Trash Talk: Investigating the Refuse of the Pon Yam Trenches

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Pon Yam House was built in Idaho City (now located in the Boise National Forest) in 1865. Pon Yam, a Chinese immigrant, moved into the house with his family in 1870, establishing a mercantile therein. Despite anti-Chinese prejudice and exclusionary laws, Pon Yam eventually became a successful businessman and miner, and the house became a Chinese community center. More than a century later, in 1998, six backhoe trenches were dug to ascertain whether cultural deposits existed behind the Pon Yam house. Deposits were found, and artifacts were collected. In conjunction with previous research from excavations inside the Pon Yam House, this paper uses these artifacts to speak to the lives of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chinese immigrants and pioneers. Particularly important are the insights these artifacts provide into the lives of overseas Chinese communities in the Pacific Northwest, about whom history and archeology have heretofore revealed little information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow