{"id":2513,"date":"2013-02-12T07:51:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T14:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2513"},"modified":"2014-07-04T09:30:09","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T15:30:09","slug":"honoring-an-archaeology-of-tactical-urbanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2513","title":{"rendered":"Honoring an Archaeology of Tactical Urbanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous post on this blog<\/a> I described a bit of \u00a0our archaeological research at the Ludlow \u201cTent City,\u201d a 1913-1914 coal miner\u2019s strike camp of 200 tents and about 1200 people in southeastern Colorado.\u00a0 The relevance of this work to the topic of intercultural urbanism was established in the following way:<\/p>\n

\u2026there was no apparent ethnic segregation of families within the colony\u2026 Based on the stratigraphic positioning of artifacts within cellars dug beneath the tents it appears that colony residents attempted to forge solidarity through the everyday use of certain shared items of material culture. For example, use of plainware ceramics seems to have been preferred over finely decorated Victorian teawares, as the latter would have signaled different social statuses and\/or social-climbing ambitions.\u00a0 In other words, strikers sought in their daily practices to emphasize a shared working class identity.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"LudlowColony.street\"<\/a>

Ludlow Tent Colony, Street Level View (Denver Public Library, Western History Collection)<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to the evidence apparently suggesting that different ethnic groups were living cheek-by-jowl, \u201ctactical urbanism\u201d is also evidenced by the fact that<\/p>\n

\u2026tents were arranged\u00a0 to maximize security and impede surveillance of the interior by passers-by, especially coal company officials and professional strikebreakers.\u00a0 A concerted effort was made to present a \u201ccivilized\u201d face to the outside world as a way to combat early 20th century racist stereotypes about immigrants as unclean, ignorant, and naturally violent.\u00a0 The tent city as portrayed in historical documents and photographs evince concerns for health, cleanliness, family, community, and civic order.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Materially, these concerns were reflected by formal street signage, tent numbering, and\u00a0 prominent display of the medical and community tents.\u00a0 Spatially organizing the community with both external and internal factors in mind\u2014i.e., attending to both security and<\/i> sociability\u2014contributed to a surprisingly long-lived and effective strike.<\/p>\n

The archaeological work at Ludlow helped win National Historic Landmark<\/a> status for the site.\u00a0 The icing on that particular cake came last week when History Colorado<\/a> bestowed a Stephen H. Hart Award for Historic Preservation<\/a> on the University of Denver\u2019s \u00a0Department of Anthropology<\/a> and our partners the National Park Service<\/a> and the United Mine Workers of America<\/a>.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an excerpt from the award program text:<\/p>\n

History Colorado is proud to honor the Department of Anthropology at the University of Denver for their efforts at the Ludlow Tent Colony site in southern Colorado. During the late 1800s, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad wanted a local steel source for their growing narrow gauge railroad system. By 1892, their various subsidiaries merged to form the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, known as CF&I. Throughout most of the 20th century, CF&I was Colorado\u2019s largest employer and the center of various labor and management disputes.<\/i><\/p>\n

One of the most notorious incidents occurred at a tent colony occupied by striking workers, approximately 20 miles north of Trinidad, near the town of Ludlow. Tensions between labor and CF&I led to a prolonged strike in 1913 and 1914. On April 20, 1914, two women and eleven children died in a tent cellar when Colorado militia, battling with striking miners, set fire to the tent. Including the eight miners who were killed, the tragic events of the day resulted in 19 deaths. The Colorado Coal Field Wars are considered to be one of the most important events in American labor history. It is estimated that almost 70 people lost their lives in the Coal Field Wars.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Ludlow Tent Colony Site was studied by archaeologists from 1997 to 2002\u2026Between 1997 and 2005, the State Historical Fund awarded eight grants totaling almost $850,000 to the University of Denver\u2019s Department of\u00a0<\/i>Anthropology to survey, test, excavate, analyze artifacts, and create interpretive displays and materials. The project yielded a wealth of knowledge about the physical nature of the site as well as what camp life was like during the strike\u2026 On January 16, 2009, the Ludlow Tent Colony Site was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. Much of the information used to argue for the site\u2019s national significance was gained from the archaeological investigations.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"HartAward.640\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the settlement tactics employed at Ludlow are not the kind that would draw immediate interest \u00a0from contemporary urbanists, they\u2019re something that scholars dedicated to a comparative archaeology of urbanism (e.g., here<\/a>) might <\/b>find relevant. \u00a0So too might contemporary tactical urbanists having an interest in building the inclusive<\/i> city.\u00a0 To reprise the money quote from an earlier post about archaeology\u2019s relevance to intercultural city-building<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2026 archaeology tells us that at least a few ancient cities were very successful in harnessing diversity\u2019s advantages.\u00a0 Today\u2026we can use little tactics of habitat to accomplish the same goals. Housing can be designed in ways that better integrate marginalized and disenfranchised groups into community.\u00a0 Preserved historic buildings can be turned into low-income housing instead of upscale lofts.\u00a0 The hated (at least within New Urbanist planning circles) surface parking lot can be strategically located to help promote and sustain informal urban economies that, more often than not, have a minority ethnic flavor.\u00a0 We can recognize and defend an aesthetic right to the city.\u00a0 We can better democratize access to public space, markets and other spaces of day-to-day exchange. A variety of strategies for reclaiming urban space can be found within Tactical and Everyday urbanism.\u00a0 Other spatial tactics and strategies for harnessing diversity\u2019s advantages likely await discovery in the ancient <\/i>[and, we might add, recent historical] urban world.\u00a0<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"HartAwrd<\/a>

Hart Award Recipients for Ludlow Tent Colony Work<\/p><\/div>\n

The partners in the work at Ludlow are of course gratified by the Hart Award honor, albeit for different reasons.\u00a0 NPS can be gratified by the fact that their excellent work in spearheading the NHL nomination has added a rare \u201cshadowed ground<\/a>\u201d to America\u2019s commemorative landscape.\u00a0 The UMWA can be gratified that federal and state recognition has finally been given to one of trade unionism\u2019s most hallowed and sacred grounds. I\u2019m personally gratified that historical archaeology\u2014up until recently a pursuit that was considered little more than a \u201chandmaiden<\/a>\u201d to written history\u2014made a critical difference in establishing the Ludlow Colony\u2019s national significance. This helps enhance archaeology\u2019s potential to contribute to other areas of human endeavor\u2014like, say, city-building. Today\u2019s intercultural city theorists, community activists, and tactical urbanists might take note of that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a previous post on this blog I described a bit of \u00a0our archaeological research at the Ludlow \u201cTent City,\u201d a 1913-1914 coal miner\u2019s strike camp of 200 tents and about 1200 people in southeastern Colorado.\u00a0 The relevance of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[22,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-intercultural-city"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Ex","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2513"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3329,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}