Andrew James Leith

In order to understand how nearly two centuries of heavy industry in urban Chicago have affected soil toxicity in marginalized communities where community gardening plays a significant role in well-being I will; determine where heavy metal toxins are present in the soil, then seek to identify the relationship between historic land use and the deposition of those toxins, and finally, how contemporary peoples are contending with this legacy through the lens of community gardening. This one-year study engages topical anthropological conversations related to urban landscapes, slow violence, and gardens to develop an interdisciplinary methodology combining ICP-OES/pXRF soil testing, archaeological excavation, and participant observation in order to analyze the impact soil toxins, treated as agentive artifacts, play in patterns of land-use and marginalization over time. Chicago’s industrial rise and decline (1850-1970) reflect broader socioeconomic patterns that impact land-use in many rust-belt cities, making it an ideal case-study. This work contributes to numerous projects including Environmental Injustices in Chicago (Rosenberg 2021) and archaeologies of toxicity (Stewart 2017, 2023). This project seeks to develop an anthropological methodology and policy intervention by placing stratigraphic analysis and soil chemistry, in concert with archival maps and participant observation to connect contemporary environmental toxicity with historic sources.