Asian diaspora archaeology is a rapidly maturing subfield of historical archaeology, chronicled in edited volumes, journal articles, and graduate theses. However, scholarly monographs are comparatively few. Two recent exceptions highlight the rich and diverse approaches to this burgeoning discipline. Bonnie Clark's study of gardens and gardeners at Camp Amache, a World War II Japanese incarceration center in Colorado, focuses on one type of landscape feature at a single site occupied for just three years. It is part of a large body of historical and archaeological research on Japanese incarceration in the United States. In contrast, Christopher Merritt's study of the Chinese diaspora in Montana presents a comprehensive overview of the history and archaeology of Chinese immigrants statewide over eight decades.
Clark summarizes a sliver of her long-term community-oriented research project at Amache, centered on a biennial field school hosted by the University of Denver since 2008. She frames her research as landscape archaeology and archaeology of the contemporary world. The volume opens with a virtual tour of Amache, introducing the types, functions, and social roles of gardens. This is followed by an introduction to the Amache project, its stakeholders, and Clark's emphasis on gardens, embodied in a preliminary case study focused on a single artifact: a jar of seeds (Chapter 1).
Subsequent chapters outline the research design and methods (Chapter 2), the history of Japanese gardening and the Japanese diaspora in California (Chapter 3), and World War II incarceration and Camp Amache (Chapter 4). Results are presented thematically: camp-wide landscape transformations—especially tree planting—and the roles of professional gardening families and children (Chapter 5); the ways gardens connected people at multiple scales, from families to barracks blocks, the entire camp, and beyond (Chapter 6); and variability in barrack entryway gardens, including evidence for tradition and innovation (Chapter 7). The final chapter (Chapter 8) provides an interpretive synthesis, concluding that incarcerees invested in gardens to meet myriad physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
Clark studied three major garden types at Amache (ornamental public gardens, vegetable gardens, and barrack entryway gardens) but focused on entryway gardens. Records suggest that at least half of Amache's population farmed prior to the war, and each barracks block contained at least one professional gardener. Field methods included pedestrian survey, ground-penetrating radar, test excavation, and sampling for soil chemistry and macrobotanical remains. A key theme uniting the book's methods and findings is conceptualization of soil itself as an artifact.
This research is necessarily multidisciplinary. Only via context provided by archival data and oral history can we link patterns and variability in gardens to individuals and families. The key to this study is the synergy between sources, and Clark excels at identifying clusters of experienced farmers/gardeners and linking them to specific gardens, drawing on government demographic data. A sad irony, as she notes, is that these records—the very instruments of oppression—are what make this richly nuanced study possible.
Oral and documentary sources are so rich that archaeology sometimes takes a back seat. However, there are moments when archaeology shines, especially insights from chemical, pollen, and phytolith analysis revealing use of local and imported plants and how soils were amended to enhance fertility. Archaeology also links children and gardens, with discovery of marbles and other toys in garden contexts. A key insight is the role of children in shaping landscapes, including designing and building gardens in the schoolyard and planting and tending vegetable gardens.
Clark strikes a balance between emphasizing racial injustices and material privations and highlighting the ways incarcerees harnessed creative energies, forged a sense of hope and community, and developed relationships with the wider community. Interpretive themes focus on power, place, institutional confinement, and the Japanese concept of gaman (“enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”). Clark dismisses models of domination and resistance, instead emphasizing themes of balance and harmony. A central conclusion is that gardens were neither strictly Japanese nor American in design or function but unique combinations of landscaping traditions. Although there are occasional references to gardens at other camps such as Manzanar, more in-depth comparisons to other incarceration landscapes would aid in placing Amache in wider context.
Clark's study is one of the few long-term research projects on an incarceration center or any Asian diaspora site. Her book is as much about the archaeological process as about gardens, and it describes numerous eureka moments when particular approaches or perspectives produced meaningful discoveries. Clark acknowledges many intellectual debts (scholars, former incarcerees and families, local community) and credits a collaborative approach for the project's success. She especially forefronts the role of student research in reconstructing the archaeological history of Amache and providing essential context for her garden study.
Merritt's book, based on doctoral research at the University of Montana, is an amalgam of two types of research study: historical ethnography and archaeological context/research design. The former, emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach, has a long tradition in Chinese diaspora archaeology, notably Neville Ritchie's 1986 dissertation at the University of Otago on the Chinese in New Zealand and Darby Stapp's 1990 dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania on a Chinese mining community in Idaho. The latter aids agencies in identifying and evaluating archaeological resources, in compliance with state or federal heritage regulations. Merritt's research draws on existing historical and archaeological scholarship plus new fieldwork and analysis of existing collections, in partnership with academic institutions, government agencies, and private individuals.
This study has three main goals: to develop a comprehensive statewide archaeological context for the Chinese diaspora in Montana, to explore the internal social organization of Chinese communities and how it affected daily life, and to highlight the role of Chinese in the development of the state's economy and infrastructure. As elsewhere, Chinese have been neglected, marginalized, and stereotyped in mainstream histories of Montana, and there were no statewide contexts for interpreting and evaluating Chinese sites. Merritt weaves together historical and archaeological sources to present a holistic study of the Chinese in Montana between the 1860s and 1940s, casting them as active participants in shaping state history.
Following an introduction that outlines the study's scope and situates it within the history and archaeology of the Chinese diaspora, Merritt presents a history of the Chinese in Montana across three chapters (Chapters 1–3), comprising approximately 60% of the book. It chronicles their arrival and expansion in the mining industry in the 1860s, through increasing restriction and legal attacks by non-Chinese to employment diversification and decreasing population as mining declined and immigration restrictions were enacted, culminating in the repeal of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. Themes, limited by available data, include population and employment demographics, geographic distribution, the character of population centers, Chinese labor, merchant networks, the nature of male-dominated homosocial communities, roles of Chinese women, racism and legal exclusion, crime, death and violence, and ritual events such as weddings and funerals.
Merritt then provides an overview of Chinese diaspora archaeology in Montana based on reanalysis of existing data and new field and lab work, summarizing methods, findings, and historical context for each site or study area (Chapter 4). Based on survey of hundreds of acres of public and private lands, recording/revisiting over 50 sites, and excavations at five major sites, Merritt identified 40 sites with confirmed Chinese occupation. A key finding was evidence for starvation among Chinese miners revealed by fragmented and calcined fauna from the Cedar Creek Mining District. A highlight of Chapter 4 is Merritt's critical review of prior research, including identification of analytical errors, dubious interpretations, missing artifacts, and curatorial problems.
In Chapter 5, Merritt argues for the anthropological concept of social organization as a unifying interpretive framework for the Chinese diaspora, particularly the role of fictive kinship networks, such as district associations, clan groups, and secret societies. Such organizations were central in organizing travel, contracting labor, and distributing goods, but they could also be coercive and abusive. Merritt claims that artifact patterning is better understood as a product of market availability controlled by merchants (leaders of voluntary organizations) than acculturation/adaptation. The book concludes (Chapter 6) by suggesting directions for future research and dispelling common myths surrounding the Chinese.
Overall, Chapters 1–4 are primarily descriptive, with little engagement in scholarly debate, although Merritt admirably exposes and counteracts biases in primary and secondary sources. One exception is his discussion of the popularity of opium among Chinese and Euro-Americans, dismissing recent scholarly critiques that studies of opium use perpetuate racial stereotypes and prejudices. In Chapters 1–3, Merritt weaves archaeological insights into his historical narrative, whereas in Chapter 4, he uses his historical context to inform the archaeological data. Archaeological findings are important in fleshing out aspects of daily life absent in written records, including evidence for poverty and starvation, trade routes, dining habits, use and sale of various consumer goods, the nature of domestic dwellings and industrial landscapes, racial segregation in mining and railroad camps, socioeconomic variation between households, and funerary ritual.
Throughout, Merritt injects his writing with wit and humor, as his team tracks down missing artifacts to a highway gas station or fights its way through legions of mosquitoes to reach a remote railroad camp. In fact, both Clark and Merritt infuse their texts with personal anecdotes that broaden their appeal beyond specialist academic audiences. Although the primary audience for both books will be scholars of the Asian diaspora, in their engaging styles, interdisciplinary research designs, broadly anthropological frameworks, and contemporary relevance, both will appeal to readers beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries. Ultimately, even though these two volumes differ widely in their subject, scope, interpretive framework, and overall objectives, they are both exemplary products of the dynamic field of Asian diaspora archaeology in the twenty-first century.
