How and what we feed our children depends on a whole lot of different factors. It follows fashions, medical knowledge of the time and depends on the availability of different foods. We can learn a lot about childhood diet just by looking at or analysing teeth. In this blog post we look at the archaeological … Continue reading Teething problems?
In our last post we talked about the tragic story of the sisters who died of whooping cough just one day apart. Today in blog 4 of our Little Lives series, paleopathologist Dr. Annie Snoddy talks about the diseases that used to make childhood so dangerous for our colonists. Infants and children are the “canary … Continue reading Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases
Historically, children have been very much ignored by archaeologists, and stories of little lives are often not told. But we know that the lives of children touch the lives of the whole community, and so whatever we can find out about them is important. Because their bones and teeth are so delicate we're often limited … Continue reading Two sisters from St. John’s?
Today, in Blog 2 of our Little Lives series, Prof. Hallie Buckley, one of our co-directors, talks about how we've been looking at the children of St John's Burial Ground, Milton, and what can they tell us about the community... At the St John’s burial ground in Milton we found a number of graves of … Continue reading St John’s babes in arms
Today we begin our Little Lives blog series for New Zealand Archaeology week. Welcome! Come and join us as we shine a light on the children of colonial times, whose stories so often don't get told in the history books... Today Dr. Peter Petchey starts us off with some insight into the children in burial … Continue reading Children in the Archaeological Record
Women and children are often less studied in archaelogy - this blog series aims to put that right!A woman breast feeding her baby, with a dog sitting next to them in a rural setting. Etching by C. Lewis, 1848, after Sir E. Landseer, 1837.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This coming week the … Continue reading Introducing our blog series – “Little Lives”
Last week we posted on how Otago handled the Influenza epidemic of 1918. This week, as New Zealand moves into lockdown due to Covid-19, Dr. Peter Petchey tells us what isolation meant to the European colonial settlers of NZ. As we all go into four weeks of social isolation it will be the greatest change … Continue reading Isolation in the colonial period
As we write this blog post our country is just beginning to feel the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. This kind of pandemic is relatively rare in modern society... but the colonial settlers of Dunedin knew all about it. In this blog post we're exploring how our forebears dealt with concerns over disease spread. We … Continue reading Pandemics in the Past
Visiting a Chinese Camp Part 5 Today Les and Maisie conclude their tales of the Lawrence Chinese Camp by taking us into the darker underbelly of the nightlife - the camp's opium den. As with all of the other Chinese Camp posts, the broken English is deliberate and reflects spoken Chinese. We obtained flasks of … Continue reading Chinese Whispers: The darker side of the Lawrence nightlife
Visiting a Chinese Camp Part 4 Today we rejoin Les and Maisie Wong's visitors to the Lawrence Chinese camp, as they enjoy a meal with their hosts and are introduced to the camp's nightlife... Heading towards Ah Bok’s, we noticed Missy struggling with a pail of water. She said she was getting water from the … Continue reading Chinese Whispers: The Lawrence Chinese camp’s nightlife
Southern Cemeteries Archaeology Project 