Category Archives: Project Updates

Say Hello to Our New Student Intern!

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Hello! 

 

My name is Alana Okonkwo and I am a Stanford Undergraduate studying Archaeology and African & African American Studies. I am a student researcher for the MSCAP project. I help support Kim Connor with re-categorizing glass tableware and containers and digitizing our artifact cataloging forms. 

I joined this project to learn more about artifact analysis and to understand the important role that glass played in the daily lives of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans at Market Street. I love thinking about the stories that each bottle holds, from its creation to its use to its deposition. One of my favorite parts of this project has been transcribing the embossed marks on bottles to determine what their original contents may have been. I would like to continue researching the contents of the bottles to understand consumption amongst the community members who used these bottles!

This is one of my favorite artifacts so far, it’s from a bottle of medicinal bitters!

Though this is only my fifth week working on the MSCAP project, I have already learned so much about glass manufacturing techniques, typologies of glass finishes, and the conservation challenges that archaeologists face when working with glass. I hope to continue making blog posts that shed insight upon the new things that I learn! 

 

Until next time,

Alana

New Glass Analysis Project

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Hi all, 

My name is Kim Connor and I’m the new Postdoctoral Scholar on the MSCAP project. This year I’m going to be working on re-cataloging glass tablewares (cups and other vessels used for consuming food and drink) and containers (like bottles and jars) and beginning to analyze them. I’m very excited to be working on the project and am hoping to occasionally post some of the cool things that I find as I’m working my way through the material. Here are a couple of my favorites from the last few weeks! 

 

 

This seal would have decorated the shoulder of a bottle full of absinthe made by Edouard Pernod in Couvet Switzerland between around 1827 and 1910.

The base of this bottle is embossed AB&Co. We don’t know who this maker was, although bottle collectors suggest it might have been European from the 1860s to 1910s. This bottle might have held beer or wine.

On the base of this bottle you can see a perfectly round valve mark because this bottle was made by a machine, meaning it probably dates from the 20th century, after the Chinatown had left the site.

There Was a Chinatown Here – a new digital exhibit

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The Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project is very pleased to announce our new digital exhibit, There Was a Chinatown Here.

There Was a Chinatown Here logo

The exhibit tells the story of San Jose’s historic Chinese community through artifacts, stories, and videos. This new website is the result of the joint efforts of Stanford archaeologists and members of Chinese Historical and Cultural Project.

In addition to creating an on-line venue for interpreting this important chapter of San Jose’s history, the digital exhibit is linked through QR codes to artifact displays in the Chinese American Historical Museum. Visitors can scan the QR codes with their smartphone or tablet to be instantly linked to the videos, photographs, and stories in the digital exhibit.

Please, visit our new online exhibit, There Was a Chinatown Here.