 This paper considers capitalism and as an extension globalization as the root of conflict and violence and calls for a more nuanced understanding of practices that isolate and erase distinct ethnic, social and economic groups from the physical and ideological landscape. These processes of clearing are not new, but are ones which are essential for Western capitalist nations to employ to survive. They are violent and they are evidenced not only by direct physical action, but also subtle and covert policies we recognize as normal. Conflict archaeology is well positioned to challenge and expand upon processes that we have come to accept as standard by our 21st century governments and corporations. To parse out the subtle and covert, I will first place capitalism into a historical and theoretical context, then present two marginalized regions as points of discussion, 18th century and 19th century Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, and southern Appalachia, in particular eastern Kentucky and the United States. My research is unified around broad themes of clearing and erasure. The physical and ideological processes by which certain groups of people are removed and or raised in the past and the present, but seeing it, finding the materiality of clearing and erasure, requires disentangling it from narratives, ideologies and practices that are at our core. We live, as we all know, in a material world driven by capitalism and globalization, and our everyday lives are intimately wrapped up in unjust practices which have become quite normal and mundane, a socio-economic and political reality that we may not even question. My research shows that the very processes that begin at the local level, however, are often catalysts for large scale violence for clearing and erasure on a global scale. I seek to understand the ways in which these processes become acceptable, become mundane, become normal, and what materiality develops from them. Finally, I want to understand the ways in which these processes erode or even support relationships between people and things. Conflict resides in a myriad of spaces, including virtual ones. So to be archeologists in the 21st century means seeking material culture and its production in much broader terms. However, to do so, we must consider the establishment of capitalism as conflict. In Great Britain, developing capitalism took shape in the form of improvement, in quotes, a matrix of economic, material, and social changes directed at the rural landscape and towards achieving a productive, civilized world that involved what Adam Smith described as, quote, a moral imperative for the betterment of humankind, end quote. For capitalism to evolve and remain in process, controlling the means of production, buying labor, putting that labor to work, and constantly in process producing surplus through technological advancement, met altering embedded social and material relationships. The modification of past practices, which have been the foundation of society, such as face to face exchange and access to land, was designed to restructure the social fabric of the labor force. Ensuring a reproduction of inequality between those with control over the means of production and those who did not have control. Furthermore, the division between those two, between those who must subsist by selling their labor grows. Understanding the processes by which these inequalities develop and persist is bound up in the interplay between structure, agency, and power. Bringing such abstract ideas about social relations as these to the problem of the social movement of improvement and related transformations of landscapes and material culture requires a clearer notion of how social relations are produced and reproduced, and how the material world is implicated in these processes. Habitus is constructed from learned dispositions, garnered from the various relationships between people and things, over time and space within a historically specific context. Individuals as knowledgeable agents generate the structures in which they function, but can currently be structures limit and or facilitate agency. The reflexive nature of agency and structure, however, is not in isolation, but influenced by the material world that plays an important role in the creation of knowledge. In one sense, materials help shape the learning of dispositions as individuals and groups relate to their physical environment. The material world also drives society in the production of capital, economic, cultural, social, and symbolic, that in turn contribute to the asymmetrical power dynamics between individuals and groups. In other words, while agents may be knowledgeable and thus make informed choices based on prior experiences, they are still bound by social structures not of their own making. This is most distinctive within developing capitalist systems where social structures are reorganized around economic concerns that strive towards a dominion over society and the material or object world, the individuals and or groups ability to transform within these worlds. The reorganizing of social structures to accommodate a more capitalistically focused society rests in power. Power is the foundation of all social interaction where all individuals have the ability to exercise power in a, quote, transformative capacity, end quote. Social interaction is intrinsically tied to resources, what Giddens calls the medium through which power is exercised. Further, Giddens locates two types of resources, authoritative, which is of the social world and allocative of the material world. And these formulate the structures of domination. Power or domination therefore rests in the control of resources. This control is not equivocal to force, but to a more subtle covert disciplining of society in which over time a consciousness is established that can be noted in the relationship between agency and structure. This is not to suggest that such consciousness is, comes from the top down, but it pervades the spectrum of society at all levels. This idea is similar in scope to that of, quote, power two, or the ability to transform through action, end quote, end quote, power over or domination, the ability of one individual or group to dominate another. This heterogeneity, ooh, heterogeneity, sorry. A power posits that within power over, there exists power two and allows power to be situated in all facets of society. Not simply traditional spaces such as state institutions or the elite, but others considered not to be power laden, such as rural landscapes. In his work on conceptualizing capital, Bordeaux broadens the notion to include symbolic dimensions such as the cultural and social, and how these dimensions are directly linked to social relations. These forms of capital, including economic capital in the Marxian sense, helped to construct and maintain the social fields, which in turn naturalized economic inequality. Crucial here is the shift from overt violence to that symbolic manipulation, where specific groups are coerced into thinking, acting, and behaving in particular ways. Or, as Bordeaux says, of making people see and believe. Violence for Bordeaux rests in this naturalization, and I use his quote here. Gentle, hidden exploitation is the form taken by man's exploitation of man whenever overt brutal exploitation is impossible. Johann Galtung used three forms of violence, cultural, structural, and physical, to better qualify the experiences of groups have in certain power situations. Cultural and structural violence are the two which interest me the most, because of their direct relation to clearing, and therefore improvement. In these forms, violence is naturalized built into our socioeconomic structures so much that we cannot recognize and therefore challenge it. Language is appropriate to mask the violence as productive and positive, as in the cases of practices like rezoning, gentrification, or urban renewal. In a similar vein, Foucault described the control of populations in terms of discipline. Discipline took many forms from literally corporeal to spatial, ideological, psychological, even extending into the control of the self. The disciplining of time and space, together with society's acceptance of violence, produced distinct material and physical markers. And to quote Martin Vopes, these markers are products of and precedents for human behavior. In these contexts, archeologists have the potential to explore and understand capitalism as it is in process, as well as the ways in which people construct their lives through an engagement with discourse, the material world, and memories born out of capitalist practices. So a prime example of the intersection of these processes in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, and their material influence on an individual is Lieutenant Gilbert McClimut. McClimut caught my attention because he was sequestered or filed bankruptcy in 1850, which is sort of the tail end of the age of improvement. What makes this case intriguing is threefold. First, the bankruptcy of a tenant speaks to the illusion of improvement as a means to security and success. Evidence indicates he was an improved tenant implementing improved agricultural techniques. And here in this slide, we've got an indication from the Surrendant book where he owns improved journals and books. Excuse me. He also, excuse me, what makes this case, first the bankruptcy, evidence indicates that he was an improved tenant implementing improved agricultural techniques. And he was also participating in economic ventures like cattle dealing, which would ensure rent would be paid and garner more income for luxury goods. Second, the possession of an extraordinarily high number of material goods highlights the shift from subsistence living to one of leisure. Here we have his alcohol content, which is excessive. Party at his house later. Okay. Excuse me. The ownership of so many things suggested he and his family believed that they were secure in their lease and in their home. And finally, the climate has been, excuse me, and then in this case, we've got his dining sets as well as the bedroom, this list of bidet and a foot bath, but he also was in possession of two bidets in his house, which in 1850 for a tenant is quite amazing. Finally, the climate has been taken to court by his creditors, many of whom who are other tenants causing strain on the relationships between the climate and his community. An aspect of being an improved tenant was to participate fully in the new economic system, either by choice or by necessity in an effort to make rent, as well as to supply his family with the tools to survive. But the possession of luxury goods, a necessary aspect to distinguish themselves from other tenants, is an example of personal clearing of social and economic ways and an acceptance of the new. The climate's failure to succeed in his subsequent bankruptcy meant he must be removed from the process in which he has failed. In failing, he is also erased ideologically. Being labeled as bankrupt definitively marks him as a failed improved tenant. The continued understanding promoted through the teaching of history that with improvement, Scotland became modern, and that prior to improvement, the nation was backward is a dominant theme that has resoundingly penetrated how Scotland perceives itself as much as others perceive the nation. This dichotomy plays out in many ways, pre-improvement improvement, improvement clearing, backwards or traditional and modern. With each of these dichotomies comes very specific demarcations of how society was structured, how people behaved, and how people entered into or exited from relationships. The continued use of improved or gentrified or renewed as in modern terms communicates a shift from knowing about practices that inflicted violence to a glossed over image prioritizing the results of a few. Improved also simplifies a complicated process that seems to have little bearing on the present. To be specific, the use of the label age of improvement for Scotland and associated words have erased the experiences of a range of populations and altered the ways in which the locals view themselves on a daily basis. Where improvement and clearing have been seen as two separate processes, I see no distinction between the two. Clearly stated, socioeconomic and material change cannot be put into practice without enacting clearing. This combined process rests at the heart of capitalism and has developed through colonial and more recent globalization processes. In practice, capitalism relies, excuse me, on this process to seek out and secure resources on local, regional, national, and global scales. This combined process is materialistic and ideological, is violent, pervasive, and is carried out globally as well as through mundane, daily acts practiced in public and private spaces. It is carried out from the top down as well as horizontally through members of the same socioeconomic class. It is enacted through legal and non-legal means and politically and local, regional, and national governments. By seeking out ways in which improvement and clearing are developed into essentially capitalist practices, we can begin to understand how deeply embedded this covert practice is within our own society. However, I would like to close by arguing that the implications of this research extend far beyond Scotland and bring it home, so to speak, to Southern Appalachia, where I'm living, researching and teaching. Residents of Southern Appalachia certainly experience clearing either physically, ideologically, or both on some level on a daily basis. Parallels to tenants and codders of the 18th century and 19th century are strong. Appalachian folks are seen as backward, stupid, dirty, fat, and poor health not interested in changing. The hillbilly is the most visible stereotype, but despite a racially diverse population of black, Native American, Hispanic, and other groups, Appalachia remains decidedly white. Efforts to improve their lives are constantly being debated. American and multinational corporations have and continue to see Southern Appalachia as culturally bare, thus available for production. Local residents have struggled with coal, natural gas, and chemical companies, which pollute their land and poison their crops and cattle. Despite the continued violence enacting against them, community engagement is strong and grassroots efforts are locally powerful. Many instances, communities in eastern Kentucky specifically have passed, specifically, have passed equality laws challenging the conservative rights, attack on civil rights, and have resisted the push of white supremacy groups attempting to recruit in their towns. To conclude, this paper theorizes the link between two global processes. I argue that we need to be wary of any process that promises to improve a community. We must ask those, we must ask whose interests fuel the desire for improvement, who will benefit, who will not. We have seen that insidious practices often masquerade as improvement, promising all kinds of behavioral, moral, financial betterment that might be appealing to some, but time and time again in the physical and ideological removal of the people from their home. I argue that the historical analysis of all forms of material culture is uniquely suited to unveiling long forgotten instances of social inequality. Doing so will allow us to return to return a history to a people. And as social scientists, we have the tools necessary to identify modern roots of improvement and clearing processes before they have deleterious effects. Thank you.