"A Son Is Always a Boy": Chinese Ideals of Male Elderhood

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Diverse and Enduring: Archaeology from Across the Asian Diaspora" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Over the past decade, the archaeology of the Chinese diaspora has embraced new methods, theories, and questions for investigating the lives of the men, women, and children of America’s 1800s and 1900s Chinese populations. As with archaeology in general, however, Chinese diaspora archaeology has largely neglected to address elderhood in Chinese culture, an unfortunate oversight due to the rapidly aging Chinese demographics in the turn-of-the-century diaspora. Without discussing the emic conceptions of this important stage of the life cycle, archaeologists run the risk of normalizing and invisibilizing old age. This presentation examines the intersection of age and gender in archaeological investigations of Chinese identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Diverse and Enduring: Archaeology from Across the Asian Diaspora   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology