UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Imagined Asia: Archaeology and Museum Anthropology of the Chinese Diaspora and the Ainu Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/70n0g175 Author Lowman, Christopher B. Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Imagined Asia: Archaeology and Museum Anthropology of the Chinese Diaspora and the Ainu By Christopher B. Lowman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Laurie A. Wilkie, Chair Doctor Ira Jacknis Professor Jun Sunseri Professor Michael Omi Fall 2019 Abstract Imagined Asia: Archaeology and Museum Anthropology of the Chinese Diaspora and the Ainu by Christopher B. Lowman Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Laurie A. Wilkie, Chair Archaeological sites and ethnographic museums preserve materials, and the human lives to which they connect, in different ways. Sites preserve evidence of peoples’ everyday lives in the form of their material contents, but by their nature as buried and often fragmented artifacts and features they also indicate some degree of loss or even erasure during the process of the site’s formation. Ethnographic museums, by contrast, purposefully preserve both material and documentary evidence of people’s lives. However, they also maintain the context of the collection’s creation, the agencies of the original owners, collectors, and institutions involved in their assembly. This dissertation examines an archaeology site and museum collections in tandem to discern their shared context in transpacific interactions between the United States and East Asia in the late nineteenth century. First, I use a combination of oral history and historical archaeology to understand the lives of Chinese immigrants living at the Arboretum Chinese Quarters at Stanford University in California between 1876 and 1925, the era of both widespread Chinese diaspora and increasing racialization and discrimination against immigrants in the United States. Second, I examine ethnographic museum collections initially created during this same time period between the 1870s and 1920s. These collections of material culture from the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kurile Islands, share a social context with the archaeological remains of the Chinese diaspora beyond their contemporaneity. Both the site and the collections formed as they did due to the racialization of Asian ethnic groups in the nineteenth century United States. Through uniting these material remains with historical documentation, oral histories, and records of oral traditions, I explore this shared context, the evidence they both provide about everyday lives shaped by colonial policy, and present ways that objects, both archaeological and ethnographic, continue to matter for descendent and other stakeholder communities today. 1 Acknowledgements My dissertation would not have been possible without the support of the multiple kinds of communities with whom I worked. My advisor, Laurie Wilkie, has inspired me with her ability to weave together the memories and interests of people today with evidence from both archaeology and history to tell vivid, meaningful stories. Reading her articles as an undergraduate, her storytelling ability was one of the things that led me to pursue historical archaeology. I appreciate her advice, patience, critique, and collegiality during my time in graduate school, her guidance on writing and teaching, and her creativity and encouragement about combining wide-ranging topics. Ira Jacknis has similarly offered me both professional mentoring and vast academic and historical knowledge of museums and the development of anthropology. Taking his class my first year in graduate school derailed my plans for a simple research topic because of how much I learned and how generous he was with sharing his expertise. His support for postponing my final paper in my first-year class turned into my application to research at the Smithsonian, my excitement to work at the Hearst Museum as a graduate student, and my use of collections as teaching tools in classes of my own. I feel lucky to have had so many opportunities for one-on-one meetings with Michael Omi, whose perspectives on racialization and history greatly shaped my thinking, and whose questions and insights from outside archaeology made me think more deeply about the work I did. Jun Sunseri has been inspiring not only because of his research, but also his commitment to educating students and seeking new ways to build the visibility of archaeology’s relevance in many kinds of communities today. Thank you to all of you for sharing your experiences and offering so much guidance. I am grateful to members of the Chinese American communities in Palo Alto and throughout the Bay Area who generously shared their time and knowledge with me along the way. My thanks to Lorraine Mock, Connie Young Yu, Gerry Low-Sabado, Atherton Quan, Ben Kwong, George Chin and Lee Liu Chin, Gloria Hom, and Mackenzie Lee for sharing their family stories and their input and interest during the research process. Brenda Hee Wong and other members of the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project in Santa Clara County have welcomed me to their meetings and offered valuable research directions and suggestions. I have appreciated your invitations to participate in community gatherings and look forward to continuing to do what I can to support the growing visibility of the history and culture that you shared with me. The staff and curators at multiple museums have been incredibly helpful and inspiring. My research would not be possible without participating in the Smithsonian Institution’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) in 2014, especially through advice from Candace Green, Marit K. Munson, and Jennifer Kramer, as well as the help of staff at the NMNH and the National Anthropological Archives, and SIMA research assistants, particularly Kasia Ahern. Thanks to Laurel Kendall and Katherine Skaggs at the American Museum of Natural History, Joan M. Cummins at the Brooklyn Museum, and Adam Nilsen, Linda Waterfield, and Katie Fleming at the Hearst Museum and Junko Habu at UC Berkeley for accommodating my research visits, answering my questions about collections, and helping me flip objects over for photographs. Thank you for spending so much time helping me. Thanks also to Koji Yamasaki i (Hokkaido University), Kenji Sekine (Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum), Koji Deriha, and Yoshinobu Kotani for personal communications during research. You made my visit to Japan and my subsequent work so much stronger because of your helpful advice and interest. Thanks also for comments from the Museum Anthropology editorial team and anonymous reviewers who gave me valuable criticism of my writing, and advice from William Wierzbowski, Mariko Sakai, Chisato Dubreuil, Scott Lyons, Sebastian Peel, the Anthropological Inquiry Working Group, and the Interdisciplinary Working Group on the Early U.S. My research was supported through the Gan Aston Fellowship, and it was inspiring to meet Richard Aston and learn more about his vision to support a broad range of academic work on the history of U.S. relations with China. I very much appreciated the wide-ranging scope of his interests as well as his personal knowledge of Chinese American history here in the Bay Area. My research was also supported by Stahl Grants and the Lowie Olson Fund and other resources from UC Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility, and the generosity of Laura Jones and her invitation to conduct parts of my research at Stanford’s Field Conservation Facility, despite having traded sides from Stanford to Berkeley. Barb Voss, who was the first “real archaeologist” I met as a high schooler and whose work with Chinese American communities has truly changed how historical archaeology is conducted, was a great inspiration for everything I have done. Thanks to Lauren Conway, Garrett Trask, and the rest of the Stanford archaeology team, as well as Annelise Morris, Kirsten Vacca, Annie Danis, Alexandra McCleary, Katrina Eichner, Alyssa Scott, Katie Kinkopf, and David Hyde from UC Berkeley. Your help in the field, over beers, or over long nights of writing or studying has been wonderful. I want to particularly acknowledge the work of undergraduate students Halee Yue, Becca Fielding, Josie Miller, and Minxing Chen from UC Berkeley, who worked many hours on cataloguing and conducting individual research that helped build this project. Thanks also to Kelly Fong, Clement Lai, Bright Zhou, Ezra Bergson-Michelson, and Ethan Bresnick for helping shape the project at Stanford. Last, thanks to my family and friends, and to Chris Olivares, for tirelessly offering encouragement, asking questions, providing amazing ideas and resources from the “home library,” acting as sounding boards for new ideas, offering perspectives from other disciplines and life experiences, reading and listening to my work along the way, for spotting important artifacts, and for asking me when I would finally finish – that was always a push in the right direction. ii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: Theoretical Framework and Chapter Overview. 1 Frameworks of Imperialism and Racialization . 2 Community Collaboration .