Timber Timber Peter Davies The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Archaeology Edited by Eleanor Conlin Casella, Michael Nevell, and Hanna Steyne Print Publication Date: Apr 2022 Subject: Archaeology, Industrial Archaeology Online Publication Date: Apr 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199693962.013.14 Abstract and Keywords In a world once dominated by organic material culture, wood products were pre-eminent. Forests and woodlands provided timber for buildings and houses, ships and furniture, carts and tools. Small wood provided heating fuel, charcoal, and a host of minor products. Industrial logging began in the nineteenth century, as colonial lands of the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia were opened up to European exploitation and trade. Archae­ ologists have researched and revealed numerous aspects of timber-getting in this period, including log transport, milling technology, the social structure of lumber camps, and the solitary lives of charcoal burners. The forests of the world today are a product of how they were treated and managed in the past. Keywords: timber, lumber, logging, sawmilling, forests Introduction WOOD products dominated material life at the beginning of the industrial period in Eu­ rope. Forests and woodlands provided immense quantities of fuel for heating and cook­ ing, timber for housing, and material for an endless array of tools, furniture, fencing, looms, mills, carts, and barrels. Forests were plundered to build ships, while wood and charcoal heated iron furnaces, potteries, cloth mills, brick and lime kilns, breweries, salt works, and other industries. Rural people and town dwellers relied on forests for food, medicine, fibres, fertilizer, and dyes, while forests supported an entire community of shepherds and woodcutters. The clearing of Europe’s forests had intensified in the six­ teenth and seventeenth centuries, as populations grew and people sought new lands to farm and settle (Williams 2003: 168–186). In Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, Canada, and the tropical forests of the Americas there were still vast expanses of largely intact forest (Braudel 1981: 364), while both Germany and Japan were developing sustainable forestry sectors (Radkau 2012; Totman 1995). From the eighteenth century, however, European colonization exerted increasing pressure on natural resources, and resulted in the indus­ trialization of the world’s forests. Page 1 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber The technology to achieve this transformation developed steadily during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a heavy reliance on the strength of men and animals, and the use of steam and water power where possible. While wood processing was traditional­ ly a craft industry in much of Europe, timber-getting became highly mechanized and ex­ port-driven in the United States and other settler societies. This chapter reviews the in­ dustrial archaeology of the timber (or lumber) industry during this period, with a particu­ lar focus on experience in North America and Australasia. The forest landscapes encoun­ tered by the earliest European arrivals were often the creation of Indigenous peoples, whose subsequent displacement paralleled the destruction of forests by the new settlers. Land clearance for cultivation was accelerated by industrial logging. The shift from man­ ual to steam power in the nineteenth century dramatically (p. 159) increased the scale of tree clearance and timber production, as well as the expansion of white settlement. As timber-getting was essentially a transport industry, sawmillers had to find cheap and effi­ cient ways to transport heavy logs and timber through difficult terrain to make a profit. Transport involved not only the iconic log drives on rivers, but extensive networks of rail­ ways and tramlines that often left substantial archaeological traces. Sawmills were the fo­ cus of commercial logging, and were often located deep within forests to be close to the timber resource. As soon as trees within a suitable radius had been cut out, however, the mill was closed or moved to another location, often leaving behind extensive remains of the operation. The social dimensions of timber-getting have also been a focus of archaeo­ logical research, with investigation of lumber camps providing important insight into work practices, consumption patterns, and gender structures. Encountering Forests European settlers arriving in the new worlds of tropical and temperate Asia, America, Australasia, and elsewhere were often confronted with seemingly endless expanses of trees. The forests and woodlands they encountered, however, were not pristine wilder­ ness, but had been managed by Indigenous inhabitants for centuries beforehand. Native Americans, for example, used fire to clear forest and create grasslands, skilfully manipu­ lating vegetation to promote game animals and foraging (Cuthrell et al. 2012; Denevan 1992: 371–373; Pyne 1997: 468; Whitney 1994: 107–120). In a similar fashion, Aboriginal Australians used ‘firestick farming’ to open up forest areas and encourage the growth of grass for animals to graze. Early British explorers in Australia often found ‘park-like’ landscapes with mosaics of open woodlands and abundant wildlife interspersed with thicker forests, the result of widespread fire use by Indigenous peoples (Gammage 2011; Jones 1969). Likewise in New Zealand, the natural landscape at the beginning of the nine­ teenth century was a complex mosaic of forest and grassland created by centuries of burning by Maori to create an environment suited to their needs (Anderson 2002; Mc­ Glone 1983). The impact on forests wrought by the arrival of Europeans, however, was much greater than anything that had occurred before. Settlers waged war on the trees, using fire and axes to carve farms and settlements from the forests. Settlers in Australia were so over­ Page 2 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber whelmed by the quantity of trees that the supply seemed inexhaustible (Bolton 1992: 40). Widespread deforestation and veld-burning also accompanied the British colonisation of South Africa (Grove 1997), while intensive forest clearance by sawmillers was an accept­ ed part of land ‘development’ in colonial New Zealand (Wilson 1993; Wynn 2002). There was also heavy forest cutting in India under British rule, for shipping timbers, railway construction, and clearance for agriculture (Gadgil and Guha 1993: 118–123). In North America, the slash-and-burn agriculture of early colonists plundered the fertility of forest soils, in a fashion that inadvertently mimicked (p. 160) the swidden horticulture of dis­ placed native populations. Cutting down trees for land clearing and farming was a univer­ sal part of rural life, with industrial logging aiding the process. The endless labour of clearing the forest not only provided a livelihood, but was a symbol of the struggle to es­ tablish dominion over the earth. A smallholding in the forest was a place where the pio­ neer created the world anew, transforming ‘wilderness’ into ‘civilization’ (Nash 1973: 23– 25). The process accelerated after 1800, as settlement expanded westwards across the United States. By the end of the nineteenth century, 121 million hectares (300 million acres) of forest had been cleared for farms and timber (Williams 2003: 303). While the approach to industrial forest operations in North America and Australia was broadly similar in the nineteenth century, the scale and technology of timber-getting in each region varied considerably. The United States boasted immense forest resources and a continental network of rivers, later linked with railways, to transport timber products. Large-scale private ownership of standing timber led to monopolies and heavy exploita­ tion, while advances in steel technology meant better tools and machinery, and the mass production of standardized products. By 1906, the United States accounted for two-thirds of the world’s timber output (Williams 2003: 387). In Australia, however, large timber trees were mostly found in the east and south-eastern parts of the country. The arid inte­ rior was dominated by scrubby woods and grassland, with few permanent rivers for in­ land transport. The timber industry that emerged in colonial Australia was widely dis­ persed and relatively small in scale, cutting timber on public land mostly for local needs, with machinery often imported from Britain and the United States (Bale 1883). Logging The hardwood and coniferous forests of the Great Lakes region and the Pacific North West, the kauri forests of New Zealand, and the eucalypt forests of south-eastern Aus­ tralia, presented numerous challenges to the commercial logging industry. The first was the sheer size of many of the trees felled. Several species found in the highlands of Victo­ ria and Tasmania, for example, including Eucalyptus regnans or mountain ash, commonly exceeded 77 metres (250 ft) in height (Griffiths 2001), while in North America the white pine, Douglas fir and California redwood were among the largest and finest timber trees in the world. Some kauri trees on New Zealand’s North Island could each yield hundreds of cubic metres of sawn timber (Dawson and Lucas 2011: 46; Wilton and Soltani 2013). Manually cutting or felling such large trees involved heavy labour, with two men often working for hours to cut a single stem. Tree felling was done with axes until the mid-nine­ Page 3 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber teenth century, when cross-cut saws with rakes between the teeth were developed, which pushed the sawdust out of the cut in both directions (Rohe 1996: 41). A scarf or notch was first cut into the trunk above the buttress roots, facing the direction of intended fall. A cut was then made on the opposite side of the tree, with steel (p. 161) wedges ham­ mered into the incision to prevent the saw from jamming. After the tree had fallen, the crown was removed and the log was bucked or cross-cut into shorter lengths for trans­ port to the mill. There were several techniques available to move heavy logs through the forest, depend­ ing on tree cover, distance, and slope. The simplest method involved hitching horses or oxen to the log with a rope or cable and dragging it to the mill. Log sleighs hauled over snow or ice roads aided the process during winters in Michigan and Wisconsin, with loads weighing from six to ten tonnes by the 1870s (Rohe 1996: 47). Alternatively, chutes could be cleared and gouged down steep hills and the logs slid down to the mill. ‘Big wheels’ were another way of moving logs through the forest. Each set consisted of a pair of large wheels with a chain slung between to support the end of the log, with a bar hitched to horses to pull the load. The same technique, known as a ‘whim’, was used in the jarrah and karri forests of Western Australia. Figure 11.1 Remains of steam-powered logging winch in the headwaters of the Yarra River, Victoria, Australia (P. Davies 2006). Steam-powered logging winches (or donkeys) could also be used (see Figure 11.1), espe­ cially in forests with a dense concentration of high-quality logs over a limited area. Winches consisted of a heavy wooden frame on which were mounted twin cable drums driven by steam cylinders. A heavy wire rope extended from the winch along a cleared path through the forest, with a tail rope to return the cable to the logging area. The log was attached to the main cable with a short line, and the winch hauled the log to a landing or directly to the mill. The cables were attached to separate drums on the log­ ging winch, which could each be operated independently (Ficken 1987: 70–71; McCarthy 1987: 84). (p. 162) Page 4 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Remnant stumps are one of the clearest physical legacies of tree-felling in forest re­ growth areas. In the mountain ash forests of south-eastern Australia, for example, the enormous stumps of trees cut down more than a century ago can still be found today. Some of these measure up to ten metres or more in circumference around the buttress roots. The notches preserved in their sides indicate both the method of cutting and the height to which axemen climbed to obtain a straight-sided log (Griffiths 2001: 20–22). Networks of drag lines (or snig tracks) were also created when logs were hauled along the forest floor. These often radiate from a winch site into the forest, and indicate the scale and intensity of logging in the past. Logging railways, or tramways in Australia and New Zealand, were also vital for industri­ al logging. These were generally lightweight, narrow-gauge rail lines laid through forest cutting areas, which permitted the efficient transport of logs to the mill. The track bed was first cleared of timber and then excavated to create a level gradient. Rough wooden ties or sleepers were laid to create a bed, with wooden, iron, or steel rails secured to form the line. Check rails were sometimes laid along the inside track on sharp curves to pre­ vent derailments. Each log truck consisted of a pair of bogies constructed from iron and timber, with wheel and axle sets made from cast iron or steel. Swivelling bolsters were fixed to the top of the bogie frame, with chains for securing the logs. The design allowed log trains to be navigated around the often tight curves of forest rail lines. Teams of hors­ es or small steam locomotives hauled the trains through the forest to the mill, with the lines increasing in length as trees were systematically cut in a radius from the mill. The archaeological legacy of these rail or tramway systems often includes extensive networks of track formations, cuttings, bridges, and log landings (see Figure 11.2). From these re­ mains archaeologists can trace the extent, direction, and timing of logging operations, and the introduction of new technologies that improved or accelerated commercial log­ ging activities (e.g. Evans 1994; Mahoney 1991; Williams 1989: 211–16). Logs were also commonly transported by water, especially in North America but also in New Zealand, and occasionally in Australia. As timber technology improved during the nineteenth century, log drives helped to integrate river catchments and lakes with high production sawmills. The system in the United States began on the rivers of New Eng­ land, New York, and Pennsylvania in the early nineteenth century, and then spread to the new logging areas of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and later to the southern states. Logs cut in winter were cast into swollen spring rivers and ‘driven’ downstream to the mill, manoeuvred along the way by agile river men with poles and pikes. Logs were sorted in large pens or booms, to provide a consistent supply of lumber to the mill (Fries 1989: 41–59). Chicago dominated much of this trade from the 1850s, receiving vast quan­ tities of white pine from around the Great Lakes and despatching it by rail throughout the Great Plains and beyond (Cronon 1991: 148–206). In New Zealand, logging of the mas­ sive kauri trees on the North Island involved the use of wooden (p. 163) driving dams, a technique that may have been imported in the 1850s by workmen from Nova Scotia in Canada (Ell 1996: 86; Napier et al. 2009; Wilton and Soltani 2013). Dams up to 100 me­ tres wide were built from logs and timber in mountain streams, which were tripped when full of water to send the logs downstream for processing. Hundreds of dam sites have Page 5 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber been recorded, although archaeological remains are often limited to the foundation holes in the stream bedrock (Diamond and Hayward 1991: 25). Figure 11.2 Bridge on logging tramway, Little Ada River, Victoria, Australia (P. Davies 2005). Milling One of the oldest techniques for reducing logs into sawn timber was manual pit-sawing. This was slow, laborious, and repetitive, but the only possible method in the absence of machinery. A pit was dug allowing enough depth for a man to stand, and then smaller beams were placed at intervals across the top to support the log to be sawn. Alternatively, scaffolding was erected to save the labour of excavation. The man on top guided and pulled the saw, while his mate below pushed the saw back and was showered in sawdust. A day’s work generally produced little more than 200 board feet (0.5 m3) of sawn wood (Vader 2002: 117). A well preserved archaeological example of a pit-sawing complex has been inves­ tigated at the Sarah Island convict station on the west coast of Tasmania (Nash 2007). The settlement operated from 1822–1823 and 1846–1847, with up to 380 convicts work­ ing at timber-getting, coal mining, and lime-burning at various outstations. Convicts sawed large Huon pine logs into planks for building small coastal boats. Contemporary depictions show a long, open-sided shed with a pitched roof near the water’s edge, cover­ ing eight separate saw-pits. The surviving section is about 20 metres long, almost 4 me­ tres wide, and up to 1.5 metres deep, with the remains of a wharf at the front for landing logs and loading sawn timber. (p. 164) Mechanized mills using water power had been used in France, Germany, and Switzerland for cutting timber since the fourteenth century, but only arrived in Scandinavia and Eng­ land several centuries later (Rackham 1982: 215; Reynolds 1983: 90). Wood-working ma­ chines were called ‘mills’ because in many cases they operated in combination with ma­ chinery for grinding grain, with each action driven by the same power source (Radkau Page 6 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber 2012: 202–203). The rotary motion from a water wheel was converted into reciprocating (up and down) motion for the saw by cams or cranks, with the saw cutting through the log which was positioned on a travelling carriage. The single-blade sash or frame saws gave way in the nineteenth century to gang saws which held several blades in parallel. This technique was widely used in Britain, Europe, Scandinavia, and the United States, but was mechanically inefficient. The blade only cut on the downstroke, and energy was wasted as the saw frame had to overcome its own momentum on each return. Neverthe­ less, even a single blade driven by water power produced many times more timber than manual sawing (Williams 2003: 247). The origins of rotary or circular saws are obscure, but they had become well established by the mid-nineteenth century, especially when coupled with steam technology. Early cir­ cular blades were made of cast iron up to 6.4 mm (¼ in) thick, which resulted in a thick kerf or cut and a great deal of wood wasted as sawdust (Byrne and Spon 1874: 3089; Craik 1877: 237; Radkau 2012: 240). Improvements in steel technology, however, meant that blades could be made thinner and harder, with various designs and patents taken out for the shape and angle of saw teeth (Ball 1975: 81–84). Circular saws had a variety of ap­ plications including breaking down, ripping, docking (or cross-cutting) and grooving, and were often used in conjunction with reciprocating or band saws (discussed later). The largest circular saws were used for the initial breaking down of logs, and were often arranged in pairs, with one mounted above and slightly ahead of the other in alignment to allow a clean cut through logs up to 2.13 metres (7 ft) or more in diameter. Band saws became popular in the United States from the 1870s (Fries 1989: 62), but they were rarely used in Australia until after the Second World War. They consisted of a con­ tinuous flexible steel blade about 381 mm (15 in) wide, running between two powered wheels. Band saws were highly efficient, cutting a very narrow kerf and operating at higher speeds than circular saws, and their length of up to 15.2 metres (50 ft) meant they could be used to cut very thick logs. Once a band saw was installed in a mill, the circular saw was relegated to cutting and trimming smaller timbers. In the nineteenth century, sawmills generally operated on similar principles al­ though their size and capacity varied enormously. A large forest mill in Australia might cut up to 50,000 board feet (118 m3) per week, but the adoption of larger and more pow­ erful machinery by sawmillers in Michigan, Wisconsin, and other parts of the United States produced similar volumes of timber each day (Williams 2003: 247–249). Most sawmills were located within or close to the forest to minimize transport costs, with mate­ rials to build the mill itself usually cut from the forest nearby. Saw benches and engines were commonly housed in a large shed with open sides to facilitate the easier handling of logs and timber, with trenches dug beneath the floor to permit the removal of sawdust. Power from a wood-fired boiler and steam engine was transmitted to the saws by a series of shafts and belts attached to a fly wheel, with clutches provided to enable the saws to be disengaged. One or more log carriages ran the length of the mill, carrying logs past the saw to be cut into timber. Nearby were log storage areas and often workers’ huts, with rail or tram lines radiating from the mill back into the forest, and a main line to con­ (p. 165) Page 7 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber nect with a railway or port. A working mill site was usually surrounded by a waste of stumps, bark, sawdust, and mud. At abandoned mill sites in the forest, remains of almost every industrial and social aspect of sawmilling are often preserved. Earthworks and remnant support timbers are among the most durable elements, and these allow the size of the mill shed to be determined. Sawdust trenches, machinery settings, and boiler foundations give an indication of the in­ ternal layout of the mill. Other items commonly found include the remains of drive belts, discarded saws, tram wheels, and horse shoes, all of which give clues to the scale of the operation. Large volumes of sawdust were also produced, which was either burnt as green fuel in special retorts, dumped in the nearest creek, or piled in large heaps close to the mill. Wood-drying kilns were also built at some forest sawmills in the early twentieth century, consisting of sets of large concrete chambers for steaming and drying the timber. The remains of kilns reveal attempts by sawmillers to improve the quality of their product and compete with larger metropolitan wood processors. Minor Forest Industries A range of other products were also extracted from forests and woodlands during this pe­ riod, often using ancient techniques, although most left few physical traces of activity. Tanbark, for instance, was stripped from oak trees (or black wattle in Australia) and used in tanning pits to cure and soften leather hides. Railway ties or sleepers were cut in vast numbers, often manually with axe and adze, to underlie the enormous expansion of rail­ ways around the world during the nineteenth century (Whitney 1994: 190). Millions of pit props were cut for use in coal, gold, and other mining industries to support shafts deep underground (Hardesty 2010: 43–46). Charcoal was widely used for mineral processing, glass works, and by blacksmiths, espe­ cially in areas where coking coal was unavailable. Charcoal was manufactured by (p. 166) burning hardwood timber in conditions that virtually excluded air. Billets of wood were stacked together in a low mound, generally five to ten metres across, which was some­ times placed in a shallow, saucer-shaped pit (Muir 2005: 224–225; Ruby 2005). The mound was covered with turf, mud, or clay, and the wood was set alight, to burn down slowly over several days. Controlled burning was essential to avoid flare-ups, so charcoalburners mostly camped beside the kiln during the whole process. Later in the industrial period, iron retorts replaced traditional kilns, with industrial gases and liquids produced as part of the distillation process (Winzenreid 1986). In archaeological terms, shallow pits lined with charcoal, and rusting fragments of iron kilns, can still be detected in some for­ est areas, to reveal the location of this ancient craft. The remains of beehive-shaped kilns made from stone and brick have also been identified at sites in Nevada (Thomas 2007; Zeier 1987). Recent archaeological work in Nevada has revealed further details of charcoal production used in mine smelters and roasting furnaces in the late nineteenth century (Ko et al. 2011; Mahoney 2014). Swiss-Italian charcoal burners, collectively known as ‘Carbonari’, Page 8 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber set up temporary camps to harvest pinion and juniper trees. The men built retaining walls on steep slopes using large boulders and backfilled soil to create level platforms, which supported kiln stacks up to ten metres across. They also created small huts from which to monitor the burning charcoal. Hut sites were simple arrangements of boulders, probably once associated with canvas tents. Stone ovens were also identified, along with the re­ mains of goat, sheep, and cow bones. The archaeological evidence reveals the ephemeral nature of charcoal production and the exploitation of scarce natural resources, carried out by migrants whose lives are otherwise scarcely documented. The use of wood fibre for paper production also emerged in the nineteenth century. The technology was first developed in Germany in the 1840s and transferred to the United States in the 1860s. The Pagenstecher brothers imported machinery to Massachusetts in 1867 that shredded logs to a pulp by forcing their ends against a revolving, water-cooled grinding stone. Rag fibre was added to the early wood-pulp papers to give extra strength. The price of newsprint fell dramatically in the following years, as the use of wood as raw material transformed the paper and newsprint industries in the United States and else­ where (Hunter 1957: 376–380). Social Life Wood production in forest areas generally involved the establishment of temporary indus­ trial work camps. Timber-getting was highly labour intensive, and despite the increasing mechanization of operations during the nineteenth century, large numbers of men were needed to carry out all the tasks of logging, loading, milling, and transport. Logging camps typically housed dozens or even hundreds of men, and some brought their families to live with them as well. While the focus of archaeological studies of the (p. 167) timber industry has often been on machinery and technological change, and issues of heritage significance, research has also examined the social and material aspects of life in the camps, including such issues as gender, class, and ethnicity, along with subsistence, hous­ ing, recreation, and health (e.g. Brandon and Davidson 2005; Brashler 1991; Davies 2006; Muckle 2021; Pappas 2004). Logging camps were just one kind of industrial settlement that sprang up in the eigh­ teenth and nineteenth centuries in response to an emerging global economy. Capital, labour, and raw materials intersected with notions of ‘development’ to create what Van Bueren (2002: 2) calls ‘peripheral work settlements’ devoted to mining, railways, dam construction, and other infrastructure. These specialized communities typically provided accommodation for workers, but little else, and were often located in remote areas. While some camps developed into permanent settlements, most were abandoned when the work finished or natural resources ran out. The archaeological investigation of temporary work camps, company towns, and other related settlements helps to reveal the processes of in­ dustrialization and how workers responded to the places and conditions they encountered (Douglass 1998; Gillespie and Farrell 2002; Hardesty 2002; Mitchell 2013; Shackel 2004; Spude et al. 2011). Page 9 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber In the logging industry, men worked hard for long hours in the forest, often in cold and wet conditions, and demanded substantial meals to fuel their bodies. Forest workers could consume up to 9,000 calories per day (Conlin 1979: 167–169). Food in the logging camps of New England and the Great Lakes during much of the nineteenth century was generally plentiful but often monotonous, with few farms and towns nearby to provide fresh supplies. Beans, pork, and bread were staples, along with pancakes, pickled beef, sourdough biscuits, tea, and molasses (Conlin 1979: 166). In later years, however, betterquality food became a standard of logging camps. Professional cooks were often em­ ployed, fresh food was more readily available, and dedicated dining rooms or cookhouses were established. Workers expected good food and would often leave a camp to seek em­ ployment elsewhere if they were unhappy with the food provided. Much of the material evidence at logging camps relates to the preparation and consump­ tion of food. Archaeological remains of tablewares, animal bones, and other items provide evidence of worker culture in nineteenth-century forest camps. Franzen’s survey of log­ ging sites in northern Michigan, for example, identified a high frequency of white earth­ enware or ‘ironstone’ plates, cups, and saucers, along with yellow ware bowls and Rock­ ingham pitchers (Franzen 1992: 86–89). Tinwares and enamelwares were present on some sites, but were by no means universal, as loggers seemed to have preferred ceram­ ics, and their cost to mill owners was similar to metal vessels. Faunal remains indicated that beef was the most common meat consumed at the camps, with lesser amounts of pork and little or no wild game. The large beef cuts suggest that roasts and stews were frequent, and well suited to feeding large numbers of men (Franzen 1992: 90). Brashler’s (1991: 64–65) recording of decorative glassware and other display pieces at logging sites in West Virginia is consistent with the presence of women and families and the different consumption patterns of men and women in the early twentieth century. Mill camps in the United States often had a distinctive ethnic structure, which re­ lated to the frequent employment of recent immigrants in the timber industry. Early pine camps in the Great Lakes region during the 1840s to 1870s were dominated by German, Irish, and Canadian (both French- and English-speaking) workers (Franzen 1992: 83–85). Large numbers of Scandinavian and Finnish loggers arrived as the hardwood era began late in the nineteenth century, with Poles, Slovenians, and Serbo-Croatians appearing in the following years (Karamanski 1989: 215). Finnish camps often featured saunas, an im­ portant ethnic marker that left distinct archaeological traces. Rectangular earthen berms identified at mill sites in Michigan, for example, enclosed piles of heat-altered cobbles. These appear to be the remains of traditional smoke saunas, where rocks were heated by fire and bathers entered after the fire was extinguished and the smoke had cleared through a hole in the roof (Franzen 1992: 90). Saunas represented an important cultural feature of logging camps in Michigan and Minnesota, where Finnish workers could assert their ethnic identity on the industrial frontier of the new world. A Japanese Canadian log­ ging camp in British Columbia occupied in the 1920s also featured the archaeological re­ mains of Japanese ethnic features, including a bathhouse (ofuro) and garden (Muckle 2021). (p. 168) Page 10 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Accommodation for mill workers was also an important feature of camp life. As the scale of logging operations increased during the second half of the nineteenth century, more men were employed and camps expanded in size. Archaeological remains of huts and houses reveal important aspects of labour relations and gender structures, and how these changed through time. Up to the 1870s, the basic form of accommodation in the Great Lakes region and the North-West coast was the bunkhouse. This was a simple, all-purpose log building used by up to a dozen men for cooking, eating, and sleeping. The floor level was often dug into the ground to provide a level surface for wooden boards, and earth was banked along the base of the exterior walls for insulation (Franzen 1992: 74; Rohe 1996: 13–15). An iron stove and kerosene lamps provided heating and lighting, while bunks for sleeping were arranged along the walls. Other features built at small logging camps often included a blacksmith shop and a root house to keep vegetables from freez­ ing, while a separate cookhouse also became a feature of camp life. Mill buildings were typically clustered together in a clearing in the forest. The structure of logging camps gradually changed in the following years, as sawmills grew larger and older workers with resident families were employed more often in the camps. Men with wives and children were widely regarded as steadier workers, and log­ ging companies responded by building better quality single-family dwellings (Karamanski 1989: 211; Rajala 1989: 176–178). Larger mill settlements and company towns also fea­ tured a store and sometimes a school, as well as a boarding house and huts for the single men. At the Dogway site in West Virginia, Brashler (1991) identified archaeological debris from numerous shanty-car houses along a logging railway. Shanties were rectangular wooden structures, approximately 3.6 by 7.6 metres (12 by 25 ft) which were brought to the site by train, lowered beside the rails with a crane, and later picked up and moved to the next logging area. They provided portable housing in temporary logging communities, in response to the needs of a mobile workforce. Dogway was a (p. 169) company logging camp, where men, women, and children lived together in a pattern that reinforced the family values of traditional rural society, but one which was also adapted to the needs of an industrial economy. A similar pattern of gendered housing is evident at forest mill sites in eastern and southeastern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sawmills were typically located in a large forest clearing, with small houses for families arranged close together and separated from the huts of single men by a path, creek, or rail line (Evans 1994: 39). At Henry’s Mill in south-west Victoria, the archaeological remains of at least eight family houses were located several hundred metres from the mill shed, in a sepa­ rate ‘suburb’ beside the West Barwon River (Davies 2005). Each house consisted of a front living room, with two small bedrooms behind and a lean-to kitchen at the rear. Wooden huts for single men were much smaller, generally about 3 metres (10 ft) square, and each was shared by two men. About fifteen huts were built close together at Henry’s Mill, largely within the course of a shallow gully. Page 11 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber The physical separation between single men and married employees with resident fami­ lies was blurred, however, by the provision of special quarters for married men who lodged their families elsewhere. These men were provided with group accommodation separate from their bachelor co-workers, but the communal nature of the lodgings rein­ forced the absence of their wives and children. In addition, the family of W. R. Henry, the mill owner, maintained a cottage on a slope overlooking the entire site, its isolated loca­ tion reinforcing the distance between boss and workers. The location and nature of differ­ ent types of housing at Henry’s Mill thus expressed social divisions and gender relations in a remote forest sawmill. Conclusion The timber industry was dominated by steam, animal, and human power until the early twentieth century. Sawmills were typically located deep in forest areas, and formed the centre of industrial communities that provided accommodation and basic services to mill workers and often their families as well. While these sites today are often heavily over­ grown, archaeological survey, and in a few cases excavation, have revealed important as­ pects of the social changes to forest camps brought about by industrialization. Founda­ tions of huts, houses, and other buildings, along with discarded ceramics, glass, and many other domestic items, reveal the growing scale of the logging industry, the shift from a single-gender to a family-oriented workforce, and the integration of rural industri­ al workers with wider spheres of production and consumption. By the 1930s and 1940s, a new economy of industrial forestry was emerging in much of North America, Australasia, and elsewhere. The pulp and paper industries demanded huge quantities of logs as raw material, which resulted in the clear-cutting of ever larger tracts of forest (Dargavel 1995). Diesel engines, lorries, chainsaws, road networks, and electrification combined to transform the timber production process, as large modern sawmills in towns made smaller forest mills obsolete. Native forests were re­ placed with extensive plantations in many areas, while the conservation movement cam­ paigned to protect and preserve forests of outstanding natural appeal. Demand for timber products also shifted, as plastics and alloys came to be increasingly used in the manufac­ ture of many everyday products. The forests of the world remain under threat from nu­ merous pressures, but in their hidden depths they can still provide glimpses of their own history as well as the people for whom timber-cutting was once a way of life. (p. 170) References Anderson, A. 2002. ‘A Fragile Plenty: Pre-European Māori and the New Zealand Environ­ ment’, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, E. Pawson and T. Brooking (eds). Mel­ bourne: Oxford University Press. pp. 19–34. Bale, M. P. 1883. Sawmills; Their Arrangement and Management; and the Economical Conversion of Timber. London: Crosby, Lockwood, and Co. Page 12 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Ball, N. 1975. ‘Circular Saws and the History of Technology’, Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology vol. 7 (3): 79–89. Bolton, G. 1992. Spoils and Spoilers: A History of Australians Shaping Their Environment, 2nd edn. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Brandon, J. C. and J. M. Davidson. 2005. ‘The Landscape of Van Winkle’s Mill: Identity, Myth and Modernity in the Ozark Upland South’, Historical Archaeology 39 (3): 113–131, Brashler, J. 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E. Perry (eds). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp. 53–172. Dargavel, J. 1995. Fashioning Australia’s Forests. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Davies, P. 2006. Henry’s Mill: The Historical Archaeology of a Forest Community. Oxford: Archaeopress. Davies, P. 2005. ‘Space and Structure at an Australian forest sawmill’, Historical Archae­ ology 39 (4): 51–64. Dawson, J. and R. Lucas. 2011. New Zealand’s Native Trees. Nelson, NZ: Craig Potton Publishing. Denevan, W. M. 1992. ‘The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492’, An­ nals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (3): 369–385. Diamond, J. T. and B. W. Hayward. 1991. Kauri Timber Days. Auckland: The Bush Press. Page 13 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Douglass, W. A. 1998. ‘The mining camp as community’, in Social Approaches to an Industrial Past, A. B. Knapp, V. C. Pigott, and E. W. Herbert (eds). London: Routledge, pp. 97–108. (p. 171) Ell, G. 1996. King Kauri: Tales and Traditions of the Kauri Country. Auckland: The Bush Press. Evans, P. 1994. Rails to Rubicon: A history of the Rubicon Forest. Melbourne: Light Rail­ way Research Society of Australia. Ficken, R. E. 1987. The Forested Land: A History of Lumbering in Western Washington. Durham/Seattle: Forest History Society and University of Washington Press. Franzen, J. G. 1992. ‘Northern Michigan Logging Camps: Material Culture and Worker Adaptation on the Industrial Frontier’, Historical Archaeology 26 (2): 74–98. Fries, R. F. 1989. Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin 1830–1900. Sister Bay, WI: Wm Caxton. Gadgil, M. and R. Guha. 1993. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gammage, B. 2011. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Syd­ ney: Allen & Unwin. Gillespie, W. B. and M. M. Farrell. 2002. ‘Work Camp Settlement Patterns: Landscape Scale Comparisons of Two Mining Camps in South-eastern Arizona’, Historical Archaeolo­ gy 36 (3): 59–68. Griffiths, T. 2001. Forests of Ash: An Environmental History. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press. Grove, R. 1997. ‘Scotland in South Africa: John Croumbie Brown and the roots of settler environmentalism’, in Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies, T. Griffiths and L. Robin (eds). Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp.139–153. Hardesty, D. L. 2010. Mining Archaeology in the American West: A View from the Silver State. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Hardesty, D. L. 2002. ‘Commentary: Interpreting Variability and Change in Western Work Camps’, Historical Archaeology 36 (3): 94–98. Hunter, D. 1957. Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Jones, R. 1969. ‘Fire-Stick Farming’, Australian Natural History 16: 224–228. Karamanski, T. J. 1989. Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging in Northern Michigan, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Page 14 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Ko, D. W., A. D. Sparrow, and P. J. Weisberg. 2011. ‘Land-use legacy of historical tree har­ vesting for charcoal production in a semi-arid woodland’, Forest Ecology and Manage­ ment 261: 1283–1292. Mahoney, P. J. 1991. ‘Bush tramways in New Zealand: an unrecognised historic resource’, The Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology 9: 79. Mahoney, S. 2014. ‘Charcoal Burners on the Pancake Range: Charcoal Production in East­ ern Nevada during the late 19th century’. Public presentation. Québec: Society for Histor­ ical Archaeology Conference. McCarthy, M. 1987. Bellbrakes, Bullocks & Bushmen: A Sawmilling and Tramway History of Gembrook 1885–1985. Melbourne: Light Railway Research Society of Australia. McGlone, M. S. 1983. ‘Polynesian Deforestation of New Zealand: A Preliminary Synthe­ sis’, Archaeology in Oceania 18 (1): 11–25. Mitchell, P. 2013. ‘Modelling Construction Camps on the Otago Central Railway’, Aus­ tralasian Historical Archaeology 31: 42–48. Muckle, R. 2021. Archaeology of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Canadian Log­ ging Camps in British Columbia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 25 (3): 740–761. (p. 172) Muir, R. 2005. Ancient Trees, Living Landscapes. Stroud, UK: The History Press. Napier, A., G. Boswijk, and G. Brierley. 2009. ‘Spatial history of kauri driving dam place­ ment in the Kauaeranga Valley, Coromandel Peninsula’, New Zealand Geographer 65: 171–186. Nash, M. 2007. ‘A survey of maritime infrastructure at the Sarah Island penal settlement’, The Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology 31: 91–104. Nash, R. 1973. Wilderness and the American Mind, rev. edn. New Haven, CT: Yale Univer­ sity Press. Pappas, E. I. 2004. ‘Fictive Kin in the Mountains: The Paternalistic Metaphor and House­ holds in a California Logging Camp’, in Household Chores and Household Choices: Theo­ rizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology, K. S. Barile and J. C. Brandon (eds). Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, pp. 159–176. Pyne, S. J. 1997. Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World. Seattle, WA: University of Seattle Press. Rackham, O. 1982. ‘The Growing and Transport of Timber and Underwood’, in Woodwork­ ing Techniques before A.D. 1500, Sean McGrail (ed.). Greenwich: National Maritime Mu­ seum, BAR International Series 129, pp. 199–218. Radkau, J. 2012. Wood: A History, Cambridge: Polity Press. Page 15 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Rajala, R. A. 1989. ‘Bill and the Boss: Labor Protest, Technological Change, and the Transformation of the West Coast Logging Camp, 1890–1930’, Journal of Forest History 33 (4): 168–179. Reynolds, T. S. 1983. Stronger Than A Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Rohe, R. 1996. ‘The Material Culture of an 1870s Logging Camp: The Sherry and Gerry Site, Wisconsin’, Material Culture 28 (1): 1–68. Ruby, A. 2005. ‘Itinerant Industry: Nineteenth-Century Charcoal Production in the Coso Mountains’, Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology 18: 176–80. Shackel, P. A. 2004. ‘Labour’s Heritage: Remembering the American Industrial Land­ scape’, Historical Archaeology 38 (4): 44–58. Spude, C. H., R. O. Mills, K. Gurcke, and R. Sprague. 2011. Eldorado! The Archaeology of Gold Mining in the Far North. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Thomas, N. D. 2007. ‘Pinyon-Juniper Woodland Resource Depletion at the Ward Historic Mining District, 1872–1888’, Nevada Archaeologist 22: 23–32. Totman, C. 1995. The Lumber Industry in Early Modern Japan. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Vader, J. 2002. Red Gold: The Tree that Built a Nation. Sydney: New Holland Publishers. Van Bueren, T. M. 2002. ‘The Changing Face of Work in the West: Some Introductory Comments’, Historical Archaeology 36 (3): 1–7. Whitney, G. G. 1994. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmen­ tal Change in Temperate North America 1500 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press. Williams, M. 2003. Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Williams, M. 1989. Americans and their Forests: A Historical Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilton, D. and L. Z. Soltani. 2013. ‘Tram or Dam? A Comparison of Kauri Logging Transportation Methods in the Kauaeranga Valley, New Zealand, 1871–1928’, Aus­ tralasian Historical Archaeology 31: 78–87. (p. 173) Wilson, G. A. 1993. ‘Irrational Forestry Policy: The Timber Industry and Forest Clearance on Farms in the New Zealand Catlins District, 1870–1950’, Forest and Conservation His­ tory 37 (3): 120–131. Page 16 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022 Timber Winzenreid, A. P. 1986. Britannia Creek: An Essay in Wood Distillation. Melbourne: APW Productions. Wynn, G. 2002. ‘Destruction Under the Guise of Improvement? The Forest, 1840–1920’, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, E. Pawson and T. Brooking (eds). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 100–116. Zeier, C. D. 1987. ‘Historic Charcoal Production Near Eureka, Nevada: An Archaeological Perspective’, Historical Archaeology 21: 81–101. Peter Davies Peter Davies is a research associate in Archaeology at La Trobe University. He is the author of several books, including An Archaeology of Institutional Confinement: The Hyde Park Barracks, 1848-1886 (with Penny Crook and Tim Murray, 2013). He also co-edits the journal Australasian Historical Archaeology. Page 17 of 17 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 27 April 2022