Some Archaeology of Early Dunedin

Hi all,

 

It has been quite a busy last month for me, hence the lack of posts to this blog!

 

Part of the reason why I have been busy is that I am currently in the middle of a month of salvage or rescue archaeology work experience.

Most nations of the world have some form of protective legislation related to cultural/archaeological heritage. As noted in a couple of my previous posts, the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014, which has recently replaced the Historic Places Act 1993, makes the modification or destruction of any archaeological site¹ in New Zealand unlawful unless an archaeological authority has first been obtained from Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

As part of the planning process for the construction of new facilities for a local craft beer brewery in the city of Dunedin an archaeological authority was applied for due to the expected disturbance of late 19th century cultural material, as the site occupied land that was known to have been created during Dunedin's extensive historic land reclamation programme in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. A condition of the granted archaeological authority was that any digging expected to be deep enough to disturb the 19th century reclamation material be monitored by an approved archaeologist. I was given the opportunity to work fulltime as an assistant to the approved archaeologist, Dr Andrea Farminer of Jackie Gillies & Associates, and have spent the last two weeks helping with the retrieval of archaeological artefacts.

 

There has been a huge amount of material recovered so far, as was to be expected given the nature of the deposits - a massive amount of the city's rubbish was dumped into the harbour in order to extend the shoreline.

 

The purpose of my blog entry today is to briefly reflect on the implications of some of the material that has been recovered. I intend to write more later, dependent on my involvement further along the line - but as any archaeologist will tell you, collection of material/data is just one small step in the process - analysis and interpretation are by far the more time consuming (but also interesting, as it is at this stage that we are able to start building a picture of the behaviour of people in the past!).

As noted in an earlier post, historical archaeology refers to the archaeological study of societies from which we have contemporary historical records. Methodologically, it involves the complementary study of material remains of the human past and those historical records.

Written records can provide insight into the minds of those that created the archaeological record and into gaps in the archaeological record (some materials, such as textiles and food scraps, are less likely to survive in the archaeological record than other materials, such as metal and ceramic). Having just said all that there was a decent sample of textiles, and shoes and boots - lots of shoes and boots! - retrieved in this instance, potentially providing some interesting data.

Conversely, archaeology can complement incomplete historical records. Often the historical records that are available have been written by those from a particular section of society, such as the upper classes in Victorian society, and therefore we only have the picture from a limited perspective. The story of the lower classes is lost to history, but may be salvageable, at least in part, through their archaeology! Other examples of sections of Victorian society largely left out of much of the available written history are women and children.

To date we have found numerous traces of the children of 19th century Dunedin - child-sized shoes/boots, children's plates and mugs (printed with phrases such as "For a Good Girl"), a ceramic marble, and pieces of a doll-sized tea-set.

One of our finds was a piece of a child's "alphabet" dinner plate (note the embossed letters around the rim), like the one illustrated here. Source image here.

 

The material that we are recovering also gives us some insight into how 19th century Dunedin fit into an increasingly global world. The interconnections between distant human societies was certainly not a new development in this period, as evidence of long-distance trade and exchange extends far back into prehistory in many parts of the world, however the European Age of "Discovery" and colonialism expanded international trade routes to every corner of the world (Orser, Jr., 2004). Finding their way into the rubbish dumps of 19th century Dunedin were products from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Hungary and the United States of America.

 

Some of these artefacts hint at not only the movement of objects around the world, but also the spread of IDEAS. For the most part, the new wave of colonists in 19th century New Zealand would have seen themselves as still very much part of the British Empire and Victorian with regards to their beliefs and tastes. This is perhaps reflected nicely by one of the artefacts recovered - part of a ceramic teacup on which the words "temperance" and "industry" were printed.  When I found this it immediately invoked memories of a find I had mentioned in an earlier post - the Father Mathew teacup recovered from rubbish-fill associated with a late 19th century Irish tenement in New York City, which espoused the same, highly regarded, Victorian values of temperance, hard work and diligence. Irish Catholics newly arrived in America were actively encouraged to visibly signal assimilation of and adherence to these American Victorian middle-class behaviours and values in order to combat prevalent negative stereotypes (Brighton 2001).

In addition, we have also found the bulb of a white clay tobacco pipe stamped with an Irish harp and the slogan "HOME RULE". Smoking was an ever-present component of the Victorian social environment (Brighton 2006). Symbols or slogans seem to have been common features moulded or stamped onto smoking pieces, and could be an avenue for expressing social and political positions in a public arena. One can easily imagine first generation Dunedinites from Ireland standing in solidarity with their kin in America and back in the homeland in their support of the Irish Nationalist Home Rule movement. Another example of an idea/movement spreading across the globe.

Thanks for Reading!

 

Footnote

 ¹ An archaeological site is defined in the HNZPT Act as "any place in New Zealand (including buildings, structures or shipwrecks) that was associated with pre-1900 human activity, where there is evidence relating to the history of New Zealand that can be investigated using archaeological methods."

References

Brighton, S. A. 2001. "Prices that suit the times: Shopping for ceramics at the Five Points." Historical Archaeology 35(3): 16-30.

Brighton, S. A. 2006. "To begin again elsewhere: Archaeology and the Irish diaspora." In C. E. Orser Jr (ed.), Unearthing Hidden Ireland, pp. 193-216. Bray, Co. Wicklow: Wordwell.

Orser, Jr., C. E. 2004. Historical Archaeology (2nd ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.