The Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project Symposium Presenters! Photo by Yucaipa Kwock.

Hi everyone,

This past weekend (March 8-10) the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) held their annual conference in Berkeley, CA.

As part of the conference, project director Dr. Barbara Voss and collection manager Megan S. Kane organized a symposium entitled:  Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project:  Ten Years of Community-Based Research on an Overseas Chinese Collection

This symposium served as a space for various project participation to reflect on the progress made in its last 10 years, the directions currently being explored and as an opportunity to solicit feedback and input from the California archaeological community and the public. The SCA’s were an especially appropriate venue for this reflection, as it was at their annual meetings in 2004 that the first Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project symposium was held as part of the initial project launch!

From 8:45am to 12pm, a variety of project participants presented 12 minute papers on various facets of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project. Presenters ranged from those most recently brought on to the project, to those involved from the start, archaeologists and non-archaeologists, undergraduate and graduate students, professionals, professors and more! The papers presented were well received and the symposium was very well attended, with the audience spilling out into the hallway for almost the entire time.

In addition, later that evening our project partner, Chinese Historical and Cultural Project (CHCP) received the Helen C. Smith Avocational Society Award from the Society for California Archaeology! This award is given annually “to a California avocational archaeology society, club, group or individual belonging to such an entity who has shown outstanding leadership in the field of cultural resources management.” Lillian Gong-Guy, Anita Wong Kwock and Yucaipa Kwock were there to receive the award on behalf of CHCP. Congratulations to CHCP on receiving this award!

Anita Wong Kwock and Lillian Gong-Guy are presented the Helen C. Smith Avocational Society Award from SCA by Barb Voss. Photo by Yucaipa Kwock.

To give everyone a taste, listed below is the description of and program for the symposium. Scroll to the bottom of this post for a photo gallery of the symposium, the banquet dinner and CHCP receving their award. All photos courtesy of Yucaipa Kwock.

Thank you to the symposium organizers, project participants, and to all the presenters for making this Market Street event such a big hit, and congratulations to CHCP!

Symposium 5 Program

Title:Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project: Ten Years of Community Based Research on an Overseas Chinese Collection

Organizers: Barbara L. Voss and Megan S. Kane

Symposium Description

In 1985-1988, San Jose’s first Chinatown was rapidly excavated during urban redevelopment. Despite being described as the most significant assemblage of Overseas Chinese artifacts in North America, the collection was only minimally studied before being stored in a municipal warehouse. In Fall 2002, Stanford University, Chinese Historical and Cultural Project, History San Jose, and Environmental Science Associates formed the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project to catalog, analyze, and publish this remarkable collection. This 10th anniversary symposium presents current research and public outreach programs, and explores new directions for the next stages of the project.

Presentations:

8:45 Introduction: Reflections on Ten Years of Collaborative Research, Education, and Public Archaeology Programs on the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project
Barbara L. Voss

9:00 The Chinese Community in Santa Clara Valley – Chinese Historical & Cultural Project (CHCP) of Santa Clara County, Inc. (1987)
Anita Wong Kwock and Lillian Gong-Guy

9:15 The Public Archaeology Events of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project
Guido Pezzarossi

9:30 City Beneath the City: Market Street Chinatown San Jose Art Installation – Giving Public Voice and Visibility to A Buried History
Rene Yung

9:45 Art/facts: Challenging Archaeological Presentation in the “City Beneath the City”
Kyle Lee-Crossett

10:00 Exhibits and Events: Ethnographic Observations of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project
Meghan E. Gewerth

10:30 Reconstructing the Context of an Orphaned Collection: a Case Study of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project
Megan S. Kane

10:45 Worth a Thousand Words: Transfer Prints from the Market Street Chinatown Collection
Stephanie K. Chan

11:00 Fan and Tsai: Food, Identity, and Global Connections in the Market Street Chinatown
Ryan Kennedy

11:15 Starch and Residues on Market Street Chinatown Artifacts
Sheahan Bestel and Fanya Becks

11:30 Food, Diet, and Health in Market Street Chinatown, San Jose: Microscopic and Macroscopic Evidence 
Linda Scott Cummings, Kathryn Puseman, Chad Yost, and Peter Kováčik

Discussant:
Rebecca Allen

Photo Gallery (All photos by Yucaipa Kwock).

Just a quick update: The last Public Event of the Winter quarter was held a couple of weeks ago on Feb. 24 at the Peralta Adobe in San Jose.

As usual, fun was had by all as approximately 50 kids (plus their families, guardians, and other accompanying adults) participated in mock excavations, analyzed artifacts, and reconstructed broken dishes, bowls, and cups, all in order to gain official certification as Junior Archaeologists on the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project.

Thanks to Stanford Anthropology 112: Public Archaeology course student James Huynh for once again providing photos of the event!

Our next public event will take place Saturday, April 20th 11am-3pm  at History Park in San Jose (click here for more info) and will coincide with the Earth Day celebration hosted by History San Jose. Hope to see you there!

We have an exciting update on the very first results from the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project’s Glass Bottle Residue Pilot Project.

In January, the project shipped 15 glass bottles (of different shapes and sizes) that at one time likely contained beer, liquor, Euro-American patent medicines, traditional Chinese medicines, personal hygiene or grooming products. Many of these bottles are of distinctive shapes associated with certain types of products (see here for examples), while some are embossed with the name of the either the manufacturer, the name of the product it contained, and/or the purveyor, all of which (with the help of guides or archival research) can provide clues as to what the bottle contained at the time of its purchase and use.

However, what do we do when we have a glass bottle, but no embossing or mark? What if the vessel form does not provide clues as to what it held? Even when we have embossing and information on what the bottle contained at the start of its circulation within the Market Street Chinatown, how can we find out what exactly those products were made from? Finally, when emptied of their original contents, how can we find out if these bottles were reused for different purposes than they were made to fulfill?

One way of addressing these questions is through various forms of residue analysis employed by archaeological scientists! In January, Marguerite De Loney, a Stanford PhD student in Archaeology working with the project, pulled 15 glass bottles from the Market Street collection with some type of residue -sometimes powdery, sometimes liquid- still inside of them. These bottles were sent to the University of Idaho Department of Analytical and Environmental Chemistry, where Dr. Ray von Wandruszka and collaborators are carrying out a pilot analysis project of the residues in these bottles in order to identify what was in them, and/or how they were being used at the time of their disposal.

While this project is just getting started, we have some preliminary results on the contents of one large, brown bottle (see pictures below). As you can tell from the photos, the bottle is embossed with “San Jose Bottling Co. C. Maurer.”

Documentary research by Dr. von Wandruszka has determined that it is likely a beer bottle, made for the Fredericksburg Brewery of San Jose (1867-1918; see here and here for blog posts about the history of this brewery) by C. Maurer (later C. Maurer and Sons) San Jose Bottling, Co. (see here for PDF of 1905 San Jose Directory that lists C. Maurer and Sons Bottling Company).

This is where things get REALLY interesting: As you can tell from the photos, the bottle still has its original, resealable porcelain closure in place. What you CAN’T tell from the photos, is that this bottle contained a decent amount of thick, slightly cloudy, viscous fluid that was contained by the closure and preserved for at least 126 years! Could this be the last unwanted sip of a historic San Jose local brew?!

Well, not exactly. Dr. von Wandruszka sampled this fluid and determined a few things: It’s combustible, soluble in hexane, and infrared spectroscopy analysis (one of the best analytical techniques for organic residues of this type) has determined that it is made up of fatty acids and/or esters. In other words, this fluid is NOT beer but most likely cooking fat! While they are still trying to determine if it is vegetable or animal fat (they are betting on animal fat), what is clear is that someone at the Market Street acquired this bottle, possibly drank its contents, and then kept it and its useful resealable closure around as a way to store leftover cooking fat rendered from pork or other meats prepared in the kitchen!

These early results really bring home the point that archaeological sciences, in tandem with documentary research can provide us with a much more complete picture of the way in which everyday things were acquired, used, and re-used by the inhabitants of the Market Street Chinatown. It forces archaeologists to consider the extended lifecycles of common (but durable and useful) things like bottles and stoneware food storage vessels that may have been put to creative uses long after their original contents (be it beer, wine or pickled foods) were gone.

Now THIS is how you start a pilot project out with a bang! Stay tuned for more updates and thanks for reading!

Thanks to Dr. Ray von Wandruszka and Dr. Barbara Voss for contributing the content for this post. 

The event is part of an ongoing series of programs organized by the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project, a research and education partnership among the Stanford Archaeology Center, History San José, and the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project. This project is sponsored by the Stanford Archaeology Center, the Department of Anthropology, the Haas Center for Public Service, Asian American Studies and the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford University, as well as History San José.

Public Archaeology Event
When:  Sunday, May 19th, 2013, 11:00AM to 3:00PM
Where:  History San José’s History Park
1650 Senter Road
San Jose, CA 95112

Should you have any questions about the event or about the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project and the work that we do, you are welcome to contact Megan Kane (mskane@stanford.edu).

We hope to see you at our event on the 19th!

This past Friday, January 11th we marked the official opening of the City Beneath the City Installation @ Stanford Archaeology Center with an exciting, well attended and memorable opening reception.

CBC @ SAC Opening Reception

With at least 80 people from the Stanford and surrounding community, news media from the Menlo Park News, National Public Radio, and the U.S. Bureau of the China News Service, the exhibit run is off to a great start!

Thank you to everyone involved in setting up the installation and  opening reception!

Please be sure to visit the CBC @ SAC webpage for more information on the installation, how to plan your visit to CBC @ SAC and to check out photo galleries of the setting up of the installation, the installation itself, and the opening reception.

For more info on City Beneath the City please click here.

Over the last two weeks we here at the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project have been working tirelessly to install the City Beneath the City exhibition in the Stanford Archaeology Center.

City Beneath the City was originally organized by the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the ZER01 art and technology biennial thematic, “Seeking Silicon Valley.” This exhibition by artist Rene Yung, presented in partnership with Chinese Historical and Cultural Project, History San José, and the Stanford Archaeology Center, presents artifacts excavated from the site of the Market Street Chinatown in downtown San Jose. Rene Yung’s sensitive design connects the daily lives of the people of the Market Street Chinatown to the present day.

This exhibition of Market Street Chinatown artifacts is now getting a second life here at the Stanford Archaeology Center. To bring this artwork to Stanford University, Rene Yung redesigned City Beneath the City into an exhibition suitable for a public passageway. This new iteration of City Beneath the City transforms the everyday spaces of archaeological research into unexpected places for reflection.

City Beneath the City at the Stanford Archaeology Center

The City Beneath the City exhibition will be available for viewing in the Stanford Archaeology Center (Building 500, 488 Escondido Mall, Stanford) from January 11, 2013 to April 30, 2013.

We wanted to share some of the installation excitement with you. Take a look below to find photos of the installation process.

 Installing The City Beneath the City

This past Sunday, Nov. 4th 2012 the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project hosted its second Public Archaeology Event of the Fall at History Park in San Jose! Stanford undergraduate and graduate student volunteers (most veterans of the Oct 13th Public Archaeology event) were joined by volunteers from Notre Dame High School in San Jose.

Playing out against the musical backdrop of a bluegrass band, the Stanford volunteers hosted well over 150 kids and their parents at 4 different stations (excavation, screening, artifact identification, and artifact reconstruction) meant to simulate the archaeological process that has been used to unearth, analyze and curate artifacts from the San Jose Market Street Chinatown collection. A final station was located within the Chinese American Museum at the Ng Shing Gung  and provided the Public Archaeology Event participants an opportunity to gain a broader appreciation of Chinese American experiences in San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley from the mid-19th century to the present and the specific role that archaeology has played in reconstructing the history of the Market Street Chinatown and the experiences of its inhabitants.

Setting up the excavation activity.

While the excavation station is usually the most popular, we had SO many participants this time around that ALL stations were continually busy! Not only did our volunteers more than earn their keep, they all left quite fulfilled thanks to the sheer number of Junior Archaeologist Badges awarded to participants who completed all the stations!

As always, thanks very much to all the participants, volunteers and our hosts at History San Jose for an amazingly successful and fun day at History Park!

Please mark your calendars for our next Public Archaeology Event:

January 27th, 2013 at History San Jose’s Peralta Adobe (more details in the coming weeks!)

Look forward to seeing you there!

Just a quick update: New content has been added to the site (accessible via the menus on the right hand side of the page) including:

• The 2011-2012 Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project Progress Report
• Technical Reports focusing on: 1) analysis of animal bone and foodways, 2) a pilot study of the urban environment of the Market Street Chinatown and 3) a pilot study of microbotanical plant residues remaining on pottery and in soil samples.

All are accessible as PDF documents, and contain some great information that highlights the exciting research currently underway on the Market Street Chinatown collection.

Happy reading!

Hi everyone!

Sunday, November 4th, Stanford University, History San José, and the Chinese Historicaland Cultural Project will be hosting another Public Archaeology Event that is FREE and open to the general public. This hands-on event is designed to introduce children from age 4 to 12 and their families to archaeology. Children will participate in “mock” excavations and study authentic archaeological artifacts to learn about San Jose’s hidden history. It is a fun and educational event for the entire family!

The event is part of an ongoing series of programs organized by the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project, a research and education partnership among the Stanford Archaeology Center, History San José, and the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project. This event is sponsored by the Stanford Archaeology Center, the Department of Anthropology, the Haas Center for Public Service and Asian American Studies at Stanford University, as well as History San José.

Public Archaeology Event
When:  Sunday, November 4th, 2012, 11:00PM to 3:00PM
Where:  History Park at Kelley Park
         1650 Senter Road
         San Jose, CA 95110

In addition to the Public Archaeology Event, there will be live music and a craft activity for children at History San Jose’s History Park on November 4th.

Please, help us spread the word about this event to anyone that might be interested! Should you have any questions about the event or about the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project and the work that we do, you are welcome to contact me (mskane@stanford.edu).

We have additional Public Archaeology Events scheduled in the winter, on Sunday, January 27, 2013 and Sunday, February 24, 2013, if you are unable to attend this event. If you would like additional information about these events, please contact me (mskane@stanford.edu).

Thanks for your time and we hope to see you at our event on the 4th!

Megan S. Kane