Consumer Strategy and Household Consumption in the Cripple Creek Mining District, Colorado, USA

The Cripple Creek Mining District of Colorado (USA) was billed as “the World’s Greatest Gold Camp” in the 1890s and was home to a multitude of men, women, and children who left behind a record of past consumer behavior. Examination of fourteen household archaeological assemblages provides insight into aspects of household consumption strategies and the negotiation of socioeconomic class relationships within the late nineteenth and early twentieth century mining communities in the American West. An analytical approach that combines the quantitative economic scaling of ceramics and faunal remains is used in combination with the qualitative analysis of entire assemblages to understand consumer strategies and the negotiation of class relationships between households in the district.