Abstract
In the fall of 2004, archaeologists, students, and volunteers from the Field Museum, DePaul University, and the community conducted archaeological survey and testing of an empty parcel adjacent to the new Chinese American Museum of Chicago. The lot, still at the original nineteenth-century street level, was over 3 ft below the modern Twenty-Third Street level. Shovel probes yielded in situ deposits, and subsequent test excavations unearthed layers of material culture and subsistence remains that reflect demographic change in this Chicago neighborhood from its beginning in the late nineteenth century through the 1911 restart of Chinatown and beyond. The hands-on archaeological project and resulting historical exhibition formed a stronger bond between Chinatown's past and present for young Chinese student participants, community members, historians, and anthropologists.
