Abstract
The Asian Comparative Collection was established in 1982 in the University of Idaho's Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology. It is a repository of artifacts, slides, and bibliographical materials, particularly useful for the study of the Chinese and Japanese who immigrated to the West of the United States of America and Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ongoing research is designed to identify and document most classes of Asian artifacts found both on American and Canadian archaeological sites and in American and Canadian museums and private collections. Researchers are encouraged to visit and work with the Collection and materials may also be borrowed for use elsewhere. In this paper Priscilla Wegars, a Research Associate at the University of Idaho, explains how the Collection is organized and provides descriptions of typical Chinese and Japanese artifacts to enable them to be more easily recognized when excavated from sites. Thus the paper has relevance for historical archaeologists in Australia and New Zealand, as well as for those in the western United States and Canada.