Lunch Club provides affiliates of the Stanford Archaeology Center with a community-oriented forum for engagement with current issues in archaeology. On May 21, 2025, we will host Dr. Kim Connor from Stanford University.

Over nearly 25 years, the Market Street Chinatown Archaeological Project has studied the material lives of the Chinese and Chinese American residents of San José’s Market Street Chinatown (1862-1887). Previous projects have analyzed the ceramics, botanicals, faunal remains, and targeted types of small finds to reveal the everyday habits of the Chinatown’s residents and visitors, their combined use of Chinese and Euro-American artifacts, and the causes of the fire which destroyed their homes. But what does analyzing the glass add to this story? Following two years of cataloging and analyzing the glass containers and tableware, this talk presents the first results from the glass analysis at the Market Street Chinatown. Temporally diagnostic glass containers shed new light on the taphonomic history of the site while functional analysis reveals the foods, beverages, medicines, and household products provides insight into local consumption patterns. While still preliminary, the story told by the glass of local, national, and international shopping highlights very different patterns from the ceramics, speaking to the social and economic networks that the Chinatown’s residents maintained in China and created in their new homes.

A recording of Dr Connor’s talk will be available online after the event.

When: 12-1pm PT (San Francisco) Wednesday 21 May 2025 / 5am AEST (Sydney) Thursday 22 May 2025

Where: Online

Registration: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PD2egrOVRiORSp66PEMjag#/registration

For more information: https://archaeology.stanford.edu/events/lunch-club-series-beer-bitters-and-batteries-first-impressions-glass-containers-market