ABSTRACT
At first blush, from an anthropological perspective the mining community presents us with a unique scholarly anomaly. Most of the literature regarding it has been generated by historians, both professional and amateur, whereas there are few anthropological treatments. This is so despite anthropology’s notorious fixation upon community studies, a legacy that the discipline has transcended (and then not entirely) only in recent years. Upon closer examination, however, there are logical explanations for anthropology’s relative neglect of the mining community.
