“To be Pure or Prosperous”: The Archaeology of Transient Laborers and Saloons along the Minnesota and North Dakota Border (1870-1940)

Abstract

This dissertation expands how archaeologists conceptualize marginalized groups like transient laborers consisting of loosely grouped historical characters like the hoboes, tramps, migrant workers, and others as they moved through highly concentrated and contested spaces. To do this I combine the archival record with the archaeological record of the Saloon Row in Moorhead, MN. I argue that saloons acted as “nodes of visibility” in which the embodied marginalization of these transient laborers comes to the forefront in a moral economy. Moreover, I examine this process of capitalism in terms of production, via labor on industrial bonanza farms and consumption, via saloons. This dissertation seeks to examine primarily three research questions: 1) How does the material culture of saloons reflect the presence of transient laborers? 2) What does this tell us about the intimate connection between production and consumption in a moral economy? And 3) Is there any connection between transient laborers and contemporary unhoused people?