ABOUT THIS BOOK

Historical archaeologists explore landscapes in the American West through many lenses, including culture contact, colonialism, labor, migration, and identity. This volume sets landscape at the center of analysis, examining space (a geographic location) and place (the lived experience of a locale) in their myriad permutations. Divided into three thematic sections—the West as space, the West as community, and the West today—the book pulls together case studies from across the American West and incorporates multivocal contributions and perspectives from archaeology, anthropology, Indigenous studies, history, Latinx studies, geography, and material culture studies.

Contributors tackle questions of how historical archaeologists theoretically and methodologically define the West, conveying the historical, mythological, and physical manifestations of placemaking. They confront issues of community and how diverse ethnic, racial, gendered, labor-based, and other demographic populations expressed their identities on and in the Western landscape. Authors also address the continued creation and re-creation of the West today, exploring the impact of the past on people in the present and its influence on modern conceptions of the American West.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Emily Dale is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She was guest editor of a thematic issue of Kiva entitled “New Perspectives on the American Southwest: Historical Archaeology of the 1800s and 1900s.”

Carolyn L. White holds the Mamie Kleberg Chair in Historic Preservation and is the director of the Anthropology Research Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her most recent book is The Archaeology of Burning Man: The Rise and Fall of Black Rock City.

REVIEWS

“A significant contribution to the field of Western archaeology and a valuable addition to any historical archaeology or history class focused on multi-variant storytelling, heritage debates, and histories of the American West.”
—Katrina C. L. Eichner, assistant professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Idaho

“Highlights the complexities of practicing historical archaeology in the American West in the twenty-first century and addresses aspects of space and place. This volume does a good job of balancing the theoretical with archaeological interpretations. It also does a good job of including historical archaeologies of Native people alongside migrant and European American sites.”
—William White, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Emily Dale and Carolyn L. White

Lotte Govaerts

Rachel Feit

Melonie Shier

Emily Dale

Lauren Walkling

Erin Hegberg

S. Joey LaValley

Patricia Markert

Mark Tveskov and Chelsea Rose

Carl G. Drexler

Nathan Acebo

Aaron B. Brien and Kelly J. Dixon

Mark Warner

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