Forgotten Populations and Found Objects: Insight into the Remains of the Daily Life of the Overlooked Overseas Chinese

Summary

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 mountain men, dauntless pioneers, and daring cowboys. However, the history of this region, like the land itself, was populated by a much wider cast than those romanticized archetypes. The overseas Chinese were one such population. This paper seeks to address aspects of daily life for the Chinese population in the Montana mining town of Highland City – aspects which have long been absent from the historical narrative. Through an analysis of imported ceramics and glassware, the quotidian activities of these oft overlooked pioneers has begun to emerge.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Frontier and Settlement Archaeology

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 355