The author, John Baeten, on Portage Lake, MI. The Quincy Smelting Works is in the background.
Thanks for visiting my website. I am an interdisciplinary social scientist, with a background in archaeology, geography and environmental history. My research is focused on the environmental and cultural legacies that manifest within post-industrial landscapes.
I believe if we want to understand and address current environmental challenges, it is imperative that we understand the context in which they evolved.
My research aims to do this.
I am broadly interested in contextualizing the environmental legacies produced from past industrial activity as meaningful cultural heritage. I believe the vast global footprint of contamination, waste, and pollution that has accompanied former industrial activity embodies much more than an environmental problem. Rather, these wastescapes represent significant cultural decisions - human choices that have, and will continue to, affect populations across spatiotemporal scales. Recognizing contamination as artifact, and wastescapes as heritage, allows us to view these features through a cultural lens - and more importantly provides future generations with the opportunity to reflect on our past uses and abuses of the environment.
I believe if we want to understand and address current environmental challenges, it is imperative that we understand the context in which they evolved.
My research aims to do this.
I am broadly interested in contextualizing the environmental legacies produced from past industrial activity as meaningful cultural heritage. I believe the vast global footprint of contamination, waste, and pollution that has accompanied former industrial activity embodies much more than an environmental problem. Rather, these wastescapes represent significant cultural decisions - human choices that have, and will continue to, affect populations across spatiotemporal scales. Recognizing contamination as artifact, and wastescapes as heritage, allows us to view these features through a cultural lens - and more importantly provides future generations with the opportunity to reflect on our past uses and abuses of the environment.
Work Experience:
I've come to recognize that much of my current research interest spawns from past experiences.
I grew up in Northeast Wisconsin, and as a senior in high school, I worked as a sanitation worker for a rural garbage service, picking up discards from small communities, bars, and farms in the greater Green Bay, WI region. Since archaeology is, in its essence, the study of discards, what better introduction to the field then hanging off the back of a garbage truck? This up close and personal experience with discards, with things, and with stuff, certainly piqued my interest in archaeology, and my later focus on waste and wastescapes.
Upon completion of my undergraduate degree, I worked as an archaeologist for the United States Forest Service for just under a decade. In this capacity, I conducted broad landscape surveys, documenting cultural landscapes from Alaska to Arizona, California to Texas, and New Mexico to South Dakota. In total, I've conducted archaeological work in 10 states, and roughly 20 National Forests - recording sites ranging from historic logging camps and railroad grades, to vast Native American sites in the southwest, and a multitude of mining landscapes.
The latter of which slowly grew on me.
I've come to recognize that much of my current research interest spawns from past experiences.
I grew up in Northeast Wisconsin, and as a senior in high school, I worked as a sanitation worker for a rural garbage service, picking up discards from small communities, bars, and farms in the greater Green Bay, WI region. Since archaeology is, in its essence, the study of discards, what better introduction to the field then hanging off the back of a garbage truck? This up close and personal experience with discards, with things, and with stuff, certainly piqued my interest in archaeology, and my later focus on waste and wastescapes.
Upon completion of my undergraduate degree, I worked as an archaeologist for the United States Forest Service for just under a decade. In this capacity, I conducted broad landscape surveys, documenting cultural landscapes from Alaska to Arizona, California to Texas, and New Mexico to South Dakota. In total, I've conducted archaeological work in 10 states, and roughly 20 National Forests - recording sites ranging from historic logging camps and railroad grades, to vast Native American sites in the southwest, and a multitude of mining landscapes.
The latter of which slowly grew on me.
The remnants of a waste rock pile in Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, 2004
Within the realm of government archaeology, and broader cultural resource management (CRM), mining sites are generally considered less interesting, and often less valuable, than other archaeological sites. The reasoning for this is multifaceted - post-mining sites are often really messy - they often contain a vast amount of material things strewn about the landscape, ranging from mining equipment, to myriad lines of extractive features, and garbage.
Lots and lots of garbage.
Within mining landscapes, its common to find historic dumps consisting of an assortment of 55-gallon drums, many of which have some unknown fluid continuing to seep from their side decades after the mines shut down. Features like these, tend to stick with you - its their relative modernness, coupled with the environmental disregard that both defines mining landscapes, and often disparages them in the eyes of archaeologists and the public.
Lots and lots of garbage.
Within mining landscapes, its common to find historic dumps consisting of an assortment of 55-gallon drums, many of which have some unknown fluid continuing to seep from their side decades after the mines shut down. Features like these, tend to stick with you - its their relative modernness, coupled with the environmental disregard that both defines mining landscapes, and often disparages them in the eyes of archaeologists and the public.
The Kokomo Creek area in the Fairbanks Mining District (2011-2012)
But not all mining landscapes are defined by this messiness. Some have blended in with the environment, and are nearly absent of these physical signs of waste. No two mining landscapes are the same, but they all share similarities - patterns of development, extraction, and abandonment that can be read in alignments of shovel-dug pits, rows of alder, and piles of discards.
Post-mining landscapes are dynamic and evocative cultural legacies - they reflect technological change, environmental impact, and human displacement - and are the cultural remains that I find most intriguing.
Post-mining landscapes are dynamic and evocative cultural legacies - they reflect technological change, environmental impact, and human displacement - and are the cultural remains that I find most intriguing.
The author within an historic mining trench. Certain types of vegetation tend to thrive in areas of past disturbance. In Alaska, this was seen in dense groves of alder, while in southern California, white thorne is a typical post-mining species
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A steam line still running towards an adit.
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DISSERTATION
My dissertation, A Landscape of Water and Waste: Heritage Legacies and Environmental Change in the Mesabi Iron Range, explored the mining landscape of Lake Superior's Mesabi Iron Range, through the lens of industrial heritage and environmental history.
Iron mining in the Lake Superior District involved three major phases: Direct shipping ores (1847-1970s); Washable ores (1910-1980s); and Taconite (1947-Today). Direct shipping ores did not require water for ore processing and produced minimal amounts of waste, called poor rock and overburden, which were deposited in piles near the mines. Washable ores are low-grade ores that required water for processing and produced a new form of mine waste called tailings, that were dumped into lakes near processing plants. Taconite is lowest grade of iron ore in the Lake Superior District, and required the largest amount water for ore processing and produced the greatest amount of tailings. Within the Lake Superior Iron District, the development of low-grade iron ore mining occurred most intensely in the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. Washable ores and taconite are low-grade iron ores, meaning that they contain both a lower percentage of iron than direct shipping ores, and a higher percentage of waste. In order to be considered valuable, these low-grade ores needed to be processed after extraction.
Washable ores and taconite were processed in industrial facilities called beneficiation plants, that removed waste from the ore, and elevated the percentage of iron within these ores to a marketable percentage. Low-grade iron ore processing transformed the social and environmental landscape of the Lake Superior Iron District. Beneficiation plants produced immense economic benefits but also left lasting environmental impacts. Today, these plants and their legacies of waste remain largely absent from contemporary heritage sites.
You can find my dissertation here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319875853_A_Landscape_of_Water_and_Waste_Heritage_Legacies_and_Environmental_Change_in_the_Mesabi_Iron_Range
My dissertation, A Landscape of Water and Waste: Heritage Legacies and Environmental Change in the Mesabi Iron Range, explored the mining landscape of Lake Superior's Mesabi Iron Range, through the lens of industrial heritage and environmental history.
Iron mining in the Lake Superior District involved three major phases: Direct shipping ores (1847-1970s); Washable ores (1910-1980s); and Taconite (1947-Today). Direct shipping ores did not require water for ore processing and produced minimal amounts of waste, called poor rock and overburden, which were deposited in piles near the mines. Washable ores are low-grade ores that required water for processing and produced a new form of mine waste called tailings, that were dumped into lakes near processing plants. Taconite is lowest grade of iron ore in the Lake Superior District, and required the largest amount water for ore processing and produced the greatest amount of tailings. Within the Lake Superior Iron District, the development of low-grade iron ore mining occurred most intensely in the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. Washable ores and taconite are low-grade iron ores, meaning that they contain both a lower percentage of iron than direct shipping ores, and a higher percentage of waste. In order to be considered valuable, these low-grade ores needed to be processed after extraction.
Washable ores and taconite were processed in industrial facilities called beneficiation plants, that removed waste from the ore, and elevated the percentage of iron within these ores to a marketable percentage. Low-grade iron ore processing transformed the social and environmental landscape of the Lake Superior Iron District. Beneficiation plants produced immense economic benefits but also left lasting environmental impacts. Today, these plants and their legacies of waste remain largely absent from contemporary heritage sites.
You can find my dissertation here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319875853_A_Landscape_of_Water_and_Waste_Heritage_Legacies_and_Environmental_Change_in_the_Mesabi_Iron_Range
Contact
email: [email protected]
Twitter: @hist_landscapes
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Baeten
email: [email protected]
Twitter: @hist_landscapes
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Baeten
