Description
Book SynopsisThis volume explores how pluralistic communities thrived in California’s mining hinterland as well as how immigrants and California Natives mobilized and mitigated power inequalities through their daily experiences of identity expression, community cohesion, and labor relations.
Trade Review"Sunseri effectively uses archaeology to unmute the archival record and let the workers speak. This book belongs on the shelf of scholars who study labor’s struggle and on the reading list for graduate seminars on historical archaeology."—Randall H. McGuire,
Journal of Anthropological Research"An excellent study on a topic that is on the cutting edge of multi-ethnic scholarship and challenges the long-held notion that there was little or no positive interaction between the Chinese, Native Americans, and Euro-Americans."—Sue Fawn Chung,
Western Historical Quarterly"
Alliance Rises in the West is cohesive, compact, and convincing. The text is at its best when pinpointing important historical and archaeological parallels between the lived overseas Chinese and Native Paiute experiences. . . . [Sunseri's] work is a well-researched, insightful, and clear examination of daily life in historical Mono Mills and class struggles during the Gilded Age."—Seth Mallios,
American Antiquity"Sunseri's work provides a more complete assessment of the experience of non-white laborers in the Gilded Age of the American West than study of documentary evidence alone allows."—Kathleen L. Hull,
American Anthropologist"This is an approachable and concise study that is certain to inform the work of educators and researchers with interests in such topics as class, capitalism, and labor movements, as well as
race and racialization during the Gilded Age. For students, the book represents an excellent case study in gathering and comparing multiple forms of evidence in archaeological research.
Alliance Rises in the West is recommended reading for historical archaeologists, particularly specialists in California and elsewhere investigating the experiences and agency of minoritized ethnic groups combating and rebuffing discrimination and violence during California's long history of missionary, mercantile, and settler colonialism."—Tsim D. Schneider,
California History“
Alliance Rises in the West makes a significant contribution to the archaeology and history of labor, race, and the politics of alliance of industrial communities in the American West.”—Donald L. Hardesty, author of
Mining Archaeology in the American West: A View from the Silver State“Sunseri’s book makes a very important contribution to the field of historical archaeology in the West and offers a broad set of contributions to historical archaeology globally and to our understanding of intersubjectivity in the past. Sunseri masterfully sweeps research that is far ranging across the fields of ethnicity, race, class, and, most significantly, labor.”—Carolyn L. White, editor of
The Materiality of Individuality: Archaeological Studies of Individual LivesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Mono Mills, a Wild West Suburb
1. Beneath the Gilding of 19th-Century Company Towns
2. Archaeological Study of Laborers’ Identities in Capitalism
3. Paiute and Chinese Laborers in Mono Mills
4. Archaeology of Race-Based Collective Action
5. Archaeology of Working-Class Solidarity and Resistance
References
Index
