November 2023 – Buried Chinatowns

Shedding light on a railroad lantern lens

Hi all, it’s Evan again. Recently we found an unusual curved blue glass shard in our Evanston Chinatown collection that took some crowdsourcing and additional research to finally identify as a railroad semaphore lens! Mixed in with shards belonging to a variety of different bottle types, it was immediately apparent that this was no ordinary…
Read more: Shedding light on a railroad lantern lens
Soy pot, spouted jar, or nga hú?

Hello everyone! George here again. I want to tell you a bit about Chinese Brown-glaze Stoneware, or CBGS for short. CBGS is very common among ceramic types in Chinese diaspora archaeological sites. It is often characterized by the brown color of the glaze on fired containers (as one would figure by the name), but the…
Read more: Soy pot, spouted jar, or nga hú?
The Multiple Uses of Chinese Coins

Hey everyone! This is George, one of Dr. Ng’s assistants here in the lab. It’s a privilege to be able to work on this project. I am very interested in transnational cultural identities and the relationship between power and the movement of people. A great part of this research has been all the fascinating artifacts…
Read more: The Multiple Uses of Chinese Coins

Buried Chinatowns