Stonemasons from the Alpine valleys of northwestern Italy shaped the architectural face of Paradise Valley in northern Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s. Drawing on their own distinctive skills, they constructed the constellation of granite and sandstone buildings that are the region's most visible landmarks. Marshall's analysis of this architectural legacy, illustrated with 229 photographs and 70 line drawings, is not only a valuable resource for scholars in vernacular architecture, folklore, and cultural geography, but also a verbal and visual treat for all who love the American West.

A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The mythic American West, with its perilous frontiers, big skies, and vast resources, is frequently perceived as unchanging and timeless. The work of many western-based historical archaeologists over the past decade, however, has revealed narratives that often sharply challenge that timelessness. Historical Archaeology Through a Western Lens reveals an archaeological past that is distinct to the region—but not in ways that popular imagination might suggest. Instead, this volume highlights a western past characterized by rapid and ever-changing interactions between diverse groups of people across a wide range of environmental and economic situations. The dynamic and unpredictable lives of western communities have prompted a constant challenging and reimagining of both individual identities and collective understandings of their position within a broader national experience. Indeed, the archaeological West is one clearly characterized by mobility rather than stasis. The archaeologies presented in this volume explore the impact of that pervasive human mobility on the West—a world of transience, impermanence, seasonal migration, and accelerated trade and technology at scales ranging from the local to the global. By documenting the challenges of both local community-building and global networking, they provide an archaeology of the West that is ultimately from the West.

Documents, oral testimony, and ethnographic description all play a role in text-aided archaeology, which in some broad sense includes all archaeology. This volume explores the relationships among many of these sources and addresses how historical documentation is used in archaeology. Public and official archives; mission and church sources; business and company sources; scholarly institutions; letters, diaries, and private papers; literature; transient documents; local sources and opinions; and maps are among the categories of historical sources used in this collection.

In this meticulously researched study of Basque boardinghouses in the United States, Jeronima Echeverria offers a compelling history of the institution that most deeply shaped Basque immigrant life and served as the center of Basque communities throughout the West. She weaves into her narrative the stories of the boarding house owners and operators and the ways they made their establishments a home away from home for their fellow compatriots, as well as the stories of the young Basques who left the security of their beloved homeland to find work in the United States.

A collection of essays which focus on capitalism, its terminology, theory and the material record. Contents: Setting some terms for historical archaeologies of capitalism; Why should historical archaeologists study capitalism? The logic of question and answer and the challenge of systemic analysis; historical archaeology and identity in modern America; The contested commons: archaeologies of race, repression, and resistance in New York City; Ex Occidente Lux? An archaeology of later capitalism in nineteenth-century west; Archaeology and the challenges of capitalist farm tendency in America; 'A bold and gogeous front': The contradictions of African America and consumer culture; Ceramics from Annapolis, Maryland: A measure of time routines and work discipline; HIstorical, archaeology, capitalism.