In the early industrial world of the 19th century, gunpowder was a central source of power–physical, political, and economic. In South Asia, the British empire found itself in control of the world’s preeminent source of saltpeter for manufacturing gunpowder. This saltpeter underwrote British military and commercial dominance and fed global explosives production.

This paper traces the history of the Madras Gunpowder Factory from its establishment in the late 18th century to its final liquidation in 1895. In recounting the rise and fall of the mill, it explores the place of gunpowder as an imperial and industrial commodity, both within South Asia and beyond. Explosives manufacture in India was inextricably linked to global markets, technological developments, and geopolitical interests. At the same time, it was uniquely shaped by local conditions–at once subject to the demands of imperial commitments and a site for local innovation.

This paper applies portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) to analyze post-emancipation metal artifacts recovered from a former enslaved cabin at Evergreen Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana. The goal of this study is to investigate how elemental composition can provide insight into material access, technological strategies, and household-level adaptation during the transition from slavery to different agricultural labor systems like wage labor. This project contributes to African Diaspora archaeology by highlighting how Black families at Evergreen used, reused, and adapted industrial materials within the constraints of racial and economic inequality. It shows how chemical data, interpreted through historical and spatial context, can help reconstruct the everyday experiences of those who shaped plantation landscapes long after the formal end of slavery.

This project examines the lives of miners' children in the 19th-century Spanish Town settlement at New Almaden, California, one of the oldest mercury mining communities in the United States. While the hardships faced by adult miners have been reasonably documented, the experiences of their children remain largely unstudied. Through archaeological fieldwork and artifact analysis, this research reconstructs aspects of childhood in this industrial setting. A particularly meaningful discovery was a Frozen Charlotte doll hand, a fragment of a popular 19th-century porcelain doll often associated with working-class families. This object points to the presence of play and socialization within a physically and economically demanding environment. It also reflects how Victorian-era gender expectations reached even marginalized communities, as dolls like Frozen Charlotte reinforced ideals of femininity and domesticity. Alongside household artifacts and architectural remains, this discovery offers valuable insights into how children at New Almaden sought moments of normalcy, play, and identity.

Constructed in 1871, the Boise Assay Office (10AA150) served as a central hub for assaying precious metals in Idaho until its closure in 1933. The building still stands today and remains one of the oldest buildings in downtown Boise, Idaho. In 2024, construction activities uncovered a dense midden of historical assaying tools, domestic items, and construction debris from the side lawn of the Assay Office. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the assemblage as well as a brief discussion of chemical testing of assay equipment conducted in collaboration with the University of Idaho’s Chemistry Department. Diagnostic artifacts, combined with metallurgical data, indicate that the assemblage dates to the earliest years of the Assay Office’s operation. These findings offer valuable insight into Idaho’s mining industry and the daily life of those who worked and lived at the office during the late 19^th and early 20^th century.

In this presentation we explore both the industries that operated in the Sulcis Plain of southwest Sardinia between the unification of Italy in 1861 and the Second World War—i.e., agricultural production, mining, and forestry—and the infrastructure that developed to transport the products of these enterprises to cities beyond the confines of the plain. While modern industry is often conceptually linked with urban spaces, we argue that Sulcis in this period saw a sort of “industrial ruralism,” aided by the emplacement of a railway system that allowed traditional farming villages to remain physically quite distant from urban worlds but intimately materially linked to them. The same individuals and communities occupied the categories of peasant farmers and the industrial proletariat, depending on their activities at a given time or location. While many of these industries were short-lived, their infrastructure persisted, leaving lasting impacts on regional development and the rural landscape.