Documenting Man Camps
This week, I have spent some time figuring out how to document the material culture associated with man camps in North Dakota’s Bakken Oil Patch. As I mentioned last week, I struggled a bit with whether to document that camps in a highly structured way using a standardized recording form or to embrace a less structured form of documentation using notebooks and sketches.
In the end, as almost always happens in archaeology, I prepared a compromise proposal that I’ll circulate to my collaborators later today. Basic data will be recorded on a form.
North Dakota Man Camp Project Documentation FormBasic Data
Camp Number:
Date:
Location and Access: This field will provide a short description of the location of the camp and the mode of access.
UTM: Record a single point in a specific location (i.e. northeast corner, southwest corner, et c.)
Dimensions: Using a laser range finder and a compass, measure the basic dimensions of the camp.
Number of Units:
Basic Features: These fields collect basic features of the camp that inform and test our typology. The comments field allows for general comments on the fit of the camp into our typology and to propose modifications or sub-types.
Standardized Units (y/n):
Gravel Bed for Units (y/n):
Graded Roads or Parking (y/n):
Electrical hook-ups for units (all, some, none):
Water hook-ups for units (all, some, none):
Comments:
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I’ll also propose supplementing this basic data with a form designed to standardize to some extent the collection of data about individual units. This form is very basic as well.
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These two relatively standardized forms will be complemented with notebooks. While the individual recorders will certainly be free to document whatever they think important in their notebooks, I’ll offer three prompts that conform to some extent to our research questions.
Structure of Settlement
The organization of the units within the camp can often reveal significant information on the history of settlement. It will also contribute to understanding site formation and the processes associated with forming individual and collective identities
The practice of sketching the site holds out the possibility of capturing important interpretative distinctions between units and areas within the camp that photography would not reveal. Time constraints will likely make it impossible to produce scale plans of the camps (and low altitude aerial photography may make these kinds of detailed drawings possible at another time), but sketch plans can nevertheless capture valuable interpretive data.
Preliminary visits to the camps have noted that Type 2 and Type 3 camps tend to have far less regular organization. Units are place less consistently sometimes to create private spaces between units, to provide better access to hook ups, or because the camp grew by accretion rather than under a systematic plan. Changes in orientation may well mark additions to the camp or attempts to maximize available space for units as demographic and economic pressures increased in the area.
Site Formation and Discard
Part of the research goal of the North Dakota Man Camp Project is to document site formation in the context of short term settlement. It might be most useful to use the terms formulated by M. Schiffer to describe site formation with the understanding that Schiffer saw the transformation of objects from system to archaeological context taking place over a rather more extended timespan than the man camps associated with the Bakken Patch.
The basic descriptive terms proposed by Schiffer and others creates a consistent interpretative vocabulary for describing a range of practices associated with the systemic use and discard of objects. Lateral cycling (transfers of objects from one user to another), recycling (for a different purpose than originally intended and usually involving some kind of manipulation of the object), secondary use (re-use without altering the object; these objects often reside in various forms of provisional discard), and conservation (object preserve for its own sake) mark out the processes of re-use for objects that remain in systemic archaeological contexts. Depositional processes which should also be visible in the man camps, include primary discard (at place of use), secondary discard (away from place of primary use), and de facto discard (as part of the abandonment process).
Social Differentiation and Identity Formation
A key element in recent conversations about the archaeology of labor and the working class focuses on the relationship between domestic and working space. Industrial housing complemented the assembly line. It offered a structured existence that sought to shape the moral character of the individual and produce docile bodies suitable for the requirements of industrial economy. Workers articulated individual and community distinctions in the interstices between repression and neglect. Documenting the ways that individuals and communities used objects and space to mark themselves as distinct will contributed to ongoing debates in the archaeology of the working class and consumer culture.
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