Overseas Chinese (Other Keyword)
1-22 (22 Records)
The Chinese on the Palmer River goldfield of North Queensland from the 1870s onwards were involved in market gardening as well as mining. This paper examines in detail the history and archaeology of one such garden occupied by Chinese from 1883 until 1934. The results of an archaeological survey of the garden area, including habitation sites, graves and an irrigation system, and excavation of the principal Chinese house-site and several rubbish dumps, are analysed in the context of documentary...
Archaeology in the Arboretum: Exploring the Evidence of the Arboretum Chinese Labor Quarters Site on Stanford University’s Campus (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Revolutionizing Approaches to Campus History - Campus Archaeology's Role in Telling Their Institutions' Stories" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Stanford’s Arboretum Chinese Labor Quarters (ACLQ) Project seeks to use archaeological evidence, alongside documentary and oral historical data, to better understand the daily lives of the Chinese workers at Leland Stanford’s Palo Alto Stock Farm and, later, at...
Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology Volume 02
Archive of papers from Volume 2 of the Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology, published by the Australian Society for Historical Society (ASHA) in 1984.
Commercial Connections in the Chinese Diaspora (2016)
What do Chinese work camps in the American West tell us about emergent capitalist networks in the mid-nineteenth century? This talk will draw upon current archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork as well as historical studies to contextualize the historical archaeology of Chinese railroad laborers. The extant archaeological remains found on work camps - hearths, ceramic sherds, game pieces, etc - only tell part of the story. A focus on remittances, and the transnational flow of cash, goods,...
Cuisine of the Overseas Chinese in the Western United States: Using Recipes to Interpret Archaeological Plant Remains (2017)
Most of the Chinese who immigrated to the United States in the mid to late 19th century came from a few districts in southern China, an area with a well-developed cuisine. They brought ingredients, cooking equipment, dining implements, and seeds for garden crops to prepare food for daily meals and festivities. However, their culinary traditions were modified by a variety of factors including the absence of some ingredients, the easy availability of Euro-American foods, and restrictions on the...
Current Research on the 1969 Yreka Chinatown Archaeological Excavation and Collection (2018)
In 1969, construction of I-5 through Yreka in northern California, threatened to destroy historic building foundations and archaeological deposits associated with Yreka’s Chinese community. From January to March 1969, State Parks archaeologists conducted a salvage excavation at the location of what was Yreka’s last Chinatown, occupied from 1886 through the 1940s. This was one of the earliest excavations of a Chinese community in California. Archaeologists recorded nine features and cataloged...
Defining Historical Community Boundaries with GIS: Walla Walla’s Chinatown (2015)
In 2014 Fort Walla Walla Museum performed a cultural resource survey of the City Hall Parking Lot in downtown Walla Walla, Washington. Archival research, namely Sanborn fire insurance maps, revealed this location to be a major locus of activity including a Chinatown from 1888 and up to around 1905. While Sanborn maps indicate an area in which many Overseas and American-born Chinese lived and ran businesses, other sources like city directories and federal census records show Walla Walla's...
Forgotten Populations and Found Objects: Insight into the Remains of the Daily Life of the Overlooked Overseas Chinese (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontier and Settlement Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Frontiers are creative, chaotic places where cultures collide with geological and ecological forces of the physical environment; however, these dynamic spaces of interaction, meeting, and change, are often highly focused on one population – that of the dominant settler and colonizer. Particularly in the American West, frontier narratives follow dour...
Gaming in The Dalles: The Presence of Asian Coins and Glass Gaming Pieces in a Small Town Laundry (2017)
The partners/owners of the Wing Hong Tai/Hai Company were innovative entrepreneurs who utilized multiple strategies to circumvent economic and social pressures during the Chinese Exclusion Act era. The ‘Chinese Laundry’ site (35WS453) located in the Dalles, Oregon was occupied by the company beginning in the 1880s until the mid-1920s. The site is situated along the Columbia River which is an important hub for travel and trade in the western United States. The partners of the Wing Hong Tai/Hai...
Getting Burned: Fire, Politics, and Cultural Landscapes in the American West (2015)
The National Historic Landmark town of Jacksonville, Oregon is celebrated for its nineteenth century past. While saloons, hotels, and shops survive as testament to the days of the Oregon gold rush, the selective preservation of the built environment has created a romanticized frontier landscape. A sleepy park now covers the once bustling Chinese Quarter, which burned to the ground in 1888. Recent public archaeology excavations revealed the remains of a burned building, and led to a fruitful...
Getting Burned: Fire, Politics, and Cultural Landscapes in the American West (2015)
The National Historic Landmark town of Jacksonville, Oregon is celebrated for its nineteenth century past. While saloons, hotels, and shops survive as testament to the days of the Oregon gold rush, the selective preservation of the built environment has created a romanticized frontier landscape. A sleepy park now covers the once bustling Chinese Quarter, which burned to the ground in 1888. Recent public archaeology excavations revealed the remains of a burned building, and led to a fruitful...
Give Me a Y-Beam: Architecture and Agency at Rural Chinese Woodchopping Camps, Mineral County, Nevada (2015)
For the turn-of-the-century rural Chinese woodchoppers of Mineral County, Nevada, the construction of cabins, dugouts, corrals, and fences served myriad functions. Yet, architecture, even in its simplest forms, consistently goes beyond the functional. The orientation of and relationships between structures, material preferences, and diverse construction techniques demonstrate the choices made by the Chinese as they strove to make a living supplying firewood to nearby mining boomtowns. This paper...
Households of the Overseas Chinese in Aurora, Nevada (2013)
Chinese immigrants in Aurora, Nevada were an integral part of the boomtown community. They thrived from the town’s founding in 1861 until its final mining bust in the 1920s despite the racially charged overtones of the late nineteenth-century. Examination of the Chinese community at the household level, combining historical records and documentation with information gathered during recent archaeological surveys and excavations permits a nuanced understanding of the lives, occupations,...
Immigration Service Records and the Archaeology of Chinatown, The Dalles, Oregon (2015)
As a key transportation hub and supply center on the Columbia River during the 19th century, the city of The Dalles, Oregon attracted significant numbers of overseas Chinese workers and merchants. By the 1880s a distinct "Chinatown" district had emerged. Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act included close monitoring of the population by Federal agents. Records of the Immigration Service housed at the Seattle branch of the National Archives include the case files for many community residents....
Life Along the Grade: Archaeology of the Chinese Railroad Builders and Maintenance Crews in Utah (2016)
Between 1867 and 1904, hundreds of Chinese workers lived and labored along the railroad grade in deeply rural northwestern Utah. Small section houses served as the only reprieve from the toil of daily labore in the treeless and sun scorched landscapes of Box Elder County. Archaeological inventory spurred by a National Park Service Initiative is identifying sites previously unknown to scholars. These sites are shedding light on the life and experience of the 11-15 Chinese section crews in this...
Plant and Animal Consumption in the Market Street Chinatown, San Jose, California (2015)
The Market Street Chinatown was a major urban Chinese community in nineteenth century San Jose, California. From 1866 to 1887, the community housed and served as a home base to several thousand Chinese residents and laborers. Excavated in the 1980s, the Market Street Chinatown yielded an incredibly rich collection of material culture as well as faunal and floral remains. This paper examines food consumption and food choice amongst Market Street’s nineteenth century Chinese residents. The author...
Plants, Animals, and Food Choice Within the Market Street Chinatown, San Jose, California (2015)
The Market Street Chinatown was a major urban Chinese community in nineteenth century San Jose, California. From 1866 to 1887, the community housed and served as a home base to several thousand Chinese residents and laborers. Excavated in the 1980s, the Market Street Chinatown yielded an incredibly rich collection of material culture as well as faunal and floral remains. This paper examines food consumption and food choice amongst Market Street's nineteenth century Chinese residents. The author...
Railroad Camps in the High Sierras (2015)
Railroad construction camps occupied by Chinese laborers have been investigated archaeologically since the 1960s. The upcoming 150 year anniversary of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad has spurred renewed interest in these sites. This paper will discuss what we have learned from previous studies of railroad work camps and how they inform current interpretations, with special emphasis on drawing connections between the archaeological record and theoretical frameworks for...
Scraping Our Way To The Past:A Methodological Approach for Chinese Rural Work Camps (2015)
Recovering meaningful information from ephemeral, short-term work camps in the west is challenging, given the brief occupation time, absence of shelters other than tents or portable structures, and informal layout and design. One methodological approach that has proved effective for research at camps with shallow or no subsurface deposits focuses on exposing and investigating the horizontal deposits across the sites. Archaeological studies of Chinese occupied camps related to mining, railroad...
There’s a Hole in my Bucket! (But I Put it There on Purpose): Modified Can Use at Rural Woodcutting Camps in Mineral County, Nevada (2015)
In 2014, in conjunction with the University of Nevada-Reno, I led a Forest Service Passport in Time project in a survey of rural Chinese woodcutting camps surrounding the turn-of-the-century mining boomtowns of Aurora, Nevada and Bodie, California. In addition to the expected glass bottle fragments, rusting cans, and Chinese-related ceramics and opium tins, we discovered a large portion of the material culture, specifically cans, buckets, and other metal objects, had been modified and repurposed...
Unearthing Sandpoint’s Chinatown: the Archaeology of Sandpoint, Idaho’s Overseas Chinese (2015)
Established in the early 1880s, Sandpoint, Idaho became a bustling railroad and lumber town with commercial businesses sprouting up along the Northern Pacific railroad tracks. Overseas Chinese came through the town when building the railroad, but quickly moved on along with the construction. Who then, were the Overseas Chinese that came and settled, making Sandpoint their home? Archaeological investigations of the original town site uncovered a structure referred to as Sandpoint’s "Chinatown"...
What Have We Done, What Are We Doing, and Where Are We Going with Overseas Chinese Archaeology? (2015)
According to this session’s organizers there is no dominant Overseas Chinese narrative, but rather one characterized by diversity. They perceive this diversity as a strength and seek to highlight the range of both Chinese experiences and recent archaeological approaches to their lives. Papers address topics ranging from lifeways of urban merchants to healthcare practices of rural railroad workers, consumer habits of Chinatown residents, and the role of burned sites in creating highly politicized...