While the academic year research assistants are off on their own summer adventures, four Grinnell College students — Amber Remington ’28, Jenna Mack ’29, Emily Gonzalez ’29, and Alice Yan ’29 — have joined the Buried Chinatowns team. Each are part of a ten-week summer Mentored Advanced Projects (MAP) undergraduate research program and will be writing about historic residents of the Rock Springs Chinatown, processing artifacts from previous excavations, and sharing their research with the public through blog posts and an ArcGIS StoryMap. Each student’s short biography will be posted on the “Research Team” page, but in the meantime, I’ll provide a recap of our first two weeks of research.
The four students began by learning how to identify artifacts commonly found at Chinese diaspora archaeology sites by cataloging artifacts from the 1991 Rock Springs Chinatown excavation. Over the next few days, they will be posting their research on specific artifacts from the 1991 excavation.
We happened to begin our summer work during Grinnell College’s Alumni Reunion week and were lucky to have several alums visit us including Don Marquardt ’70 and Sue Hyatt ’76 who have each contributed financially to our archaeology project. Don funded our Four Corners camping trip last year en route to Rock Springs and Sue has provided us with funding in honor of her ancestor, Isador Kastor, who was once mayor of Evanston, WY when the Evanston Chinatown was still standing. I didn’t get a photo of Sue visiting us so below is a old photo from her 2024 visit!
Another fun visitor was Marianne Ronan, a “cheery checker” at the Grinnell College dining hall who is also an avid reader of The New Yorker. Marianne contacted me after she read Michael Luo’s article on the Rock Springs Chinese massacre last year and provided kinds words of support.
Other highlights include a MAP BBQ + Potluck organized by Prof. Sam Rebelsky, a MAP cohort-building field trip to tour an underground railroad site at the Jordan House Museum in Des Moines funded by the Center for the Humanities, and a lecture on geoarchaeology by local Grinnell resident, Gregory Vogel, who I met at book talk at a book talk by Bill Green ’74. Being able to describe soils is a skill that we will need when we return to Rock Springs this summer!
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