Asian woman with dark medium-long hair and glasses against greenery.
Contact
Address

1226 Park Street
HSSC building, room S1352
Grinnell, IA 50112
United States

Laura Ng

Assistant Professor
Offices, Departments, or Centers: Anthropology , East Asian Studies ,

Laura W. Ng is a historical archaeologist with a research focus on the archaeology of transpacific migration and Asian diasporic communities. She conducts archaeological research on late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese migration and the transpacific circulation of people, goods, and ideas between Chinese diaspora sites and home villages in Taishan County (Hoisan), Guangdong, China. She is currently examining agricultural landscapes created by Chinese vegetable farmers and collaborating with Dr. Dudley Gardner on the archaeology of the Evanston and Rock Springs Chinatowns in Wyoming. The latter was the site of the 1885 Rock Springs Chinese Massacre. Follow our artifact cataloging progress on the Evanston Chinatown blog: https://buriedchinatowns.sites.grinnell.edu/

Previous projects include the archaeology of transnational linkages between the San Bernardino Chinatown and Riverside Chinatown in Inland Southern California and the Gom Benn village cluster in Hoisan County, co-directing the Cangdong Village Project, which was the first archaeological investigation of a home village in Guangdong Province, and providing research support for the Chinese Railroad Workers of North America Project at Stanford University. She has also helped lead community archaeology projects at Manzanar National Historic Site, a National Park Service unit that preserves the story of the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Education and Degrees

Ph.D. Anthropology, Stanford University, 2021
M.A. Historical Archaeology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2014
B.A. Anthropology, University of California San Diego, 2008

Selected Publications

Wang, Jiajing, Laura W. Ng, and Tamara Serrao-Leiva. 2024. “Self-Reliance and Pig Husbandry in Los Angeles Chinatown (1880–1933): New Evidence from Dental Calculus Analysis and Historical Records.” American Antiquity 89 (1): 2–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2023.79.

Fong, Kelly N., Laura W. Ng, Jocelyn Lee, Veronica L. Peterson, and Barbara L. Voss. 2022. “Race and Racism in Archaeologies of Chinese American Communities.” Annual Review of Anthropology 51(1): 233–250.

Ng, Laura W. 2020. “Between South China and Southern California: The Formation of Transnational Chinese Communities” in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology in North America, edited by Chelsea Rose and J. Ryan Kennedy. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press.

Voss, Barbara L., J. Ryan Kennedy, Tan Jinhua, and Laura W. Ng. 2018. The Archaeology of Home: Qiaoxiang and Non-State Actors in the Archaeology of the Chinese Diaspora. American Antiquity 83(3):407-426.

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