There are Many Kinds of Fish in the Sea: Zooarchaeology and Ancient DNA Insights into 19th-century Chinese Diaspora Fisheries

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.

Late-19th-century Chinese diaspora faunal assemblages from the American West often include a diverse range of fish species imported from many different locations. In these contexts, fish bones serve as evidence not only of the wide-ranging trade networks that connected Chinese diaspora communities, but also of the many Chinese fishers who operated across the Pacific World. In this paper, we discuss new insights gleaned from ongoing ancient DNA and zooarchaeological analyses of fish remains from Chinese diaspora sites in California and Wyoming. We present new archaeological evidence for both the regional trade of several native California fishes, including Wolf-eel and Sacramento Pikeminnow, and the importation of fishes from previously unrecognized locations, including the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Asia. Ultimately, we use these data to demonstrate the intricacy of fish-based trade networks across the Chinese diaspora, as well as the importance of migration and entrepreneurialism to the success of Chinese fishers.

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