BARKERVILLE, CANADA—Archaeologist Dawn Ainsley is examining garbage dating back to the late nineteenth century from a site next to what was the home of the Doy Ying Low Chinese restaurant in Barkerville Historic Town and Park, according to a CBC News report. The artifacts have been protected by layers of mud from flooding over the past 150 years, Ainsley explained. Some 2,000 Chinese miners lived in the town, which is located in British Columbia near the Cariboo Mountains, at the height of the Cariboo Gold Rush. Ainsley said she has recovered pork bones, a can of meat, opium tins, toothpaste lids, broken glass, metal, dominoes, Chinese medicine bottles, pipe pieces, beer bottles, and a bone crochet hook, in addition to 400-year-old Qing dynasty coins. Ben Zhou, who portrays Chinese school teacher Nam Sing for the park’s living history program, explained that many of the town’s Chinese residents were men from southeastern China’s Guangdong province who wanted to make money to send back to their families. To read about how archaeology has revealed the culture and challenges of the first Chinese Americans, go to "America's Chinatowns."
