This edited volume presents seven case studies exposing the repeated pattern of population removal and replacement in the United States from its founding until today. An eighth example spans the Atlantic to hint at how America has also received those removed from other lands. Such ebbs and flows of populations can be traumatic events for both peoples and landscapes. The chronological organization of this volume highlights the redundant tactics of devaluing certain peoples, declaring their land as misused, removing communities, and replacing them with something deemed better for all. A wide variety of archaeological approaches, from traditional artifact counts to Google Earth imagery, speaks to the manipulation of reality that justified removal and replacement and the trauma these events caused. Most figures are maps, both historical and archaeological.
The introduction, “Anthropological, Theoretical, and Historical Contexts of Removal,” by Weik, sets a critical tone by acknowledging the role of “salvage archaeology” in clearing landscapes and perpetuating notions of extinct social groups and empty lands. Emphasis then shifts to acknowledging the suffering of those being forced from one land to another. The chapter reads as a call to action for archaeologists to be part of writing peoples back into landscapes, and for archaeologists to see agency and resistance without belittling the injustices that were perpetuated.
The first chapters address impacts of colonialism on Native groups of the mid-Atlantic. In “We Can Fly No Farther,” Flick and King use site locations and excavated artifact densities to show that relocation of Piscataway people disrupted traditions. More interestingly, the authors suggest that changes in the landscape's vegetation and soil worked to erase visible features of the Native landscape. In “Mapping Chickasaw Removal,” Weik addresses how maps reinforce the erasure of Native peoples by denying their presence and presenting emptiness. These chapters pair nicely to show that the Piscataway and Chickasaw dealt with removal differently.
The next three chapters address the role of capitalism in removal by emphasizing development and productivity. “Whitewashing an African American Landscape,” by Woehlke and Reeves, shows that people were relocated to provide labor for capitalists, which included the removal of tenant farmers from their means of production. Archaeological mapping of activity areas counters the emptiness of historic maps, challenges the narrative that laborers chose these migrations “freely,” and shows how racism functioned to keep African Americans in poverty. Fracchia's chapter, “Worth(Less),” does an excellent job of connecting buttons, ceramics, and headstones to show how quarry workers bought into the same ideals that oppressed them. Horning's chapter, “Removal and Remembering,” masterfully connects data to lived experiences, and it refutes the narrative that the creation of national parks improved the livelihoods of the rural peoples whose lands were taken. Here, excavation of removed homesteads contradicts the “poor and uncivilized” stereotype by suggesting no difference in goods consumed when compared to other homesteads of their time.
The last two chapters focus on cases of removal that resulted in imprisoned populations. In “Creating a Community in Confinement,” Kamp-Whittaker and Clark assess the role of physical and social “neighborhoods” in a World War II internment camp. Unlike the other chapters, oral history is used to connect artifacts and archival records to interpretations. That approach reveals how apparent contradictions in material culture can reveal the diversity of experiences within a community. In “Topographies of Removal,” Starzmann criticizes past prison archaeologies for insufficient attention to the agency of the imprisoned and for insufficient consideration of and engagement with anti-prison activism. Using Google Earth, the author shows how prisons are often meant to be seen, yet what happens within them is obscured. Starzmann analyzes the Fishkill Correctional Facility in New York state to reveal connections between the destruction of rural communities, the labeling of certain people as “insane,” and the often-unquestioned imprisonment of people who are then forcibly employed by the same system that restricts their livelihoods.
The final chapter, “The Janus Face of Removal,” by Orser, begins with the “despair” of Ireland's Potato Famine–era tenant farmers who could no longer produce for their landowners. After removal from their lands, many came to America. Another cross-Atlantic connection is the donation the Choctaw community in Oklahoma made to the people of Ireland in 1847, very soon after the forced removal and suffering of many Choctaw people. Orser suggests that those who have experienced removal are more sympathetic to others experiencing it. The chapter ends with general commentary helpful for those who may undertake their own research on removal and related topics. Of the points raised, those that linger with me the most are that (1) evidence for removal persists in cleared landscapes in ways that archaeologists can find when others cannot, and (2) the most important evidence may be that which seems the most mundane.
