Appalachian extraction & the orogeny of emancipatory archaeology

Abstract

Abstract

Appalachia's history of extraction includes the removal of many resources: coal and timber, factory laborers, stories to fuel readers' imaginations, and archaeological remains to fuel the academy. Appalachia's extractive history relies on mythopoeses featuring untamed wildness and exotic, anachronistic people; materials, identity, history, nuance, diversity, and cultural pride mined. Extraction began in the late nineteenth century when writers, industrial barons, speculators, government officials, and social reformers “discovered” a so-called white, regressive, hillbilly frontier in the American Southeast. Thus culturally and intellectually inferiorized, the region's literal and figurative mining was justified, Appalachia rendered intelligible and useful through outside interpretation. Archaeology in many ways also removes mountains: we move soil, take away artifacts, republish stories, and render region. Without collaborative practice, these materials simply become more overburden, smothering hollows and homeplaces with elitist narratives and agendas. Community archaeology has the potential to become a new Appalachian orogeny, uplifting mountains with many hands. This paper calls for the immediate intersection of Appalachian Studies with Southeastern archaeology and argues that archaeology outside community-based collaborative efforts strips the region down to subsoil. Case studies from company-built coal mining towns in Appalachian Kentucky and Ohio demonstrate the power of collective practice in a region positioned as powerless.