The Unfolding of Industrial Capitalism

In the late nineteenth century, the rural county of Berguedà in Catalonia, Spain, underwent a process of coal industrialisation, establishing itself as part of the energy-producing periphery of the city of Barcelona. This paper adopts a historical-archaeological perspective to landscape and dwelling in the context of this transformation of the rural world. In doing so, it incorporates new narratives of previously silenced, marginalised identities to provide insights into the materiality of processes associated with the dismemberment of rural society, the restructuring of the gender order and the making of a complex, diverse working class.