Disposing of Modernity

“This remarkable study of modern life expands historical archaeology in exciting, bold ways. We finally have a book that provides fresh perspectives on modernity and its everyday meanings to people living with its implications.”—Charles E. Orser Jr., author of The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic America

“Innovative. Assessing how social, economic, and cultural life in the Midwest were codified and reproduced at the turn of the twentieth century, Graff elucidates the impacts of a rapidly developing industrial economy, the rise of labor unions and unrest, and burgeoning ideas of modernity.”—Deborah L. Rotman, author of The Archaeology of Gender in Historic America

“Graff has provided compelling insight into past Chicago society through the lens of archaeology, exploring that most revealing source—the trash people left behind.”—Matthew Johnson, author of Archaeological Theory: An Introduction

“In this innovative, perceptive, and well-constructed book, Graff successfully demonstrates that we are still living the modernity that was experienced at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.”—American Antiquity

“Provides a novel approach to the understanding of elite 19th-century society to the complex social networks of the urban environment and illuminates the archaeological potential to understanding those interactions.”—Historical Archaeology

“This handsome and impressive volume . . . is a meditation on American modernity focused, through the lenses of history, philosophy, and archaeology, on Jackson Park—site of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893—and the contemporaneous Gold Coast residential neighborhood of Near North Side Chicago. . . . The author has complemented systematic excavation with equally thorough archival research in order to put forth informed assertions about practices of modern life, then and now.”—Journal of Anthropological Research

“Links between historic content and contemporary notions of modernity are strong throughout, making this text pertinent for those interested in consumption and modernity today.”—Choice