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Shellfish for the Celestial Empire: The Rise and Fall of Commercial Abalone Fishing in California . TODD J. BRAJE . 2016. University of Utah Press , Salt Lake City . xiv + 242 pp., 57 figures. $34.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-60781-496-2 .
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In 2003, Todd Braje and a contingent of students initiated unprecedented research on the Northern Channel Islands off of southern California: a survey/testing project that targeted commercial Chinese abalone fishing from the late nineteenth century. Sites representing this short-lived (ca. 40 years) enterprise were known from the islands, but this was one of the first projects to focus exclusively on this ethnic group on the northern islands. Nineteenth-century Chinese sites are, in general, common in California, especially from the gold-mining era, and their distinctive artifact assemblages are well documented, but Braje's project focused on a Chinese enterprise that probably few people are aware of. Goals of the project seem to have been twofold. First, the team sought to archaeologically confirm and further illuminate the history of this understudied ethnic industry. Fleshing out the histories of overlooked ethnic minorities has been a raison d'être for historical archaeology in California and elsewhere for many decades, and, in and of itself, this...