University of Nevada, Reno

Practical Mining: Historical Archaeology and Practice among Island Mountain’s Chinese Gold Miners

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology

By Kyle Crebbin

Dr. Carolyn White/Thesis Advisor

August 2020

Copyright by Kyle Crebbin 2020 All Rights Reserved

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

We recommend that the thesis prepared under our supervision by

entitled

be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Advisor

Committee Member

Graduate School Representative

David W. Zeh, Ph.D., Dean Graduate School

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Abstract

This thesis looks at an archaeological assemblage from a domestic feature on the

Island Mountain site in northeastern Nevada. The site was a Chinese mining settlement

active in the late 1800s until the turn of the century. While the community declined after

the mining economy went bust, Chinese individuals resided there through the early

Exclusion Era (1882–1943). Chinese community members found a degree of belonging

in Island Mountain, at a time when naturalized citizenship was denied to Chinese people in the United States. The assemblage represents the minimalistic material culture miners relied on to inhabit the region. A practice theory informed approach looks to artifacts as characteristic of strategies miners used to find success in an industry where they became increasingly excluded. Island Mountain was an intermediary place where miners possessed greater volition than elsewhere in the American West, yet still contended with racial hierarchies of the era.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for support from many people. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr.

Carolyn White, for her insight and patience in guiding me through this research and

writing process. My other committee members, Dr. Sarah Cowie and Dr. Meredith Oda

graciously shared their knowledge with me, and their teaching has sharpened this project.

I am also indebted to Chelsea Rose, whose mentorship has encouraged me to meet my potential. Other archaeologists, students, and peers connected to the Oregon Chinese

Diaspora Project have played an important role in shaping my thinking. Though this thesis regards a site from a state away, the work being done in Oregon has molded this project.

Fred Frampton was an invaluable source of knowledge on the history of the area, the Passport in Time project and field school that began excavations on the site, and helped me grasp the role of Island Mountain within broader region. Patricia Izabelle

Eaves also passed along a great deal of her understanding regarding Island Mountain history and recounted details of the excavation she oversaw in the early 2000s. Chimalis

Kuhn kindly lent me some of her time to give me a tour of the site proper.

I am gracious for assistance from the Historical Reno Preservation Society, as well as my family, who have consistently supported me throughout my studies. Any errors in this document are my own.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... i Acknowledgements ...... ii Table of Contents ...... iii List of Tables...... v

Chapter One: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter Two: Chinese Gold Miners and the Mining Industry in the American West ...... 12 Nineteenth-Century Transpacific Migration from China ...... 13 The Mining Industry in the American West Following the Early Gold Rush...... 14 Chinese Miners and Labor in the American West ...... 19 Belonging in Island Mountain ...... 27 Exclusion and Island Mountain’s Placer Mines ...... 35 Summary ...... 39

Chapter Three: Methods and Theory ...... 41 Chinese Diaspora Archaeology ...... 43 “Boomsurfing” the American West ...... 46 Practice Theory ...... 50 Outline of a Theory of Practice for the Island Mountain Collection ...... 55 Fields, Capital, and Habitus ...... 56 Functional Categories and the Feature 2 Assemblage ...... 62 Summary ...... 65

Chapter Four: Island Mountain’s Feature 2 Assemblage ...... 66 Mining-Related Artifacts ...... 69 The Activities Category ...... 72 Domestic Artifacts ...... 74 Personal Objects ...... 78 iv

Recreational Items ...... 83 Structural Materials ...... 83 Summary ...... 85

Chapter Five: Conclusion ...... 87 Field, Capital, and the Material Culture of Feature 2 ...... 88 The Mining Industry ...... 88 Chinese Social and Political Organizations ...... 91 Habitus and Boomsurfing ...... 93 Conclusion ...... 98

Works Cited ...... 101 Appendix 1: Catalog of Artifacts in Feature 2 Assemblage ...... 111

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List of Tables

Table 4.1. Minimum number of individual (MNI) counts and percentages by functional group and subfunction for units excavated in Feature 2. MNI for functional categories with asterisk are estimated, with artifact count in parentheses (e.g. MNI(count))...... 68

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1. Location of the Island Mountain site in Nevada...... 5

Figure 1.2. One of the dugouts used by members of the Island Mountain Chinese community, ca. 1903. Photo by Hilda Matthey. Courtesy of Fred Frampton...... 8

Figure 2.1. The early Island Mountain general store, with the merchant Chung (2011) identified as Hung Li. Photo courtesy of Fred Frampton...... 32

Figure 2.2. The miner known as Henly, photographed in 1903 by Hilda Matthey. Photo courtesy of Fred Frampton...... 34

Figure 3.1. Photo depicting dugouts along Peking Avenue, at Island Mountain in 1903. Feature 2 is not photographed, but likely would have be these structures. Photo by Hilda Matthey, courtesy of Fred Frampton...... 43

Figure 4.1. Layout of excavation units in Feature 2...... 67

Figure 4.2. Rocker screen fragments (08-74-823) from Feature 2. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 70

Figure 4.3. Diagram of a rocker, taken from Vanderburg (1964:38–39). A) end, B) sides, C) bottom, D) middle spreader, E) end spreader, F) rockers, H) screen, K) apron, L) handle...... 71

Figure 4.4. Shovel head (08-74-971) recovered from Feature 2. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 73

Figure 4.5. Firearm cleaning rod segment (08-74-1708). Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 74

Figure 4.6. Bamboo pattern bowl (08-75-3090) from Feature 2. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 76

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Figure 4.7. Key-opened can fragments (08-74-1695). Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 77

Figure 4.8. One of the riveted buttons (08-74-911) recovered from Feature 2. Scale at 1 centimeter. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 79

Figure 4.9. Can (08-74-1702) repurposed for structural material, as evident by nail holes. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 84

Figure 4.10. Clinched cut nails (08-74-810). Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum...... 85

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Chapter One: Introduction

The mining industry in the American West is among the most influential extractive enterprises in the recent history of the region, initially spurred by the search for gold. Though the first wave of the gold rush began in California in 1848, a flood of consecutive rushes occurred across the Pacific in regions like the American West and

Australia. After this date in less than “fifty years miners and mining companies extracted from the earth some 435 million ounces of gold—more than the total that had been mined in the previous three thousand years” (Ngai 2015:1082). The value placed on gold propelled a mass movement of people around the world in pursuit of the mineral. A large contingent of early miners in the American West came from southern China. In half a century of western mining, Chinese miners found success, but they also encountered a racialized landscape. The polyglot mining communities that emerged across western lands became arenas where racial categories developed based on assumptions of national belonging. The mining industry incorporated these categories and granted legal privileges to those who could become citizens and relegated those deemed “foreigners” provisional access to western resources. Chinese miners, characterized in American society as foreigners, had to develop strategies to meet both the booms and busts of the West, as well as the racialized landscape.

The Island Mountain site (26EK6621), named for the former Island Mountain mining district established in Elko County, Nevada, represents a place where Chinese miners were active in the late nineteenth-century (Figure 1.1). The district was founded on October 11, 1873 after completion of the Central Pacific Railroad, which allowed the 2

transport of immigrants and supplies to the area (Chung 2011:122−123). The Island

Mountain district encompassed an approximately twenty-six-mile-long territory between the head of the Owyhee River and the mouth of Meadow Creek to the northeast (Owyhee

Daily Avalanche, 21 October 1874). While different settlements were established throughout the district, the location that became designated the Island Mountain archaeological site was located along the confluence of Coleman Canyon and Hammond

Canyon (Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest 2009). It comprises the remains of a

settlement that became a predominantly Chinese neighborhood within the broader

multiethnic mining community.

The goal of this thesis is to contribute insight to the dynamics that circumscribed life for Chinese individuals in Island Mountain. While the gold rushes of the nineteenth- century were transnational, multiethnic events, they also coincided with the expansion of

United States (U.S.) territorial claims and the formation of a national identity that delineated between those eligible for U.S. citizenship and those who were barred from it.

In the American West, these distinctions came to play an important role in the development of the mining industry. Chinese miners contributed enormously to the industry, but their access to western resources was constrained compared to European

Americans. Island Mountain was an important place where Chinese miners employed strategies to adapt to the constraints of the mining industry. This thesis looks at material remnants of the site as evidence of the practices miners who lived on the site relied on to

successfully work in and inhabit the area.

The district was founded by Emanuel Penrod, who is first recognized to have struck gold in the region (Chung 2011:123). Between 1873 and 1878, he hired Chinese 3 workers to excavate ditches for placer gold mining, a kind of mining focused on alluvial deposits. (Chung 2011:125). It is likely these workers established the initial Chinese community at the settlement that became the Island Mountain site. Although I will continue to refer to the members of this community as Chinese, this characterization can obscure the heterogeneity of the early diaspora. China has historically been composed of many different ethnicities that had different relationships to dynastic rule and state government. Most who came to Island Mountain from China were likely from counties in southern Guangdong, based on the volume of individuals who emigrated from that region during the latter half of the nineteenth-century—at least two miners who worked in the district were part of a small clan from Sihui County (Chung 2011:135).

While the Island Mountain district was intermittently productive, it had a short lifespan and was eventually subsumed under a larger mining district in the early 1900s after an economic bust—except for a few individuals, the Chinese community also largely left the area by this time (Chung 2011:132). Because many of those who lived at the settlement were miners, the collapse of the mining economy was one factor that drove the community’s migration away from the district. This period also coincided with the first years of the Chinese Exclusion Era (1882–1943), which also contributed to the decline of the Island Mountain Chinese community (2011:131,168).

The Island Mountain district was established within the traditional territory of the

Western Shoshone, or Newe. The rise and fall of the mining district occurred within a broader chronology marked by the establishment of the Ruby Valley Treaty (1863) between multiple Newe bands and the U.S. While this treaty states that the U.S. is allowed certain rights to travel through Western Shoshone lands and contingent access to 4 natural resources, Shoshone never ceded their land. During the early years of the Island

Mountain district, the flow of settlers into the Western Shoshone territory had spurred a struggle to establish reservation lands protected from further encroachment (McKinney et al. 1983:17). A reservation in the vicinity of Island Mountain was not concretely demarcated until 1877, with the Duck Valley Reservation—four years after mining efforts in Island Mountain were active (McKinney et al. 1983:51). While this thesis largely focuses the experiences of Chinese miners in the district, their position within the local mining industry, and their relationship to U.S. authority, it is important to acknowledge that this all took place on land that belongs to the Western Shoshone.

The economic bust that occurred in Island Mountain at the turn of the century was a response to a surge of activity that started in 1896. In this year the planned town site of

Gold Creek was incorporated three miles east of the Island Mountain site as a reaction to earlier mining success (Chung 2011:129; Murbarger 1958:178–179). While Gold Creek was not a company town, its emergence is associated with the introduction of the Gold

Creek Mining Company, an entity established by East Coast capitalists who brought with them a substantial amount of outside resources. The settlement of Gold Creek transformed the district—mining activity intensified with the capital provided by absentee owners and investors interested in scaling up and the extraction of gold through industrial technology. Through this period Chinese miners worked as wage laborers for the Gold Creek Mining Company, and notably constructed the company’s canal and reservoir system (Chung 2011: 129−131; Murbarger 1958:180). By 1900 the company went into debt after they poured resources into maintenance of the reservoir and canal it 5 used to feed mining operations. This sent the economy of the district into a decline followed by a large exodus.

Figure 1.1. Location of the Island Mountain site in Nevada

A few Chinese individuals stayed in the area after the crash. Scholars have drawn on these individuals’ experiences to argue the circumstances at Island Mountain were unlike elsewhere in the American West. Whereas anti-Chinese violence was on the rise in many western regions, scholars have argued the Island Mountain mining community created a place where Chinese people found greater acceptance, and Chinese miners 6 possessed greater access to mineral wealth compared to other mining communities in the state (Chung 2011:122,136,168–169; Hunt-Jones 2006:31). While there is no evidence of systematic physical violence that targeted the Chinese community at Island Mountain, anti-Chinese violence generated a level of threat that was felt beyond the specific localities where it occurred (Lew-Williams 2018:116). Ultimately this pattern of localized violence generated the national exclusionary policies that characterized the

Chinese Exclusion Era. While physical violence against Chinese individuals was not monolithic in the early American West, it produced a monolithically threatening environment for Chinese migrants and induced the first steps toward modern American border control. Communities like those at Island Mountain are important for understanding how Chinese communities persisted through the development of the

Exclusionary Era.

Alongside the threat of anti-Chinese violence, the Island Mountain Chinese community also faced structural racism. Federal legislation and local mining laws, such as those that deemed only eligible citizens could establish mining claims, structured access to resources in the district. Chinese miners in Island Mountain were not able to establish mining claims themselves. This was presumably because Chinese individuals were racialized as inassimilable foreigners in the early American West, and this racialization became the legal category of “alien ineligible for citizenship” (Kim

1999:111). Even with the barrier to citizenship and restriction of mining laws, miners at

Island Mountain found a degree of success by purchasing or leasing claims from people eligible for citizenship or working for wages paid by European American mining companies (Chung 2011:130,164). While Island Mountain was not an extensively violent 7

place for Chinese people, it held certain restrictions, which placed it on a spectrum where

“different dynamics converged to make the place hospitable or not to Chinese merchants

and miners” (Chung 2011:175−176).

The archaeological site provides evidence for the material conditions produced by

these dynamics for members of the Island Mountain Chinese community. Analysis

centers on the remains of a dugout structure designated Feature 2, probably not unlike

structures photographed on the site in 1903 (Figure 1.2). The construction of these

buildings reflected techniques used in southern China, but they were composed of locally

acquired materials (Hunt-Jones 2006:54−56). The artifact assemblage reflects the material culture of a domestic building inhabited by miners who worked at Island

Mountain. Prior research on the site has looked to the community’s general store (Hunt-

Jones 2006), the healthcare practices of the site’s inhabitants (Heffner 2012),

geochemical and macrobotanical analysis of soil samples (Springer 2015), and compiled

a comprehensive history of the district (Chung 2011). This thesis adds the analysis of an

assemblage from a miners’ dugout to this body of work. This project investigates what

strategies the occupants relied on to maneuver the social and political environment

specific to the mining frontier of the American West.

This sociopolitical context is investigated through practice theory, and employs a

framework conceptualized by Bourdieu (2015). The sociological perspective developed

by Bourdieu attempted to build a bridge between structural models of human society and

perspectives that emphasized individual agency (Jenkins 1992:10). The framework is

well suited to critically examine the strategies Chinese miners employed in the context of

the discriminatory structures of the American West. This research follows in the footsteps 8

of scholars who have suggested that with some modification, Bourdieu’s framework can

be productively applied in archaeology to interpret patterns of material culture produced

in the context of past structural racism (e.g., Orser 2003).

Figure 1.2. One of the dugouts used by members of the Island Mountain Chinese community, ca. 1903. Photo by Hilda Matthey. Courtesy of Fred Frampton.

This thesis addresses a range of questions related to mining and the lives of the

Chinese community. What was the relationship of Chinese miners in Island Mountain to the growth of the mining industry? As the mining industry grew in Nevada Territory 9

Chinese mine workers were often expelled through violence (Lingenfelter 1974:109), yet this was not the case at Island Mountain. With this in mind, how was the community affected by the threat of violence and the expansion of the exclusionary landscape?

Furthermore, through Bourdieu’s framework, what were the power structures at Island

Mountain? Does the material culture analyzed grant insight into the strategies Chinese miners adopted in light of the social and political context of the district?

The next chapter draws on the historiography of the Chinese diaspora in the U.S., and of the mining industry in the American West, to better understand the circumstances early Chinese miners faced and how they participated in the industry as it developed over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter contextualizes the establishment of Island Mountain within the broader arc of the mining industry, and considers the relationship between anti-Chinese violence, the growth of exclusionary federal policies that targeted Chinese communities, and restrictive mining laws. The chapter will endeavor to explain why the Island Mountain district was among the more popular regions for nineteenth-century Chinese miners in Nevada, and how the community endured the Exclusion Era.

The third chapter presents the methodology and theoretical perspectives of the thesis. Recent scholarship in Chinese diaspora archaeology and in archaeologies of the

American West inform the perspective taken towards material culture. This chapter outlines the practice theory of Bourdieu. With his concepts of the social field, capital, and habitus, Chapter Three models the fields of the western mining industry, Chinese sociopolitical networks, and the strategies Chinese miners implemented to navigate those fields. While the fields, capital, and habitus will be defined in greater detail, the terms are 10

defined as follows—fields are composed of the social and political environments that

determine the rules or stakes involved within them. Capital embodies those stakes and is not restricted to its purely economic form. Habitus encompasses the mechanism by which individuals decide how to act within the fields to which they belong (Jenkins

1992:74−98). These concepts work in conjunction to frame the Feature 2 assemblage.

Chapter Four comprises the artifact analysis and looks at the assemblage associated with Feature 2. In the course of fieldwork undertaken by the University of

Nevada, Reno (UNR) Anthropology Depart and the U.S. Forest Service between 1999 and 2001, 16 dugout features were identified on the site. Feature 2 represents one of the

11 that were sampled. The feature was selected as the focal point due to the presence of mining related objects in the assemblage, which suggest the former inhabitants were

directly connected to the mining activity that took place in the area.

The fifth and final chapter will connect the material record to practice, and returns

to Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, and habitus.

The experiences of Chinese miners in the U.S. illustrates that resource extraction

is not strictly an economic process, but one that is laden with socially ascribed values.

The mining industry of the early American West was marked by power structures

characterized by politics of belonging, and while places like Island Mountain demonstrate

that belonging was conditional on a localized basis, it was not devoid of power. A local

newspaper published an article titled “Practical Mining” (Gold Creek News, December

1896), in which the author exulted in the sensible application of cutting-edge placer

mining technology that was introduced to the district. They proposed that the days of the

“practical miner” were at an end with the introduction of hydraulic systems. They stated: 11

The practical miner has been at work on Gold Creek for a good many

years, and has taken out several hundred thousand dollars. But he has

worked, after all, in a very crude way. The new owners [of the property

around Gold Creek] retain every good feature of the old system, and are

able to bring other principles to bear that are as firmly established as the

earth itself.

While the author uses the term “practical mining” to contrast the emergence of novel

industrial forms of extraction, the term can also be construed to refer to practices, in the

sense of practice theory—the suite of strategies, techniques, and tactics miners relied on as the mining industry grew, transformed, and systematized. Many miners continued to

implement and adapt age-old practices as the industry broadly marched towards

industrialization. Among the “practical miners” who worked at Gold Creek, Chinese

miners were among the earliest. Some Chinese miners continued to work in the district

following the introduction of industrial methods to the district, and relied on firmly

established “practical” techniques. Others found work on infrastructure used in the

hydraulic technology introduced to the region. This thesis emphasizes the strategies

Chinese miners relied on to attain success, parallel and within the predominant mining

industry in the U.S.

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Chapter Two: Chinese Gold Miners and the Mining Industry in the American West

The development of the mining industry at Island Mountain was rapid and

followed a pattern of booms and busts. While “practical” methods of mining used in the

district were similar to methods used in the early California Gold Rush, mining

companies eventually adopted industrial techniques, technology, and modes of

organizing that expanded their ability to extract earth’s resources. Chinese miners were

among the early waves of migrants that flocked to the West upon recognition of gold in

the region in 1848. The trend towards industrialization coincided with the increase of

discriminatory laws and violence that targeted Chinese communities in the U.S. This

chapter aims to contextualize how Chinese miners participated in the mining industry as

industrial practices became more prevalent, and how they confronted the social landscape

developing in the American West.

First this chapter will provide a general background of early migration from China

to the American West, and the arc of the western mining industry through the nineteenth-

century. A discussion regarding some of the ways Chinese miners participated in the U.S.

mining industry, and how they are portrayed in mining historiography, will follow. After

this, focus will turn to Island Mountain, where Chinese individuals found a degree of

belonging amidst the growing exclusionary environment in Nevada. The final section will

discuss the sharp decline of the Chinese population in the region at the turn of the

twentieth century, with the expansion of national exclusionary policies that targeted

Chinese laborers. 13

The goal is to contextualize the Island Mountain site within some of the broader

historical developments that occurred around it. A significant development in U.S.

history is marked by the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which set off an

era of immigration restriction and violence against Chinese migrants that was not

rescinded until 1943. While the Chinese community at Island Mountain was active in the

early period of the Exclusion Act, at the turn of the twentieth century the community

largely departed. This has been attributed in part to the economic decline of the mining

district (Chung 2011:131–132). Another important factor may lie in a distinction between

the early Exclusion Era and later amendment to the Exclusion Act by additional laws, namely the Scott Act (1888) and Geary Act (1892), which progressively transformed and strengthened exclusionary measures that targeted Chinese migrants. Lew-Williams argued that the intensification of national gatekeeping that occurred following the Scott

Act was not characteristic of the earlier, experimental period of exclusion (1882–1888)

(2014; 2018:8). The Scott Act barred all Chinese workers (miners included) outside the

U.S. from entering the country, even those who had potentially resided in the U.S. prior, and its effects were likely felt by the Island Mountain Chinese community.

Nineteenth-Century Transpacific Migration from China

The beginning of the California Gold Rush corresponded to events that occurred

in southern China, marked by overpopulation, environmental degradation, and political

unrest (Chung 2011:1,135; Hsu 2000:2–3; Lee 2003:191; Rose and Johnson 2016:18).

Conflicts such as the British Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860), the Taiping

Rebellion (1851–1864), and the Punti–Hakka Clan Wars (1855–1867) created a set of 14

circumstances that encouraged heavy emigration from the region (Rose and Kennedy

2020:1; Merritt 2017:176–178). The gold rushes of North America and Australia

provided an opportunity for many to both escape the increased pressure, and financially

assist their family members who stayed behind. Bronson and Ho (2015) stated that despite the tension present in southern China, for some people in the territory, migration to North America was connected to a longer tradition of migration to Pacific regions such as Borneo, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, to take advantage of mining opportunities

(Bronson and Ho 2015:1; Chung 2011:13).

When word of the 1848 California Gold Rush reached the regions around the

Pearl River Delta, Chinese miners reached the western shores of North America by 1849

(Bronson and Ho 2015:1). Migration out of southern China to the U.S. increased over the latter half of the 19th century, that slowed only with the increase of racialized violence that targeted Chinese people, and culminated with the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), followed by the Scott Act (1888). This era marked a significant moment in the history of

U.S. nation building, where the country transformed from one with a policy of open immigration, to one that actively sought to control its borders and distinguish vigorously between citizens and “aliens ineligible for citizenship” (Kim 1999:111; Lew-Williams

2018:7; McKeown 2008:122–123).

The Mining Industry in the American West Following the Early Gold Rush

The earliest Chinese immigrants landed in California just as the 1848–49 Gold

Rush gained momentum. The initial years of the Gold Rush were marked by a feverish pilgrimage to the region by a wide range of people. Miners were initially focused on 15

placer (alluvial) deposits, which held gold in mineral-rich gravels that could be worked

with relatively little capital and experience, often by using water to sort constituents of

the deposits (Paul and West 1963:19). The impact of the rush was extensive. Madley

argued it played a central part in the genocide committed against indigenous populations

in California, with violence radiating into the region following the growth of gold mines

(2016:82–102). Alongside the violence against indigenous populations, by the 1850s intense “anti-foreign” sentiments also grew among European Americans in the California goldfields, and Chinese miners, among other people considered “foreigners,” became targets of antagonistic, exclusionary violence (Hsu 2000:59; Kanazawa 2005:783). This particular form of “exclusionary” violence eventually grew into a significant kind of political violence that drove the passage of laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (Lew-

Williams 2018:5).

While violence transformed the Gold Rush landscape, work within the mining industry also changed. Though some Native populations were enslaved and compelled to work in some of the earliest gold mines in California Territory (Madley 2016:72–73), slavery was not practiced for long in the region. Many early gold miners practiced small- scale, or “informal” mining, where individuals or small groups engaged in mining either part-time, or seasonally (Hardesty 1998:82–83). Mining in the early Gold Rush

contrasted some of the forms of labor practiced in the eastern U.S., which underwent a period of industrialization, marked by more mechanized work environments, scientific rhetoric, and a push for greater efficiency and social control (Cowie 2011:12–14;

Fracchia and Roller 2015:15; Paul and West 1963:9; White 2017:70–71). Elements of informal mining paralleled pre-industrial, artisan labor practices characterized by the 16 ownership of “the tools and materials necessary to ply [one’s] trade” and greater “control over the hours and conditions of [one’s] labor” (Fraccia and Roller 2015:13).

It did not take long for the products of industrialization to reach western mining camps. Historians have deemed this period of the late nineteenth-century the Gilded Age, which referred to the “exceptional scope and rate of social change” that occurred alongside the “facade of success promised in the West” (Sunseri 2015:85–86). The construction of railroads, application of new, or newly adapted forms of technology, the increased shift to wage-based pay, and the push to find more sources of gold beyond the most easily accessible and quickly depleted placer deposits led to the development of industrial practices in the California gold fields. Among the most well-known developments was the hydraulic monitor, a nozzle mounted at the end of a hose, or stretch of penstock, that allowed miners to use pressurized water to excavate deeper, gold-bearing Tertiary gravels (Greenland 2001:43–46; Paul and West 1963:29–30,91–

92). While the technology granted access to previously inaccessible sources of gold, it also created drastic changes to the natural and social environments. Paul and West noted that life in hydraulic mines became akin to life “at a small, isolated factory in a company town. The men lived in barracks or boarding houses and followed a daily routine that was monotonously unvarying” (1963:92). In the Sacramento Valley, tailings from hydraulic mines congested river channels, and created tension between miners and farmers, which led to local regulations on the technology (Greenland 2011:222–223,227–228).

To the east of the Sierras, new mines developed after the discovery of the

Comstock silver lode (1859) and the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad (1869)

(Lincoln and Horton 1964:2,6). Many of these were focused on hard rock mining, which 17

targeted ore in uneroded rock. While the California side of the Sierra Nevada mountains

had numerous hard rock mines (referred to as “quartz mines”), they were comparable to

the proliferation of hydraulic mines that targeted deep placers (Paul and West 1963:92–

93,95). In Nevada territory, placer mining—in particular small-scale, “informal,” placer

mining—was much less significant in terms of yields, though still present (Paul and West

1963:96–97). In Nevada territory, hard rock mines became the major producers.

Hard rock mining largely necessitated industrial technology and labor.

Technology such as machine drills, hoists, pumps, and complex milling equipment that

allowed for the excavation of deep mines also transformed the work environment.

Wyman (1979:85–87) suggested that the mechanical innovations that allowed for greater exploitation of minerals, often marketed as a means to make miner’s jobs easier, created increasingly dangerous work conditions that necessitated the organization of labor unions. These unions were often also major proponents of anti-Chinese racism however, and union members organized riots aimed at the exclusion of Chinese miners from hard rock diggings, prior to the height of exclusionary violence elsewhere in the west.

While Chinese miners appear to have worked placer deposits in the territory that

was to become Nevada by 1857 (Chung 2011:83), violence in camps and towns such as

Unionville (1869) and Gold Hill, Nevada (1869) (Lingenfelter 1974:109,115), effectively

prevented Chinese miners ability to work in hard rock districts (with few exceptions, such

as the Cortez district in central Nevada (Obermayr and McQueen 2016:75–76)). In some

areas, local discriminatory legislation was passed to regulate Chinese communities, as in

Aurora, Nevada (Dale 2011:21–25). Through all this, Chinese individuals were not

passive victims, and developed strategies to address the discrimination. This ranged from 18

the organization of voluntary associations to the construction of infrastructure within

their local communities to address anti-Chinese policies and actions (Baxter 2008). As a

result, many Chinese individuals turned to ancillary industries, such as woodcutting and laundry work (Chung 2011:113).

Another strategy Chinese miners may have relied on in Nevada territory was to continue to focus mining efforts on placer gold districts. With the growth of hard rock

mines, placer deposits became considered less “significant” in terms of yields (Paul and

West 1963:97; Vanderburg 1936:10). This perception may have made placer deposits a

less contested resource, where Chinese miners could circumvent exclusionary violence

that began to coincide with the rise of lode mining. Placer-focused districts like Island

Mountain became important for Chinese miners. Although in the broad scheme of

Nevada’s mining history, Island Mountain was not a highly productive district (Lincoln

and Horton 1964:29–30), this may be due to the district’s short lifespan. Historical

accounts of the district’s productivity describe it as quite profitable for many who worked

there (Chung 2011:127–128).

While placer mining in Nevada Territory may have provided a degree insulation

from explicit violence that was growing around hard rock mines, placer districts still

produced challenges. Aside from the persistent threat of violence, placer mining in

Nevada was typically administered in accord to racialized U.S. laws that attenuated

Chinese individuals’ access to mineral lands. The following section will provide greater context to this issue of access, and other strategies Chinese miners’ employed to adapt to

the West broadly. 19

Chinese Miners and Labor in the American West

Chinese laborers who worked in the American West were portrayed in early historical narratives as “coolies,” contract workers entrapped in systems of debt bondage

(Barth 1964; See also Ngai 2015). While this system of unfree labor was established in certain regions of the Pacific where contract workers were coerced into labor in regions such as South America and the southern U.S. (González-Tennant 2011:521), this form of bondage largely ceased in Gold Rush California after 1852 (Ngai 2015:1087). Scholarly focus on the exploitative practices of contract labor has produced narratives that have skewed the reality experienced by many later Chinese miners in U.S. goldfields, who were predominantly free laborers. Chinese miners worked independently, among Chinese companies or cooperatives, and as wage laborers for European American companies

(Ngai 2015:1088–1093). Structural racism and the exclusionary landscape of the U.S. still shaped Chinese mining practices—as Ngai pointed out, “free” labor “[also] involved elements of coercion and volition” (2015:1095).

The widespread notion that all Chinese miners were unfree workers did not emerge in a vacuum. Anti-Chinese movements in the nineteenth-century U.S. justified their exclusionary position as an opposition to slavery, which they equated with

“coolieism.” The anti-Chinese violence perpetrated by early Nevada miners’ unions and other groups was frequently justified as combating this form of slavery. Making the connection between Chinese workers and slavery in the free states of the West was “the quickest way to push [Chinese individuals] beyond the pale of civilization” (Ngai

2015:1097). Lew-Williams suggested the belief that Chinese workers represented a threat lay in the knowledge that they were actually free labor—Chinese laborers “held a certain 20

degree of economic power and with it the dangerous potential for upward mobility”

(2018:34). Through the portrayal of Chinese free laborers as slaves or contract workers,

proponents of exclusionary politics were able render them incompatible with the “free”

settler society becoming established in the American West.

In contrast to advocates of exclusion, other members of U.S. society were often

supportive of Chinese immigration, though that support was conditional. To many in the

U.S., Chinese laborers had come to signify a source of revenue and “fuel for western

development” (Lew-Williams 2018:138). Railroad and mining companies sought to hire

Chinese workers to develop infrastructure and extract western resources. The space

between the two positions regarding Chinese laborers was often permeable. Voss

recounted how Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific Railroad initially adopted a

restrictive, anti-Chinese stance, yet circumstantially changed his position upon the start of

construction on the railroad—the desire for inexpensive and effective wage workers

overtook his initial restrictive disposition (2018:294).

Lew-Williams (2018) described tension that grew between a contingent of the

European American working class who comprised the anti-Chinese movement, and those in the U.S. supportive of Chinese immigration. Many who supported Chinese

immigration were not necessarily sensitive to the denial of rights to Chinese

individuals—Lew-Williams suggested many were often in favor of cheap labor, the

preservation of trade relationships with China, and defense of the status quo (2018:139).

The U.S. mining industry also followed this dichotomy in perspectives. Hard rock

miner’s unions pressured European American mine owners to stop the hire of Chinese

mine workers, and instead provide jobs for European American miners. Many mine 21

owners were vociferously opposed to union demands, though not always in defense of

their Chinese employees’ rights—mine owners were often primarily concerned with their own rights to manage their mines (Lingenfelter 1974:118−119).

The wage system that became a violently contested in the industry was familiar to

Chinese miners who migrated to the States. Ngai noted that systems of wage labor emerged in Guangdong “since at least the seventh century” (2015:1093). Some Chinese miners either supplemented their wages or relied on smaller scale, “practical” mining endeavors instead. These often smaller-scale operations required a different kind of relationship to mineral lands than in the case of wage labor. Independent or cooperatively organized Chinese miners had to either own or lease mining claims to pursue this kind of work. In the U.S, ineligibility for citizenship meant that most Chinese miners were legally barred from the ability to establish original mining claims and were left to either work under European American companies or purchase or lease previously worked claims from individuals eligible for U.S. citizenship.

In contrast to national citizenship laws, laws in early mining districts were organized informally, often evolved out of traditions of European common law (Paul and

West 1963:23). In the early days of the California Gold Rush, there were instances of

Chinese miners who worked claims they established themselves (Ngai 2015:1086−1088), but after bouts of “anti-foreign” violence in Northern California in the late 1850s many districts codified local regulations barring those “ineligible for naturalization” from possession of claims (Chung 2011:38−39; Hsu 2000:59). By the mid-1860s local regulation began to give way to federal doctrine—Congress took an interest in the mining industry given the tenuous relationship between miners and western lands the U.S. 22

considered public domain (Paul and West 2001:168−169). An initial act put forth by

Congress, colloquially called the General Mining Act, was passed in 1866 and focused on the establishment of lode mines. By 1872 another version was drafted that extended the law to placer mining. Language used in the act stated that land claimed by the U.S. was free and open to mineral exploitation by “citizens of the United States and those who have declared their intention to become such” (Revised Statutes of the United States

1872). As Chinese individuals were legally classified “aliens ineligible for citizenship” at this time (Kim 1999:111), they were formally restricted from possession of mineral lands.

This legislation, and the local regulations that preceded it, did not wholly prevent

Chinese miners’ access to mining claims, though it did institutionalize hierarchies of access to mineral lands. In early mining histories, Chinese miners are often associated with the remains left after the most easily accessible ore had been mined out of a district.

Historians have described California’s early diggings as “abandoned to the Chinese”

(Paul and West 1963:88). Some authors describe European American claim owners who sold previously worked claims to Chinese miners after they deemed returns on the property unprofitable and suggest Chinese miners “were content with smaller returns”

(Vanderburg 1936:30). While Chinese miners’ contentedness with that situation is questionable, these depictions illustrate that European American miners often had priority access to mineral deposits.

Chinese miners were still able to gain contingent access to mineral lands despite their status as noncitizens ineligible for naturalization, through the purchase or lease of established claims. The purchase of mining claims by Chinese miners from European

American claim owners has been noted in numerous sources (e. g. LaLande 1981:322; 23

Rose 2009:116−117; Steeves 1984:160–161,165). While It is often suggested that this

was simply a product of European Americans’ lost interest in potential left in mined

claims, since Chinese miners were considered noncitizens this practice was considered

legally ambiguous (Chung 2011:38; Rose and Johnson 2016:19). Some proponents in western states attempted to regulate the practice, to prevent Chinese miners access to

even previously worked claims (Chung 2011:127).

Such attempts were largely unsuccessful. When mining districts experienced a

decline, some European American claim owners actively sought to sell claims to Chinese miners, and often either ignored or attempted to reverse mining policies that prevented them from doing so. Valentine (1999:64–65) stated that among European American claim owners, the practice was often justified as a means to generate additional income after economic busts. The practice at times seemed at odds with the stated goals of the anti-

Chinese movement. M. S. Bonnifield and L. F. Dunn, two men involved with the

Workingmen’s Protective Union, responsible for an anti-Chinese riot that drove Chinese mill workers out of Unionville, Nevada in 1869, also sold previously worked placer claims to Chinese miners in the years after the riot (Valentine 1999:31,66).

Chinese communities that followed the mining industry of the West were also targeted by taxes. Kanazawa (2005) indicated that in the early California Gold Rush, there was dissonance between the exclusionary desires of European American miners, and the revenue generated from taxes that targeted Chinese miners, and other ethnicities deemed “foreigners” to U.S. society, through state leveed foreign miners’ taxes. He argued that foreign miners’ tax revenue may have held back earlier exclusionary attempts in the state, but that after California addressed its financial issues (sometime after 1858), 24 pushes for exclusionary legislation in the state gained more ground (Kanazawa 2005).

Rose and Johnson (2016:20–21) drew a correlation between the California miners’ tax, and the Oregon Poll Tax. They suggest the Poll Tax was also employed for the purpose of debt relief, and was directed at those considered “foreigners,” as well as Native

Americans, in Oregon as gold strikes expanded out from California.

Miners from southern China had to find ways to maneuver in the progressively restrictive environment of the American West. Many miners likely drew on prior traditions of organization. Ngai identifies several different modes of organization characteristic of Chinese miners who worked in the goldfields of Victoria, Australia, and

California. She suggested that Chinese miners organized independently (either solo or in partnerships of two or three people) and within Chinese companies and cooperatives, alongside work as wage laborers for European American companies (2015:1088–1096).

While independent workers and wage laborers employed by large companies occupied two extremes in terms of operational scales and intensity of extraction, Chinese cooperatives and companies often occupied a middle ground, and were frequently bound by regional and familial connections, as well as through voluntary organizations (Merritt

2017:167–173, 186–197; Ngai 2015).

Van Bueren (2008) described a Chinese work crew in the region around the

California Mother Lode. He drew details about their business arrangements and schedules from a handcrafted ledger created from a recycled magazine. The document indicated they worked as both farm hands (the ledger was found on the farm) and as miners

(2008:88−90). The ledger illustrated both the seasonality of placer mining, and the fact that it was often supplemented by wage work. Drawing on cooperative arrangements 25 alongside the pursuit of wage labor likely allowed Chinese miners to persist despite the restrictions of the West.

The organization of such cooperatives likely followed traditional arrangements used in southern China, where “a group of professional miners acted under the leadership of a “manager” [and while] no wages were paid … profits from the mine were shared among members of the group” (Valentine 2002:45; See also Chung 2011:12,38–39,143;

Ngai 2015). Hann (2020) suggested that the legacy of eighteenth century kongsi organizations in China and Borneo—institutions administered by democratic and merit- based business partnerships that also distributed profits as shares—structured Chinese mining company organization in the early American West. Valentine’s work illustrated that such business arrangements were not always strictly egalitarian. He described the distribution of claim leases in American Canyon, Nevada centered around the local merchant who leased claims from European American community members, who would then lease claims via lottery to Chinese miners who worked within the community. While traditional cooperative structures found success in the American West, they were adapted to the particularities of the region (2002:45; See also Valentine 1999:33–35). Such modes of organization likely allowed Chinese miners to adapt to the social and political environment of the American West.

In Nevada, the growth of exclusion from capital and labor-intensive hard rock mines likely pushed many Chinese miners to pursue opportunities in regions where placer gold deposits were more prevalent. Chinese miners likely continued following independent and cooperative modes of organization in placer districts. The techniques associated with the exploitation of placer deposits have a long history, were well-known 26

in southern China (Valentine 2002), and such techniques persisted well after the height of

the California Gold Rush. In the 1930s, placer mining in the Automobile Gold Rushes of

the Great Depression sustained “snipers” in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada while the

country experienced a deep economic recession (Tiede 2017:3–4). Combined with

exclusion from lode mines, and the fact that placer deposits could be potentially worked

with relatively little capital, placer locales were probably important alternatives for

Chinese miners in the American West. Frampton suggests that Elko County, Nevada was

one such region, given the unusually high number of Chinese placer miners recorded on

the 1870 census at a time when only eight percent of the total Chinese population of

Nevada were employed as miners (1993).

The Island Mountain mining district was among the districts of Elko County, and

represented one that rose and collapsed rapidly. The Chinese community that established themselves there were some its earliest miners, but many left as mining opportunities and

wage labor declined. The few who remained became important figures in the rural

community. Chinese miners at Island Mountain likely relied alternatively on wage work

and informal, “practical” placer mining on claims purchased or leased from European

American community members (Frampton n.d.). While scholars have argued Island

Mountain represented a unique settlement, where the Chinese community was able to prosper despite the growth of the Exclusion Era, the skewed distribution of mineral land ownership indicates the district retained some of the inequalities characteristic of the

West broadly. The next section will discuss the circumstances at Island Mountain that facilitated Chinese miners’ belonging amidst these inequalities within the mining community. 27

Belonging in Island Mountain

The perception of Island Mountain as free from the threat of anti-Chinese violence has emphasized the district as a place where Chinese individuals found a greater degree of belonging compared to elsewhere in the West (Chung 2011:122,136; Hunt-

Jones 2006:140). Many of the historical accounts that support this narrative come from the later period in the district (late 1890s and post-1900). Chung suggested that after much of the Chinese population left the region in the late 1890s, the few Chinese people who remained found membership among the larger European American population through economic interdependence. Those remaining Chinese individuals represented a

“lack of economic threat [that] opened the door to positive social interactions”

(2011:168). In this interpretation, the sense of belonging experienced by Chinese individuals who chose to live in Island Mountain after the turn of the century was contingent on the out migration of numerous Chinese laborers who had come to the district in pursuit of mine work. While Chung also implied that earlier Chinese miners found belonging at Island Mountain in the period prior to the late 1890s, this understanding is based on the position of the district’s founder, Emanuel Penrod, towards the Chinese workers he employed.

“Belonging” for the purpose of this discussion follows the definition outlined by

Savage et al. (2005), who considered it an unstable concept, in that people’s sense of belonging is contingent on other factors that may be subject to change. They argued belonging should not be seen “as primordial attachment to some kind of face-to-face community” or as “discursively constructed, but as a socially constructed, embedded process in which people reflexively judge the suitability of a given site as appropriate 28

given their social trajectory” (2005:10). It is also relevant to address the fact that while

the Chinese community at Island Mountain appear to have not experienced discrete

physical xenophobic violence, as previous researchers have emphasized, the effect of

exclusionary violence extended far beyond the localities where it occurred. Alongside the

production of national-scale exclusionary policies, the type of violence that targeted

Chinese communities in the U.S. created a pervasive threat of aggression (Lew-Williams

2018:116,242). Chinese individuals in Island Mountain likely experienced this sense of

threat at the same time they participated within the community broadly. As the Chinese

population grew smaller at the towards the twentieth century, those individuals who

remained may have actively cultivated positive relationships across racial boundaries to

alleviate threat.

Most of the early Chinese community in Island Mountain came to mine in the

area around the tributaries that fed the headwaters of Gold Creek. Chung asserted that in

the early days of the district, Emanuel Penrod, who hired Chinese workers to develop his

mining claims, was responsible for an atmosphere of acceptance surrounding this initial

Chinese community (2011:126−127). He was opposed to Chinese Exclusion in Nevada, and later sold claims to Chinese miners. Chung cited Penrod selling claims as evidence of his favorable attitude towards Chinese miners, though the practice was not necessarily uncharacteristic for claim owners who wished to disburden themselves of depreciated claims.

While Penrod’s motivation for his opposition of Chinese exclusion may not be completely clear, given the prevalence of U.S. capitalists in support of Chinese immigration to provide labor in the development of western resources (e.g. Lew- 29

Williams 2018:138), social equity was potentially not his main concern. Chung (2011) drew upon Penrod’s voting record for the time he was a member of the Nevada

Legislature in 1875 alongside other statements he made to assess his character. From this, she suggested Penrod was a “practical man who realized the need for Chinese laborers in

Island Mountain,” and thus did not support anti-Chinese legislation (2011:126−127). It is relevant that given the absence of anti-Chinese violence in Island Mountain, Penrod too, as a mine owner employing Chinese workers, was not pressured to release Chinese workers he hired. Across California and Nevada, mine owners and railroad tycoons who hired Chinese laborers, when confronted by the threat of violence from European

American unions often reconsidered their position. While some mine owners dug in against anti-Chinese pressure, many made an about-face and abandoned Chinese employees (Lingenfelter 1974:115−117,121−122).

As the district transitioned in the 1890s with the introduction of the Gold Creek

Mining Company in 1896 and the associated settlement of Gold Creek, work continued to be available for Chinese laborers in the region. In 1897, the Gold Creek Mining Company hired 289 workers, 200 of which were Chinese workers, to excavate a reservoir and canal system to feed its mining operations (Chung 2011:130). The canal system connected to the reservoir drew water from a nearby watershed to employ it to work claims along Gold

Creek. The Gold Creek Mining Company’s hydraulic giants were only able to be implemented at Crevice Gulch (Fred Frampton 2020, pers. comm.), approximately a mile northwest of the Island Mountain site before the mining economy collapsed. Expenses required for the construction and maintenance of the canal (that regularly needed to by cleared of ice) drove the company into debt (Chung 2011:131). Despite the profit gleaned 30 from the Crevice Gulch operation, by 1900 the district was visibly affected by the crash.

The final day of Gold Creek was celebrated on the Fourth of July in 1928 (Murbarger

1958:183). Fifteen hundred people showed up to take part in festivities, and the buildings were torn down shortly after. While mining continued sporadically throughout the 1900s

(Chung 2011: 131; Vanderburg 1936:74), the early attempts at the implementation industrial methods to profit from the district’s placer gold collapsed under environmental conditions.

After the establishment of Gold Creek, many of the region’s European American inhabitants, some of whom had lived in proximity of the Island Mountain site, moved to

Gold Creek (Chung 2011:123,135–136). With this demographic shift the settlement at the

Island Mountain site became colloquially known as “Gold Creek’s Chinatown” (Chung

2011:123). This change mirrored more segregated residential patterns observed in other mining communities. While this may indicate the Island Mountain formed in contrast to other instances of “Chinatown” formations, often formed response to discriminatory measures or potential hostility (Baxter 2008; Dale 2011:7–8,22), more informal oppressive influences may have enforced separation with the Island Mountain community.

It might be expected that the demographic divide after the formation of Gold

Creek would further insulate both the Chinese and European American population from one another, scholars have argued this was not the case—they have emphasized the role of the Island Mountain Chinese community’s merchant, who was known as “Lem,” in providing a bridge between groups. Some confusion about his identity exists, as the name was used for both the initial storekeeper, as well as his brother who replaced him around 31

the turn of the century. Chung stated it was not clear if the first brother had passed away

or decided to return to China sometime around 1900 (2011:150−152). Through census records, newspaper advertisements, and other primary documents, she identified the

initial Island Mountain merchant as Hung Li (Figure 2.1), and the second as his brother,

Hong Lee, though these names may have represented the name of their business (Hunt-

Jones 2006:79).

The storekeeper played an important role within the community broadly, and

both supported Chinese miners in the region as well as European American patrons.

(Chung 2011:152−158; Hunt-Jones 2006:80−82). Aside from just supplying goods, Hung

Li and Hong Lee built strong reputations within the community. Accounts indicate that

the brothers remained influential community members, bestowed gifts upon visitors, and

in one instance sent lifesaving provisions to a family who were snowbound and starving

(Chung 2011:158−161). These examples of generosity may have represented strategies

the brothers used to develop belonging within the mining community, and potentially

mitigate the threat of exclusionary violence.

Aside from a few exceptions, the Chinese community at Island Mountain had

largely left the district by the 1900s. Five Chinese individuals were listed in the 1900

U.S. census and three in the 1910, compared to the upwards of 200 present as late as

1897 (Chung 2011:149; Nevada State Historic Preservation Office n.d.). Compared to the

85 individuals categorized as “white” in 1900 and 117 in 1910, the population of the

Chinese community appears to have decreased over the ten years, while more European

Americans entered the region. Chung observed that even after the crash of the Gold

Creek Mining Company, mines continued to operate sporadically in the district into the 32

1910s, but that virtually no Chinese miners were recorded in the census (2011:131).

While census data may be unreliable as many Chinese individuals eluded census takers

(Hunt-Jones 2006:70), this pattern occurred statewide. Chinese miners appear to have largely left northern Nevada by the 1900s (Vanderburg 1936:17), though they may have been invisible in the documentary record.

Figure 2.1. The early Island Mountain general store, with the merchant Chung (2011) identified as Hung Li. Photo courtesy of Fred Frampton.

Chinese individuals who stayed in the district after the decline of the mining economy became important figures in the broader community. Among them was Hong

Lee, the merchant who ran the general store, though several people who worked as miners also stayed. Many of the accounts that helped build a picture of the Chinese community’s experience of belonging in Island Mountain centered around these 33

individuals. While the few Chinese people who stayed in Island Mountain after the turn

of the century found belonging in the declining mining district, they established community membership through their interactions across racial boundaries. This may have represented a shift in the form of belonging experienced compared to that of some of the early miners who may not have developed the same kind of connections.

While most Chinese miners left the region by 1900, several remained. Brothers

Nie Sui and Nie Shu were among those who purchased a placer claim from Penrod.

Though they appear to have continued mining after the region’s bust, this was not a full- time endeavor. Sui apparently also raised horses, and by the 1910 census, Shu (listed as

“Joe Carney”) was listed as a ranch hand (Chung 2011:164; Murbarger 1958:180).

Another miner, “Henly,” whose real name is unknown, worked as a servant (Chung

2011:162). Henly is also among the few Chinese individuals at Island Mountain photographed by Hilda Matthey in 1903 (Figure 2.2). Although these miners were able to continue working claims, they supplemented that work with other labor.

The stories and historical accounts of these individuals suggest they developed a sense of belonging within the community that transcended ethnic or racial boundaries present elsewhere in the American West. Chung recounted how Nie Shu regularly hunted, played cards, and took part in other activities with European American friends

(2011:164). Accounts such as this illustrated the remaining Chinese individuals in the district had developed relationships in the broader community beyond those circumscribed by work.

34

Figure 2.2. The miner known as Henly, photographed in 1903 by Hilda Matthey. Photo courtesy of Fred Frampton.

In the earlier period of Island Mountain’s history, the membership of Chinese

miners within the broader mining community was likely supported by sentiments seeking to capitalize on the labor potential borne by the Chinese workers who followed gold strikes in the area. As Lew-Williams noted, this attitude towards Chinese migrants eventually broke down in the face of anti-Chinese violence (2018:139), and localized anti-Chinese violence produced the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). The smaller Chinese community that continued living in Island Mountain at the turn of the century, after 35 mining collapsed and the Exclusion Era (1882–1943) intensified, relied on connections they had made across racial boundaries to facilitate belonging. This belonging was developed in the wake of a national-scale transformation that targeted the Chinese working class, miners included. The next section will discuss the shifts that occurred in the early Exclusion Era that specifically targeted the Chinese working class, including those who were mining in Island Mountain.

Exclusion and Island Mountain’s Placer Mines

While the collapse of the mining economy is one reason for the decrease in the

Chinese population in the district at the turn of the century, transformations that occurred within the national exclusionary landscape also likely affected the Island Mountain

Chinese community (Chung 2011:131,168). Lew-Williams traced the effects of anti-

Chinese violence and emphasized that while its ultimate product was Chinese exclusion, in the process it also transformed conceptions of U.S. power to control national borders

(2018:190−193). She argued the path to exclusion was permeated with conflicted intentions. Many in the U.S. oppose to exclusion wished to preserve trade relations with

China, harness the labor potential of Chinese migrants, and some politicians were concerned about the ramifications of breaking the Burlingame Treaty with China, which was supposed to ensure free immigration between countries (Lew-Williams

2018:28,46−47). Against a large contingent of U.S. society who supported exclusion, these contradictions were rife in the early years of the Exclusion Era. Lew-Williams makes a distinction in the early Exclusion Era, between an initial experimental restrictive phase (that started with the passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act) and the harsher, 36

exclusionary period marked by passage of the Scott Act (1888) (2014; 2018:8). The

significance of this shift lies the way the Scott Act targeted the Chinese working class—

the amendment barred all Chinese laborers outside the U.S. from returning to the States.

Because many of the miners working at Island Mountain were considered laborers, this

shift likely affected the Island Mountain Chinese community.

The initial 1882 Exclusion Act came about as an attempt to “placate western

sinophobes without eliciting retribution from the Chinese government” (Lew-Williams

2014:34). The act was purposefully limited in scope and did not significantly slow immigration. Lew-Williams made a distinction between the initial iteration of the act and

its later amendment in the form of the Scott Act (1888) (2018:8; 2014). She argued that contemporaries of the 1882 act referred to it colloquially as the Restriction Act, though it was formally titled the “Chinese Exclusion Act” (2014:26). It was not until the 1888 renegotiation of the conditions of the act that it became widely known as the Exclusion

Act. Lew-Williams argued that these designations were more than just rhetorical and designated the period of “Chinese Restriction” (1882–1888) (2014:27). The Restriction

Period encompassed an era where Congress, unsure of its abilities to fully exclude an entire group of people from the nation, experimented with its powers to regulate immigration. Upon transition to the Exclusion period (1888–1943), the U.S.’ immigration policies became significantly more severe, and notably ended patterns of circular migration many people relied on to travel to and from China and the U.S.

With the uncertainty of the earlier Restriction period, Chinese workers who lived in the States were able to continue to move between the U.S. and China with relative ease given provisions that ensured return immigrants were afforded readmittance. Congress 37 had implemented a system that allowed return immigrants to come back into the U.S. with ease, and customs officials issued “return certificates” to those who left only to come back (Lew-Williams 2018:57; 2014:35). This system was exposed to fraud and did not significantly restrict the number of Chinese migrants travelling to the States—many new immigrants were able to cast themselves as return migrants to enter the U.S. While only ten new Chinese immigrants are recorded in the U.S. in 1887, 11,162 are recorded as return immigrants in San Francisco alone (Lew-Williams 2014:36). This changed in

1888, when new policies “declared null and void approximately 30,000 return certificates that had been issued to Chinese laborers since 1882” (2014:50).

The 1888 Exclusion Act was met with opposition by Chinese communities in the

U.S. Notably, the act was petitioned by Chae Chan Ping—a laborer who lived in the U.S. from 1875 to 1887, when he took a trip to China without the intention of staying long

(Lew-Williams 2018: 192). When he attempted to return to the U.S. in 1888, he was refused the right to land. The Chinese Six Companies, an important voluntary organization that provided mutual aid to the Chinese diaspora in America, raised funds to help Chae Chan Ping challenge the act. In Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889), however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the constitutionality of the Exclusion

Act. Lew-Williams argued this represented an important shift in U.S. immigration policies—while prior to the ruling immigration was viewed as administered by policies governing commerce between nations, after the ruling, immigration became “a matter of inherent sovereignty” (2018:192). The immediate effect of this decision was that a considerable number of Chinese working class who lived and worked in the U.S., but who were overseas at the time of the ruling, were unable to reenter the country. Lew- 38

Williams emphasized that this ruling also had a greater, foreboding legacy, and has

supported “the expansion of a racially based immigration regime in the twentieth century

[that] became a cornerstone of U.S. imperialism” (2018:193).

It difficult to capture the nuance of this 1888 shift in Island Mountain. Census

data is incomplete, with the seven years of the Restriction period falling within the ten-

year gap between census surveys (the 1890 census data for the state was also lost to a fire

(Chung 2011:146)). What census data does capture, showed that 54 Chinese individuals

were recorded in the Island Mountain precinct in 1880 (43 worked as miners), and by

1900 only five (three miners) were present (Nevada State Historic Preservation Office n.d.). Chung stated that approximately 200 Chinese workers were hired in 1897 to construct the Sunflower Reservoir and canal system (2011:130), which indicated that

Chinese miners or other workers continued to come to the region in the years after the

1888 policy changes.

Census data also indicated that Chinese miners did not necessarily leave the

district on account that mines had given out. While the number of miners of all ethnicities

in Island Mountain during the 1900 census was only seven (a decline from 49 in 1880),

by 1910 twelve miners are recorded, alongside 19 “prospectors.” This influx of

prospectors may indicate that while the failure of the Gold Creek Mining Company at the

turn of the century was a bust, it was more so the failure of capital rather than lack of

gold that caused this. If prospectors were active in the region, there was likely some sense

that the district still held promise. At this point, exclusionary measures may have

prevented Chinese miners from returning to the area to work. 39

With the 1888 Exclusion Act, Chinese miners who worked in Island Mountain but

perhaps returned to China to visit families, were likely unable to come back to the district

to continue mining. The mining community at Island Mountain has been described as ambivalent towards the development of federal exclusionary policies (Hunt-Jones

2006:68), but they were likely aware of the transitions that occurred. Chung described a fragment of a Chinese book that discussed the republican government established in

China in 1912, recovered in archaeological excavations of the general store (Chung

2011:159). Despite the rural setting of the community, such an object illustrates they

were not isolated from information about changes that occurred at the international level.

Chinese individuals at Island Mountain were likely highly aware of the changes to federal

policies that made a return to the U.S. more difficult for laborers. Nie Shu, among the

miners who stayed in the district after 1900, apparently remitted an impressive 1,000

dollars a month to his family in Guangdong (Chung 2011:165). He may have opted to

establish a life in Island Mountain to remain able to support his family with the

knowledge that if he left for China he would likely not be able to get back to the U.S.

Summary

The mining activity at Island Mountain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries was brief but took place alongside significant transformations that occurred in

the American West. With industrial techniques on the rise, small-scale placer mining

became a marginal but important endeavor. Paul and West described how after the

California Gold Rush, placer gold districts outside the California Mother Lode rapidly

developed towards industrial methods—namely towards the implementation of hydraulic 40

techniques (1963:47). Island Mountain followed this trajectory but collapsed under the

weight of debt and challenges of the environment.

The Chinese miners that worked at Island Mountain found success despite the

constraints they faced in the industry more broadly. After the collapse of the mining

economy in the 1900s, the few Chinese individuals who remained found belonging

within the broader community by building relationships across racial divides, alongside

economic interdependence (Chung 2011:168). This contrasted the period prior to the

collapse of the Gold Creek Mining Company, where a substantial population of Chinese

miners and other workers resided in the district following available work. While Island

Mountain was a locale where organized, physical anti-Chinese violence does not appear to have been present, the ubiquitous threat of violence and the national exclusionary policies it produced certainly affected the district. Chinese miners who worked at Island

Mountain were able to continue to work in the district unimpeded through the Restriction period (1882−1888), but after 1888 movement between the U.S. and China became difficult. This chapter has attempted to broadly characterize elements of the mining industry in the American West, the systems that constrained Chinese miners, and the local idiosyncrasies and national transformations that shaped Island Mountain. The next chapter will outline the methods and theory that informs archaeological analysis and constructs a more nuanced picture of social and political relationships that guided miners’ strategies in the West at Island Mountain in the late nineteenth-century.

41

Chapter Three: Methods and Theory

Excavation of the Island Mountain site (26EK6621) began in the summer of 1999, and consecutively in 2000 and 2001, in a collaboration between the University of

Nevada, Reno (UNR) Anthropology Department, and the U.S. Forest Service’s Passport in Time (PIT) program (Hunt-Jones 2006:88). The project was a fruitful example of archaeological research undertaken alongside community outreach—the PIT program partnered with the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, Washington and brought in volunteers, scholars, and a chef that prepared traditional Cantonese dishes based on faunal materials recovered in the course of the project (Fred Frampton, pers. comm. 2020). After fieldwork, the collection was curated at the University of Nevada, Reno Anthropology

Research Museum. The materials were incorporated into several theses and dissertations on subjects such as healthcare practices (Heffner 2012) and geochemical and macrobotanical analysis (Springer 2015). Hunt-Jones (2006) was the first to look in depth at the archaeological remains, and analyzed materials associated with the community’s general store. She argued the store was an important cornerstone of the area for both

Chinese and European American community members. Despite this breadth of research, a large proportion of the collection remains unanalyzed. This thesis draws on some of these unanalyzed materials to answer questions about the lives of miners who lived and worked in the district.

The focus of analysis is on the remains of a structure denoted Feature 2, the remains of a dugout built along the main thoroughfare of the site (Figure 3.1). Although a series of photographs of the community were taken by Hilda Matthey in 1903, Feature 2 42

is not depicted in any of them (Fred Frampton, pers. comm. 2020). Despite this, the

structure was likely similar to others illustrated in Figure 3.1. This feature was selected as

the focus of the thesis for several reasons. First, it was one of the initial buildings

excavated in the course of the project and was thoroughly sampled. Second, the

assemblage includes materials associated with mining activity. While other features

recorded in the excavation had been correlated to known structures, such as the general

store and the laundry, Feature 2 was not connected to a specific business. The presence of

mining-related objects suggests former inhabitants pursued mining activity in the area.

Third, there are excavation notes for Feature 2 recorded in the 1999 field season.

Paperwork for other structures excavated in the consecutive 2000–2001 seasons could not be located. The 1999 paperwork helps contextualize the assemblage in the depositional environment at the site.

This chapter outlines the methodology and theory that informs the analysis described in the next chapter. Sections below will outline scholarship that informs artifact analysis, which include research in Chinese diaspora archaeology, the archaeology of

“boomsurfing” (Purser 2017), and the work of Bourdieu (2015). The Feature 2 material was categorized by functional categories used to classify the assemblage broadly. After an overview on functional categorization in historical archaeology, the chapter will turn to the perspectives that guide the research.

43

Figure 3.1. Photo depicting dugouts along Peking Avenue, at Island Mountain in 1903. Feature 2 is not photographed, but likely would have been similar to these structures. Photo by Hilda Matthey, courtesy of Fred Frampton.

Chinese Diaspora Archaeology

Scholarship has moved to conceptualize the early Chinese population in North

America as a diaspora. This research has provided a context to comprehend the complex social relationships transpacific Chinese communities engaged with in the nineteenth- century. Early historical archaeological work on Chinese sites in the U.S. focused on the quantifying degrees of acculturation or assimilation, which misinterpreted much of the 44 material and reinforced problematic narratives (Voss 2005). In response, archaeologists who advocate for diasporic approaches have argued that diaspora provides a useful concept that counteracts many of the problems inherent in acculturative perspectives (e.g.

Ross 2013:31–37, 2020). This section provides a brief overview of acculturative research and its critique in archaeology, before delving into scholarship that outlines diasporic perspectives and their relation to sites like Island Mountain.

Acculturation perspectives were adopted by archaeologists to study culture contacts and attempted to measure adoption or transmission of cultural “traits” between groups of people through patterns of material culture (Cusick 2015:122–123). In the case of early Chinese immigrants, acculturative viewpoints consisted of several flawed assumptions. Voss stated these perspectives “assumed that there was an inherent acculturative pressure on Chinese immigrant populations to become more like non-

Chinese populations” (2005:427). Resistance to acculturative pressures was viewed as

“agency on the part of Chinese immigrants” (2005:427). Voss argued that these perspectives framed questions about ethnic boundary maintenance as the central questions of the material culture, and created a methodology that quantitatively and qualitatively measured degrees of “Western” and “Eastern” influence, which reinforced an east versus west binary (2005:435).

Fong further argued that these acculturation/assimilation-based methodologies fueled the racialization of Chinese and other Asian Americans as foreigners (2013:4).

Through quantification and continual reification of ethnic or cultural boundaries, she suggested that archaeologists have reinforced assumptions that have historically deemed

Chinese migrants “aliens ineligible for citizenship” (2013:28,31). She argued that 45

reference to the subfield as “Overseas Chinese archaeology” has also encouraged this, in the implication that Chinese communities who lived outside China are always “overseas”

(2013:12–13).

Recent scholarship has made the case to consider transpacific Chinese immigrants a diaspora. Ross (2020; 2017; 2013:29–61) synthesized much of this discourse, and outlined issues both with a diasporic perspective as well as the value that comes with adoption of the concept. Originally used to refer to Jewish communities forced out of their homeland, “diaspora” has come to refer to numerous communities that are spatially removed yet still connected to their homelands (Voss et al. 2018). Ross claimed that arguments against such a characterization of Chinese in the U. S. in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries imply that the concept of “diaspora” tends to unnecessarily homogenize all Chinese that traveled to the U.S. (2020:10). Although the regions where the highest density of emigration occurred within southern China was spatially restricted, migrants from those regions were not ethnically homogeneous (González-Tennant

2011:511). Critiques of the diaspora concept have emphasized its potential to gloss over identities that may have developed outside of China (Voss et al. 2018:409). Other criticisms have suggested that given the connection to homeland, diaspora can also intimate a sense of nationalism among the population it seeks to describe that may not be accurate (Ross 2020:10).

While these critiques are valid, Ross argued that with the recognition of its potential flaws, the concept of diaspora can be strengthened to provide a particularly useful means to “[permit] the construction of a coherent picture of migrant lives that circumvents debates over competing models of national and cultural identity” (2020:14). 46

He considers diaspora a process of community formation that can be distinguished from

other forms of migration, rather than a kind of ethnicity. Furthermore, in order to avoid

essentialism, he argued it is important that scholars who draw on diasporic concepts

recognize that the concept is etic and does not inherently describe the realities

experienced by its subjects but provides a means for archaeologists to frame their work.

Framing the archaeology of early Chinese sites in the U.S. as Chinese diaspora

archaeology helps move the discipline away from problematic acculturative frameworks

and focuses on the social relations, processes, and power networks that framed Chinese

experiences across the Pacific. Such a perspective recognizes that while discrete

archaeological sites in places like the U.S. may be location bound, the individuals who

created the site likely had complex connections to the places they came from. The next

section will focus on archaeological perspectives that conceptualize some of the

strategies those within the Chinese diaspora employed to address the boom and bust

swings of the American West. This will help inform the interpretation of material culture

associated with rural mining sites such as Island Mountain.

“Boomsurfing” the American West

Historical archaeologists have characterized the American West as a discrete

region of study, both to emphasize its idiosyncrasies, as well as to connect the West to

broader phenomena (Dixon 2014; Warner and Purser 2017). Mass-produced goods, ephemeral settlements, and the reuse of materials are the archaeological signatures of sites like Island Mountain at the end of the nineteenth-century. The concept of

“boomsurfing,” articulated by Purser (2017), is particularly useful to describe how people 47

dealt with the instability that typified the boom and bust patterns of the West. This

section argues that strategies indicative of boomsurfing were among those employed by

Chinese miners to address both the economic unpredictability of the region, and the form

of structural racism encountered in the West.

Boomsurfing describes some of the ways people engaged with material culture in the course of American Western expansion. Purser suggested that boomsurfing encompassed strategies people used (rather than specific groups of people) to “survive the brutal boom-bust economic swings of that particular place and time (2017:7). Mobile, locally maintainable technology, and the reuse and modification of materials plays an important role in boomsurfing strategies, which allowed boomsurfers to adapt to the volatility of the region. Locally maintainable technology was often represented by older, well established technologies. Purser noted that “what might look sharply anachronistic in an archaeological context might actually be a strategy for long-term success, rather than a “failure” to shift rapidly to the newest available technology” (2017:6).

Object reuse can also be connected to boomsurfing strategies. Barna (2008) looked to the practice of “making do” (de Certeau 1984:29) among placer miners in the

Rabbithole mining district of Pershing County, Nevada during the Great Depression.

“Making do” references the ways people who are not in positions of power reuse, or repurpose, the predominant order, often to reproduce familiar cultural forms (de Certeau

1984:30−31). In the case of Rabbithole, this included the ways people adapted mass- produced goods and materials in ways they were not intended—for example, reusing containers, cans, and auto bodies for structural materials (Barna 2008:156−165). While

Barna did not connect making do to boomsurfing, the two concepts have parallels. Barna 48

considered the repurpose objects in creative ways a key aspect of making do that allowed

miners to persist through the Great Depression (2018:9,19–27). Although he focused on the Great Depression, many of the strategies examined can be observed in earlier periods of western history and can be understood as expressions of boomsurfing people relied on to endure difficult times.

Mobility has been evoked as an attribute of the western mining frontier, and as a strategy characteristic of boomsurfing (e.g. Brooks 1995: Purser 2017:8). Tiede (2017) also conducted research on the Depression era community of the Rabbithole district but

looked to the material expression of anticipated mobility. Anticipated mobility refers to

the length of time people intended to stay at a given location—in its archaeological

application, this is interpreted from the kinds of material remains left at a site (2017:37).

For example, refuse patterns are used as one indicator, with contained, discrete dumps

imply an intent to stay longer than scattered sheet middens. Strategic investment in a

location can be considered representative of boomsurfing, where individuals may plan to

stay at a given location only if local resources or work options hold out, to skirt the

effects of potential economic declines.

Sites associated with Chinese labor in the U.S. convey characteristics of

boomsurfing. The mobility of Chinese miners and other laborers has left remains such

that archaeologists have noted it is more effective to excavate work sites with broad

exposures, rather than deep samples, due to their shallow and ephemeral deposits (Furnis

and Maniery 2015). While this kind of mobility may be considered part of a suite of

strategies relied on to adapt to the tenuous economic circumstances of the West, Hardesty

stated that power relations are also at play, and that the kind of mobility in question was 49

also a “key characteristic of a distinctive social class of wageworkers created by the

industrial transformation of the American West” (1998:84).

Purser cautioned against reading impermanence (as a feature of mobility) in all

material expressions of boomsurfing. Some features may appear ephemeral, but often are

seasonally reconstructed or repaired, which illustrated people’s intentions to stay, rather

than transience. Purser described how nineteenth and twentieth century farmers

reconstructed brush landings in the Sacramento River every year to dock boats (2017:14).

This is a salient point in the context of Chinese sites in the U.S., given Chinese

individuals’ mischaracterization as sojourners, migrants who travelled abroad with the

explicit intention of returning to their homeland (Chung 2011:xxii,23,30). This

mischaracterization has fed into biased beliefs about Chinese communities commitment

to American society. Locations like Island Mountain illustrate that while apparently

ephemeral material culture (such as the dugouts portrayed in Figure 3.1) was present at

some locations, this was not necessarily a reflection of people’s lack of connection to

place. Some Chinese individuals at Island Mountain intended to stay in the region long

term, and others likely returned on a seasonal basis.

Material expressions of boomsurfing can be seen at sites associated with Chinese labor. The reuse of objects such as shipping crates and cans were observed at

woodcutting sites in the Sierra Nevada (Dale 2016;212,221–224). Moreover, Chinese miners’ focus on placer mining regions and use of practical, long-established technologies for recovering gold may produce an archaeologically “anachronistic” signature, compared to districts that have implemented novel lode mining systems. While this can be construed as a strategy for long-term success, it also has important dimensions 50

in relation to power. With exclusionary pressure in hard rock mines, placer-focused districts became important options that allowed Chinese miners to endure economic

challenges and racial violence in the West.

Purser indicated that an aspect of the boomsurfing concept that remains under-

theorized is the way people drew upon social relations as survival strategies to address

the unpredictability of the American West. She described how repair, reuse, and

exchange occurred within the network of social groups who relied on one another to

persevere (2017:6). Purser used the concept of social capital, established by Bourdieu

(2015), to talk about these relationships. Churches, voluntary or fraternal organizations,

as well as schools, saloons, and other institutions are some of the socially mediated

spaces she referenced, and noted that, “the line between community institution and profit-

making enterprise [is] often quite intentionally blurred” (2017:24). The subsequent

section will draw on the practice theory of Bourdieu, in part as a means to expand on

these social aspects of boomsurfing. The social networks Chinese diaspora drew upon in

the American West can be seen as extensions of the strategies employed to address the

economic seesaw of the region, as well as the insecurity caused by the pressure of the

exclusionary movement in the U.S.

Practice Theory

Practice theory is informed by a large body of literature with contributions by

numerous scholars. This thesis focuses on the work of Bourdieu (2015). Bourdieu

developed his approach to a theory of practice to transcend the divide between structure

and agency. Individuals in the purview of a practice-based approach are understood as 51

neither automatons that respond only to environmental or economic stimuli, or agents in

complete control of the decisions that guide their lives. Humans are active agents in the

world around them, but phenomena such as social relationships, traditions of knowledge,

and power structures also exert an influence on decisions made. The “practice” of

practice theory refers to the “neither wholly conscious nor wholly unconscious” (Jenkins

1992:72) strategies people engage in through their social interactions. In relation to the

archaeology of the Chinese diaspora, such an approach is valuable as it can acknowledge

both the decision-making abilities of the discipline’s subjects, and the strictures of social

organizations and structural racism on those decisions.

While much of Bourdieu’s practice theory focuses on class divisions, Orser argued that a practice-based approach to archaeology has the potential to comprehend past racialization processes as well (2003:140,148). Orser argued that to effectively use

Bourdieu’s concepts, they “must be interlinked in a manner that allows for the comprehension of the racial practices of particular sociohistoric formations” (2003:141).

Employment of a practice-based lens in the archaeology of early Chinese diaspora in the

U.S. allows archaeologists to investigate strategies Chinese individuals and communities employed when faced with racialized social structures like those of the nineteenth- century American West. Scholars such as Fong (2013:16, 2020) have argued that archaeologists must consider racialization in the archaeology of Chinese communities, to produce a more nuanced picture of the past.

This thesis draws from several concepts in Bourdieu’s work to inform its analyses. Habitus refers to a “strategy-generating principle” (Bourdieu 1977:72) that guides the practices of individuals. It is a key concept in Bourdieu’s framework, and 52

provides an explanatory link between an individual’s decisions and the structural factors

that influence them (Jenkins 1992:74). Bourdieu conceives of habitus as a series of

predispositions that inform strategies. These dispositions may be structured by factors

such as culture, environment, or social institutions, and limit the kinds of decisions an

individual may make, but still leave open the possibility that two people under the same habitus will make vastly different decisions.

Bourdieu also expanded upon the idea of capital, and considered alternative forms of the resource. Among these alternative forms of capital are social capital, cultural capital, and symbolic capital (Cowie 2011:153–156; Jenkins 1992:85). Social capital, evoked by Purser (2017), refers to the value individuals develop in their various relationships with others. Cultural capital represents a kind of resource associated with forms of “legitimate” cultural or institutional knowledge. Symbolic capital is tied to prestige and honor, or more specifically, it is derived from naturalized systems that distribute value according to their internal logic (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:119). An example may be family lineages—someone with a renowned family name may possess a large amount of symbolic capital based on the perceived “value” of their lineage, though they have done little to actually accumulate any themselves. These additional conceptualizations of capital allow for interpretations to be made about a broad range of social interactions and behavior with economic language. While critiques against

Bourdieu’s expansion of capital argue it may unnecessarily economize social interactions

(Jenkins 1992:87), or dilute the concept as an analytic category (Smart 1993:389), his

characterization of capital as a broad system of accumulation and exchange has value

when each form is carefully defined in its composition and relationship to other forms. 53

The various forms of capital are accumulated across fields, which Bourdieu

considers networks of relationships defined by the kinds of resources or stakes involved

(Jenkins 1992:84). Social fields can overlay and interlock with one another. The

connection between the habitus and field are somewhat tenuous in Bourdieu’s

conceptions, though it is suggested that the field is both produced and responsible for

production of the habitus (Jenkins 1992:84, 90). Orser argued that an archaeological endeavor that employs Bourdieu’s framework must effectively mobilize the concepts of habitus, capital, field in conjunction with one another—neglect of one of the components risks the disregard of key relationships between the three ideas (2003:141–142).

Despite this, practices can be investigated in the material record without explicit reference to Bourdieu’s specific suite of nomenclature. Several studies that involve

Chinese sites in California have adopted practice-inspired approaches to make interpretations of material patterns. Praetzellis and Praetzellis (2001) looked at ceramics associated with a Chinese district association that was active in Sacramento in the 1850s.

Remnants of a set of Staffordshire tableware were recovered in the course of excavation—in conjunction with historical accounts, the authors argue that the assemblage is suggestive of “impression management” strategies (Praetzellis and

Praetzellis 2001:648). They refer to a newspaper article that referenced a banquet held by a district association agent where, “businessmen were treated to a [twenty-six] course

Chinese meal, which subtly fused Chinese food and environment with familiar symbols of Victorian gentility” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001:649). The Staffordshire wares can be understood as material evidence of the social strategies used by the agent to cultivate 54

an air of genteel sophistication and used his knowledge of Victorian dining practices in a

way to generate what can be understood as cultural capital.

While Praetzellis and Praetzellis (2001) looked explicitly at Victorian ideology to

inform their interpretation of the material record, Voss (2019) looked at an assemblage of

ceramics from the Market Street Chinatown in San Jose, and noted high frequencies of

British and American-made earthenwares commonly associated with Victorian values,

similar to the Staffordshire wares from Sacramento. Unlike the assemblage in

Sacramento, the collection of ceramics from the Market Street Chinatown portrayed a

different pattern—instead of complete “sets” of ceramics of the same style, the earthenwares from the Market Street Chinatown possessed a wide range of decorations and forms (Voss 2019). Voss argued that this pattern contrasts that associated with

Victorian dining, and stated, “the use of both new and secondhand ceramics and the preference for unique vessels rather than matched sets—suggests improvisation, exploration, and perhaps even humor in selecting vessels to add to the visual repertoire of food-related material culture” (2019:43).

Both of these studies look at the use of ceramics with commonly attributed

Victorian values in the context of early Chinese communities in California and use

practice-influenced approaches to come to different conclusions about the respective

assemblages. While the interpretation of Praetzellis and Praetzellis (2001) can be tied to

the production of cultural capital, Voss (2019) finds that such an explanation does not fit

the pattern observed at the Market Street Chinatown, and thus levels alternatives. The

divergence between the studies illustrates how a practice-based perspective can aid 55

archaeologists to make interpretations of the material record, to better understand the

numerous ways objects engage with the socially mediated worlds of people.

A practice-based framework is beneficial to a diasporic perspective. While diaspora describes a broad phenomenon, looking to practices in the archaeological record allows scholars to understand different strategies individuals and communities may have

implemented to address structural racism, and establish lives away from home villages. It

also allows archaeologists to consider the ways those in diaspora interfaced with the

diverse material culture associated with the American West, that does not establish racial

binaries as analytic categories.

Outline of a Theory of Practice for the Island Mountain Collection

A practice-based approach to the Feature 2 material requires that some of the particularities of the place and period of study be couched in language and concepts used

in practice theory. In this analysis, Bourdieu’s notion of social fields is drawn upon, as an

arena where different forms of capital are accumulated to navigate power relationships.

Jenkins (1992:86) noted that to operationalize Bourdieu’s notion of social fields

necessitates three steps be taken. First, the relationship of a field to power, the “the

dominant or preeminent field of any society” (Jenkins 1992:86) must be understood.

Second, the structure of the field should be determined, conceptualized as a “topology” where the peaks and valleys represent different accumulations of capital (Jenkins

1992:86). Finally, the habitus of actors and their relationship to the structure of the field is to be analyzed (1992:86).

56

Fields, Capital, and Habitus

Relevant social fields include those that formed the mining industry in the

American West, Chinese social and political organizations, and the consolidation of the

U.S. state, its expansion into the West, and its racialized hierarchies of belonging. U.S. state authority interfaced with both the mining industry and Chinese social and political organizations in different ways.

The mining industry in the early American West interacted with state authority in a dialectical manner. Paul and West described early mining laws in California and

Nevada that were established and agreed upon by self-governed groups of European

American miners, that drew upon earlier codes established in Europe to form early districts (1963:23–24). Developed in the goldfields of California, these common law systems were eventually legitimized by the federal government and carried into other mining centers throughout the American West, which culminated in the General Mining

Act of 1872 (Paul and West 1963:169–173). While the mining industry gave shape to federal policy, it also relied on state power to make claims on property. Notably, definitions of citizenship played an important role in who could legitimately stake mining claims, and the 1872 act stated that deposits located on what the U.S. considered public lands were open to “citizens of the United States and those who have declared their intention to become such” (Revised Statutes of the U.S. 1872). As discussed in chapter two, Chinese miners’ inability to attain U.S. citizenship meant that they were not able to establish claims outright, which created situations where the primary means to obtain claims lay in purchasing or leasing them from those who were able to attain citizenship status. 57

In this thesis, citizenship is considered a form of symbolic capital. This connection is made based on the supposition that symbolic capital is derived to a large extent, from symbolic power, defined as “the power to impose and inculcate systems of classification that effect the naturalization of structures of domination” (Bourdieu and

Wacquant 1992:13). Symbolic capital is generated “through categories of perception that recognize its specific logic or … misrecognize the arbitrariness of its possession and accumulation [emphasis in original]” (1992:119). In other words, symbolic power constitutes the ability to define the rules of a game, and symbolic capital consists of the rewards distributed in accord to those stipulations.

The rules determined by those who hold symbolic power can establish inequality.

In the case of nineteenth-century citizenship, the racialization of Chinese individuals as culturally inassimilable to American society, and the synthesis of that racialization into legal determinations, meant that simply being Chinese denied one symbolic capital. Other scholars have also brought citizenship into a Bourdieu-informed framework. Kalm (2020) defined a distinct “citizenship capital” to describe the ways citizenship can accumulate hierarchically in contemporary transnational space. She argued that national belonging has the potential to be alternatively a boon or a bane for individuals depending on where they were born, and argued that defining a citizenship capital “offers a forceful tool for assessing and comparing social positions between individuals and groups across state boundaries” (2020:2−3). While this thesis does not employ a specific citizenship capital, it considers citizenship among the predominant forms of symbolic capital that shaped the nineteenth-century mining industry in the American West. 58

The symbolic nature of citizenship categories represents a connection to the character of violence early Chinese communities faced in the American West (Rose

2020b). Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence refers to the way symbolic categories such as citizenship can be mobilized by those with authority to maintain “order and social restraint … rather than by direct, coercive social control” (Jenkins 1992:104). The boundaries drawn around race and citizenship categories have been historically established through the use of coercion, violence, and control. Despite this fact, the justification for violent actions and systems are established through symbolic capital.

Through the combination of racialized assumptions that lay in the intersection between

Chinese individuals’ categorization as inassimilable foreigners (Kim 1999) and mining laws that considered those ineligible for citizenship incapable of establishing mining claims, the mining industry became an early space that regulated land use and access through symbolic violence.

The topology of the mining industry, or the locations that accumulated the greatest capital, were inhabited by European American miners. Economic capital was distributed unevenly, with those in possession of more economic resources able to further develop claims. A particular relationship between economic and symbolic capital formed—one where citizenship (symbolic capital) and property ownership (economic capital) were dependent variables. Chinese miners, ineligible for citizenship, likely mobilized other forms of capital to navigate the field of the industry. Cultural capital in the form of knowledge of mining and water management techniques (Valentine 2002:40–

44) assured that Chinese miners were able to attain circumstantial access to the mineral wealth of the West. 59

Chinese miners relied on various strategies to succeed in U.S. goldfields, which

included the purchase or lease of previously owned mining claims, the consolidation economic capital in the form of collectives or companies, and various manifestations of boomsurfing. These kinds of strategies may be considered expressions of the dispositions that shaped the habitus of Chinese miners in the American West. Previous knowledge and systems followed to conduct mining were brought by Chinese individuals who had experience prior to emigration, but European American systems became the authority in the West. With Chinese miners’ status as indefinite noncitizens, which became integral to

U.S. mining laws, Chinese miners had to develop strategies to adapt.

Lawrence and Davies (2015) suggested that in case of the Australian gold rush, technology employed by miners represented a form of habitus. They argued that water management systems developed in Victoria, Australia were a transformation of miners’ habitus that differed from systems and strategies that developed in places of emigration

(2015:21). Strategies developed by Chinese miners in diaspora, like the purchase

previously deeded claims in U.S. goldfields can be considered similarly. Although

immigration to the West to pursue mining opportunities was part of a longer tradition for many in southern China (Bronson and Ho 2015:1; Valentine 2002), the racialized

environment in the U.S. required new strategies to implement previously established

mining techniques.

The field formed by Chinese social networks came in the shape of family lineage,

clan or district affiliation, and voluntary organizations (Merritt 2017:167–168). Family

networks and those associated with native places facilitated people’s immigration and

aided diaspora community’s survival in the U.S. (Hsu 2000:61). Often smaller companies 60

emerged from these broader networks, such as in the case of mining companies, which

allowed groups of individuals to pool together resources to make larger investments that

would benefit the group. Merritt noted that voluntary organizations (also called secret

societies) regularly played a more influential role the structure of diasporic social

networks in places like the U.S. than in home villages (2017:170). These associations cut

across family or clan-based connections, though the different affiliations often

overlapped (Merritt 2017:170,189). While voluntary organizations provided mutual aid,

legal, and financial support, they also exerted coercive power over its members

(2017:190). In observation of this duality, Ngai suggested that “...native-place associations and sworn-brotherhood societies … are better understood as early modern social formations that facilitated overseas trade and migration, and operated along vectors of solidarity and control” (2015:1095–1096)

These social networks provided support to Chinese communities in the U.S., where miners and other workers were caught between the U.S. elite’s desire to capitalize on their labor, and the exclusionary movement’s pressure to expel Chinese communities.

It is not always clear how social capital was mobilized within these systems. Cowie discussed the role of social capital within European American voluntary organizations in

Fayette, Michigan, and noted that while the such organizations provided a degree of mutual aid across class divisions, in the case of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, accumulation of social capital appears to have fallen into a clear hierarchy (2011:156–

158). This was likely the case for many Chinese voluntary associations as well. Scholars have broadly characterized the class divisions within diasporic Chinese social networks with merchants and labor contractors on the upper end, and miners and other laborers as 61

members of the working class (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001:649; Merritt 2017:202).

While there are numerous accounts of upward mobility within Chinese diaspora

communities (e.g. Chung 2011:26), those who worked as merchants and labor contractors

generally occupied more influential positions within social networks (Merritt 2017:198).

Social capital likely accumulated disproportionately along these general class divisions.

In terms of habitus, social networks were important channels Chinese individuals

could draw upon to navigate the exclusionary environment and rapid boom-bust swings of the American West. Lee described the paper son and daughter system, used to circumvent exclusionary U.S. border practices that connected older individuals, already established in the U.S., with younger emigrants (2003:194–195). After this symbolic

adoption, the two would develop matched backstories to deliver to border agents who

screened potential immigrants. Lee described how paper identities “were shaped by the

ability of immigrants … to exploit the weaknesses in [immigration] laws” and were

“structured by the ideologies of race, class, gender, and citizenship” (2003:200).

Previously established social connections through family, district, or voluntary

associations may have brought the two together, but a new strategy redefined their

relationship in order to bypass U.S. border policies.

The American West and its mining frontier are mythologized as a social space

distinguished by European American masculinity, and a “notoriously fast and loose

lifestyle” (Rose 2013:26). Scholars like Rose (2013) have argued that the reality of this is

far more complex than popular mythos depicts, and the image of mining communities as

particularly lawless may be another element worth revising. Chinese communities in the

rural mining frontier moved into settler societies that were at once characterized by the 62 authority of local systems of European American common law, and national classifications of belonging. These systems composed the field of power that structured many mining communities in the American West and helped dictate what constituted various forms of capital. Chinese miners who emigrated to the U.S. were informed by previously established mining practices and social organizations, though new systems and strategies were developed to adapt to the unique circumstances those in diaspora encountered in the U.S.

Functional Categories and the Feature 2 Assemblage

Analysis of the Feature 2 assemblage began by assigning functional categories to the materials. Functional categorization has been a staple of artifact analysis in historical archaeology since South’s (1977) foundational work in the field. For South, functional categories served as a means to identify patterns used to distinguish specific cultural traditions. While the use of functional categories has persisted in North American historical archaeology, South’s focus on the identification of patterns came under scrutiny, most effectively articulated by Orser (1989). Orser suggested that the methodology was epistemically flawed. He referenced South’s interpretation of material culture from plantation sites in the southern U.S., and argued that a pattern-based perspective viewed plantations as static entities resistant to historical change, and ignored the social relations that produced discrete assemblages (1989:28,37).

This critique has moved functional analysis away from early attempts at pattern recognition. Brooks (2005) noted that in more recent use, functional categorization has become an institutionalized aspect of catalog production in Australian historical 63

archaeology (as in North America). He pointed out several issues arise from this: the

practice construes catalog production with artifact analysis, often ignores the multiple

functionality of artifacts, and terminology used may not be flexible enough to address the

unique circumstances of individual sites (Brooks 2005:9). To the first point, he argued

that the production of a catalog and actual analysis of artifacts associated with a given

site are two separate activities that should understood as distinct processes—a catalog

does not require functional typologies, as these are subject to change, reinterpretation,

and may be specific to individual analysts’ goals for a given assemblage.

To circumvent this issue, Brooks advocated the disregard of function in catalogs

until artifact analysis is to be done (2005:9). He also suggested archaeologists

accommodate for multiple functionality in a given assemblage either through additional

room in a catalog for multiple functions, or through the reliance of secondary catalogs

constructed from the original that elaborate upon functional categories (Brooks 2005:12).

Alongside this, he proposed that site-specific terminology be developed to address unique

circumstances at discrete sites—an example Brooks provided on archaeological research

conducted on the Port Arthur penal colony in Tasmania, Australia emphasized the

significance of a specific “penal” functional category that included a range subfunctions

unique to the disciplinary environment (Brooks 2005:11).

The significance of this methodology for sites like Island Mountain is twofold.

Because mining sites, like other historical sites in the west, are commonly associated with

repurposed or salvaged objects, this framework accommodates the multiple use-lives of artifacts. Secondly, this approach aligns with statements made by Orser (1989), who emphasized that archaeologists should focus on the social relationships that underlie 64

artifact assemblages and their functional associations. With a practice-based approach to

the Feature 2 assemblage, it is both important to recognize what similarities the material

culture may share with other Chinese diaspora sites associated with mobile labor such as

mining, while avoiding defining hollow patterns of material culture in the vein of early

functional categorization work. As scholars have called for comparative and transnational

analyses in the field (e.g. Merritt 2017:xvi–xviii; Voss and Allen 2008:19), site-specific characteristics, power relations, and practices should continue to be emphasized to better understand the social landscape a diverse Chinese diaspora faced across the Pacific.

This thesis employs a variation of the functional categories developed in the

Sonoma Historic Artifact Database (SHARD), by the Anthropological Studies Center at

Sonoma State University (Anthropological Studies Center 2008). Along with the general

categories of activities, domestic, personal, recreation, structural, and an indefinite use,

this thesis employs a mining category to specifically address the prevalence of mining

related labor that has historically occurred around the site. The activities category refers

to a broad range of potential actions, labor, and enterprises, and includes subfunctions

related to general tools and firearms. Mining is a specific activity category that includes

the tools and equipment related to mining. Domestic artifacts include those involved in

the maintenance of the lived space and subsistence, namely food preparation and

consumption, and food storage. The personal category relates to bodily practice,

substance use, and healthcare. Recreation involves gaming artifacts and other items of

leisure. Structural objects are those related to the hardware and materials used in

construction of buildings and furnishings. The final indefinite use category encompasses 65

a range of objects and materials whose functions could not be clearly determined. In the catalog process, objects with multiple functionality were attributed multiple subfunctions.

While functional categories allow the materials associated with Feature 2 to be

organized, the sections below will outline some of the perspectives that provide another

level of interpretation to the assemblage. Research in the field of Chinese diaspora

archaeology contextualizes the experiences of the Chinese community at Island Mountain

in the broader history of Chinese transpacific migration and provides a greater analytical

depth to the functional categories employed.

Summary

The Feature 2 assemblage recovered from the Island Mountain site represents the

contents of a dugout structure, formerly a shelter to miners who were active in the region

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholarship in Chinese diaspora

archaeology provides an important framework for analysis. These perspectives emphasize

early Chinese communities’ dispersal around the Pacific as nuanced processes that

simultaneously connected those communities to home villages and produced new

diasporic identities. The archaeology of boomsurfing in the American West also provides

important perspectives to understand this material culture. The strategies indicative of

boomsurfing were among those employed by some within the Chinese diaspora in the

U.S. To connect some of these themes to the material culture of the assemblage, a

practice-based approach in accordance with the framework developed by Bourdieu

(2015) is proposed. The fourth chapter will comprise analysis of the Feature 2 material. 66

Chapter Four: Island Mountain’s Feature 2 Assemblage

Feature 2 was formerly a dugout structure, identified by the depression it left in

the ground, a scatter of metal objects and milled lumber on its surface, and its alignment

with other depressions identified as former structures on the site. Dugouts were partially

excavated into the earth, with the remainder of the structure built around the portion

excavated. These structures were conducive to the lifeways followed by many miners, as

they could be constructed relatively quickly with locally acquired materials and offered a

degree of temperature regulation given the often-extreme climates miners experienced

(Hunt-Jones 2006:54). Feature 2 was archaeologically excavated in the 1999 field season at Island Mountain, and the materials recovered are curated at the UNR Anthropology

Research Museum. This section provides an analysis of those materials, which are listed in full in Appendix 1.

Figure 4.1 depicts the layout of units excavated in Feature 2. Units 1 and 5 were two by two meter excavations and represented the broadest exposures of the feature. The dotted line shows the approximate dimensions of the depression that defined the feature.

Units were excavated according to ten-centimeter increments. In the 2000 and 2001 field seasons excavation methods changed to follow the single context excavation technique used to construct Harris matrices, but the Feature 2 excavation appears to have concluded before this shift (Hunt-Jones 2006:94). Cultural material was recovered from all units except Unit 4, though an aggregation of cobbles was noted, which may have been a component of the structure. While excavation notes provide some insight into the layout of the structure, it is difficult to discern any discrete activity areas in the living space. 67

The artifact assemblage consists of 765 individual items total. Mining-related

objects were a small proportion of the assemblage (0.26 percent). Alongside these were

activities-related items (0.39 percent), domestic objects (6.94 percent), personal artifacts

(6.02 percent), recreational items (0.26 percent), and structural materials (72.38 percent).

The indefinite use category consisted of 13.86 percent of the material. Table 4.1 summarizes the minimum number of individuals (MNI) for each specific function and subfunction, separated by unit. The following sections will describe each of these categories in greater detail.

Figure 4.1. Layout of excavation units in Feature 2.

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Table 4.1. Minimum number of individual (MNI) counts and percentages by functional group and subfunction for units excavated in Feature 2. MNI for functional categories with asterisk are estimated, with artifact count in parentheses (e.g. MNI(count)). Function/Subfunction Unit 1 % Unit 2 % Unit 3 % Unit 5 % Unaffiliated % Total % Activities 2 0.26 − − − − 1 0.13 − − 3 0.39 Tools 2 0.26 − − − − − − − − 2 0.26 Firearms − − − − − − 1 0.13 − − 1 0.13 Domestic 19 2.48 3 0.39 3 0.39 26 3.40 2 0.26 53 6.94 Closure − − − − − − 1 0.13 − − 1 0.13 Food prep/consumption 7 0.92 1 0.13 1 0.13 8 1.05 2 0.26 19 2.48 Food storage* 12(31) 1.57 2(2) 0.26 2(2) 0.26 17(94) 2.22 − − 33(129) 4.31 Mining 1 0.13 1 0.13 − − − − − − 2 0.26 Tools 1 0.13 1 0.13 − − − − − − 2 0.26 Personal 21 2.75 8 1.05 1 0.13 15 1.96 1 0.13 46 6.02 Alcohol* 4(18) 0.52 1(1) 0.13 − − 6(11) 0.78 − − 11(30) 1.44 Clothing 9 1.18 6 0.78 − − 3 0.39 1 0.13 19 2.48 Footwear 1 0.13 − − 1 0.13 1 0.13 − − 3 0.39 Grooming/health 2 0.26 − − − − 1 0.13 − − 3 0.39 Opium 5 0.65 1 0.13 − − 4 0.52 − − 10 1.31

Recreation − − − − − − 2 0.26 − − 2 0.26 Games − − − − − − 2 0.26 − − 2 0.26 Structural 316 41.31 16 2.09 7 0.92 189 24.71 25 3.27 553 72.38 Hardware* 308(357) 40.26 15(58) 1.96 7(14) 0.92 186(188) 24.31 24(34) 3.14 540(651) 70.59 Materials 7 0.92 1 0.13 − − 2 0.26 1 0.13 11 1.44 Misc. container 1 0.13 − − − − 1 0.13 − − 2 0.26 Indefinite use 43 5.62 10 1.31 8 1.05 40 5.23 5 0.65 106 13.86 Closures 1 0.13 − − − − 1 0.13 − − 2 0.26 Fasteners 9 1.18 − − − − − − − − 9 1.18 Hardware 7 0.92 1 0.13 − − 7 0.92 1 0.13 16 2.09 Misc. container* 7(749) 0.92 6(154) 0.78 6(100) 0.78 21(2,371) 2.75 1(44) 0.13 41(3,418) 5.36 Misc. metal items* 3(167) 0.39 (100) − − − 4(100) 0.52 2(132) 0.26 9(499) 1.18 Tools − − − − 1 0.13 − − − − 1 0.13 Unidentified* 16(346) 2.09 3(12) 0.39 1(1) 0.13 7(67) 0.92 1(3) 0.13 28(429) 3.66 *MNI counts are estimated 69

Mining-Related Artifacts

Fragments of rocker screens are the sole objects in this category (n=2). Rockers

(also known as cradles) are portable tools that assist in the process of separating ore out from placer gravels (Vanderburg 1964:37–41). Screens trap larger materials, and with a rocking motion, allow smaller materials to pass through to be worked with the help of water. Gold is trapped in a cloth apron located underneath the screen (Figure 4.3). The screen fragments in the Feature 2 assemblage have a thin gauge and some fragments have irregularly spaced, round holes, which may indicate these items could represent screens made at the site. These fragments were likely either new or discarded screen fragments created in the course of tool repair. The example in Figure 4.2 has wire woven through some fragments, which shows how the objects were attached to the body of the rocker.

The fragments were found at various depths throughout the feature and were among the objects observed at its surface.

Rocker screens are also referred to as grizzlies, although Steeves (1984:137–139) makes a distinction between grizzlies and rocker screens. He suggests the former are composed of a thicker gauge and grill pattern (as opposed to holes). Both objects essentially fulfill the same purpose however, and it may be the case that the Feature 2 screens represent thin gauged grizzlies used at the end of sluice boxes. The portability of rockers and the location of the screen fragments within a domestic feature suggests that these were components of rockers in the process of being repaired.

Screen fragments recovered from upper levels of the feature may indicate they were further repurposed as structural elements, or were discarded after the deterioration 70 and abandonment of the structure. Chung (2011:162) described how metal sheets were used on roofs to protect against snow, and discarded rocker screens (alongside repurposed cans and other such materials) could have reinforced the structure given the environmental conditions of the region.

Figure 4.2. Rocker screen fragments (08-74-823) from Feature 2. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

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Figure 4.3. Diagram of a rocker, taken from Vanderburg (1964:38–39). A) end, B) sides, C) bottom, D) middle spreader, E) end spreader, F) rockers, H) screen, K) apron, L) handle. 72

The presence of rocker components reflects the type of mining that took place.

Rockers could be used on a relatively small, independent basis, or in larger scale placer operations as one step in the mining process alongside more intensive excavation techniques. Their size makes them conducive to a mobile workflow (Vanderburg 1936:9) and because of this, Chinese miners who moved between sites with frequency likely preferred the tools. The presence of rockers alone does not necessarily indicate the scale at which miners who lived in the dugout operated, but suggests that they could have worked at the individual scale on nearby mining claims.

The Activities Category

The activities category consists of tools (n=3). A shovel head (Figure 4.4), the head of a rock hammer, and a firearm barrel cleaning rod segment (Figure 4.5). While the shovel and rock hammer could be used in mining, they could also be used for a variety of tasks related to the maintenance of the structure and living space, which places them in the more general activities category. The end of the shovel has been worn down, and displays heavy use. The wood handle of the rock hammer has deteriorated and left only the head.

73

Figure 4.4. Shovel head (08-74-971) recovered from Feature 2. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

The firearm cleaning rod segment was identified by its depiction in

advertisements (Montgomery Ward 1941:900). Some of the residents of Island Mountain

were active hunters (Chung 2011:164, 168), which may indicate one activity the object was connected to. Elsewhere in the nineteenth-century West, Chinese miners armed themselves against anti-Chinese threats (Lingenfelter 1974:122). Because of the circumstances at Island Mountain, where the Chinese community does not appear to have been subjected to physical anti-Chinese violence, this item may represent the rod for a hunting rifle. The rifle’s potential as a weapon of self-defense cannot be neglected, however. It may have lent its owner some assurance against a sense of threat they could have experienced, either in Island Mountain or elsewhere.

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Figure 4.5. Firearm cleaning rod segment (08-74-1708). Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

This item being a cleaning rod points to the routinized maintenance of a firearm,

suggesting a gun was seeing somewhat regular use. The question about whether this use represented hunting or self-defense is slight considering it had the potential to be both.

The rod connects to larger questions regarding the nature of violence Chinese communities in rural regions of the early American West experienced (Rose 2020b).

Regardless if the weapon was not frequently fired, gun possession has accompanied even practices of nonviolence and been effectively employed as a deterrent against terrorism

(Cobb 2014:1,5). The cleaning rod points to the potential state of precarity (Voss 2018) former residents of Feature 2 were in, given the broad threat of anti-Chinese violence.

Domestic Artifacts

Domestic objects consisted of items related to the habitation of the space. These are predominantly objects related to food preparation, consumption (n=19), and storage

(n=33). They include ceramics, cast iron cookware, and numerous cans. For the purpose 75

of this analysis, faunal remains are excluded. This category also provided the terminus

post quem for the assemblage in the form of a sanitary can, which were initially developed in 1897 (Rock 1993). This object was recovered from the initial 10cm of excavation in Unit 5, so it may also represent disposal that followed the abandonment of the structure.

Objects characteristic of food preparation and consumption speak to the living conditions of work sites. Ceramics include porcelain min yao (folk ware; Choy 2014) tableware, and consisted of Bamboo patterned (n=3), Four Season Flower (n=5), and

Winter Green (n=4) (Figure 4.6). Fragments of woks (n=2) represent cookware used to prepare meals, identified as dense iron fragments with a convex shape. Choy (2014) described how, “in situations where only male workers were present, such as in work camps for mines and railroads, ... each worker had his own porcelain rice bowl [and workers’] meals were served out of common cooking utensils directly into these bowls.”

The material evidence within the Feature 2 assemblage aligns with this description, and consisted predominantly of min yao bowls, used individually, along with woks, common cookware that could accommodate a meal for several residents.

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Figure 4.6. Bamboo pattern bowl (08-75-3090) from Feature 2. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

In terms of objects used to store and transport food, Chinese brown-glazed

stoneware (n=22) is included within the assemblage—fragments from wide-mouthed jars,

spouted jars, and liquor bottles. These represent foodstuff and alcohol shipped to the U.S.

from China. These may have held a variety of different items and substances, and would frequently be reused, so their presence alone cannot be tied to specific food items (Choy

2014).

Other food storage objects are cans. While many of these have deteriorated and

are unidentifiably fragmented, some diagnostic portions remain. Can keys from sardine 77

or shellfish cans are present in the assemblage (n=5), which indicate that canned fish or

shellfish were consumed by the dugout’s inhabitants (Figure 4.7). Key-opened cans were first developed in 1866, and their application to sardine canning grew in California by the early twentieth century (Rock 1987:58−60).

Figure 4.7. Key-opened can fragments (08-74-1695). Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

Key-opened cans in the Feature 2 assemblage illustrate that miners did not rely

solely on foods imported from China. Preserved goods from across the West were also

depended on. Numerous cans recovered from excavation of the general store indicate that was where miners likely acquired them. Hunt-Jones (2006:80) noted that many of the goods found in the Island Mountain general store were freighted from San Francisco, many of the store owner’s groceries also came from Salt Lake City, Utah (Chung

2011:155). While sardines and various shellfish may be species typical of southern 78

Chinese foodways, their incorporation into the canning industry and distribution across

the West illustrates that systems of mass-production that developed in the nineteenth- century created supply networks important to Island Mountain.

The relatively restricted range of objects types within the domestic category is suggestive of impermanence. Min yao bowls, woks, and a bevy of portable storage containers indicate residents intended to stay light in terms of how they fed themselves.

This does not mean they did not eat a wide range of food—analysis faunal and floral remains from other dugout structures associated with Chinese miners in northeastern

Nevada indicated they had a diverse diet (Frampton 1993).

Personal Objects

The personal category includes clothing objects, drug and alcohol materials, and items related to healthcare (n=46). Clothing-related objects include buttons associated with riveted work clothes (n=5) (Figure 4.8). While those in the Feature 2 assemblage lack brand names or other identifiers, they appear like other diagnostic rivet buttons observed in early twentieth century work camps elsewhere (Psota 2002:117) and are nearly identical to those used in present-day riveted denim. All fasteners were in the uppermost three unit levels.

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Figure 4.8. One of the riveted buttons (08-74-911) recovered from Feature 2. Scale at 1 centimeter. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

Chung (2011:153) noted that miners at Island Mountain wore canvas work

overalls. These overalls may have been made from “duck,” a canvas-like material that

was used to make the earliest examples of riveted work clothes that eventually developed

into riveted denim (Downey 2016:113). Levi Strauss riveted denim was developed in

Reno, Nevada and patented in 1873 (Downey 2016:121), just as the Island Mountain

district was established. The innovation became popular throughout the American West,

and the material has since become an icon of American identity (Downey 2016:242–

243).

Riveted clothing was an innovation that occurred alongside many of the other

technological developments that swept through the U.S. in the late nineteenth-century

(Downey 2016:118). Unlike some of the technological innovations of the era, riveted clothes were affordable on an individual basis. The clothing appealed to the large population of wage-laborers in the American West, in that it allowed workers to avoid continually having to replace or repair their clothes (Downey 2016:118–119). The clothes 80

were attractive to those that worked in fields such as mining, woodcutting, and practiced

other forms of labor that focused on the exploitation of natural resources of the West or

development of the infrastructure to do so.

Additional clothing-related items include six Prosser porcelain four-hole buttons

(n=6), and leather fragments, some of which can be clearly identified as portions of footwear (n=3). Unlike riveted buttons, Prosser buttons are more difficult to tie to a particular type of clothing item, and could be used in objects such as shirts or coats.

Chung (2011:153) noted that leather boots manufactured in China were worn by miners

at Island Mountain, though most portions of footwear included in the assemblage are too

deteriorated to distinguish diagnostic attributes. One fragment of vulcanized rubber may

indicate the presence of rubber boots, which are among the clothing items worn by

miners elsewhere (Steeves 1984:141). Chung (2011:153) noted that leather boots

manufactured in China were worn by miners at Island Mountain, though most portions of

footwear included in the assemblage are too deteriorated to distinguish diagnostic

attributes.

Objects of personal adornment have been looked to as artifacts that convey

elements of an individual’s identity (White 2008). White noted that in constructing one’s

identity, there is a tension between the portrayal of oneself as the same as a larger group,

in opposition with distinguishing oneself from others (2008:17−18). In the instance of

work-related items such as riveted clothes, elements of individuals’ sense of identity are

provisional given the priority of function in the objects. Despite this, riveted work clothes

have been described as the “utilitarian ‘uniform’” of western work crews that created solidarity amongst workers (Psota 2002:112−113). This description suggests there is an 81 aspect to the clothing that tends toward aligning oneself with a larger group. Despite this tendency, the adoption of riveted clothes on the part of Chinese miners (or other laborers) represented a juxtaposition to that solidarity—many non-Chinese working class individuals in the U.S. supported exclusionary measures that targeted Chinese workers in the nineteenth-century.

Other materials in the personal category are opium related. This consisted of fragments of two earthenware pipe bowls, and six cuprous opium cans. While similar materials are observed at other early Chinese diaspora sites in the U.S., perspectives within diaspora communities in regards to opium use were diverse—Chung recounts a moment that occurred at Island Mountain that illustrated this. She describes a moment recalled by Della Baker, who was a child in the region in the early twentieth century.

After Della’s mother planted poppies in her garden, she described store owner Hong Lee who approached her mother and demanded the flowers be removed on account of their association with the substance (Chung 2011:159).

Hunt-Jones indicated that while the brothers who ran the store were opposed to opium use, the archaeological record indicated they carried small quantities (2006: 127–

129). This was likely to provide access to the substance to others in the community who did not share their sentiments. Smoking opium could be used for medicinal purposes at sites of manual labor, potentially for mitigating physical pain (Heffner 2015:139).

Opium-related objects were one of the material types defined by multiple functions,

Heffner noted that language used on some opium can labels is suggestive of pain relief.

Other objects related to grooming and health consist of three medicine bottles— one single-dose Chinese medicine vial composed of aqua glass and two square-bodied 82 bottle fragments of bitters bottles. Heffner (2012) describes the single-dose medicine vial in her research on healthcare practices within early Chinese communities in Nevada. The vial could have contained a variety of substances for a number of ailments, and similar to

European American patent medicines, did not require a written prescription from a doctor

(Heffner 2015:138). She proposed that the portability of the medicines could have influenced their popularity among transient workers (Heffner 2015:144).

One bitters bottle is of colorless glass, while the other is amber with an embossed portion of a label that displays “...ART…” Although they were not a substantial component of the assemblage, Springer noted that chemical analysis on soil samples recovered from the privy on the site indicates substances associated with patent medicines were likely consumed by community residents (2015:77–78). Heffner claimed the lack of access to Chinese medicines and practitioners, potential discrimination from

European American doctors, and possibly addiction, drove the consumption of patent medicines among Nevada Chinese communities (2012:237).

The presence of substances such as alcohol in patent medicines, and the possibility they were purchased simply as a source of those substances, illustrates the blurry line between recreational drug and medicine. Other alcohol-related objects may also have similar dual purposes—brown-glazed stoneware liquor bottles transported from

China often contained a medicinal wine that could be incorporated into soups or applied to the body to relieve pain (Chung 2011:155). Four of these were found in Feature 2.

Other alcohol related items include olive glass wine bottles (n=7), identified by kick-up base fragments. It is likely that much of the glass in the indefinite use category (3,418 individual fragments classified as miscellaneous containers) also represent the remnants 83

of alcoholic beverages—many appear to be fragments of beer bottles, but the MNI for

these objects was not verified.

Recreational Items

Two small glass game pieces used in games of chance and strategy, commonly

referred to as zhu (Hannon Library and Southern Oregon University 2018) are present in

the assemblage. While a professional “gambler” is noted in one of the Island Mountain

households in census records for 1880 (Chung 2011:141–142), Feature 2 is not likely the

structure he operated out of, given a greater number of gaming related objects associated

with other structural features from the site. Regardless, gaming objects such as this zhu are common within domestic contexts (Chelsea Rose, pers. communication 2020).

Structural Materials

The structural category consisted of a range of materials, which included window

glass, plaster or mortar, sod, and wood. Materials such as sod and wood have deteriorated

to the degree they are not easily identifiable as structural elements, except through

description of the dugouts and notes made in the course of excavation. Chung (2011:163–

164) indicates that given the lack of wood in the region, dugouts were built with a

combination of wood frames, local materials, and tamped earth. Two cans were visibly

reshaped, likely repurposed for construction materials to reinforce the structure against

the elements (Figure 4.9).

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Figure 4.9. Can (08-74-1702) repurposed for structural material, as evident by nail holes. Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

Numerous nails were recovered from the feature (n=525). Most of these were likely used in the construction of the dugout, though some could be the result of repairs to equipment such as rockers, or from recycled lumber burned for heat, given the lack of wood in the region (Frampton 1993:10). A diversity of nail types and sizes are present.

Instances of clinching can be observed, a technique used to strengthen a joint between two pieces of lumber (Borkenhagen and Kuelling 1951:2–3). With this technique, the nail would be hammered with the assistance of an anvil in a way that creates a bend in the shaft, and secures individuals boards more firmly (Figure 4.10). This evidence indicates a degree of specialized carpentry knowledge on the part of those who inhabited the structure.

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Figure 4.10. Clinched cut nails (08-74-810). Photo courtesy of the UNR Anthropology Research Museum.

Summary

The Feature 2 assemblage includes materials derived from a variety of sources.

Goods shipped from China, items produced from around the American West, and locally sourced objects demonstrate the diverse flow of materials Chinese miners were enmeshed with in the U.S. at the end of the nineteenth-century. Many of these goods were aggregated and distributed in the community by the general store, which illustrates the importance of the institution to connect miners to these material flows.

Mining related artifacts consisted of rocker screens. Some of the tools included in the activities category may have also been employed in mining. Domestic items consisted of porcelain min yao tableware, woks, Chinese brown-glazed stoneware vessels, and cans. Personal objects included clothing and footwear items, opium and alcohol-related materials, and items characteristic of grooming and health. Two zhu composed the 86

recreational category. Together these items speak to a space that was used to collectively

eat, recover from the endeavors of physical labor, repair tools, and recreate.

While many medicinal objects, food related items, and other artifacts associated

with the Feature 2 assemblage represent objects acquired through far-flung commercial

networks, much of the structural remains were likely acquired at or near the site. What

has not been derived from on-site materials has likely been salvaged and repurposed from

items acquired commercially. Reshaped can bodies, as well as the large diversity of nails,

suggest that inhabitants did not just discard containers and the hardware used to construct

them, but rather kept and reused the materials to improve their living quarters. This is a

practice observed in other dugout quarters inhabited by Chinese woodcutters in the region

(Dale 2016:229), and has been noted among other mobile, precarious populations and

“boomsurfers” in the American West (Barna 2008:14–16, 19–26; Purser 2017:6–7). The

Feature 2 assemblage reflects

This chapter has considered the Feature 2 assemblage. The following chapter will

further contextualize the assemblage within the mining industry and the social

environment at Island Mountain. It will return to the concepts of practice theory, and

incorporate the material culture into a framework derived from the work of Bourdieu

(2015).

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Chapter Five: Conclusion

From the composition of the Feature 2 assemblage, the dugout appears to be a structure that was not intended for permanent residence, but potentially periodic reoccupation. Locally sourced or repurposed structural materials, and a limited array of domestic goods support this interpretation. From the perspective of anticipated mobility, this assemblage would likely be characterized as nomadic or semi-nomadic (Tiede

2017:109). It is relevant to consider Purser’s (2017) point regarding the perceived impermanence in material culture associated with the early American West. She observed features that appear impermanent may represent structures important on a seasonal basis, which are continuously rebuilt or repaired (2017:14). Feature 2 may be the remains of such a structure given the seasonality of placer mining and the diversity of work across the West many Chinese miners engaged in. Occupation of the dugout may have corresponded to an increase in work or mining opportunities in the district. The material culture in the assemblage can be considered the result of practices that would have allowed residents the flexibility to adapt to the seasonality of mining, the broader boom and bust cycles, and the structural racism of the West.

To connect the material culture of Feature 2 to practices requires several interpretive jumps. The first step is to define the aspects of the social fields in which the former residents were enmeshed. These are the socially structured spheres where individuals’ interests are defined (Bourdieu 2015:76). As outlined in chapter three, the fields referenced in this thesis include those that composed the mining industry in the region and the diasporic social and political networks that characterized the Chinese 88 community. Primary documents, such as claim records from the district, provide context regarding these fields, but this thesis also relies extensively on the scholarship of Chung

(2011) and Hunt-Jones (2006) to produce an image of these environments.

The ways capital (social, symbolic, cultural, as well as economic) accrues in each field will also be considered. The fields that encompass both the mining industry and

Chinese sociopolitical networks possess a complex topography composed by multiple forms of capital. The fields and their particular formations of capital will then be connected to materials in the Feature 2 assemblage to draw conclusions regarding the strategies miners incorporated into their domestic space to overcome the challenges of the region.

Field, Capital, and the Material Culture of Feature 2

The Mining Industry

The mining industry in Island Mountain transformed over the life of the district. It began with a focus on more informal mining techniques and trended towards the application of intensive, hydraulic methods of excavation (Chung 2011:125−126,130).

Both Emanuel Penrod’s mining efforts of the earlier period, and the later industrial aspirations of the Gold Creek Mining Company relied heavily on Chinese labor to develop claims. In both instances Chinese miners appear to have generally occupied wage positions in the industry. Some Chinese individuals are recorded in census records as “boss miners,” which indicated that not all mine workers occupied the same position

(Chung 2011:142−143). While deeded claims were sold to Chinese miners by European

Americans like Penrod (Chung 2011:127), Chinese individuals appear unable to establish 89

original claims themselves, based on claim records kept at the Elko County Recorder’s

Office. The field that composed the mining industry represents the relationships between wage laborers, mine owners and mining companies, and independent miners. It was structured by the social systems they adhered to in order to extract gold.

Individuals within the mining industry at Island Mountain likely mobilized a

range of different forms of capital. The application of economic capital can be seen in the

wages paid to workers to develop ditch and canal systems, and the acquisition of equipment used to extract ore. Cultural capital consisted of knowledge of mining techniques developed over years of experience or learned from someone who had developed that experience. One’s knowledge of multiple languages may have also played an important role. This would have heightened one’s value within the industry—the designation of “boss miners” indicates some miners held greater cultural capital than others. “Boss miners” may have in turn possessed more social capital through their

position and the social connections it afforded them. Symbolic capital, the purpose of which is tied to determining who gains “special rights” (Bourdieu 2015:36), can characterize the citizenship categories that played a role in determining who had primary access to mineral lands. Chinese miners appear to have only owned mining claims on a secondary basis in the district. This indicates that Island Mountain adhered to broadly construed citizenship categories that considered Chinese people not born in the U.S. indefinite noncitizens, despite the local sense of belonging many in the Chinese community developed in the district.

The Feature 2 assemblage alludes to former inhabitants’ position within the social field that composed the mining industry through minimalistic material culture. While 90

miners may have intended to return to the district seasonally, the restricted tableware

spread, reliance on portable objects such as medicine vials and canned goods, and locally

acquired or repurposed structural materials implied they did not invest heavily in the

location. They may have not possessed the resources to invest heavily in the location.

This material culture may indicate they had to continuously move between work areas to

continue generating income. The repair of rockers and wear on other tools show that

miners who lived in the dugout maximized the lifespan of their tools. The use of rockers

also indicate they were reliant on practical mining techniques that required little capital

investment. Riveted work clothes in the assemblage, the “utilitarian ‘uniform”” (Psota

2002:113) of western work crews, are suggestive of inhabitants’ focus on manual labor.

While they may have worked as wage laborers, they also could have worked

independently or among a cooperative on claims in the area either owned or leased.

Materials in the assemblage speak to residents’ access and relationship to economic capital. Attempts to maximize the lifespan of tools, as well as the focus on the use of cost-effective rockers, imply miners may not have had a high degree of initial capital to invest in mining projects. Evidence for other forms of capital are not as easily

drawn from the assemblage. Rocker fragments indicate basic placer mining knowledge

and the cultural capital that would accompany it. The mobilization of symbolic capital is

not obvious within the Feature 2 materials despite the fact it likely played an important

role in the structure of residents’ daily life. The obscurity of these alternative “capitals”

within the assemblage may be a result of the social relationships responsible for the

qualities of that capital. Cultural and symbolic capital were mobilized at work sites and in

the distribution of mining claims in the region. The domestic space that characterized 91

Feature 2 is not as representative of the places miners would be most engaged with the cultural and symbolic capital of the mining industry.

Chinese Social and Political Organizations

The relationship between the inhabitants of the Feature 2 dugout and the Island

Mountain general store was the most accessible aspect of the field that composed diasporic social and political networks within the assemblage. Merritt summarizes the qualities of these networks, composed of “the complex web of interrelations forged between the immigrant laboring population, the growing merchant-elite, [and] family and clan relations in the homeland” allowed diaspora communities to respond to numerous challenges in the American West (2017:167). In his conception of these networks, Merritt considered merchants within diaspora communities to wield greater influence than the

Chinese working class that composed many of those mining (2017:200−202). In Island

Mountain, the exact role of the merchant brothers Hung Li and Hong Lee is unclear, but the majority of the material culture within the Feature 2 assemblage, included min yao tableware, brown-glazed stoneware, various canned goods, and even mining equipment, correspond to materials carried by the general store.

This field was broader than merchants and miners, but merchants often played an important role to connect local communities with others across the American West and the Pacific. Many provided services to send remittance money, letters, and information to families or other relations in Guangdong (Hsu 2000:35). The deployment of social capital was likely a critical aspect to navigate these relationships. Smart (1993) characterized the mechanics of social capital and argued that membership within a social group alone does entitle one to social capital. He contends that the accumulation of social capital relies on 92

“investment” strategies that incorporate “obligation, […] connections or social position,

and trust” (1993:392). Benton and Liu noted the importance of trust in the case to send

remittances overseas given the financial risk that came with entrusting others with money

intended for families (2018:6–12). While they focus on trust in relationships between

remittees and couriers (known as shuike), it is reasonable to assume trust also played an

important role between merchants and others in the Chinese diaspora.

Merritt stated that merchants, often linked to voluntary associations that provided

aid to diaspora communities, simultaneously profited from the connections they

facilitated (2017:199). This indicates a connection between social and economic

capital—something Purser has argued is linked to strategies people relied on to adapt to

the booms and busts of the West broadly (2017:9). Chinese merchants generated

economic capital through the trade they facilitated, but their businesses provided

important means through which social capital could flow between communities within

the diaspora. The social and economic institutions merchants sustained likely provided

necessary social and economic resources to Chinese communities in the West, allowing

many to contend with the booms and busts of the region as well as the discriminatory

landscape.

Comparison of the Feature 2 assemblage with materials recovered from the

general store (Feature 5) granted insight into the relationship between the two features. A

survey of the materials in the Feature 5 assemblage indicated that virtually all the

assemblage associated with Feature 2 could be acquired from the Island Mountain store.

Alongside goods that originated from China, mining equipment, canned goods, work clothes, medicine, beer and wine, and hardware all were available to purchase (Hunt- 93

Jones 2006:107−137). The Feature 2 assemblage could be slightly older, with a terminus post quem of 1897, while items associated with Feature 5 date to the early twentieth century (Hunt-Jones 2006:108). This discrepancy is slight, and it is likely residents of the

Feature 2 dugout acquired most of the goods they consumed in Island Mountain from the general store.

Juxtaposing the respective assemblages only suggested miners purchased goods from the store. Conjecture based on the general characterization of merchants within nineteenth-century Chinese diaspora and historical accounts of the influential position of the Island Mountain store suggests that the merchant brothers at Island Mountain likely played a role in the mediation of social and economic relationships. Material culture present does not indicate the mobilization of social capital between former residents of the two features, however. Given the likelihood of close linkages between social and economic capital in Chinese social and political organizations in the period, goods purchased by residents of the Feature 2 dugout may also signify exchange of social capital in some form. More evidence is required to shed light on the nuance of these interactions.

Habitus and Boomsurfing

For Bourdieu, habitus represents a key component of individuals’ interaction within respective fields. He considered it a quasi-conscious “socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating structures” (2015:76). In his framework, it produces strategies individuals implement in relation to the interests (capital) of a given field.

These strategies are based on the “practical evaluation” of a situation, informed by “a whole body of wisdom, sayings, commonplaces, ethical precepts … and, at a deeper 94 level, the unconscious principles” (2015:77). While habitus is not directly perceived archaeologically, the outcome of strategies produced by it have material signatures.

Materials within the assemblage indicative of strategies employed by the inhabitants of the dugout include domestic items characteristic of food practices, tools, and repurposed goods. Many of these objects are indicative of boomsurfing strategies— material strategies people employ that “foster stability” and address uncertainty in places and times like the nineteenth-century American West (Purser 2017:7). A restricted suite of tableware, structural materials made from repurposed items, and the maximization of tools’ use-life all constituted attempts to conserve resources. Reliance on small-scale, practical mining equipment such as rockers in a region that simultaneously attempted to implement cutting-edge mining technology, represents reliance on a means of extraction that is both affordable and reliable. The dependence on such material culture allows individuals like the former residents of the Feature 2 dugout to profit during the booms, and attenuate their losses during the busts.

Objects related to food preparation and consumption suggest that former inhabitants prepared meals in an austere manner. Min yao tableware present were mainly individual bowls, which would have held meals prepared in a wok that accommodated large servings. Choy (2014) noted the “luxury of a table setting was impractical” at sites associated with mine and railroad work. In other settings, a greater range of tableware would be used to serve meals. The lack of a more elaborate table setting in the Feature 2 assemblage indicated residents were reliant on a minimalistic spread typical of other sites associated with temporary or seasonal manual labor. 95

At other early Chinese diaspora sites in the U.S., ceramic assemblages have indicated tableware was strategically mobilized to accrue cultural capital (Praetzellis and

Praetzellis 2001) and playfully adapted to create table settings to accommodate large group meals (Voss 2019). Neither of these intentions appear characteristic of the Feature

2 assemblage. Rather, the Feature 2 tableware reflects a practical concern with keeping to the necessities. This reflects strategies associated with the mobile lifestyle of miners.

Travel with more than necessary would have made a transition to a new area more difficult, though miners may have kept particularly valuable tableware on their person regardless of their mobility. In terms of boomsurfing, it indicated residents were conscious they may need to be prepared to move and adapt to fluctuations of the district.

Repurposed goods and tools with heavy wear in the assemblage reflect similar themes. These materials suggest that miners made the most of the resources they had access to. Rocker screens were repaired on site and tools, such as the heavily worn shovel head, indicate miners maximized the life of their tools. While this could represent frugality, it may also have been an issue of access—although the general store effectively connected the community to national and transnational commodity chains, the remoteness of the setting may have also meant that access was frequently in flux.

Replacement of used goods were likely difficult or expensive enough to warrant the maintenance of useful things. Miners at Island Mountain were connected to transnational commercial networks yet isolated enough that those connections could become strained.

These material patterns can also be considered strategies residents relied on to account for the tenuousness of the West. Mines may become depleted, water for placer mining may dry up, and companies may go bankrupt. Reliance on such factors created 96

multiple avenues for potential failure. Repair, reuse, and extended use represent,

alternatively, limited access to capital necessary for purchase and replacement of

materials, or a desire to maximize what capital individuals possessed. Both instances

suggest boomsurfing strategies—with limited income, individuals had to make the most

of what they could access to attain stability and turn a profit. And if they possessed the

capital necessary to replace rather than repair tools, the choice to repair, reuse, or exhaust

materials suggests they may have intended to conserve their resources with the

knowledge that boomtimes could be ephemeral.

The rockers residents of the Feature 2 dugout used for mining are also

characteristic of boomsurfing. As efficient, mobile, and repairable tools, they allowed

miners to fall back on informal, practical mining methods that were likely vital to

enduring the tenuous economic environment of Island Mountain. While larger companies

attempted to implement technology and infrastructure conducive to hydraulic mining,

these systems were likely more susceptible to collapse. Purser describes the logic of

boomsurfing material culture, “…which [lays] in functional flexibility, localized

maintenance, and portability rather than state-of-the-art technological sophistication”

(2017:8). Chinese miners who also worked periodically for such companies may have fell back on such technology to adapt to a potential bust as well as the structural racism of the mining industry. If a large company such as the Gold Creek Mining Co. went bankrupt, some wage workers may have pursued mining opportunities on a smaller scale basis.

Those opportunities may have only presented themselves on mining lands that had been previously mined, given Chinese miners’ restriction to previously established claims.

Small-scale, practical mining techniques likely allowed Chinese miners at Island 97

Mountain to tactically prepare for a bust, capitalize on a boom, and profit from mining on

grounds that had already been exploited.

The material culture associated with the Feature 2 dugout can be considered a

product of the habitus of former residents. Alongside other artifacts collected in

excavation, the structure itself is a product of conceptions regarding how to arrange domestic space and strategies used to adapt to the area. White considered buildings as

“large artifacts, [and] pieces of material culture, created, used, changed, and ultimately discarded by their users, their owners and inhabitants” (2012:61). At Island Mountain, locally derived resources, and repurposed items used as structural material illustrate creative strategies employed to build a shelter with what little was immediately available.

Structural materials recovered from Feature 2 constitute remains Purser might describe as

“strategically impermanent architecture” (2017:8), which were distinctive of those who lived as boomsurfers.

While the organization of the household Feature 2 represents is difficult to ascertain, the assemblage may speak to the sense of belonging its former residents held regarding the locale. Rose suggested a home “is broadly defined as a place to live, yet … connotes a deeper and active connection to the life lived in that place” (2020:165). With its minimalistic material culture, the dugout does not appear as quite a “home” at first glance, but this evaluation may obscure the connection to place held by former residents.

Boomsurfing populations of the West, despite living often transient lives, “created entire communities whose precise location might shift up and down a set of mining districts, drift around an agricultural region, or stretch from one boom site to the next [yet persisted] for generations” (Purser 2017:8). In that sense, the structure is representative of 98

an “active connection to the life lived in the place” (Rose 2020a:165), but the connection

is cyclical rather than sedentary. This interpretation echoes statements made by Voss

(2008), who argued the use a “household” based unit of analysis in historical archaeology

may not be adequate to capture the lives of communities such as the early Chinese

diaspora. The assemblage from Feature 2 consisted of materials left in one location

among a constellation of other places connected by the Chinese miners who spent part of their time in Island Mountain.

Conclusion

To return to the research questions posed in the first chapter, this thesis has sought to understand the position of Chinese miners within the development of the Island

Mountain mining industry. It has attempted to comprehend the ways national exclusion affected the Chinese community. With the assistance of a practice-based perspective, it

has modeled the social fields Chinese miners in the West were entwined with. And from the material culture associated with a miner’s dugout, it has connected archaeological remains to some of the strategies those miners relied on to succeed despite the constraints they faced.

The material culture associated with Feature 2 represents the result of only a fraction of the practices miners relied on. The dugout’s residents cooked meals with a minimalistic suite of tableware. They constructed, repaired, and perhaps expanded portions of the dugout with a combination of resources purchased, collected locally, and repurposed from other items in their possession. They may have shared drinks in the evenings and repaired the rockers they used to work through placer gravels during the 99

day. Some days they could have gone to excavate ditches for one of the companies that

aspired to use hydraulic mining equipment in the district. If that project finished, they

might have taken their rockers and processed gravels on a claim leased from another

miner. Once the summer’s heat dried up the last of the season’s snowpack, they probably

made one more trip to the general store to purchase a few supplies and started to travel to another location. They may have intended to return in the spring.

If one had returned to Guangdong to visit family before passage of the 1888 Scott

Act, they were likely unable to return to the U.S. if they wanted to. The transformations

to the Chinese Exclusion Act after that date meant that miners and other laborers faced

more stringent constraints to their mobility at a national level. Within the U.S., Chinese

communities faced a patchwork of anti-Chinese violence. Places like Island Mountain

were important regions where the absence of that violence meant they had greater access

western resources. In these regions, some Chinese individuals developed forms of

belonging in broader communities that contrasted the racial violence and exclusionary

policies that targeted Chinese communities in the U.S. Despite this, in many of these

places the continued categorization of Chinese individuals as noncitizens meant they still

had to adapt to local restrictions.

At Island Mountain, Chinese miners used a variety of strategies to address the

challenges of the district. They pursued wage labor alongside mining on purchased or

leased claims to find success in a mining industry that symbolically restricted them from

equal access to western resources. Most of the goods miners consumed came from the

nearby general store, which likely served as an information hub, a means of connecting

them to families overseas, and a possible vector for mutual aid. The material remains 100

associated with the living space illustrated that miners remained strategically mobile—

akin to other boomsurfing populations in the American West. This mobility allowed them

to attain a degree of stability through the potential booms and busts of the region and was

likely recurrent, with miners returning to familiar places repeatedly over the years. Unlike other boomsurfing populations, Chinese boomsurfers experienced the rise of a national

exclusionary apparatus, which laid the groundwork for contemporary U.S. immigration

policies. Places like Island Mountain, which were seasonally familiar, gradually became

abandoned by Chinese communities as the Exclusionary Era escalated, leaving only the

few Chinese individuals who had developed deep roots.

101

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Appendix 1: Catalog of Artifacts in Feature 2 Assemblage

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Food prep/ 501 1 1 Tableware Porcelain Four Seasons pattern Domestic consumption – 1 1

502 1 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

Median fragments, Misc. 503 1 1 Bottle Glass various colors Indefinite use containers – 13 N/A

Medicine Single dose, Chinese Grooming/ 504 1 1 bottle Aqua glass medicine bottle Personal health – 1 1

505 1 1 Nail Ferrous Misc. sizes and shapes Structural Hardware – 12 12

Rocker 506 1 1 screen Ferrous – Mining Tools – 150+ 1

Grooming/ 507 1 1 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

508 1 1 Unknown Wood Possible roof strut Structural Materials – 1 1

Opium pipe Grooming/ 720 1 1 bowl Earthenware – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

Food prep/ 509 1 2 Tableware Porcelain Bamboo pattern Domestic consumption – 1 1

Rocker 510 1 2 screen Ferrous – Mining Tools – 43 N/A 112

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 511 1 2 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 2 1

512 1 2 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 8 8

Key-opened, rectangular 513 1 2 Can key Ferrous can Domestic Food storage – 1 1

Liquor Grooming/ 534 1 3 bottle CBGS – Personal Drugs - alcohol health 3 1

Misc. 535 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 3 1

536 1 3 Nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 9 7

537 1 3 Shoe sole Leather With metal rivets Personal Footwear – 11 1

Food prep/ 538 1 3 Wok Ferrous – Domestic consumption – 5 1

Grooming/ 539 1 3 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 2 1

540 1 3 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 14 1

541 1 3 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 6 N/A

542 1 3 Coal Coal – Domestic Fuel – 1 N/A 113

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. metal 543 1 3 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 38 N/A

Misc. 558 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 12 N/A

Misc. 559 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

545 1 3 Nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

546 1 3 Wood Wood Possible roof timbers Structural Materials – 110+ 1

547 1 3 Sod Organic With wood remains Structural Materials – 1 1

549 1 3 Nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 8 8

Misc. metal 550 1 3 Strap Ferrous With rivets Structural items Hardware 9 1

551 1 3 Wood Wood Plug, cut diagonally Indefinite use Materials Closures 2 2

552 1 3 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 2 N/A

Misc. 553 1 3 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 554 1 3 Bottle Aqua glass Heat affected Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A 114

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

575 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

576 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 2 2

578 1 3 Vessel CBGS Base fragments Domestic Food storage – 2 1

Misc. 579 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

580 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

581 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

582 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 1 1

583 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 1 1

584 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

585 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

586 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. metal 587 1 3 Fragments Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use items – 46 N/A 115

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. metal 588 1 3 Wire Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 1 1

589 1 3 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 4 1

590 1 3 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 1 N/A

591 1 3 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 4 1

Misc. 592 1 3 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 5 1

Misc. 593 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 594 1 3 Bottle Aqua glass – Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 595 1 3 Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 1

596 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 3 3

597 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

598 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

599 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 116

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

600 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

601 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

900 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 2 2

With metal split shank 901 1 3 Leather Leather rivet fastener Indefinite use Materials – 11 1

902 1 3 Leather Leather Herringbone hole pattern Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Misc. metal 903 1 3 Wire Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 1 1

904 1 3 Button Porcelain Prosser porcelain, 4 hole Personal Clothing Fastener 2 2

905 1 3 Fastener Ferrous Split shank rivet Indefinite use Hardware – 5 5

Misc. metal 906 1 3 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 75+ N/A

907 1 3 Bracket Ferrous With split shank rivets Structural Hardware – 2 2

908 1 3 Button Ferrous Rivet style Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

909 1 3 Slag Other – Indefinite use Waste – 1 N/A 117

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

910 1 3 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

911 1 3 Rivet Ferrous From riveted denim Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

Grooming/ 912 1 3 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 N/A

Food prep/ 913 1 3 Wok Ferrous – Domestic consumption – 1 1

914 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

915 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

916 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

917 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

918 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

919 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

920 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

921 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 118

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

922 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 1 1

923 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

924 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

925 1 3 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

Misc. 926 1 3 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 927 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

514 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

515 1 3 Fragments Leather – Indefinite use Materials – 13 1

516 1 3 Screw Ferrous Flat head Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. metal 517 1 3 Wire Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 4 1

518 1 3 Button Ferrous 4 hole Personal Clothing Fastener 10 1

Misc. 519 1 3 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 200+ N/A 119

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 520 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 4 N/A

Colorless 521 1 3 Window glass – Structural Materials – 1 1

Wood/ 523 1 3 Wood ferrous With nails Structural Materials Hardware 10 1

524 1 3 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 4 1

525 1 3 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 4 N/A

Food prep/ 526 1 3 Bowl Porcelain Four Seasons pattern Domestic consumption – 5 1

Grooming/ 527 1 3 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 5 N/A

531 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. 532 1 3 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 13 N/A

529 1 3 Fastener Ferrous Split shank rivet Indefinite use Fastener – 8 8

530 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. 555 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 29 N/A 120

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 556 1 3 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 32 N/A

Misc. 557 1 3 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 18 N/A

560 1 3 Nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 26 N/A

561 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

562 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

563 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

564 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 7 7

565 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

566 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

567 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

568 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 14 14

569 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2 121

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

570 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 25 25

571 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

572 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 3 3

573 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 2 2

574 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 7 7

Misc. 928 1 3 Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 929 1 3 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

930 1 3 Window Aqua glass – Structural Materials – 2 1

931 1 3 Leather Leather Stitch holes Indefinite use Materials – 7 1

Misc. 932 1 3 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 32 N/A

Rocker 933 1 3 screen Ferrous – Mining Tools Hardware 8 N/A

Misc. 934 1 3 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 15 N/A 122

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

935 1 3 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

936 1 3 Button Ferrous – Personal Clothing Fastener 3 3

Misc. 937 1 3 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 100+ N/A

Food prep/ 938 1 3 Wok Ferrous – Domestic consumption – 1 1

939 1 3 Leather Leather – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

940 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 16 16

Finished lumber 941 1 3 Wood Wood fragments Structural Materials – 50+ 1

942 1 3 Nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 7 N/A

943 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

944 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

945 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 7 7

946 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4 123

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

947 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

948 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

949 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

950 1 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

951 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 5 5

952 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 5 5

953 1 3 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 5 N/A

Misc. metal 954 1 3 Wire Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 2 N/A

955 1 3 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 6 2

Colorless Grooming/ 956 1 3 Bottle glass Bitters bottle Personal health – 4 1

Colorless 957 1 3 Window glass – Structural Materials – 5 N/A

958 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Personal Drugs - alcohol – 6 1 124

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Finish and median Misc. 959 1 3 Bottle Olive glass fragments Indefinite use containers – 16 N/A

Misc. 960 1 3 Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 10 N/A

Base and median Misc. 961 1 3 Bottle Amber glass fragment Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Flat, embossed, Misc. 962 1 3 Bottle Amber glass "[…]ULL[…]" Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Grooming/ 721 1 3 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 3 N/A

722 1 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

From key-opened, 723 1 3 Can key Ferrous rectangular can Domestic Food storage – 1 1

724 1 3 Clasp Ferrous – Indefinite use Fastener – 1 1

725 1 3 Seal Metal For covering bottle Domestic Food storage – 9 1

726 1 3 Button Porcelain Prosser porcelain, 4 hole Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

Misc. 727 1 3 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 4 1

Liquor Chinese Grooming/ 963 1 4 bottle Brown- – Personal Drugs - alcohol health 1 1 125

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI glazed stoneware

Misc. 964 1 4 Bottle Olive glass Finish Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

965 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 10 10

Misc. 966 1 4 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 4 1

967 1 4 Leather Leather – Indefinite use Materials – 2 1

Rocker 968 1 4 screen Ferrous – Mining Tools – 17 N/A

Colorless Food prep/ 969 1 4 Mug glass – Domestic consumption – 1 1

Misc. 970 1 4 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 53 N/A

971 1 4 Shovel Ferrous – activities Tools – 1 1

972 1 4 Wood Wood Fragments Indefinite use Materials – 2 1

Liquor Grooming/ 974 1 4 bottle CBGS – Personal Drugs - alcohol health 5 N/A

Misc. 975 1 4 Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A 126

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 976 1 4 Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Kick-up base and median 977 1 4 Bottle Olive glass fragments Personal Drugs - alcohol – 3 1

Misc. 978 1 4 Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 979 1 4 Bottle Aqua glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

980 1 4 Nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 9 6

981 1 4 Nail Ferrous Fragments with heads Structural Hardware – 3 3

982 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 4 4

983 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 1 1

984 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 3 3

985 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

986 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

987 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3 127

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

988 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 3

989 1 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

990 1 4 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

Misc. 991 1 4 Can Ferrous – Structural containers Materials 11 1

992 1 4 Plaster plaster – Structural Materials – 2 N/A

993 1 4 Strap Leather – Indefinite use Materials – 2 1

994 1 4 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 8 N/A

995 1 4 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 257 1

Misc. Misc. metal 996 1 4 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use containers items 30+ N/A

997 1 4 Washer Ferrous Concave Indefinite use Hardware – 2 2

Misc. 998 1 4 Box Ferrous Soldered, ring handles Indefinite use containers – 2 1

Misc. 804 1 5 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 47 N/A 128

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

804a 1 5 Unknown Unknown – Indefinite use – 25 N/A

Opium pipe Grooming/ 728 1 5 bowl Earthenware – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

729 1 5 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

Misc. 730 1 5 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

731 1 5 Hammer Ferrous Hammer/pick combo activities Tools – 1 1

732 1 5 Unknown Stone – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

733 1 5 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

734 1 5 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

735 1 5 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

736 1 5 Forged nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

737 1 5 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

738 1 5 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 12 12 129

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

739 1 5 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 17 17

740 1 5 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 10 10

Misc. 741 1 5 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 38 N/A

Misc. 742 1 5 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 7 N/A

Misc. 719 1 6 Bottle Aqua glass Median sherds Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

N/A 1 6 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 1 N/A

743 1 6 Coal Coal – Domestic Fuel – 1 N/A

Misc. 744 1 6 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 10 N/A

745 1 6 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

746 1 6 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

747 1 6 Cut nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 14 N/A

Grooming/ 715 1 7 Opium can Paper Fragments of label Personal Drugs - opium health 3 1 130

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

716 1 7 Cork Cork – Indefinite use closures – 1 1

717 1 7 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

Misc. 718 1 7 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

703 2 Surface Button Porcelain Prosser porcelain, 4 holes Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

Misc. 704 2 Surface Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Rocker 705 2 Surface screen Ferrous – Mining Tools – 6 1

706 2 Surface Nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 38 N/A

707 2 Surface Button Ferrous 1 stud, 2 clasps Personal Clothing Fastener 4 4

Food prep/ 708 2 Surface Tableware Porcelain Four Seasons Domestic consumption – 2 1

709 2 Surface Leather Leather With fabric on one side Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

710 2 Surface Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 10 1

711 2 Surface Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1 131

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. metal 712 2 Surface ferrous Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use items – 100+ N/A

713 2 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

714 2 Surface Button Porcelain – Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

Rocker 748 2 Surface screen Ferrous Round holes Mining Tools – 16 N/A

Rocker 749 2 Surface screen Ferrous Round holes Mining Tools – 1 N/A

750 2 Surface Strap Ferrous With cut nails Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Misc. 751 2 Surface Can Ferrous 5 gallon Indefinite use containers – 7 N/A

Misc. 752 2 Surface Can Ferrous Square bodied Indefinite use containers – 2 1

Misc. 753 2 Surface Can Ferrous Spout and handle Indefinite use containers – 5 1

Square bodied, spout and Misc. 754 2 Surface Can Ferrous handle Indefinite use containers – 1 1

755 2 Surface Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

756 2 Surface Bottle Olive glass Kick-up base Personal Drugs - alcohol – 1 1 132

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 757 2 Surface Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 15 N/A

Misc. 758 2 Surface Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

759 2 Surface Cut nails Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 5 N/A

760 2 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

761 2 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Amethyst Misc. 1307 2 Surface Bottle glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

Misc. 1308 2 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. 1309 2 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 1310 2 Surface Bottle Aqua glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 4 N/A

Colorless 1313 2 Surface Window glass – Structural Materials – 1 1

Misc. 1314 2 Surface Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 92 N/A

Misc. 1315 2 Surface Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 11 N/A 133

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Grooming/ 1316 2 Surface Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

1317 2 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

1318 2 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

1319 2 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 7 7

Misc. 762 3 Surface Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. 763 2 Surface Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Grooming/ 1724 5 Surface Opium pipe Earthenware – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

Food prep/ 1725 5 Surface Tableware Whiteware – Domestic consumption – 4 1

1726 5 Surface Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 2 1

1727 5 Surface Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 3 1

1728 5 Surface Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 10 1

1729 5 Surface Window Aqua glass – Structural Materials – 4 1 134

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1730 5 Surface Window Aqua glass – Structural Materials – 14 N/A

1731 5 Surface Window Aqua glass – Structural Materials – 2 N/A

Colorless Misc. 1732 5 Surface Bottle glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 9 1

Misc. 1733 5 Surface Bottle Aqua glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

Amethyst Misc. 1734 5 Surface Bottle glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 6 1

Base fragment, embossed Misc. 1735 5 Surface Bottle Aqua glass "A.B.C Y3..." Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. 1736 5 Surface Bottle Aqua glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 1737 5 Surface Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

Square bodied, median Misc. 1738 5 Surface Bottle Amber glass fragment Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

Misc. 1739 5 Surface Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 41 N/A

Misc. 1740 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 7 N/A

Bitters bottle, embossed Grooming/ 1741 5 Surface Bottle Amber glass "..ART…" Personal health – 2 1 135

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Mamelon kick-up base 1742 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass fragment Personal Drugs - alcohol – 3 1

Misc. 1743 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Finish fragment Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 1744 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 40 N/A

1745 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Kick-up base fragment Personal Drugs - alcohol – 1 1

Misc. 1746 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Insweep base fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. 1747 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Finish fragment Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 1748 5 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 31 N/A

1749 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous Clinch nails Structural Hardware – 3 3

1750 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 6 6

1306 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

804 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

805 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 136

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

806 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 7 7

807 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 7 6

808 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous L-head finish nail Structural Hardware – 1 1

809 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

810 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous Clinch nail Structural Hardware – 2 2

811 5 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

812 5 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

813 5 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

814 5 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

815 5 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

816 5 Surface Wiretack Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

817 5 Surface Wiretack Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 137

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

818 5 Surface Brad Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. metal 819 5 Surface Wire Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 4 1

Ferrous/ 820 5 Surface Button cuperous Rivet buttons Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

821 5 Surface Can Ferrous Sanitary can Domestic Food storage Misc. container 22 2

Misc. 822 5 Surface Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 500+ N/A

Rocker 823 5 Surface screen Ferrous Wire attached Mining Tools – 18 N/A

Cast or spun iron, Food prep/ 824 5 Surface Wok Ferrous slightly convex Domestic consumption – 6 1

825 5 Surface Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 2 1

Misc. 826 5 Surface Can Metal Lead or aluminum foil Indefinite use containers – 41 1

Grooming/ 827 5 Surface Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 9 1

828 5 Surface Shoe Leather Fragments Personal Footwear – 2 N/A

N/A 5 Surface Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 138

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1673 5 1 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Four Seasons, median Food prep/ 775 5 1 Tableware Porcelain fragment Domestic consumption – 1 1

Winter Green, median Food prep/ 776 5 1 Tableware Porcelain fragment Domestic consumption – 1 1

Bamboo pattern, median Food prep/ 777 5 1 Tableware Porcelain fragment Domestic consumption – 1 1

778 5 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 4 1

779 5 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 10 N/A

780 5 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 2 1

781 5 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

782 5 1 Spouted jar CBGS Spout fragment Domestic Food storage – 1 1

Liquor 783 5 1 bottle CBGS Lute seam fragment Personal Drugs - alcohol – 1 1

784 5 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1

785 5 1 Vessel CBGS – Domestic Food storage – 1 1 139

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 786 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 15 N/A

Finish, shoulder Misc. 787 5 1 Bottle Olive glass fragments Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 788 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 106 N/A

Misc. 789 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 34 N/A

Misc. 790 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Finish fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 791 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 24 N/A

Misc. 792 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Base fragments Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 793 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Finish fragments Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 794 5 1 Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 18 N/A

Misc. 795 5 1 Bottle Amber glass Finish fragments Indefinite use containers – 7 N/A

Misc. 796 5 1 Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 52 N/A

Misc. 797 5 1 Bottle Aqua glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A 140

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. 798 5 1 Bottle Aqua glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 14 N/A

Finish, shoulder Misc. 799 5 1 Bottle Aqua glass fragments Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

Misc. 800 5 1 Bottle Aqua glass Finish fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Amethyst Misc. 801 5 1 Bottle glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

Colorless 802 5 1 Window glass – Structural Materials – 3 N/A

Misc. 803 5 1 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

Possibly from container Misc. metal 1320 5 1 Foil Foil seal Indefinite use items – 19 1

Grooming/ 1321 5 1 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 18 N/A

Lid, stamped with Grooming/ 1322 5 1 Opium can Brass characters Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

Ovular shaped, possibly Misc. 1323 5 1 Can Ferrous repurposed Indefinite use containers Materials 1 1

Key-opened, rectangular 1324 5 1 Can key Ferrous can Domestic Food storage – 1 1

1325 5 1 Clamp Ferrous Hose or pipe clamp strap Indefinite use Hardware – 2 1 141

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1326 5 1 Grommet Ferrous – Indefinite use Hardware – 1 1

1327 5 1 Fastener Ferrous Split shank rivet Indefinite use Hardware Fastener 3 1

1328 5 1 Washer Ferrous Concave Indefinite use Hardware – 3 2

Misc. metal 1329 5 1 Wire Ferrous Bailing wire Indefinite use items – 2 1

1330 5 1 Bottle cap Ferrous – Domestic closures – 1 1

Rivet style, stippling on 1331 5 1 Button Ferrous face Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

Melted on top of ferrous Misc. metal 1332 5 1 lead Lead fragment Indefinite use items – 1 N/A

Circular, with stitching 1333 5 1 Leather Leather holes Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Possibly boot, and one 1334 5 1 Rubber Rubber fragment felt Personal Footwear Clothing 3 1

1335 5 1 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 10 1

1336 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1337 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 142

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1338 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1339 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1340 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1341 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 5 5

1342 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 6 6

1343 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

1344 5 1 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

1345 5 1 Tack Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1346 5 1 Tack Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1347 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 8 8

1348 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

1349 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 5 5 143

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1350 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 5 5

1351 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 14 14

1352 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous Fragments Structural Hardware – 17 17

1353 5 1 Cut nail Ferrous L-head Structural Hardware – 2 2

Misc. 1354 5 1 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 500+ N/A

Misc. 1355 5 1 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 75 3

1674 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1675 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1676 5 2 Cork Cork – Indefinite use closures – 3 N/A

1677 5 2 Coal Coal – Domestic Fuel – 2 N/A

1678 5 2 Vessel CBGS Base fragment Domestic Food storage – 13 1

Misc. 1679 5 2 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 1 1 144

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Misc. metal 1680 5 2 Handle Ferrous Corrugated metal Indefinite use items – 3 N/A

Misc. 1681 5 2 Can lid Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. metal 1682 5 2 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 42 N/A

1683 5 2 Bottle Olive glass Kick-up base fragment Personal Drugs - alcohol – 3 1

Misc. 1684 5 2 Bottle Olive glass Finish fragments Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 1685 5 2 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 45 N/A

Misc. 1686 5 2 Bottle Amber glass Insweep base fragment Indefinite use containers – 2 1

Misc. 1687 5 2 Bottle Amber glass Finish fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 1688 5 2 Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 23 N/A

Misc. 1689 5 2 Bottle Aqua glass Square bodied Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Colorless Misc. 1690 5 2 Bottle glass Finish, median fragments Indefinite use containers – 9 N/A

Colorless 1691 5 2 Window glass – Structural Materials – 1 1 145

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1692 5 2 Game piece Ceramic – Recreation Games – 1 1

Misc. 1693 5 2 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 1 1

1694 5 2 Washer Ferrous – Indefinite use Hardware Fastener 1 1

Key-opened, rectangular 1695 5 2 Can key Ferrous can Domestic Food storage – 4 1

1696 5 2 Strap Ferrous – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Rocker 1697 5 2 screen Ferrous – Mining Tools – 1 N/A

Misc. 1698 5 2 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 13 N/A

Misc. 1699 5 2 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 107 N/A

Misc. 1700 5 2 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 1 1

1701 5 2 Strap Ferrous – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Flattened, nail holes Misc. 1702 5 2 Can Ferrous present Structural containers Materials 124 1

1703 5 2 Strap Ferrous With rivets Indefinite use Hardware – 1 1 146

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Grooming/ 1704 5 2 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 2 N/A

Grooming/ 1705 5 2 Opium can Brass – Personal Drugs - opium health 1 N/A

Misc. 1706 5 2 Can Ferrous Square bodied, 5 gallon Indefinite use containers – 1 1

1707 5 2 Button Ferrous From riveted denim Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

1708 5 2 Rod Ferrous Gun barrel cleaning rod activities firearms – 1 1

1709 5 2 Forged nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

1710 5 2 Forged nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

1711 5 2 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

1712 5 2 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

1713 5 2 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 6 6

1714 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1715 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 147

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1716 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1717 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 7 7

1718 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1719 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1720 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1721 5 2 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 1 N/A

1722 5 2 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 10 1

1723 5 2 Textile Rubber – Indefinite use Materials – 30 N/A

Drinking Amethyst Food prep/ 2713 5 2 glass glass – Domestic consumption – 1 1

2714 5 2 Vessel CBGS Base fragments Domestic Food storage – 2 1

2715 5 2 Vessel CBGS Median fragments Domestic Food storage – 6 N/A

2716 5 2 Vessel CBGS Rim fragments Domestic Food storage – 2 N/A 148

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

2717 5 2 Vessel CBGS Median fragments Domestic Food storage – 2 N/A

Winter Green, base and Food prep/ 2718 5 2 Bowl Porcelain rim fragment Domestic consumption – 1 1

Misc. 764 5 2 Can Ferrous Square bodied Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. 765 5 2 Can Ferrous Lid, from number 764 Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 766 5 2 Can Ferrous From number 764 Indefinite use containers – 8 N/A

Misc. 767 5 2 Can Ferrous From number 764 Indefinite use containers – 35 N/A

768 5 2 Ash Ash From number 764 Indefinite use Waste – N/A

769 5 2 Charcoal Charcoal From number 764 Indefinite use Materials Fuel 9 N/A

771 5 2 Cut nail Ferrous From number 764 Structural Hardware – 5 5

Handle, from number Misc. metal 772 5 2 Ring Ferrous 764 Indefinite use items – 1 N/A

Misc. metal 773 5 2 Ring Cuperous – Indefinite use items – 1 1

774 5 2 Bottle Olive glass Wine bottle Personal Drugs - alcohol – 1 149

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Winter Green, rim Food prep/ 1493 5 3 Bowl Porcelain fragment Domestic consumption – 2 N/A

Four Seasons, rim Food prep/ 1494 5 3 Bowl Porcelain fragments Domestic consumption – 3 1

Liquor Grooming/ 1495 5 3 bottle CBGS Lute seam fragment Personal Drugs - alcohol health 1 1

Misc. 1496 5 3 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 1497 5 3 Bottle Amber glass Median fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 1498 5 3 Bottle Aqua glass Base fragment Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Misc. 1499 5 3 Bottle Aqua glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 5 N/A

1651 5 3 Forged nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1652 5 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1653 5 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 3 3

1654 5 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 2 2

1655 5 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1 150

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

Four Seasons, rim Food prep/ 1656 5 4 Bowl Porcelain fragments Domestic consumption – 9 N/A

1657 5 4 Vessel CBGS Base, median fragments Domestic Food storage – 6 1

Liquor Grooming/ 1658 5 4 bottle CBGS Lute seam fragment Personal Drugs - alcohol health 2 N/A

Square bodied, base Misc. 1659 5 4 Bottle Aqua glass fragments Indefinite use containers – 14 N/A

Misc. 1660 5 4 Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 4 N/A

Misc. 1661 5 4 Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

1662 5 4 Game piece Glass Zhu Recreation Games – 1 1

1663 5 4 Leather Leather Possibly from shoe Personal Footwear – 2 N/A

1664 5 4 Wood Wood – Indefinite use Materials – 2 1

1665 5 4 Charcoal Charcoal – Indefinite use Materials Fuel 1 N/A

1667 5 4 Forged nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

1668 5 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4 151

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

1669 5 4 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

1670 5 4 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 4 4

Grooming/ 1671 5 4 Opium can Brass Strap fragment Personal Drugs - opium health 1 1

Misc. metal 1672 5 4 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 27 N/A

Misc. 15186 5 Surface Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 500+ N/A

Misc. N/A 2 Surface Can Ferrous With spout and pump Indefinite use containers Fuel 2 1

505 1 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 12 12

Misc. metal 506 1 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 130+ N/A

Misc. 503 1 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

Misc. 513 1 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 514 1 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 3 N/A

Misc. 511 2 Bottle Amber glass Base fragment Indefinite use containers – 2 1 152

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

512 2 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 8 8

Misc. metal 510 2 Fragments Ferrous Hinge included Indefinite use items – 1 1

Misc. 7148 3 Bottle Amber glass – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

7149 3 Mortar Mortar Stone with mortar Structural Materials – 1 1

7150 3 Cut nail Ferrous Square-bodied Structural Hardware – 2 2

7151 3 Nail Ferrous Floor nail Structural Hardware – 1 1

7152 3 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. 7153 3 Can Ferrous – Indefinite use containers – 6 N/A

Bamboo (1) and Winter Food prep/ 3094 3 Tableware Porcelain Green (7) Domestic consumption – 8 2

Mixed olive, colorless, Misc. 3095 3 Bottle Glass amber, aqua Indefinite use containers – 23 N/A

3096 3 Cut nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 10 N/A

Misc. metal 3097 3 Fragments Ferrous – Indefinite use items – 1 1 153

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

3098 3 Leather Leather Fragments Indefinite use Materials – 3 1

3099 3 pipe Ferrous End threaded Indefinite use Hardware – 1 1

3100 3 Button Porcelain Prosser porcelain, 4 hole Personal Clothing Fastener 1 1

Round bodied (3), square 3017 3 Surface Cut nail Ferrous (4) Structural Hardware – 7 N/A

Misc. 3018 3 Surface Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 85 N/A

Rubber and 3019 3 Surface Textile felt – Indefinite use Materials – 1 1

Misc. 3020 3 Surface Bottle Amber glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 2 1

Misc. 3021 3 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 2 1

Misc. 3022 3 Surface Bottle Olive glass Median fragments Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Winter Green, small rim Food prep/ 10069 3 Surface Tableware Porcelain fragment Domestic consumption – 1 1

Cut and wire 10070 3 Surface Nail Ferrous manufactured Structural Hardware – 7 7

Key-opened, rectangular Misc. metal 10071 3 Surface Brace/can Ferrous can and cornerbrace Domestic Food storage items 2 2 154

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

10072 3 Surface Shoe Leather – Personal Footwear – 1 1

Misc. 10073 3 Surface Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 3 1

Misc. 10074 3 Surface Bottle Glass Amber and olive color Indefinite use containers – 6 2

571 3 Surface Tool Bone – Indefinite use Tools – 1 1

N/A 2 Surface Bracket Ferrous – Indefinite use Hardware – 7 1

Amethyst Misc. 535 5 2 Bottle glass – Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Amethyst Misc. N/A 5 2 Bottle glass Finish Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Amethyst Misc. 530 5 2 Bottle glass – Indefinite use containers – 1 N/A

Key-opened, rectangular 532 5 2 Can key Ferrous can Domestic Food storage – 1 1

537 5 2 Wire nail Ferrous – Structural Hardware – 1 1

Misc. 531 5 2 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – 1

Misc. 534 5 2 Can Ferrous Fragments Indefinite use containers – N/A 155

Cat. No. Unit Level Object Material Description Activity Function A Function B Count MNI

"D" ring from can (534 Misc. 533 5 2 Ring Ferrous (duplicate)) Indefinite use containers – 1 1

Misc. 548 1 3 Bottle Olive glass – Indefinite use containers – 2 N/A

Misc. 1326 5 1 Can Ferrous Hole-in-cap top Indefinite use containers – 1 1