The Contemporary Archaeology of a Transnational Family: Between the Pearl River Delta and the Tucson Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Critical Issues in Contemporary Archaeology & Historical Archaeology: Limits, Opportunities, Challenges", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper re-examines the history of a family from the Gin clan through letters and material remains collected in-situ from the rooms of male Chinese migrants who had lived in the Ying On Association compound before the 1968 Tucson Urban Renewal (TUR) project in Arizona. Using contemporary archaeological methods, we bring together documents and artifacts that were separated by TUR researchers, as well as new genealogical research. Most of the letters belonging to Gin Gay Yin and his son, Gin Boon Loon, date to the 1940s-1960s – a tumultuous period in China – and indicate that they actively maintained connections with their wives and children in mainland China and, later, Hong Kong. Dateable objects collected by archaeologists reveal transnational connections in the mid-1940s via medicines purchased from immigrant hometowns. In addition, the consequences of the lack of U.S.-China relations after 1949 is evident by the adoption of uniquely Chinese American ceramics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Critical Issues in Contemporary Archaeology & Historical Archaeology: Limits, Opportunities, Challenges   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow