Burying stereotypes: Archaeology, representations, and everyday activism at Appalachian company coal mining towns

ABSTRACT

Politicians, scholars and the popular media have problematically represented Appalachia for the past 150 years. Appalachians are the homogenous, white ‘Other’ in a backward land of isolated hillbillies living in opposition to the American mainstream. Such characterizations have been revitalized since the 2016 election to explain Appalachia's ‘cycle of self-inflicted ills,’ to justify exploitation, and to obfuscate underlying structural factors. Archaeologists in Appalachia have unique input about its materiality, identity, and economies, inexplicably linked with industrialism in complicated relationships of identity, despair, hope, and pride and impacted by the legacy of coal extraction. Archaeologists must add our voice to global discussions of Appalachia's past and future. Critical regional studies of company coal-mining towns across Appalachian Kentucky demonstrate archaeology's potential to challenge persistent narratives with contemporary consequences through artefacts and oral histories, and suggests economic strategies adapted from historic ones to aid Appalachia's just transition post-coal.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical archaeology
• Appalachia
• Eastern Kentucky
• oral history
• discourse analysis
• heritage
• applied archaeology

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the community members from Eastern Kentucky’s coal towns who shared stories that have shaped the discussion and suggestions in this paper. Particular thanks to the communities of Jenkins, McRoberts, Neon, Wayland, David, Lynch, Benham, and Balkan. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Nagatha Anderson, Donna Boggs, Jim Scott, Charles Dixon, and Eileen and Ked Sanders for their hospitality, expertise, and community connections that made my dissertation research in Jenkins and McRoberts possible. Special thanks to Dr. Doug Boyd and Dr. Kopana Terry at the University of Kentucky Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History for their patient support as I collected oral testimony. I could not have done this work without their unfailing support. Both my dissertation research and my work on the Coal Camp Documentary Project has been continually supported by Shane Barton, Dr. Ann Kingsolver, Erin Norton-Miller, and Dr. Kathryn Engle, my fellow team members and directors at the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. Thanks to Dr. Dwight Billings for the mentorship and inspiration to think radically about Appalachia. Warmest wishes to the residents of Kentucky’s Appalachian counties, and may you continue to inspire visitors to love your towns as much as you do.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Zada Komara is a Lecturer at the Lewis Honors College, University of Kentucky. Her current and future research projects focus on history and material culture at former company coal mining towns in Kentucky's Appalachian counties. She also currently serves as the Administrator for the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center's Coal Camp Documentary Project, a collaborative documentary history project about Kentucky's Eastern Coalfields.

Notes

1 See (Catte 2018) for an excellent analysis of Trump Country exposés, including the most notorious examples.

2 The University of Kentucky Coal Camp Documentary Project's website can be accessed at https://appalachianprojects.as.uky.edu/coal-camps.

3 I was particularly inspired by Carl DeMuth's paper at the 2014 Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meeting, who is a fellow Appalachianist archaeologist. Carl's paper was about how diverse economic strategies, policies, and infrastructures in historic company coal mining towns in West Virginia could be adapted to address food deserts in Appalachia (DeMuth 2014), and it sparked considerable interest among attendees. I have also been deeply inspired by Audrey Horning (Horning 2000, 2002) and Jodi Barnes's (Barnes 2011a, 2011b; Gadsby and Barnes 2010) work on farming communities in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which illuminate diversity in Appalachia and explicitly combat stereotypes about the region, and Brandon Nida (2013) and Paul Shackel’s (2018) work on preserving coal heritage.

4 I often have conversations like this with people who look to me as an expert about Appalachian history and social science. I sometimes struggle to respond to these accusations that Appalachia is responsible for the Trump presidency and deserves an ill fate. I was fortunate to hear Kentucky poet and writer Robert Gipe respond to this narrative while speaking on a panel at the 2017 Annual Appalachian Arts and Research Showcase at the University of Kentucky. Gipe, who teaches at Southeast Community Technical College and is director of the college's Appalachian Center passionately responded something along the lines of, ‘“Those people” are not abstractions to me. They are my neighbours, my friends, my family, and my peers. “Those people” are my community, and all our community as Kentuckians.’ I am deeply indebted to Robert for inspiring me to think positively about social change and to make my work more relevant to our community at large.

5 See also Kim McBride's oral historical and archaeological study of Barthell, Kentucky (McBride 1993) and Karen Metheney's (Metheney 2007) study of Helvetica, Pennsylvania.

6 This was a strong common topic among my interviews of residents from the Kentucky coal towns of Jenkins, McRoberts, Wayland, and David.

7 Most of Kentucky's company coal mining towns operated during the golden age of Appalachian Kentucky's industrial period between 1900 and 1940. Over 600 company coal towns were likely built in Eastern Kentucky (Eller 1982), and my University of Kentucky Appalachian Center colleagues and I have identified around 430 towns for the Coal Camp Documentary Project so far (Komara and Barton 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Kentucky Oral History Commission under Grant 395, the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology's Susan Abbot-Jamieson Pre-Dissertation Award, the University of Kentucky Appalachian Studies Program's James S. Brown Graduate Student Award, and a University of Kentucky Appalachian Center Research Assistantship.