Abstract
In this paper, we examine the context of archaeological labor in American cultural resource management (CRM) that led to the creation of the United Archaeological Field Technicians (UAFT) in the mid-1990s. In particular, we focus on The Underground, a zine/newsletter that was widely circulated among compliance archaeologists primarily working east of the Mississippi River between 1993 to 1995. The Underground functioned as a community space in a pre-internet age by facilitating an open discussion of the positive and negative aspects of the CRM industry. Due to the nature of zines as a collaborative, grassroots media, The Underground presents a unique opportunity to examine labor conditions not just through traditionally published quantitative datasets, but through the lived experiences of the archaeological workers and organizers themselves. Furthermore, the material constraints of a zine as physical media allowed for its distribution to be more closely controlled and thus provided a level of security which facilitated more open discussion of labor conditions. The Underground’s position as a trusted venue amongst the archaeological workers was essential for its eventual role in the labor movement as a way to spread information about the UAFT and distribute an organizing survey on hourly pay rates and benefits. The Underground is an invaluable archive of both labor conditions and a major attempt at unionization in archaeology. Together, these historical data can contribute to an understanding of the changing CRM industry and provide an opportunity to see if the futures of archaeology imagined by the zine and the union can offer us a path to addressing our shared struggles.