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Reviews
| From the Miners' Doublehouse: Archaeology and Landscape in a Pennsylvania Coal Company Town. By Karen Bescherer Metheny. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2007. xix+305 pp., maps, illus., tables, notes, bibl., index. $45.00 hb (ISBN-13: 978-1-57233-495-3).
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From the Miners' Doublehouse is more than an archaeological site report and more than a community history; it is best described as a historical ethnography in the most complete sense. Metheny combines information from documents, oral accounts, archaeology, and landscape analysis in focusing on the daily life experiences of the residents of a western Pennsylvania coal company town. Her interpretations are informed by the convergence of these multiple lines of evidence.
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1
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In the introduction, Metheny presents her theoretical conception of the miners and their families, not as the victims of capitalist, industrial class relations whose every action was tied to resistance, as some researchers have suggested, but as self-empowered social actors engaged in continuing cultural negotiation with a paternalistic coal company. She argues that miners took an active role in creating and maintaining the physical and cultural landscapes of their town and homes as they lived their lives, day to day.
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2
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Following the introduction, the volume consists of nine chapters that can be divided into five sections: (1) background, (2) documentary history, (3) oral history, (4) material culture and landscape, and finally (5) interpretations. The first three chapters provide the broad context for what is to follow. Metheny first focuses on the rise of corporate paternalism from its origins in the manufacturing villages of early-19th-century New England and the company town as it developed through the 1880s. She then turns to the bituminous coal fields of western Pennsylvania and, specifically, to the rise of town landscapes dominated by the two-story, frame, semidetached, twin- or doublehouses of the title, taking note of previous research on Pennsylvania coal towns, most notably Anthony Wallace's (1988) work on St. Clair and Stephen Warfel's (1993) on Eckley. The third chapter reviews the history of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company and its founding of Helvetia, the subject of the study, in 1890. Various company policies are described, giving the reader an understanding of how the lives of workers and their families were subject to the will of the mine's owners and managers.
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3
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The fourth chapter presents a review of census and other records to document the social and ethnic make up of the community of Helvetia. Most households were headed by a single, male wage earner, and the while the workforce was somewhat ethnically diverse, there was clear residential clustering. The majority, who were eastern Europeans, lived at one and of the village, with native-born Americans and the English clustered at the other.
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4
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Chapter 5 presents oral histories from informants, two of whom worked in the mines for short periods, while the others lived in the company town. These narratives provide information about the mine work, household composition, pastimes such as baseball and gardening, ambivalent feelings toward the mining company and company store, the quality of ethnic relations within the community, and the role of mining in the creation of individual identities. Contradictions among the accounts and with some aspects of the documentary record point to the importance of combining oral with other sources. Metheny also notes a sense of nostalgia among her informants, a sense that Helvetia was a once a special place.
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5
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The next three chapters (6, 7, and 8) are concerned with the material culture and landscape and are based on 1995 archaeological excavations at one doublehouse. Two key observations are offered in chapter 6. First, the front- and backyards of the doublehouse were used in quite different ways. While the front facades of all the doublehouses were roughly uniform (as required by the company), the backyard areas varied according to use and personal preferences of the residents. Second, artifacts were sparse across the site, apparently as a result of company refuse disposal policies. A number of small finds are, however, evocative. These include numerous toys, smoking pipe bowl fragments, and a United Mine Workers pin.
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6
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Chapter 7 is concerned with the doublehouse itself. While built by the coal company following a standard form, it is apparent that the houses were continuously altered by the families who lived in them. Porches and summer kitchens were added, water and sewer systems modified, etc.
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7
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Chapter 8 broadens the analysis to the wider landscape of the town and the ways in which the relationship between the miners and the company were expressed. The town's formal sidewalks, representing the company's view of order, are contrasted with the informal walkways connecting the private world of the miners and their families. The workers also used yards for gardens, adding splashes of color to an otherwise dreary environment. One landscape feature in particular continues to play a role in the town's sense of place and meaning: the Honor Roll of those who served in World War II. Once prominently located on company property, it was moved to a nearby church amid controversy over identity and land-use rights in the post-company era.
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8
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The final chapter focuses on the processes of social discourse in Helvetia and the evidence for these discourses in the landscape of the community at various levels; household, kin group, ethnic group, and community are each considered. In the final analysis, Metheny argues that all the sources reflect much the same story: one of miners and their families actively shaping the physical and cultural landscape in an effort to influence their social and economic well being. While there is also evidence of resistance to the company's power over the everyday lives of the miners, she maintains that focusing on that element alone presents an incomplete picture.
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9
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| This is a most welcome addition to the literature of industrial working-class life and of industrial landscapes. Metheny's theoretical and research approaches are refreshing, and for these reasons alone this book merits the attention of all those concerned with the lives of the working people of the past. |
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