This study explores the pig-raising practices of Chinese migrants in Los Angeles Chinatown during the Chinese Exclusion Era. Chinese butcher shops sold pork meat, and previous research indicates that they likely sold the more profitable parts outside of Chinatown for additional income while consuming cheaper cuts themselves. Using dental calculus analysis and archival research, this study further explores how Chinatown residents relied on pork to thrive in an anti-Chinese environment. Dental calculus results suggest that Chinese migrants raised their own pigs with food waste and by-products from rice fields; this pork was then sold to meat markets or consumed within the community. The analysis of immigration records indicates that Chinese butcher shops provided employment opportunities as well as housing, banking, and immigration support for Chinese migrants. Pig raising, therefore, not only supplied a source of meat for Chinese migrants but also supported a range of social and financial services for a marginalized group that faced everyday discrimination from dominant society. Overall, this study traces the labor and networks that small businesses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries needed to source and distribute pork, and it highlights how a Chinese diasporic community developed a pork production system to resist racism.

This paper describes topsoil phytolith assemblages from 25 loci underneath miombo woodlands on an eco-transect intersecting the Mozambican Rift along a geographical, altitudinal, climatic and botanical gradient. We provide the first comprehensive overview of the phytolith spectrum that defines northern Mozambique's Zambezian floristic zone. Our classifying criteria derive from comparison with previously described and quantified reference collections of trees and grasses growing in the study area. We characterize the sedimentological and soil features of the matrices where phytoliths are found, establishing correlation among geo-edaphic variables and phytoliths. Descriptive statistics along with nonparametric and parametric statistical analyses evaluate phytolith grouping criteria, variation, robustness, and membership. From a taphonomic perspective, we attest that topsoil phytolith assemblages are polygenic and do not represent an episodic snapshot of extant vegetation, but a palimpsest from plants representing various disturbance episodes, succession stages, and ecological trends. Phytoliths retrieved from Mozambican miombo soils do not seem to trace altitudinal, temperature, or precipitation gradients, and no significant differences exist between highland and lowland phytolith assemblages. This article provides a phytolith analog for woodland environments that can guide future paleoenvironmental research. It also confirms that phytolith analysis is able to detect shifts in the woodland/grassland interface.