Mining North America

Mining North America
Author: John R. McNeill
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2017-07-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520279174

"Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly turned to mining to produce many of their basic social and cultural objects. From cell phones to cars and roadways, metal pots to wall tile and even talcum powder, minerals products have become central to modern North American life. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and North Americans' relationship with it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, and forests leveled. The effects of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North American societies. Mining North America examines these developments. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, this book explores how mining has shaped North America over the last half millennium. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while seeking to draw mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history generally. Taken together, the authors' contributions make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies"--Provided by publisher.

Mining North America

Mining North America
Author: John R. McNeill
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2017-07-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520966538

Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly relied on mining to produce much of their material and cultural life. From cell phones and computers to cars, roads, pipes, pans, and even wall tile, mineral-intensive products have become central to North American societies. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and the human societies within it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, forests leveled, and the consequences of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North America. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, Mining North America examines these developments. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while bringing mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history. Taken all together, the essays in this book make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies.

Mining Language

Mining Language
Author: Allison Margaret Bigelow
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2020-04-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469654393

Mineral wealth from the Americas underwrote and undergirded European colonization of the New World; American gold and silver enriched Spain, funded the slave trade, and spurred Spain's northern European competitors to become Atlantic powers. Building upon works that have narrated this global history of American mining in economic and labor terms, Mining Language is the first book-length study of the technical and scientific vocabularies that miners developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they engaged with metallic materials. This language-centric focus enables Allison Bigelow to document the crucial intellectual contributions Indigenous and African miners made to the very engine of European colonialism. By carefully parsing the writings of well-known figures such as Cristobal Colon and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes and lesser-known writers such Alvaro Alonso Barba, a Spanish priest who spent most of his life in the Andes, Bigelow uncovers the ways in which Indigenous and African metallurgists aided or resisted imperial mining endeavors, shaped critical scientific practices, and offered imaginative visions of metalwork. Her creative linguistic and visual analyses of archival fragments, images, and texts in languages as diverse as Spanish and Quechua also allow her to reconstruct the processes that led to the silencing of these voices in European print culture.

The Archaeology of American Mining

The Archaeology of American Mining
Author: Paul J. White
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813065356

Mining History Association Clark C. Spence Award The mining industry in North America has a rich and conflicted history. It is associated with the opening of the frontier and the rise of the United States as an industrial power but also with social upheaval, the dispossession of indigenous lands, and extensive environmental impacts. Synthesizing fifty years of research on American mining sites that date from colonial times to the present, Paul White provides an ideal overview of the field for both students and professionals. The Archaeology of American Mining offers a multifaceted look at mining, incorporating findings from an array of subfields, including historical archaeology, industrial archaeology, and maritime archaeology. Case studies are taken from a wide range of contexts, from eastern coal mines to Alaskan gold fields, with special attention paid to the domestic and working lives of miners. Exploring what material artifacts can tell us about the lives of people who left few records, White demonstrates how archaeologists contribute to our understanding of the legacies left by miners and the mining industry. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney

To Save the Land and People

To Save the Land and People
Author: Chad Montrie
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2003-11-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0807862630

Surface coal mining has had a dramatic impact on the Appalachian economy and ecology since World War II, exacerbating the region's chronic unemployment and destroying much of its natural environment. Here, Chad Montrie examines the twentieth-century movement to outlaw surface mining in Appalachia, tracing popular opposition to the industry from its inception through the growth of a militant movement that engaged in acts of civil disobedience and industrial sabotage. Both comprehensive and comparative, To Save the Land and People chronicles the story of surface mining opposition in the whole region, from Pennsylvania to Alabama. Though many accounts of environmental activism focus on middle-class suburbanites and emphasize national events, the campaign to abolish strip mining was primarily a movement of farmers and working people, originating at the local and state levels. Its history underscores the significant role of common people and grassroots efforts in the American environmental movement. This book also contributes to a long-running debate about American values by revealing how veneration for small, private properties has shaped the political consciousness of strip mining opponents.

Mining in Latin America

Mining in Latin America
Author: Kalowatie Deonandan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1317414500

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic expansion and intensification of mineral resource exploitation and development across the global south, especially in Latin America. This shift has brought mining more visibly into global public debates and spurred a great deal of controversy and conflict. This volume assembles new scholarship that provides critical perspectives on these issues. The book marshals original, empirical work from leading social scientists in a variety of disciplines to address a range of questions about the practices of mining companies on the ground, the impacts of mining on host communities, and the responses to mining from communities, civil society and states. The book further explores the global and international causes, consequences and innovations of this new era of mining activity in Latin America. Key issues include the role of Canadian mining companies and their investment in the region, and, to a lesser extent, the role of Chinese mining capital. Several chapters take a regional perspective, while others are based on empirical data from specific countries including Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru.

Evolutionary and Revolutionary Technologies for Mining

Evolutionary and Revolutionary Technologies for Mining
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2002-03-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309169836

The Office of Industrial Technologies (OIT) of the U. S. Department of Energy commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) to undertake a study on required technologies for the Mining Industries of the Future Program to complement information provided to the program by the National Mining Association. Subsequently, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health also became a sponsor of this study, and the Statement of Task was expanded to include health and safety. The overall objectives of this study are: (a) to review available information on the U.S. mining industry; (b) to identify critical research and development needs related to the exploration, mining, and processing of coal, minerals, and metals; and (c) to examine the federal contribution to research and development in mining processes.

Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy

Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2008-03-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0309112826

Minerals are part of virtually every product we use. Common examples include copper used in electrical wiring and titanium used to make airplane frames and paint pigments. The Information Age has ushered in a number of new mineral uses in a number of products including cell phones (e.g., tantalum) and liquid crystal displays (e.g., indium). For some minerals, such as the platinum group metals used to make cataytic converters in cars, there is no substitute. If the supply of any given mineral were to become restricted, consumers and sectors of the U.S. economy could be significantly affected. Risks to minerals supplies can include a sudden increase in demand or the possibility that natural ores can be exhausted or become too difficult to extract. Minerals are more vulnerable to supply restrictions if they come from a limited number of mines, mining companies, or nations. Baseline information on minerals is currently collected at the federal level, but no established methodology has existed to identify potentially critical minerals. This book develops such a methodology and suggests an enhanced federal initiative to collect and analyze the additional data needed to support this type of tool.

Gold Mining in North Carolina

Gold Mining in North Carolina
Author: Richard F. Knapp
Publisher: North Carolina Division of Archives & History
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780865262850

The first documented discovery of gold in the United States was in 1799 at John Reed's farm in Cabarrus County. This book traces the history of gold mining in North Carolina from that discovery to the twentieth century. The authors present case histories of John Reed and his mine and of the Gold Hill mining district in Rowan County, along with material on other gold mining activity in the state.

Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi

Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi
Author: Roger L. Jewell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2015-02-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9780967841366

For the last 500 years, since Columbus "discovered" the New World, controversy has raged. Was he the first? Was there sustained travel and trade between Europe and North America, back at the dawn of America's history, 4500 years ago? How did the peopling of the Americas really happen? In this controversy, the ancient copper mines of Lake Superior (Kitchi-Gummi) have become an undeniable piece of hard evidence. There have been several books written about the tremendous amounts of pure copper that was set free by the glaciers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Isle Royal. There is undeniable proof of the mining and gathering of that copper in the distant past. Some researchers have flatly stated that whatever the amount mined, some of it had to have gone elsewhere. There simply seems to be no end (destination) of a copper trade on this continent. Many of you, local history buffs, students of ancient American history, anthropology, archaeology, and Native American studies, may have never heard of the ancient copper mines on Lake Superior. But for those who do know of them, the question was always there. Who dug approximately 5,000 copper mines 4500 years ago on Lake Superior's Isle Royale and adjoining areas? Why did they do it, and where is the copper now? How could 20 to 50 million pounds of copper be removed from this area in such a fashion, that it literally seems to have vanished. Who did the work and where did the copper go? It is significant that in the solving of this ancient puzzle, if Mediterranean area traders were involved, the accepted paradigm of the peopling of America must be changed. This book weighs in on this controversy. It does this in a straight-forward fashion. A simple case study of how these ancient mines came into existence, and the repercussions of the answer. The question of Diffusionism or Parallel Invention must at last be dealt with. This book, is part of your Ancient North American History, a subject that is as yet, in my opinion, not being taught.