"Verily the Road was Built with Chinaman's Bones": An Archaeology of Chinese Line Camps in Montana

Christopher W. Merritt; Gary Weisz; Kelly J. Dixon

doi:10.1007/s10761-012-0197-7

"Verily the Road was Built with Chinaman's Bones": An Archaeology of Chinese Line Camps in Montana

Christopher W. Merritt, Gary Weisz, Kelly J. Dixon

Anthropology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

Transcontinental railroads conveyed information and resources that fueled the Gilded Age's quintessential financial and political corporate corruption and related social inequalities. Construction of the transcontinentals required massive numbers of laborers who lived in temporary "line camps" along the railroad grades. A sample of spatially and ethnically segregated Chinese line camps along the transcontinental Northern Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Montana provide historical and archaeological examples of the Gilded Age's pervasive racist mistreatment of the Chinese, culminating in Chinese exclusion laws.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	666-695
Number of pages	30
Journal	International Journal of Historical Archaeology
Volume	16
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-012-0197-7
State	Published - Nov 2012

Keywords

Gilded age
Northern Pacific railroad
Overseas Chinese
Railroad camps

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10.1007/s10761-012-0197-7

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"Verily the Road was Built with Chinaman's Bones": An Archaeology of Chinese Line Camps in Montana

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Keywords

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