Writing about the Archaeology of Forced Migrant and Refugees

This week, I’m working on the fifth chapter on my little book on the Archaeology of the Contemporary American Experience. This chapter, as I set out last week, reviews the archaeology of forced migration and refugees as well as the archaeology of homelessness. This is as close as I’ve managed to get to my #1000WordsofSummer goals. Oh well. There’s a lot going on.

Here’s more of that chapter. The section below is a draft that focuses on Jason De León’s work with his Undocumented Migration Project. It needs more detail and to be expanded into a broader discussion of the archaeology of migrants, but that’s for another day.

Borders and Migrants

Any conversation about the character of borders and migrants in the American experience must begin with Jason De León’s ground breaking work with the Undocumented Migration Project and its book length publication, The Land of Open Graves (2015). De León combined archaeological field work in the Sonoran desert with ethnography to document the real experiences of crossing the US-Mexican border. He demonstrates how a US policy of “Prevention through Deterrence” uses the Sonoran desert itself serves as a barrier to migrants seeking to enter the US (De León 2015, 1-10). By hardening highly visible portions of the border near towns and major roads, migrants are channeled toward the more open, but radically less hospitable terrain of the desert. He goes on to show, in brutal detail, the trauma inflicted on migrants who attempt the crossing the desert and fate of those who died in their efforts. The unforgiving heat of the day and cold of desert nights, the absence of water, and the rugged topography filled with sharp stones and dead end canyons, dangerous animals, and random patrols and surveillance by various US agencies, made the Sonoran desert itself an remorseless ally in national border security. This policy not only ensures that migrants endure nearly unthinkable hardships in their efforts to enter the US, but that they are also subjected to the rapaciousness of coyotes, who offer to guide migrants through the fraught desert landscape for price. De León also emphasized that the vast size and desolate character of the Sonoran desert also served the hide from the American public the fate of those who try to cross it. The marginal land of the Sonoran desert served to render invisible, and, indeed, marginal the desperate individuals who brave its landscape. Just as the lack of documentation obscures migrants from most protections offered by the American legal system, so the Sonoran desert removes their fate from the public gaze.

The work of De León’s Undocumented Migration Project is to make both the individuals and the crossing visible. While ethnography is central to De León’s work, archaeological methods also play a key role. The material traces left behind by immigrants in their movement across the desert stand are ephemeral especially in contrast to the massive state sponsored infrastructure erected at official border crossings (Maguire 2013). Despite the claims by some anti-immigration advocates that see objects left behind by undocumented migrants as trash that contributes to the environmental degradation of the fragile desert, the UMP’s efforts to document the traces of migrants’ movement through this landscape has show that the traces of human suffering disappear quickly when subjected to the wind, sun, and occasional zeal of environmentalists and other activists. The project’s collaboration with forensic scientists, for example, revealed that human remains in the desert may quickly become subject to animal scavengers who not only disarticulate but also distribute bones leading to the sites and numbers of migrant deaths being underreported (Beck et al. 2015). The UMP also recorded things left behind during the migrant crossing, from plastic water bottles to clothing, shoes, bags, graffiti, and more personal objects. Unlike more casual efforts to link discarded objects to migrant movement, the UMP sought to understand these objects in their spatial context. Over 4 years the UMP documented almost 350 sites in the Sonoran desert with over 30,000 artifacts that reveal the complexity of the migrants’ journey as well as strategies used by the Border Patrol to intercept migrants and by activists to provide them with aide. Camp and resting sites, regularly used, informal migrant stations, water drops, Border Patrol installations, shrines, and pick up spots on secluded roads reveal a landscape of movement that makes visible the complexities of the migrant experience in the desert (Gokee and De León 2014; De León 2013). Many of the objects found in the desert provide evidence not only for strategies employed to survive the arduous journey, including water bottles, pain medication, first aide for cuts and blisters, and religious objects, but also objects necessary upon arrival such as toothbrushes, deodorant, and clothes more suitable for daily life. The contrast between the overland routes of migrants and the clear cut roads and hardened installations of the Border Patrol, for example, show not only different relationships to the physical environment, but also demonstrate that the US government’s efforts to control the desert landscape has had a much more dramatic and significant environmental impact. Of course, De León’s team also took pains to ensure that their data did not provide a map that could imperil ongoing migrant movement in this landscape. 

More importantly, locating these artifacts in their context allowed De León and his collaborators to move beyond well-meaning efforts to present objects associated with migrants as representing the migrants themselves (De León and Gokee 2018). The UMP’s decision to collect and study a vast number of artifacts allowed them to understand these objects as more than just representations of individuals, but as bearing witness to human suffering through their wear and adaptation during the desert crossing (De León 2013), their locations, and their archaeological contexts. Torn and tattered shoes, in one instance repaired with a bra strap, provide a vivid document particularly when documented in tandem with the restraints commonly used by Border Patrol. Migrant backpacks recovered by the project became the basis for an installation that was part of the UMP’s “State of Exception” exhibit at the University of Michigan. This installation which also included video and still photography revealed the ethical and political complexities associated with documenting migration and curating objects associated with such traumatic experience. A follow up exhibit called “Hostile Terrain 94” began touring in 2019 with plans to appear in 150 locations over the next several years. The center piece of this exhibit is a map of the Sonoran desert with the location of over 3200 known migrant death since 1994. Participants in the exhibit fill out toe-tags for each migrant body and affix them to the map. This creates a visually arresting display of the consequences of the US “Prevention through Deterrence” policy.