so most of you here have heard
archeology and you have some idea of
what archaeologists do so when you think
of archeology this is probably close to
what you picture so this is me on our
excavation in Egypt so behind me you can
see people excavating through the tomb
so archaeologists reconstruct the past
societies and the lives of the people by
using the culture by using these the
things that these cultures have left
behind so these things can include
pottery stone tools metal technologies
buildings and roads so this is what most
archaeologists study so I’m actually a
bio archaeologist you’ve probably never
met one of us there aren’t very many of
us in the world but what that means is
that I’m an archaeological specialist
instead of studying the things left
behind by previous people I study the
people themselves
so I excavate and analyze human
skeletons so currently I have two
excavations one in Egypt and one in
Mongolia
so I reconstruct the lives of ancient
populations based on evidence left
behind by the actual bones and teeth so
one of my research interests is mmm the
formation of identity so how we can
reconstruct individual and population
identity from the archaeological record
so I will be talking about my issues
with my own identity and how this led me
to choose bio archeology as my
profession and also how being an bio
archeologist
gave me specific insights into
understanding and finally accepting my
own ancestral history so my parents
emigrated from Taiwan to the United
States to go to graduate school so I was
actually born in Texas so my childhood
was a fairly confusing and lonely period
at home my parents expected me to act
like I was Taiwanese even though I had
no idea what that meant and at school I
was expected to be American so at home I
was expected to obey my parents and
never to ask any
at school I was expected to ask
questions and was actually called stupid
for staying quiet so once in class we
had to draw a family tree
I drew my family with my grandfather and
his three wives the teacher told me I
must be wrong she said my grandfather
had to have married each wife after the
previous one had died I said no he had
them at the same time and it was common
in many Asian countries before World War
two for wealthy men to have as many
wives as they could afford the teacher
actually accused me of lying and sent me
to the principal’s office so this is a
picture of my grandmother visiting us in
Texas so the third wife so as a child I
was always fascinated by bones so
whenever we had fried chicken or
Thanksgiving turkey I would ask my
parents to identify the bones for me
before I would actually eat and then I
would take the carcass and reassemble
the bones in anatomical order my parents
encouraged this behavior because they
were hopeful I would become a medical
doctor to the very great disappointment
I chose anthropology going away to an
anniversary going away to university was
the first time I actually met students
who were very knowledgeable and proud of
their ethnic identity so this actually
inspired me to learn more about my own
ancestral history so at that time there
were very few foreign archaeologists
working in East Asia and I wrote to all
five of them so five American
archaeology professors who did work in
China and I asked them how I could get
to China to work on their ancient
skeletons four of them told me the
Chinese would never let a foreigner work
on their skeletons and that I should
give up
last professor was the one at Harvard
most of the American archaeologists who
still work in China today are either his
students or his students students he
actually told me not to give up he
believed that if I was persistent but
polite that one day the Chinese would
give me the chance and he was right so
that particular letter I’ve still kept
to this day so working in East Asia was
a huge culture shock for me first of all
everyone around me all of a sudden was
Asian and I actually couldn’t tell
people’s faces apart because I had never
been around that many Asians before I
had the opportunity to work on several
archaeological excavations all over
China and neighboring Mongolia many
times I was the only foreigner and
sometimes the only woman on these
excavations hmm my first excavation in
Mongolia among calling graduate student
told me that women didn’t belong on
archaeological excavations that I should
be at home caring for a family so I have
researched thousands of human skeletons
spanning over 5,000 years and I had had
actually expected since my ancestors
came from China that I would look like
these skeletons that I was studying but
actually I didn’t I also didn’t look
like any of the Chinese that were living
in most of China what was even more
surprising was that while I was on
excavation in Mongolia the Mongolians
actually thought I was Mongolian so this
was quite ironic so most of you know
what the great wall is the great wall
was built by the Chinese to separate
their civilized part from the crazy
barbaric Mongolians north of the wall so
I looked not like the people I was
supposed to look like south of the wall
but like the barbarians north of the
wall so this made me realize that maybe
my family’s history was a lot more
complicated than being just Taiwanese so
while working in Beijing I was given the
opportunity to go on an archaeological
excavation near my father’s
please ancestral village in far
northwestern China now one left from my
family had been there in over 600 years
so my boss warned me that the Chinese
archaeologists in gansu province we’re
not going to be very civilized like the
ones in cosmopolitan Beijing he said
they were going to be pretty wild
so I told him you know I’m from Texas
and he said oh yeah you’ll be fine so
gansu province has always been sort of a
frontier region in China
it’s where the Silk Road actually exits
China on its way to the west it’s also
the region where Chinese Tibetan
Mongolian and Weger people have lived
together for thousands of years so the
archaeologists there were pretty well we
took a nine-hour crazy road trip through
the mountains and once we reach the
archaeological site I was really shocked
at how beautiful it was the river
running through the site was so clear
that it actually reflected the
vegetation off the mountains so that the
river was actually a beautiful shade of
pale green I asked how far my ancestral
village was and they said it’s just one
Valley over and I asked if it was just
as beautiful as this valley they said no
it’s a piece of crap that’s probably why
your ancestors left so the are cows just
like to play a game with me if they know
I’m around it’s called what’s my dynasty
so essentially what that means is in any
geographical region there’s sort of an
average face over time so the average
face lasts a couple of hundred years so
they like to ask most of them asked me
what dynasty their face is since I work
with skulls the interesting thing was
after analyzing the skulls from this
archaeological site I actually called up
my dad since it’s his family’s ancestral
region and I actually was able to tell
my dad that he’s still the face that he
has is the same face that’s been in this
region for the past 3,000
so my dad’s a geneticist and so as a
Christmas present one year we all had
our genetic tests done mmm what we found
out was that my maternal and paternal
grandmother’s both had colonies in
digital tribal DNA so these indigenous
people are related to Polynesians
actually and they were the people there
before the chinese and japanese
colonized taiwan they’re actually also
traditionally headhunters until the
early 1930s so I find that ironic that I
travel the world still collecting skulls
so for a long time anyone Taiwanese who
knew they had family members who were
partially tribal or fully tribal would
have been ashamed to mention it it’s
only been in the last few years that
this viewpoint has changed and that
people are now proud to claim this
heritage so now there are actually
several movements around Taiwan to
preserve these cultures when I visited
Taiwan for a family reunion with my
parents they were nice enough to take me
to one of these traditional tribal
villages so this is what you see it’s
actually the Taiwan tribal village was
within three kilometers of my dad’s
childhood home so while we live there I
asked my dad are there any historical
documents about our family because I
wanted to see if there was historical
proof that our family had multiple
ethnicities instead of only being
ethnically Chinese so while I was there
my uncle was nice enough to send me what
is called the family name book so a name
book lists all of the sons that are born
to that family and most of these name
books are fairly accurate up to the last
six hundred years then they also will
list the probable oldest ancestor so you
know people always dream about being
descended from somebody great and
powerful and awesome
so my family is descended from a minor
royal Prince he was the 20th out of 22
sons
and he was significant enough that there
are historical records about him so he
was famous in his time for being a
well-known drunk and womanizer hmm
that’s what I can aspire to so actually
what struck me as most important about
this book and many Chinese families have
this book there are thousands that have
still survived is what is actually
missing from this book so all of the
wives mothers and daughters are missing
and through my own genetic and
historical textual research it is these
missing family women that contribute to
the multiple non-ethnic Chinese
ethnicities and my family narrative so I
just started a new job in bio
archaeology at Cal State University in
Los Angeles and I needed a new
archeological excavation in order to
take graduate students so I emailed all
of my colleagues who were still working
in China and Mongolia and asked if any
of them needed a bio archaeologist and
was starting a new excavation where I
could bring students with me so guess
which mongolian archaeologists said yes
the one who told me ten years earlier
that women should never be on an
excavation
so I went the first year and it was me
and 23 Mongolian men yeah so I was
worried that being foreign was going to
be difficult and actually the hardest
thing was simply being a woman so the
reason I was invited to go on excavation
at the cemetery is that the skeletons
they had come up with so far did not
match any of the skeletons that had been
already excavated in Mongolia
so among goli are there are two missing
dynasties what this means is that these
dynasties have been written about so
historical accounts from different
countries diplomatic roulette errs Wars
treaties trade but there’s no physical
evidence of these two dynasties so no
one has found their cities no one has
found their cemeteries one of the
reasons is that these two dynasties are
from the dark ages of East Asian history
so no one really knows who these people
were and why they disappeared so when I
got there the Mongolian students had
already played what’s my dynasty and had
compared the skulls from the cemetery to
their own and it didn’t match any of
them luckily the skulls did match ones
in China from an ethnicity called the
Shen Bay and the Shen Bay is the first
of those two missing dynasties so by
then we knew we had found the first one
so do you remember my drunk ancestor his
mother and grandmother were Shen Bay so
every year we still have some new
discoveries and I will be returning to
Mongolia in two weeks for the third year
of our of our excavation so this year
I’ve actually been invited to look at a
second cemetery in Mongolia because they
are thinking that this is the second
missing dynasty so I’m pretty excited
about that so what I hope for you all to
take away from my long and torturous
journey is
question your own identity so try to
look at it from the outside don’t take
for granted what people tell you you are
truly ask the questions and find out if
it’s actually true and if it’s actually
even just true for you so every person
in this room is unique there has never
been anyone exactly like you and there
never will be so take an active part in
how you construct and present present
your own youth unique sorry reality
thank you
[Applause]
archeology and you have some idea of
what archaeologists do so when you think
of archeology this is probably close to
what you picture so this is me on our
excavation in Egypt so behind me you can
see people excavating through the tomb
so archaeologists reconstruct the past
societies and the lives of the people by
using the culture by using these the
things that these cultures have left
behind so these things can include
pottery stone tools metal technologies
buildings and roads so this is what most
archaeologists study so I’m actually a
bio archaeologist you’ve probably never
met one of us there aren’t very many of
us in the world but what that means is
that I’m an archaeological specialist
instead of studying the things left
behind by previous people I study the
people themselves
so I excavate and analyze human
skeletons so currently I have two
excavations one in Egypt and one in
Mongolia
so I reconstruct the lives of ancient
populations based on evidence left
behind by the actual bones and teeth so
one of my research interests is mmm the
formation of identity so how we can
reconstruct individual and population
identity from the archaeological record
so I will be talking about my issues
with my own identity and how this led me
to choose bio archeology as my
profession and also how being an bio
archeologist
gave me specific insights into
understanding and finally accepting my
own ancestral history so my parents
emigrated from Taiwan to the United
States to go to graduate school so I was
actually born in Texas so my childhood
was a fairly confusing and lonely period
at home my parents expected me to act
like I was Taiwanese even though I had
no idea what that meant and at school I
was expected to be American so at home I
was expected to obey my parents and
never to ask any
at school I was expected to ask
questions and was actually called stupid
for staying quiet so once in class we
had to draw a family tree
I drew my family with my grandfather and
his three wives the teacher told me I
must be wrong she said my grandfather
had to have married each wife after the
previous one had died I said no he had
them at the same time and it was common
in many Asian countries before World War
two for wealthy men to have as many
wives as they could afford the teacher
actually accused me of lying and sent me
to the principal’s office so this is a
picture of my grandmother visiting us in
Texas so the third wife so as a child I
was always fascinated by bones so
whenever we had fried chicken or
Thanksgiving turkey I would ask my
parents to identify the bones for me
before I would actually eat and then I
would take the carcass and reassemble
the bones in anatomical order my parents
encouraged this behavior because they
were hopeful I would become a medical
doctor to the very great disappointment
I chose anthropology going away to an
anniversary going away to university was
the first time I actually met students
who were very knowledgeable and proud of
their ethnic identity so this actually
inspired me to learn more about my own
ancestral history so at that time there
were very few foreign archaeologists
working in East Asia and I wrote to all
five of them so five American
archaeology professors who did work in
China and I asked them how I could get
to China to work on their ancient
skeletons four of them told me the
Chinese would never let a foreigner work
on their skeletons and that I should
give up
last professor was the one at Harvard
most of the American archaeologists who
still work in China today are either his
students or his students students he
actually told me not to give up he
believed that if I was persistent but
polite that one day the Chinese would
give me the chance and he was right so
that particular letter I’ve still kept
to this day so working in East Asia was
a huge culture shock for me first of all
everyone around me all of a sudden was
Asian and I actually couldn’t tell
people’s faces apart because I had never
been around that many Asians before I
had the opportunity to work on several
archaeological excavations all over
China and neighboring Mongolia many
times I was the only foreigner and
sometimes the only woman on these
excavations hmm my first excavation in
Mongolia among calling graduate student
told me that women didn’t belong on
archaeological excavations that I should
be at home caring for a family so I have
researched thousands of human skeletons
spanning over 5,000 years and I had had
actually expected since my ancestors
came from China that I would look like
these skeletons that I was studying but
actually I didn’t I also didn’t look
like any of the Chinese that were living
in most of China what was even more
surprising was that while I was on
excavation in Mongolia the Mongolians
actually thought I was Mongolian so this
was quite ironic so most of you know
what the great wall is the great wall
was built by the Chinese to separate
their civilized part from the crazy
barbaric Mongolians north of the wall so
I looked not like the people I was
supposed to look like south of the wall
but like the barbarians north of the
wall so this made me realize that maybe
my family’s history was a lot more
complicated than being just Taiwanese so
while working in Beijing I was given the
opportunity to go on an archaeological
excavation near my father’s
please ancestral village in far
northwestern China now one left from my
family had been there in over 600 years
so my boss warned me that the Chinese
archaeologists in gansu province we’re
not going to be very civilized like the
ones in cosmopolitan Beijing he said
they were going to be pretty wild
so I told him you know I’m from Texas
and he said oh yeah you’ll be fine so
gansu province has always been sort of a
frontier region in China
it’s where the Silk Road actually exits
China on its way to the west it’s also
the region where Chinese Tibetan
Mongolian and Weger people have lived
together for thousands of years so the
archaeologists there were pretty well we
took a nine-hour crazy road trip through
the mountains and once we reach the
archaeological site I was really shocked
at how beautiful it was the river
running through the site was so clear
that it actually reflected the
vegetation off the mountains so that the
river was actually a beautiful shade of
pale green I asked how far my ancestral
village was and they said it’s just one
Valley over and I asked if it was just
as beautiful as this valley they said no
it’s a piece of crap that’s probably why
your ancestors left so the are cows just
like to play a game with me if they know
I’m around it’s called what’s my dynasty
so essentially what that means is in any
geographical region there’s sort of an
average face over time so the average
face lasts a couple of hundred years so
they like to ask most of them asked me
what dynasty their face is since I work
with skulls the interesting thing was
after analyzing the skulls from this
archaeological site I actually called up
my dad since it’s his family’s ancestral
region and I actually was able to tell
my dad that he’s still the face that he
has is the same face that’s been in this
region for the past 3,000
so my dad’s a geneticist and so as a
Christmas present one year we all had
our genetic tests done mmm what we found
out was that my maternal and paternal
grandmother’s both had colonies in
digital tribal DNA so these indigenous
people are related to Polynesians
actually and they were the people there
before the chinese and japanese
colonized taiwan they’re actually also
traditionally headhunters until the
early 1930s so I find that ironic that I
travel the world still collecting skulls
so for a long time anyone Taiwanese who
knew they had family members who were
partially tribal or fully tribal would
have been ashamed to mention it it’s
only been in the last few years that
this viewpoint has changed and that
people are now proud to claim this
heritage so now there are actually
several movements around Taiwan to
preserve these cultures when I visited
Taiwan for a family reunion with my
parents they were nice enough to take me
to one of these traditional tribal
villages so this is what you see it’s
actually the Taiwan tribal village was
within three kilometers of my dad’s
childhood home so while we live there I
asked my dad are there any historical
documents about our family because I
wanted to see if there was historical
proof that our family had multiple
ethnicities instead of only being
ethnically Chinese so while I was there
my uncle was nice enough to send me what
is called the family name book so a name
book lists all of the sons that are born
to that family and most of these name
books are fairly accurate up to the last
six hundred years then they also will
list the probable oldest ancestor so you
know people always dream about being
descended from somebody great and
powerful and awesome
so my family is descended from a minor
royal Prince he was the 20th out of 22
sons
and he was significant enough that there
are historical records about him so he
was famous in his time for being a
well-known drunk and womanizer hmm
that’s what I can aspire to so actually
what struck me as most important about
this book and many Chinese families have
this book there are thousands that have
still survived is what is actually
missing from this book so all of the
wives mothers and daughters are missing
and through my own genetic and
historical textual research it is these
missing family women that contribute to
the multiple non-ethnic Chinese
ethnicities and my family narrative so I
just started a new job in bio
archaeology at Cal State University in
Los Angeles and I needed a new
archeological excavation in order to
take graduate students so I emailed all
of my colleagues who were still working
in China and Mongolia and asked if any
of them needed a bio archaeologist and
was starting a new excavation where I
could bring students with me so guess
which mongolian archaeologists said yes
the one who told me ten years earlier
that women should never be on an
excavation
so I went the first year and it was me
and 23 Mongolian men yeah so I was
worried that being foreign was going to
be difficult and actually the hardest
thing was simply being a woman so the
reason I was invited to go on excavation
at the cemetery is that the skeletons
they had come up with so far did not
match any of the skeletons that had been
already excavated in Mongolia
so among goli are there are two missing
dynasties what this means is that these
dynasties have been written about so
historical accounts from different
countries diplomatic roulette errs Wars
treaties trade but there’s no physical
evidence of these two dynasties so no
one has found their cities no one has
found their cemeteries one of the
reasons is that these two dynasties are
from the dark ages of East Asian history
so no one really knows who these people
were and why they disappeared so when I
got there the Mongolian students had
already played what’s my dynasty and had
compared the skulls from the cemetery to
their own and it didn’t match any of
them luckily the skulls did match ones
in China from an ethnicity called the
Shen Bay and the Shen Bay is the first
of those two missing dynasties so by
then we knew we had found the first one
so do you remember my drunk ancestor his
mother and grandmother were Shen Bay so
every year we still have some new
discoveries and I will be returning to
Mongolia in two weeks for the third year
of our of our excavation so this year
I’ve actually been invited to look at a
second cemetery in Mongolia because they
are thinking that this is the second
missing dynasty so I’m pretty excited
about that so what I hope for you all to
take away from my long and torturous
journey is
question your own identity so try to
look at it from the outside don’t take
for granted what people tell you you are
truly ask the questions and find out if
it’s actually true and if it’s actually
even just true for you so every person
in this room is unique there has never
been anyone exactly like you and there
never will be so take an active part in
how you construct and present present
your own youth unique sorry reality
thank you
[Applause]
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