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Abstract
After revitalizing an abalone fishery along California’s coast and offshore islands, mid-19th century Chinese immigrants found themselves deeply engaged in a lucrative commercial fishing business. Retellings of diaspora and transformation within these fishermen and merchants’ lives have been analyzed through previous historical scholarship and archaeological survey performed along the California coast and the Channel Islands. Few, however, consider their women counterparts also involved in the abalone fishery. This thesis implements feminist perspectives in early Chinese-American archaeology. It proposes a project for contextualizing the roles of female agents within the slow-moving ideological traditions of Qing China as well as phenomena of culture contact through emigration, the motion between orthodoxic and heterodoxic practices, and its gendering. This is accomplished with archival research as well as “practice-as-doxa” methodology to analyze diagnostic Chinese materials surveyed during recent fieldwork on San Nicolas Island and past archaeological investigations on the other offshore Channel Islands. Survey data build upon applications into how the material record can mirror cultural persistence. As a compilation of archaeological, historical, and anthropological scholarship, this project provides a case study on how some 19th century immigrant Chinese female agents experience the household and workplace as they find themselves molded by and molding their communities. This thesis demonstrates the research potential of investigations into the deep narrative built into, from, and by these pioneering women.
