Current Research & Fieldwork
1. The History, Archaeology, and Historical Ecology of Chinese Abalone Fishing on San Nicolas Island
While I maintain a variety of archaeological projects in California and around the world, I was recently awarded a cooperative agreement from the US Navy to conduct a historical study and re-survey of California's San Nicolas Island for 19th-century Chinese abalone fishing sites. At the dawn of the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants were among the earliest pioneers of commercial fishing along the North American Pacific Coast. In addition to other marine products such as shrimp, finfish, and seaweed, Chinese fishermen founded the first commercial abalone fishing industry in the New World, focused on the collection, drying, and export of black abalone meat and shells from Californian and Mexican rocky shorelines. By the end of the century, they had been pushed out of the industry through targeted, racist legislation and rampant anti-Chinese sentiments that permeated the highest levels of American government. As a marginalized group, their accomplishments have been relegated to footnote in California history and much of what we know of their lifeways, motivations, and economic pursuits come from occasional newspaper accounts, historical documents, and trade records.
California’s offshore Channel Islands still contain one of the only material records to better understand the lifeways, activities, and impacts of early Chinese abalone fishing. While such archaeological sites likely once existed on the mainland coast, much of this record has been lost to the ravages of time, erosion, and urban development. Chinese abalone fishing sites on the Northern and Southern Channel Islands, on the other hand, have been preserved and protected by a variety of public and private agencies that own and manage the islands today. This project extends my decade+ long work on this topic to San Nicolas Island in the southern Channel Island group.
2. Novel Isotopic Approaches to Understanding Marine Productivity Changes in the Santa Barbara Channel
In collaboration with Torben Rick and Christine France at the Smithsonian Institution and Matthew McCarthy at UC-Santa Cruz, we were awarded an NSF archaeology and archaeometry grant titled Coupling Archaeological Shell and Novel Isotope Approaches to Reconstruct Impact and Nearshore Productivity Change. Our research seeks to understand when and why cultural complexity arose along the Santa Barbara Channel and any links it may have to past changes in climate. We will draw on the analysis of novel molecular/isotopes (compound-specific isotopes of amino acids) in shells obtained from archaeological sites.
Details about on-going and past projects can be found on my Google Scholar and Researchgate accounts:
While I maintain a variety of archaeological projects in California and around the world, I was recently awarded a cooperative agreement from the US Navy to conduct a historical study and re-survey of California's San Nicolas Island for 19th-century Chinese abalone fishing sites. At the dawn of the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants were among the earliest pioneers of commercial fishing along the North American Pacific Coast. In addition to other marine products such as shrimp, finfish, and seaweed, Chinese fishermen founded the first commercial abalone fishing industry in the New World, focused on the collection, drying, and export of black abalone meat and shells from Californian and Mexican rocky shorelines. By the end of the century, they had been pushed out of the industry through targeted, racist legislation and rampant anti-Chinese sentiments that permeated the highest levels of American government. As a marginalized group, their accomplishments have been relegated to footnote in California history and much of what we know of their lifeways, motivations, and economic pursuits come from occasional newspaper accounts, historical documents, and trade records.
California’s offshore Channel Islands still contain one of the only material records to better understand the lifeways, activities, and impacts of early Chinese abalone fishing. While such archaeological sites likely once existed on the mainland coast, much of this record has been lost to the ravages of time, erosion, and urban development. Chinese abalone fishing sites on the Northern and Southern Channel Islands, on the other hand, have been preserved and protected by a variety of public and private agencies that own and manage the islands today. This project extends my decade+ long work on this topic to San Nicolas Island in the southern Channel Island group.
2. Novel Isotopic Approaches to Understanding Marine Productivity Changes in the Santa Barbara Channel
In collaboration with Torben Rick and Christine France at the Smithsonian Institution and Matthew McCarthy at UC-Santa Cruz, we were awarded an NSF archaeology and archaeometry grant titled Coupling Archaeological Shell and Novel Isotope Approaches to Reconstruct Impact and Nearshore Productivity Change. Our research seeks to understand when and why cultural complexity arose along the Santa Barbara Channel and any links it may have to past changes in climate. We will draw on the analysis of novel molecular/isotopes (compound-specific isotopes of amino acids) in shells obtained from archaeological sites.
Details about on-going and past projects can be found on my Google Scholar and Researchgate accounts:
