Visiting a Chinese Camp (part 3) Today Les and Maisie Wong continue their trip back in time with the Chinese on the goldfields. Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 of their story, and then join us as we explore the store and the Joss house in the camp... After ‘Charlie’ had departed we … Continue reading Chinese Whispers: The Chinese store and Joss house
This story is a tale of research woes. We like to pretend everything goes to plan in our studies, but sometimes the archaeology doesn't want to play along... Lead is a really important element in human history. Very early on we realised that it was a useful metal for us, it was nice and soft … Continue reading Lead astray by burial practices
Visiting a Chinese Camp Part 2. Today Les and Maisie Wong continue their trip back in time to the Lawrence Chinese Camp, bringing to life the stories of the Chinese on the goldfields... Sleeping in the loft was not without its problems. Apart from being unfamiliar with sleeping on bales of straw there was the … Continue reading Chinese Whispers: Making a fortune on the goldfields?
Visiting a Chinese Camp part 1 Continuing our exploration of life on the goldfields for the Chinese, today our collaborators Les and Maisie Wong take us on a trip into the Chinese Camps of the past... ** note that in this tale Les and Maisie have transliterated directly from spoken Chinese, in which there are … Continue reading Chinese Whispers: Visiting a Chinese Camp
Today's blog is another from our excavation co-director and expert historical archaeologist Dr. Peter Petchey. Here he tells us more about the decorated coffins and how sometimes help in visualising the past comes from unexpected places... A previous blog entry looked at Victorian funerals and the decoration that was sometimes applied to coffins. As I … Continue reading Shopping for coffin decorations – how TradeMe helped us visualise colonial funerals
Today's blog post comes from Dr. Peter Petchey, our excavation co-director and expert historical archaeologist. Here he tells us about the Victorian penchant for making death beautiful, and what coffin decorations can tell us about the past. It is trite but true that the dead don’t bury themselves. Even if the deceased left instructions, it … Continue reading Beautiful Death – coffin decorations in colonial NZ
This week we have exciting news, one of our first settler stories has been accepted for publication in the academic journal "Bioarchaeology International". You can find the full article here but this is our short, snappy summary of the study. Burial 21 is one of the identified individuals in the St. John's Milton sample, and … Continue reading Telling the stories of our settlers, one by one.
This week we're celebrating success at Southern Cemeteries Archaeology. Our excavation co-director Prof. Hallie Buckley has just received a two-year James Cook fellowship from the Royal Society/ Te Apārangi to conduct in-depth study of the skeletons, and archival research relating to the project. Prof. Hallie Buckley, co-director of our excavations and recipient of one of … Continue reading Making Microhistories – New Funding for Prof. Hallie Buckley
Today's post is the start of our 'Chinese Whispers' series giving insight into the life of the Chinese in Otago, written by Les and Maisie Wong from the Otago and Southland Chinese Association. Les and Maisie, as representatives of descendants of the Chinese goldminers, are sources of massive amounts of genealogical, cultural and historical knowledge. … Continue reading Chinese whispers: The lure of gold during the 1800s
In this project we’re interested in building up a picture of colonial people’s lives using their biology. But how are we actually doing that I hear you ask? In this series of blogs we’ll be looking at the techniques our group are using to get to the bottom of things. Or throw up more questions … Continue reading It’s all about chemistry!
Southern Cemeteries Archaeology Project 