O Can-ada: The Geography of Apex’s Canned Meat

By Emily Dale

September 4, 2024

For more about Apex or the Apex, Arizona Archaeology Project information visit our website or email Dr. Emily Dale at emily.dale@nau.edu.

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While records of a butcher and cook at Apex and myriad canning jars across the site indicate the camp’s residents had access to fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables, the tens of thousands of rusty cans reveal that much of their diet also came from tinned foods. Most of Apex’s meat cans are identified solely on their shape and opening method (think about the unique shape of a Spam can), but a few have more diagnostic elements that tell us what the cans contained and where they came from! The national origins of these cans tell of a increasingly globalized world as canned beef and fish travelled from Uruguay, Argentina, Norway, France, and California (though not Canada, as the title would have you believe) to rural Northern Arizona.

South American Beef Tins

Three cans from Uruguay and one from Argentina demonstrate South America’s successful foray into the international meat market. In Uruguay and Argentina, numerous frigoríficos, or refrigerated slaughterhouses, were opened and run by the government starting in the 1920s to harness the cattle industry and export frozen meat, especially beef. All the cans read “Inspeccionado”, indicating they were inspected; the Uruguayan cans also denote that they were “Aprobado”, or tested.

The two Uruguayan cans from the Apex laborer bunkhouse were produced by the Frigorífico Nacional, founded in 1928, while the third can, from management housing, was shipped from an unknown company. The Argentinian can, also from management housing, reads “M[d or J]éA1A”, possibly a reference to Mataderos, Spanish for slaughterhouses, a Buenos Aires barrio famous for its slaughterhouses. By the 1930s, Argentina’s assembly lines and mechanization of meat-packing allowed the country to export more beef than any other nation, with the United States claiming 54.9% of all of Argentina’s beef after the late-1920s Meat War.

Sardine Cans

Fish was also a common meat product at the site. Numerous oval tins marked “Northern California” found across the site held fish, likely sardines, canned somewhere in the neighboring state. Other oval tins stamped “DES ETATS / UNIS IMPORTE / D’AMERIQUE” were seemingly imported to France from the United States and then exported back again, filled with sardines or other fish packed in vacuum. All of these cans were open-top, double seamed sardine cans, first produced in the United States in 1918 to hold large sardines.

Other, square and rectangular cans opened with a key indicated sardines packed in other types of packaging. More common on the management side, many of these square cans are stamped “NORVEGE”, “NORWAY”, and “KIPPERED HERRING / PACKED IN NORWAY”. As many of the residents on the management side of the railroad tracks were Scandinavian, such as Arvid Anderson, the camp superintendent, the presence of Norwegian sardine tins may indicate the company’s attempt to cater to their employees by providing familiar foods to their long-term staff.

Why are all of these fish cans labeled with their country of origin? International disputes arose in the 1890s over concerns that some fish-packing companies were trying to pass off different fish as French-originating sardines, similar to arguments over the use of “champagne”, leading the British Board of Trade to declare in 1929 that only Sardinops genus fish were sardines. This meant that American and Canadian fish were not legally sardines. In response, the US Department of Agriculture determined that any similar species of canned fish could be labelled as sardines, as long as the country of origin was embossed permanently on the packaging.

Mystery Can!

Each month, we highlight a mystery artifact–something we haven’t been able to identify, but contains diagnostic elements that someone might recognize.  This month’s mystery can is possibly a food tin! Several 3″ can lids bearing a flag of two overlapping triangles with an A in the center have been found at Apex. No other diagnostic information is found on these cans and Google text and image searches have turned up nothing. If you know what company this logo belonged to or what these cans once contained, send us an email!

Sources

López-Durán, Fabiola, and Nikki Moore 2018 Meat-Milieu: Medicalization, Aestheticization and Productivity in Buenos Aires and its Pampas, 1868–1950. Urban History 45(2):253-274.

McDermott, Dave 2011 Sardines, Place, and Taste. Historical Geography 39:208-222.

Montevideo Oeste n.d. Frigorífico Nacional.

Museu Histórico 2020 Trabajadoras del Frigorífico Nacional de Paysandú, en una jornada de envasado de salchichas, 1965. Museu Histórico 23 March 2020.

Rock, Jim 2015 Sardine Can. Jim Rock Historic Can Collection. Southern Oregon Digital Archives.

Uruguay Instituto Nacional de Carnes 2011 Seguimos Haciendo Historia. El Escolar Agropecuario July.