Historical Archaeology of an Overseas Chinese Community in Sacramento, California

In late 1994 archaeologists from SSU carried out testing and data recovery on the HI56 Block in Sacramento, California. Prefield documentary research had disclosed that this was the last archaeologically surviving portion of Sacramento’s mid-19th-century Chinese district. The resulting historical and archaeological analyses revealed much information about the everyday lives of these working-class Chinese pioneers as well as how material culture was used by Chinese District Association agents to enhance their community’s relationship to Sacramento’s power brokers.