| This study uses an interpretive, contextual historical archaeology to examine the physical and cultural landscape of an abandoned coal mining town in western Pennsylvania. Written, oral, and archaeological evidence is used to reconstruct past community life in the company town of Helvetia (1891–1947) and to explore the ways that mine workers and their families constructed their sense of community and family, their individual identities, and their sense of place within the controlled environment of the coal company town. The issues of worker agency and social relations within the industrial landscape are considered using a theoretical framework that explores the discursive, multivocal, and polysemic nature of landscape, material culture, and social action. Multiple lines of evidence reveal that the miners and their families were social actors engaged in a series of relationships with the coal company, and as such, they participated in a dialogue with officials of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company over the creation of a living environment within company housing, and over the use of space within the backlot of the doublehouse and within the town at large. Elements of working-class culture and identity are discernible in the remains of this community, while worker agency is most evident in a series of physical alterations to the miners' doublehouse and through a sequence of changes to the physical landscape of the backlot, changes initiated by the tenants, not the company. Oral and historical sources also suggest that many of the cultural practices, traditions, and beliefs held by members of Helvetia's ethnically diverse community were materially and cognitively significant to the creation of a living environment and to the negotiation of place within the industrial landscape. While the working classes are frequently portrayed as resistant, reactive, or merely passive recipients of corporate ideology, the combined oral, documentary, and archaeological evidence in this study indicates that Helvetia's residents actively shaped and negotiated their physical, social, and economic well-being despite the restrictions of life in a company town under a regimen of industrial capitalism and a system of corporate paternalism. |
