UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the Battle of Blair Mountain occurring in Logan County, West Virginia, and which was the largest labor war in United States history. The battle was fought in 1921 by revolting coalminers against a quasi-militarized force backed by coalmine owners. The issues that surrounded this battle, such as social inequality, oppression, and social change, are highly prescient for debates ongoing in society today. This dissertation investigates both the historical context of the battle and the current issues that impact communities around the modern day battlefield. This analysis incorporates multiple datasets from both primary and secondary sources, including archaeological material, historical records, previously compiled oral histories, and modern sociological studies. This allows a multi-dimensional and diachronic view of a system of inequality based around the extraction of coal from central Appalachia. The theoretical framework used to interpret these data is drawn from intersectional theory (Collins 1990) and liberation theory (Albert et al. 1986), which are combined in this study to explain inequality and oppression as resulting from multiple spheres within society that overlap and reinforce each other. The theoretical framework divides both the historic and contemporary social context into five spheres: political, legal, economic, civic, and social. In this, an illustration for how each of these spheres work at the local level is given to explain the historic and current social issues surrounding the battle. Archaeological evidence from the battlefield is then examined using the framework of intersectionality and liberation theory. From ammunition and terrain analysis, this dissertation shows that the social context around the battle generated not only a unique form of oppression, but also of resistance. The miners during the course of the insurrection engaged in a highly efficient and coordinated mass uprising, where the primary dynamic was that of intersectional solidarity. This was where the common struggle incorporated the interests of many different people from different backgrounds and ethnicities. This is in contrast to traditional explanations of labor struggle as resulting from class solidarity superseding racial, ethnic, regional, or other identities and experiences. This research contributes to multiple conversations within the social sciences, including ones around community-based research, social and environmental issues around energy extraction, working class archaeology, and theories of social transformation.