The archaeology of Overseas Chinese
communities
Barbara L. Voss
Abstract
Archaeological research on Overseas Chinese communities has expanded rapidly during the last
twenty years, yet the subfield still remains marginal within historical archaeology as a whole. This
article argues that a dominance of acculturation theories and methodologies has contributed to this
marginal position. Further, a persistent research focus on the ethnic boundary between Chinese and
non-Chinese and the portrayal of Overseas Chinese communities as resolutely traditional have
curtailed the range of research topics investigated at Overseas Chinese sites. Community-focused
collaborative research on the Market Street Chinatown in San José, California, provides an
alternative perspective. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that the community’s
residents did not always experience their lives through oppositions between East and West or
between tradition and modernity. By embracing a broader research agenda, investigations of
Overseas Chinese communities can make significant contributions to archaeological studies of race,
ethnicity, gender, immigration, labor and social inequality.
Keywords
Overseas Chinese; acculturation theory; modernity; race and ethnicity; immigration; identity;
community archaeology.
Hundreds of thousands of southern Chinese left their homelands in the nineteenth century,
creating a vast diaspora that spans the globe. Most came from Kwangtung, a province
devastated by the British Opium War (1839–42) and the TaiPing Rebellion (1851–64).
Constant warfare brought famine, poverty and epidemic disease to the region. Chinese
immigrants left their impoverished villages to seek employment overseas and to create new
business ventures. By the 1860s, significant populations of Chinese immigrants were
established throughout much of North America, Peru, the West Indies, Australia, New
Zealand and Southeast Asia.
Archaeologists were initially slow to conduct research at Overseas Chinese sites. More
attention was given to Chinese-produced objects found in non-Chinese contexts than to
the history and culture of Chinese people themselves. This began to change in the 1970s,
World Archaeology Vol. 37(3): 424–439 Historical Archaeology
ª 2005 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online
DOI: 10.1080/00438240500168491
The archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities
425
and today Overseas Chinese archaeology is one of the most rapidly growing subfields in
historical archaeology.
A review of the excavation and laboratory reports, articles, edited volumes and
interpretative booklets produced during the past thirty years of archaeological research at
Overseas Chinese sites reveals two troubling but persistent trends. The first is the
marginalization of Overseas Chinese studies within historical archaeology. The second is a
recurring archaeological interpretation of Overseas Chinese populations as traditional,
bounded ethnic groups that resisted acculturation into the non-Chinese populations
among whom they lived. These two distinct trends – one disciplinary, one interpretative –
may in fact be outgrowths of the same phenomenon, namely, an implicit acceptance of
false oppositions between East and West and between tradition and modernity. In
contrast, historical and archaeological research on the Market Street Chinatown in San
José, California, suggests that its residents may have viewed Chinese and non-Chinese
cultural practices as complementary, rather than oppositional, aspects of their daily lives.
This article explores the insights gained through a community-based approach to the
archaeology of this collection and emphasizes the importance of Overseas Chinese studies
to broad research questions on race, ethnicity, immigration and labor in historical
archaeology.
On the margins: Overseas Chinese studies in historical archaeology
Overseas Chinese archaeology occupies a marginal position within historical archaeology.
Timing may be partly responsible: with the exception of a few pioneering studies in the
1970s, archaeological investigations at Overseas Chinese sites did not really get under way
in North America, Australia and New Zealand until the mid-1980s (Bell 1996; Bell et al.
1993; Wegars 1993b). The earliest research focused on topics that established an empirical
foundation for the subfield, including developing artifact typologies and identifying
chronologically diagnostic materials. These technical studies, which are referenced widely
by archaeologists studying Overseas Chinese assemblages, generated little attention from
historical archaeologists as a whole. Today, however, research being undertaken at
Overseas Chinese sites is no longer limited to such specialized topics. Yet Overseas Chinese
archaeology continues to have little impact on general scholarship in historical
archaeology. This is not limited to North America but also appears to be true in
Australia and New Zealand (Bell 1996).
Undoubtedly, one factor that accounts for this is that archaeological studies of Overseas
Chinese communities, households and labor camps are documented primarily in ‘grey
literature’ cultural resource management reports. Many of these studies are outstanding
pieces of archaeological research, but, with notable published exceptions (Allen and
Hylkema 2002; Great Basin Foundation for Anthropological Research 1987; Greenwood
1996; Lister and Lister 1989; Wegars 1993a), they are largely inaccessible to most
researchers. Still more research is documented only in unpublished theses.1
Additionally, Overseas Chinese archaeology is particularly under-represented in peerreviewed journals. A thorough review of the journal Historical Archaeology revealed that
in thirty-eight years of publication, the journal has published only ten articles with a
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substantial focus on Overseas Chinese archaeology – four of which are studies of Chinese
coins. Additionally, published works on the historical archaeology of race or ethnicity (e.g.
Delle et al. 2000; McGuire and Paynter 1991; Orser 2001; Scott 1994) almost never include
discussions of Overseas Chinese archaeology (but see Orser 2004; Schuyler 1980a).
Why, during a period when historical archaeologists have written an avalanche of
articles, monographs and edited volumes on immigration, labor, race, ethnicity and social
inequality, has the study of Overseas Chinese communities been so marginalized? Orser
has suggested that the failure of North American archaeologists to investigate Asian
culture and history is attributable to four causes: (1) a historical tendency to prioritize
research in the eastern United States; (2) in western North America, a temporal focus on
earlier Spanish colonial settlements; (3) historical events such as the World War II
internment of Japanese Americans and the rise of Communism in China; and (4) antiAsian racism (Orser 2004: 82–3). Bell, writing of Australia, has listed four different
reasons: (1) the greater comfort among archaeologists, most of whom are of Anglo-Celtic
descent, with researching people who resemble themselves; (2) a desire to attribute the
present success of Australia to the achievements of Anglo-Celtic forebears; (3) insufficient
historiography on Chinese immigrants; and (4) the fact that the experiences of Chinese
immigrants in Australia were rarely recorded in English-language documents (Bell 1996:
13).
The reasons suggested by both Orser and Bell are valuable insights. But I believe that an
additional cause of the marginal status of Overseas Chinese archaeology has to do with
how archaeologists have conceptualized Overseas Chinese culture. Most archaeological
studies have portrayed Overseas Chinese communities as insular, segregated enclaves in
which residents had minimal interactions with non-Chinese people and cultures. In
contrast to other research domains in historical archaeology where ethnicity is
conceptualized as a dynamic process, most archaeological interpretations of Overseas
Chinese sites have argued that Chinese ethnicity was static and traditional. As a result, in
contrast to the wide range of studies on bidirectional cultural interchange between
European colonists and indigenous peoples, and between African-Americans and EuroAmericans, there have been almost no archaeological studies on the ways non-Chinese
populations were transformed through interactions with Chinese immigrants (but see
Lister and Lister 1989; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1998; Praetzellis 2004). Likewise, there is
little work that even goes as far as to compare the findings of research at the sites of
Chinese households or districts with the findings of research on their non-Chinese
neighbors (but see Greenwood 1980; McGuire 1982). Thus, it is perhaps not surprising
that most historical archaeologists have seen little to be gained from a serious engagement
with the archaeology of Overseas Chinese sites.
‘The Chinese propensity to maintain their culture’2
How did historical archaeologists come to emphasize boundedness, insularity and
tradition in their interpretations of Overseas Chinese communities? The answer may lie in
the overwhelming dominance of acculturation models in the archaeology of Overseas
Chinese sites from the 1970s to the present. I am not the first to observe this trend (see
The archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities
427
Orser 2004: 86) nor the first to protest against its effects (see Praetzellis and Praetzellis
1997: 218; Praetzellis 2004: 1), but its pervasiveness warrants close examination.
During the 1970s and 1980s, when Overseas Chinese archaeology was in its early stages
of development, many historical archaeologists embraced anthropological and sociological models of acculturation. In the early and mid-twentieth century, acculturation
research sought to measure the degrees and patterns of perceived assimilation by
indigenous cultures to non-native lifeways (Herskovits 1938; Quimby and Spoehr 1951;
Redfield et al. 1936). In the 1960s and 1970s, acculturation research began to focus more
on ethnic persistence (Spicer 1962; Foster 1960), a move that was congruent with broader
changes in anthropological and historical scholarship. New Social History, which argued
that ‘ordinary people not only have a history but contribute to shaping history more
generally’ (Stearns 2003: 9), was a particularly important influence. In the United States,
the New Social History challenged the image of America as a giant cultural melting pot
and in its place raised the ‘banner of multiculturalism’ (Gassen 2003: 157), encouraging
research on the history of immigrants and ethnic minorities. Barth’s theory of ethnic
boundary maintenance was a second major influence in the transformation of
acculturation studies. Barth argued that, instead of tending toward assimilation, ethnic
groups actively seek to maintain their identities through distinctive traditions and lifeways
(Barth 1969; see also Orser 2004: 75–80).
From the beginning, most archaeological studies on Overseas Chinese sites were framed
within the acculturation research paradigm and consequently aimed at determining the
degree to which Chinese immigrants had acculturated as a result of contact with EuroAmerican and Euro-Australian society. This approach carried with it several unspoken
implications. First, it assumed that there was an inherent acculturative pressure on
Chinese immigrant populations to become more like non-Chinese populations. Second,
cultural continuity was interpreted as resistance to these acculturative pressures and thus
was seen as evidence of agency on the part of Chinese immigrants. Conversely, culture
change indicated assimilation and cultural loss. Finally, the acculturation framework also
presumed that the most important topic that could be addressed through archaeological
research at Overseas Chinese sites was the ethnic boundary between Chinese and nonChinese peoples. The resulting archaeological methodologies usually employed formulae,
both quantitative and qualitative, that used artifact ratios to measure the extent to which
Chinese immigrants acculturated (Westernized) against the ways in which they maintained
‘traditional’ (Chinese) lifeways. A necessary premise of these methodologies is that there is
a clear, archaeologically visible opposition between Eastern tradition and Westernization.
Within the acculturation paradigm, the archaeological record of Overseas Chinese
communities and households has overwhelmingly been interpreted as evidence of
traditionalism and ethnic boundary maintenance among Chinese populations. Study
after study has concluded that the Chinese ‘resisted acculturation’ (Greenwood 1980: 121);
protected ‘their traditional lifestyle’ (Langenwalter 1980: 103); sustained ‘a traditional
consumption pattern’ (Collins 1987: 64); ‘retained [their] cultural identity’ (Connah 1988:
155); ‘maintained their traditional belief systems’ (Fagan 1993); recreated ‘the dietary
practices they enjoyed in the faraway homeland’ (Diehl et al. 1998: 31); went ‘to great
lengths to maintain ethnic separation from the dominant society’ (Staski 1993: 138); lived
for decades ‘without any fundamental assimilation of the American lifestyle’ (Lister and
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Barbara L. Voss
Lister 1989); ‘maintained the strongest ethnic boundary’ (McGuire 1982: 167); ‘remained
as far removed from the local mainstream as if separated from it by a thousand miles of
open ocean’ (Pastron 1989); and, overall, ‘were much more successful at preserving their
Old World cultural patterns and resisting acculturation to American society’ (Schuyler
1980b: 87). Interpretations of cultural continuity and resistance to acculturation have even
been made at sites where, by the excavators’ own accounts, anywhere from 25 to 60 per
cent of recovered artifacts are of European or American manufacture.3 This and other
archaeological evidence challenges the empirical validity of these interpretations. For
example, Gust’s comparative study of faunal remains from five urban Chinese sites found
that dietary composition varied considerably and that most butchering marks were
‘standard Euroamerican style’ (Gust 1993: 208). Ritchie (1993) has documented
considerable innovation and diversity in architectural materials, form, orientation and
setting among Chinese miners in New Zealand. Baxter and Allen (2002: 292–6) note the
San José Chinese community’s economic ties to local and national Euro-American
manufacturers and distributors. Praetzellis (2004) has observed that many Chinese
business owners in California pursued occupations that they would never have held in
China.
Despite substantial archaeological evidence to the contrary and the findings of a few
innovative studies, the archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities has all too often
become the study of the persistence of Asian ‘tradition’ in the face of acculturative
pressure from Western ‘modernity’. Different archaeologists have explained this perceived
phenomenon in various ways. Most problematically, some have argued that Asian cultures
are inherently tradition bound and introspective, shunning contact with outsiders. Others
have suggested that, because many Chinese immigrants planned eventually to return to
China, there was no adaptive advantage to be gained by acculturating to Western norms.
Additionally, archaeologists have interpreted the perceived lack of Chinese acculturation
as a response to a pervasive climate of virulent racism: the threat of ethnic violence kept
most Chinese immigrants from engaging in intercultural interactions that would have
fostered acculturation, and insular, traditional communities provided a physical and
psychological sanctuary in a hostile world.
Certainly, residents of Overseas Chinese communities engaged in uniquely Chinese
cultural practices, and their lives were undoubtedly shaped by anti-Chinese racism and
their disadvantaged legal status. However, archaeologists’ heavy reliance on acculturation
theories has meant that studies of Overseas Chinese communities have suffered from a
very narrow view of what kinds of research questions are worth asking. There are several
studies that have investigated topics other than acculturation. One theme has been Chinese
leadership and entrepreneurship in specific industries, including fishing (Collins 1987;
Schulz 1988; Schulz and Lortie 1985), agriculture (Connah 1988: 155; Fee 1993), vegetable
marketing (Costello 1999: 297–8), placer mining (Hardesty 1988; Valentine 2002) and
laundering (Greenwood 1999; Praetzellis 2004). Lydon (2001) and Praetzellis and
Praetzellis (1997) have traced the complex social networks, both within and beyond the
Chinese community, developed by merchants in Sydney and Sacramento. Wegars (1993a)
highlights women’s roles in Overseas Chinese communities. Baxter and Allen’s (2002)
investigation of town planning, sanitation, utilities and waste management at the Woolen
Mills Chinatown in San José forcibly demonstrates that archaeological evidence can serve
The archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities
429
to counter stereotypes about Chinese communities. Of all these studies, those led by
Praetzellis and Praetzellis have challenged the acculturation model most directly. They
have argued that Overseas Chinese populations did not constitute a bounded ethnicity but
instead were socially, economically and culturally heterogeneous (Praetzellis and
Praetzellis 1997: 295), participating in cultural practices that were ‘varied, adaptive,
sophisticated, multifaceted, and layered in meanings’ (Praetzellis 2004: 2). Both their
research and that of others listed above provide an indication of the possibilities for
archaeology investigations of Overseas Chinese communities beyond the constraints of the
acculturation model.
New perspectives from the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project
By stepping away from these pervasive oppositions between East and West, and between
tradition and modernity (with all of their racist implications), it becomes possible to
consider that Overseas Chinese identities could be simultaneously ‘fluid and contingent,
but also remarkably persistent across time and space’ (Lydon 2001: 115). Early research
findings from the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project demonstrate how a
community-based approach can provide new perspectives on the archaeology of Overseas
Chinese sites.
The Market Street Chinatown in San José, California (Plate 1) was the heart of the
Overseas Chinese community in the greater southern San Francisco Bay Area. Founded in
Plate 1 Market Street Chinatown, San José, California, in 1877. Courtesy History San José.
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Barbara L. Voss
the 1860s, the community grew to encompass two city blocks and at its peak housed more
than 1,000 Chinese men, women and children. The Market Street Chinatown was also the
cultural and economic headquarters for more than 2,000 additional Chinese who worked
in agriculture, industry, mining and domestic service in surrounding Santa Clara County.
By 1880, nearly one Santa Clara County resident in thirteen (7.7 per cent) was Chinese (Yu
2001: 18–19).
The Market Street Chinatown is typical of the many Chinese urban enclaves that
formed after mining, and then railroading, ceased to employ large numbers of Chinese
workers. In the nineteenth-century United States, urban Chinese populations were
flashpoints in bitterly divided public debates about the role of Chinese workers in the
economy. Hostility against the Chinese crystallized in 1870 with the formation of the AntiChinese Union, a consortium of white labor unions that lobbied for the eventual passage
of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Chinese in urban settings were subjected to
vandalism, violence, murder and arson at the hands of ‘Yellow Peril’ mobs. The residents
of the Market Street Chinatown were not exempt. In February 1886, an Anti-Chinese
Convention was held in San José. The next year, in March 1887, the mayor and city
council issued an order declaring that the Chinatown was a public nuisance. On 4 May
1887, the Market Street Chinatown was destroyed by arson. Hundreds of spectators
gathered to watch it burn to the ground (Yu 2001: 16–18, 25–30; Plate 2).
Although a local newspaper proclaimed the following day that ‘Chinatown is dead. It is
dead forever’ (Yu 2001: 30), within a few days the former residents of the Market Street
Chinatown began to organize two new residential communities: Woolen Mills, largely a
company town, and Heinlenville, which grew to house over 4,000 people (Baxter and Allen
2002; Allen and Hylkema 2002: 2, 6–7). Today, descendants of San José’s Overseas
Plate 2 Fire destroys the Market Street Chinatown on 4 May 1887. Courtesy History San José.
The archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities
431
Chinese populations are a strong cultural presence in the region, their continuing influence
bolstered by the ongoing arrival of new Chinese immigrants.
The arson fire that destroyed the Market Street Chinatown created a silent
archaeological witness to the first twenty-five years of Overseas Chinese life in San José.
A layer of soil covered the burned debris and underlying cisterns, privies and pits by the
time city officials and local businesses began to construct new buildings at the site. One
hundred years later, this sealed archaeological site was unearthed during a vast
redevelopment project. The San José Redevelopment Agency sponsored archaeological
excavations at the site during construction. Archaeological Resource Services, a cultural
resource management firm, was contracted to conduct the investigation. At the time,
several archaeologists described the artifacts excavated from the Market Street Chinatown
as one of the most significant Overseas Chinese assemblages ever recovered in North
America. Unfortunately, the excavation data and recovered materials were never fully
analyzed or reported. The collection sat in warehouses for fifteen years after the
excavation was completed (Voss 2004).
The Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project was initiated in 2002 to catalogue,
analyze, curate and publish this remarkable collection of artifacts. The project is a
collaborative partnership between five organizations: a university archaeology program
(Stanford), a museum (History San José), a community cultural organization (Chinese
Historical and Cultural Project), a cultural resource management firm (Past Forward,
Inc.) and a government agency (San José Redevelopment). The success to date of this joint
endeavor must be credited in large part to the strong relationships established between
many of the project partners during the excavation of the San José Woolen Mills
Chinatown in the 1990s (Medin et al. 1999; Allen and Hylkema 2002).
Although the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project is still in its earliest
stages, both historical and archaeological research suggest that the residents of this
community did not necessarily experience their lives through oppositions between East
and West or between tradition and modernity. Four examples of this include the spatial
organization of residential patterns, close interrelations with non-Chinese, continued
involvement in mainland Chinese culture and the integration of Chinese and European
and American material culture in daily life.
Many prior studies have emphasized the physical enclaves that were characteristic of
many Overseas Chinese communities. There is no question that the Market Street
Chinatown was an ethnic neighborhood with firmly defined physical boundaries.
Chinatowns in San José were ‘sanctuaries, offering physical and emotional protection
for the Chinese worker and his family, a cultural homebase. . .the focus of cultural identity
in a hostile world’ (Yu 2001: 21). Yet only about one-quarter to one-third of the Chinese in
Santa Clara County actually lived in the Chinatown itself. Most resided in the homes and
on the farms of their employers, in workers’ housing near mines, canneries, mills and
factories, or in their own homes on leased farmland (Yu 2001: 19). People who lived
primarily outside the Chinatown often stayed at Market Street during weekends and
festivals and between jobs. Hence, most of Santa Clara County’s Chinese residents
participated in the sanctuary and community life of the Chinatown while residing largely
among non-Chinese. This combination of rural-urban residential life was found in many
Chinatowns in western North America (Wong 2002).
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Close interactions between Chinese and non-Chinese extended beyond residential
patterns. Labor and business were important contexts of intercultural encounters, in which
interactions between Chinese and non-Chinese were structured by class and occupation.
Chinese labor contractors acted as cultural and linguistic intermediaries between nonChinese employers and Chinese workers. Merchants developed business partnerships with
non-Chinese. In addition to these economic relationships, Yu writes:
It was in farming that there was the most interchange between whites and the Chinese.
American orchardists. . .found that these workers, who came from farming villages, had
certain skills and knowledge about growing things. Chinese in turn learned about
California soil, native varieties of plants, the use of implements and new methods of
irrigation from Americans. . ..When the white farmer and the Chinese farmer stood on
the same soil, there was an understanding and common language.
(Yu 2001: 9)
This shared interest is reflected in the numerous agrarian partnerships that formed
between Euro-American and Chinese growers in Santa Clara County.
Other forms of intercultural interaction occurred outside the workplace and economic
sphere. Many Chinese children who lived in the Market Street Chinatown were educated
in integrated schools (Yu 2001: xi). The First Methodist Church, constructed adjacent to
the Market Street Chinatown, welcomed Chinese members, many of whom attended
Christian services while also engaging in Taoist, Buddhist or Confucian practices (Yu
2001: 21, 33). Many non-Chinese were drawn to the neighborhood, sometimes as
spectators at festivals and more often as patrons of its stores, apothecaries, restaurants
and gaming halls (Camp 2004; Chang 2004). In sum, both segregation and interaction
characterized the social relationships between Chinese and non-Chinese in Santa Clara
Valley. The physical enclave of the Chinatown was a protective boundary but it was not an
impermeable social, economic or cultural barrier.
A third important point is that cultural change among Overseas Chinese did not always
occur in response to Euro-American culture. Chinese residents of Santa Clara County
maintained deep political, economic and cultural ties to China. They corresponded with
relatives and associates, and, as finances and legal situations allowed, travelled back and
forth between the two countries. The San José Chinese community was politically divided
between those who supported the Manchu dynasty and others who participated in the
revolutionary Tung Meng Hui Party led by Dr Sun Yat-Sen. Long before the Chinese
Republic was formed in 1911, many Chinese residents in San José ceased wearing queues and
practicing footbinding as a show of support for political change in China (Yu 2001: 87–9). It
would be a grave ethnocentric error to assume that cultural change in Overseas Chinese
communities was necessarily the result of acculturation to Euro-American cultural norms.
The fourth set of examples comes from archaeological research on the Market Street
Chinatown assemblage. Preliminary analyses suggest that Chinese and Euro-American
objects were intertwined in the material practices of daily life in the Market Street
Chinatown. Although there are many examples of this, the most prominent are three
practices that many archaeologists have argued were particularly traditional in Overseas
Chinese communities: foodways, medicine and drug use.
The archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities
433
To date, research on foodways at Market Street has consisted primarily of ceramic
analyses; we have catalogued about a third (*6,500 sherds) of the ceramic specimens related
to food storage, preparation and consumption. The preliminary catalog shows that, by sherd
count, about 73 per cent of the ceramics are of Asian manufacture, 22 per cent are Britishand American-produced whitewares, yellowwares and stonewares and 5 per cent are of
indeterminate manufacture. This admittedly incomplete analysis provides a backdrop for
Michaels’ (2003) analysis of peck-marked vessels in the assemblage. Sixteen peck-marked
vessels have been identified, some marked with Chinese characters and others with more
abstract symbols. Making peck marks on ceramic vessels is often described as a traditional
Chinese practice; marks can signify ownership of the vessel or represent characters associated
with good luck and blessings. Peck marking appears both on Chinese porcelains and British
whitewares (Plate 3), one indication that, for the Market Street Chinatown residents,
material tradition and material innovation were not oppositional categories.
Other material traces of the Market Street Chinatown suggest this as well. Students
involved in the project have studied medicinal bottles from the collection (Clevenger 2004;
Ishimaru 2003). They have found that these containers include both Chinese medicine vials
and patent medicine bottles, tonic water bottles and bottles embossed with the names of
non-Chinese-owned San José pharmacies. These different objects are commingled in
specific features at the site, suggesting their conjoined use. Residents of the Market Street
Chinatown may have viewed Chinese and Euro-American medical systems as complementary. The glass and ceramic bottle assemblage also indicates a widespread consumption
of American liquors and ales alongside Chinese rice wine and rice liquor (Clevenger 2004;
Simmons 2004). Chinese opium-smoking paraphernalia is also present in the assemblage
(Williams 2003). In the nineteenth-century United States, alcohol and opium consumption
Plate 3 Whiteware plate with pecked mark, possibly an honorific such as ‘sir’ or a mark of military
rank. Photo by Gina Michaels.
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Barbara L. Voss
were legal and, for both Chinese and non-Chinese, were part of social occasions, medical
practice and recreation. The Market Street Chinatown residents partook of alcoholic
beverages and opiates associated with both Asian and Euro-American traditions.
Without doubt these preliminary interpretations will be re-examined as our research on
the collection continues. We may find distinct patterns in the ways that objects of Asian
and non-Asian manufacture were incorporated in daily life at Market Street, or discover
that there were discrete differences in material practices among various segments of the
community. Nevertheless, these findings demonstrate that Overseas Chinese cultural
practices in San José were far more complex than measures of acculturation or
assimilation can ever hope to represent.
Community-based archaeology: new questions
The collaborative organization of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project
means that ongoing research priorities are established through dialogues among project
partners. At our first joint project meeting, I asked everyone present to talk about their
interests in the collection and what they hoped the project would accomplish. In the
resulting discussion, attendees articulated specific research topics they hoped could be
addressed. These included:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Social and business interactions between Chinese and non-Chinese people in San
José
Family life and childrearing practices
The extent and effects of child labor
The relationship of the Market Street Chinatown to the wider San Francisco Bay
Area Chinese population
The different economic and educational backgrounds of people who lived in and
visited the Market Street Chinatown
The intra-Chinese ethnicity of people living at the site as well as the specific villages
from which they emigrated
The way that people dressed – an important topic because dress was used to signify
intra-Chinese ethnic, class and religious identity
The use of ceramic vessels with peck marks on them
Mercantile practices
Evidence of Chinese mutual-assistance organizations and of the formation of
Chinese fire-fighting companies
Chinese music, literature, opera and dance
Ways that the collection can be used to increase public awareness of the
contributions of people of Chinese origin to the history and present-day culture
of Santa Clara County and California.
It is particularly striking that few of the research topics suggested by members of the
Chinese Historical and Cultural Project and of History San José have been addressed in
prior archaeological studies of Overseas Chinese sites. There is a great opportunity for
The archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities
435
archaeologists to diversify our research agendas and begin to ask new questions of old
data.
The research topics listed above further illustrate the ways that much archaeological
research at Overseas Chinese sites has been limited by false oppositions between Chinese
and Western culture, and between tradition and modernity. The prevailing archaeological
emphasis on the ethnic boundary between Chinese and non-Chinese has overshadowed
other research questions that might shed new light on intra-cultural developments and
intercultural exchanges.
It is regrettable that most historical archaeologists studying race, ethnicity, labor,
immigration and identity have not engaged with the substantial body of research that has
been generated on Overseas Chinese communities. It is time for this to change. The history of
Chinese immigrants and their descendants has an important contribution to make to broad
research questions in archaeology. Many of us who conduct research on Overseas Chinese
sites have not published our work in venues that are visible and accessible to the broader
community of archaeological researchers. This article has been one attempt to remedy that
situation by examining the archaeology of Overseas Chinese communities within a broader
global dialogue about theory, method and practice in historical archaeology.
Acknowledgements
Research presented in this article was conducted as part of the Market Street Chinatown
Archaeological Project at Stanford University (http://www.stanford.edu/*cengel/SJCT/).
This project is funded in part by History San José and the San José Redevelopment
Agency in cooperation with the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project and Past
Forward, Inc. Special thanks to all the members of these partner organizations and to the
many archaeologists and historians who have generously shared their expertise with us.
Rebecca Allen, Margaret Copeley, Roberta Gilchrist, Kent Lightfoot, Adrian Praetzellis
and anonymous World Archaeology reviewers all provided insightful feedback on earlier
drafts of this article. The opinions expressed in this article are mine alone and do not
necessarily reflect their views or those of the partner organizations, project participants or
project consultants.
Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University
E-mail: bvoss@stanford.edu
Notes
1 Several excellent bibliographies provide a comprehensive guide to these CRM reports
and theses (Asian American Comparative Collection Newsletter 1991; Bell 1996; Bell et
al. 1993; Ehrenreich et al. 1985; Greenwood 1993; Praetzellis 2004: 1 – 3; Schulz and
Allen 2004; Schuyler 1980c).
2 Langenwalter (1980: 103).
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Barbara L. Voss
3 In making this observation, I am not endorsing the use of artifact ratios as a proxy
measure for ethnicity. My point is rather that many investigators’ interpretative claims
do not meet their own empirical criteria.
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archaeology. Asian American Comparative Collection Newsletter, 8(2).
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Barbara L. Voss is an assistant professor of cultural and social anthropology at Stanford
University. She is principal investigator of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological
Project and also conducts research at the site of El Presidio de San Francisco, a Spanish
colonial military settlement on the central California coast. Her publications have
included the co-edited volume Archaeologies of Sexuality (Routledge, 2000).