time,

10 June:76.

PRICE, RICHARD1995 Palmares como Poderia Ter Sido (Palmares How It

Could Have Been). In Liberdade por um Fio, João José Reis and Flávio dos Santos Gomes, editors, pp. 52–59. Companhia das Letras, São Paulo, Brazil.

RAO, NANDINI1994 Interpreting Silences: Symbol and History in the

Case of Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid. In Social Construction of the Past, Representation as Power, George C. Bond and Angella Gilliam, editors, pp. 154–164. Routledge, London.

REIS, JOÃO JOSÉ1995 Quilombos e Revoltas Escravas no Brasil (Maroons and

Slave Rebellions in Brazil). Revista USP, 28:14–39. São Paulo, Brazil.

RODRÍGUES, NINA1976 Os Africanos no Brasil (Africans in Brazil). Companhia

Editora Nacional, São Paulo. Brazil.

ROWLANDS, MICHAEL1999 Black Identity and Sense of Past in Brazilian National

Culture. Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, editors, pp. 328–344. Routledge, London.

RUSSEL-WOOD, ANTHONY J. R.1974 Black and Mulatto Brotherhoods in Colonial Brazil:

A Study in Collective Behavior. Hispanic American Historical Review, 54(4):567–602.

SAITTA, DEAN J. 1992 Radical Archaeology and Middle-Range Methodology.

Antiquity, 66(4):886–897.

SANTOS, JOEL RUFINO DOS1985 Memorial Zumbi (Memorial to Zumbi). Carta, 7:

65–72. Brasília, Brazil. 1991 Zumbi. Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil.

SCHWARTZ, STUART B.1987 Mocambos, Quilombos e Palmares: A Resistência

Negra no Brasil Colonial (Maroons and Palmares: Black Resistance in Brazil). Estudos Econômicos, 17:61–88. São Paulo, Brazil.

1997 A Terra das Coisas Trocadas (A Land of Things Upside Down). Folha de São Paulo, Jornal de Resenhas, 10 Novembe:2. São Paulo, Brazil.

SKIDMORE, THOMAS E.1993 O Negro no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos (Black in

Brazil and in the United States). Argumento, 1(1):25–45. São Paulo, Brazil.

SMALL, DAVID1995 Introduction. In Historical and Archaeological Views

on Texts and Archaeology, David Small, editor, pp. 1–24. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.

TARDIEU, JEAN PIERRE1989 L’Action Pastorale des Jésuites auprès de la Population

Noire de Lima (XVI–XVIII e. Siècles) (Pastoral Action by Jesuits towards the Black Population in Lima, Peru, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries). Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 58:315–327. Rome, Vatican.

THOMAS, HUGH1997 The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave

Trade, 1440–1870. Picador, London.

THORNTON, JOHN1981 Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New

Interpretation. History in Africa, 8:183–202.1992 Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic

World, 1400–1680. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

VANSINA, JAN1995 New Linguistic Evidence and “The Bantu Expansion.”

Journal of African History, 36: 1–29.

VELHO, GILBERTO1996 Felicidade à brasileira (Happiness, Brazilian Style).

Folha de São Paulo, Mais! 11/03/1996:10.

VERLINDEN, CHARLES1974 Aspects de l’Esclavage en Italie Entre le IX e et le XII

e Siècle (Aspects of Slavery in Italy between the Ninth and the Twelfth Centuries). Revista de História, 50: 49–64. São Paulo, Brazil.

WOOD, ELLEN MEIKSINS1989 Peasant-Citizen and Slave. The Foundations of

Athenian Democracy. Verso, London.

PEDRO PAULO A. FUNARIDEPARTAMENTO DE HISTÓRIAUNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINASC. POSTAL 6110CAMPINAS, SP 13081-970, BRAZIL

Archaeology of conflict and the interpretation of Palmares, a runaway settlement

Documents

Transcript of Archaeology of conflict and the interpretation of Palmares, a runaway settlement