A small parking lot in downtown Bozeman has long held the history of the city’s red-light district and its Chinese community, buried under asphalt and left undisturbed for decades.

Over the weekend, crews dug up the asphalt on the small lot on East Mendenhall Street — which is scheduled for redevelopment into a hotel — to give Montana State University students the opportunity to excavate for artifacts of Bozeman’s past.

Sheltering under tents from the rain, about three dozen Anthropology 215 students braved the damp cold and dug up fragments of pottery and glass, animal bones, beads, and even a small, golden figurine that popped out from the mud shining as bright as it might’ve decades ago.

The artifacts will help paint the picture of two marginalized communities in Bozeman’s history, s

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