Today is the second day of the Spring semester at Grinnell College and we are back in the archaeology lab continuing to catalog artifacts from the Evanston Chinatown with research assistants Evan Albaugh and George Matthes. Over the winter break, archaeologist and project collaborator Dr. Dudley Gardner was interviewed by the Cowboy State Daily on the decades-long archaeological work he has done on the Chinatowns at Evanston and Rock Springs. The article briefly mentions our archaeology lab’s role in this project.
The reporter, however, made a few mistakes that need to be corrected, such as the fact that Dr. Gardner is affiliated with the Western Anthropological and Archaeological Research Institute (WAARI) and not Wyoming State Parks Department. In addition, the reporter noted that 13 of the 28 of the Chinese migrants murdered by a white mob in an 1885 massacre were from Guangdong Province in China; the statement should have been that 13 out of the 28 of the Chinese migrants murdered had the surname Leo. Based on ongoing research with Leo descendants who lived in Rock Springs at different periods of time, we know that they were likely from the same Leo lineage in Taishan (Toisan in Cantonese), Guangdong (Gwongdung in Cantonese) Province.
The article can be found here: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/12/23/evanstons-historic-chinatown-yields-300-000-artifacts-from-the-late-1800s/
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