French Farm: an archaeologist’s observations*

Posted on 1 August 2014 by Katharine

After a couple of weeks off from the blog, we thought it’d be a good idea to give you a run-down of what we learnt at French Farm. These are preliminary observations only, and could well change as we do more research! In no particular order, here you are.

The ground floor, French Farm house. Image: K. Webb.

Circular saw marks on timbers on the south wall of the first floor. Photo: K. Watson.

Circular saw marks on timbers on the south internal wall of the first floor. The house was built in at least two phases, with the first phase built by the French navy in the early 1840s. The timbers from the first phase were pit sawn and those from the second phase were circular sawn. Image: K. Watson.

Beaded match-lining like this lined a number of the rooms but the circular saw marks indicated that much of it was a later addition to the house. Photo: K. Watson.

Beaded match-lining like this in Room 7 (with Room 6 visible in the rear) lined a number of the rooms but the circular saw marks indicated that much of it was a later addition to the house. This in turn suggests that the original lining had been replaced. Image: K. Watson.

The wall between Rooms 1 and 2, looking south from Room 1. Circular saw marks on the wall lining indicated that at least part of this wall was a later addition. There was once a doorway to the right of the collapsed fireplace but it was boarded up at some stage. Probably after it was boarded up, access to the first floor was moved from its original location (in Room 7) to the right of the collapsed fireplace – it’s just possible to make out the ladder in this image. Image: K. Watson.

Part of the floor upstairs. The hole at right was probably the original means of accessing the first floor. And the hole would originally have been bigger, as the floorboards at left are circular sawn, unlike the pit sawn floorboards used for the remainder of the first floor (and the ground floor).

Part of the floor upstairs. The hole at right (above Room 7) was probably the original access to the first floor. And the hole would originally have been bigger, as the floorboards at left are circular sawn, unlike the pit sawn floorboards used for the remainder of the first floor (and the ground floor). Image: K. Watson.

Top: 1860 newspaper. Bottom: 1861 newspaper. These are on the wall between Rooms 1 and 2, next to the fireplace. Image: K. Watson & K. Webb.

Top: 1860 newspaper (yes, sorry, it’s very hard to make out the date on this image). Bottom: 1861 newspaper. These are on the wall between Rooms 1 and 2, right next to the fireplace, and the timbers they are stuck on were circular sawn. This could indicate that there was a circular saw operating in the area by 1860-61. And it could indicate that Phase 2 dates as early as 1860-61. Of course, this is based on the untested assumption that the newspapers were actually stuck on the wall in 1860-61. It’s equally possible that it had been stockpiled and was stuck on at a later date. And don’t forget the potential time delays with shipping material to New Zealand. Image: K. Watson & K. Webb.

Left: window into Room 1, east elevation. Right: door into Room 7, east elevation. Cut marks in the weatherboards indicated that this door and window had effectively switched places: the window in Room 1 replaced an original door and the door into Room 7 replaced an original window. Image: K. Watson.

The stones used as a footing underneath what was originally an external door into Room 1. Photo: K. Watson.

The stones used as a footing underneath what was originally an external door into Room 1. Image: K. Watson.

The first floor, looking south. The circular saw marks on the dividing wall indicate that it was a later addition. Photo: K. Watson.

The first floor, looking south. The circular saw marks on the dividing wall indicate that it was a later addition, and this upstairs space may originally have been just one room. Image: K. Watson.

This is a detail of a window frame upstairs, showing that the original window had been replaced. And either at the same time or later, this room had been lined with scrim (that’s what all the nails were for). Image: K. Watson.

Bottles under the floorboards in Room 2. The floorboards on the ground floor are butted, rather than tongue and groove, so I was expecting that we’d find some things under the floor. But small things, like fragments of glass and china, buttons, pins, that sort of thing. We did find that sort of thing, but we also found large bottles, and pieces of cutlery, which are not the sort of thing that’d just fall between the cracks in the floorboards. So, how did they get there? There are a couple of possible explanations: they could have been deliberately buried there before the floor was laid, or the floorboards may have been replaced at some stage. Image: K. Watson.

Bottles under the floorboards, Room 2. The floorboards on the ground floor are butted, rather than tongue and groove, so I was expecting that we’d find some things under the floor. But small things, like fragments of glass and china, buttons, pins, that sort of thing. We did find those small artefacts, but we also found large bottles, and pieces of cutlery, which are not the sort of thing that’d just fall between the cracks in the floorboards. So how did they get there? There are at least a couple of possible explanations: they could have been deliberately buried there before the floor was laid, or the floorboards may have been replaced at some stage. Image: K. Watson.

None of the artefacts we found could be readily identified as French. This doesn’t mean that they weren’t used by the early French occupants of the house, but it does make it difficult to prove. Further, at first glance, none of the artefacts found seemed to date from the 1840s and/or 1850s. Again, this doesn’t mean they weren’t used during the period – many common 19^th century artefacts were made for long periods of time.

Even though we didn’t find anything particularly ‘French’ in the way of artefacts, the house itself is clearly not English in origin. It’s the layout that’s the real give away. It’s just so different from the standard central hall with rooms opening off it that we usually see in Christchurch. French Farm house is at least 30 years older than most of the houses we’ve looked at in the city, but even those 1850s houses we’ve recorded still have a central hall – which, when you think about it, is a bit of a waste of space really (and something we’ve moved away from in more recent times). And once you take out the central hall, everything else changes, including the house footprint – French Farm is significantly longer than it is wide. It also changes the flow of people through rooms, meaning you have to pass through one room to get to another – not the case in a house with a central hall. Maybe the logical extension of this is less privacy?

Excavating in Room 1. Image: K. Watson.

The last thing that I learnt is that archaeology is fun! Maybe this seems a silly thing to say. But most of our work takes place on construction sites, surrounded by large diggers and other construction chaos, and – more often than not – we don’t find anything of note. For me personally, I spend most of my time sitting behind a desk, not doing any field archaeology. In either of these circumstances, it’s easy to forget how fascinating and enjoyable the process of simply digging or recording is. It’s also easy to lose sight of the fact that archaeology is all about learning more about the past, rather than simply recovering information for the sake of it.

Katharine Watson

* With thanks to Stephen Cashmore and David Brailsford for insightful conversations on site.

Three years on…

Posted on 21 February 2014 by Katharine

People often ask what we’re learning as a result of all this post-earthquake archaeology. Quite a lot, as this blog reveals. But, to date, the blog has focused on the individual sites and/or stories – there’s not been much of the big picture stuff. So, as the third anniversary approaches, we thought we’d share some of that higher level stuff with you. These are not well-researched, academic observations. These are our own personal observations about what all this archaeological work is telling us.

Buildings

Old houses fascinate me: there’s that sense of walking into someone else’s life and, as with all archaeology, that sense of mystery and the possibility of discovery. In spite of this, when I started to think about this post, I was surprised to realise that I rarely imagine the lives of those who lived in these houses. It turns out that I’m more of a scientist than I thought: I want to quantify the details of these buildings, and establish chronologies and typologies, and then think about what those patterns mean. I guess that’s what makes me an archaeologist.

A double-pane sash window with no lugs, in a c.1875 house. Image: K. Watson.

Thus far, we’ve learnt little details about houses (there’s been no time yet for any detailed overarching study). The progression from double-pane sash windows without lugs, to the same with lugs and then onto single pane sash windows (and then to casement windows, in the early 20th century). There was a change, too, from bow to box bay windows. And a change from match-lining to lath and plaster, although that may have been a class difference (and in some cases room lining related to room function). Rusticated or ship-lapped weatherboards were big in the 1870s. Rooflines changed in shape and pitch as the villa became the predominant house type. And the villa reached maturity in the 1880s.

A match-lined room in a c.1875 house. Image: K. Watson.

I love the variables that tell us about class, status and use of space: the hallway arch that differentiates public and private spaces; the skirting boards that shrink from the front to the rear of the house; the ceiling roses (far fewer around than I expected, although that may be a product of how well they survive); and that the number of windows into your front rooms (two or three) tells me something about the wealth of the builder/occupant, as does the size of the house.

1870s sash windows used in a late 1880s villa. Image: K. Watson.

A c.1875 house with rusticated weatherboards on the street front and plain weatherboards on the side. Image: K. Watson.

And these details add up to much more. The fact that you used sash windows without lugs in an 1880s villa tells me that you’re using recycled building materials (yes, even then). The fact that you have rusticated weatherboards on the street front of your house but not the sides tells me that you were aware of fashions but couldn’t quite afford to keep up with them. Your skirting boards are the same size throughout your house? Well, clearly you were well-off – or had more money than sense. Likewise if you had quite an odd arrangement going on with your skirting boards and architraves. Or if you built a brick house – although in this case it was equally likely that you were a bricklayer or a brickmaker.

An arrangement of skirting board and door surrounds only found (thus far) in the ‘grander’ houses. Image: K. Watson.

So you see, by observing and recording those small details and, yes, by quantifying them, I’m starting to build up a picture of the people who lived in the house. As the book title goes: “in small things forgotten”. And it’s seeing these things in bulk, as it were, that makes a difference. That’s what makes us so lucky to be carrying out archaeology in Christchurch right now: the size of the sample. In the space of three years, we’ve generated the quantities of data that would normally take decades to come by. The next challenge is to do something more with that data.

Artefacts and people

$Just a fraction of the material culture excavated from sites in Christchurch over the last three years. So many boxes!$

Just a fraction of the material culture excavated from sites in Christchurch over the last three years. So many boxes! Image: J. Garland.

It’s quite difficult to articulate some of the things that we’ve learned from the archaeology of Christchurch over the last three years, largely, I think, because of the sheer scale of material that’s been found. There’s just so much information to be gained from individual objects and individual sites and from those sites and objects as whole assemblages or landscapes.

As an artefact specialist, I have to say that one of the things that has jumped out at me most during my time working here is the diversity of Christchurch’s archaeology and past. It’s not just the variety of artefacts that’s noteworthy – although we are finding a range of artefacts on a scale that’s unusual and exciting – but also the diversity among the people who owned and used them.

A selection of the various artefacts found in Christchurch over the last three years. Top row from left:

A selection of artefacts found in Christchurch over the last three years. Top row from left: trepanned bone toothbrushes, effigy pipe bowl, frozen Charlotte doll, children’s ‘Father Lion’ cup. Middle row from left: toy horse, Pickering’s polish pot, ladies’ fobwatch, ‘Bouquet’ decorated plate. Bottom row from left: bottle (originally found with message inside) with Bass Pale Ale label, Nassau selter water bottle, Codd patent soda water bottle, black beer bottle, torpedo bottle (top), child’s shoe (bottom), clay pipe decorated with lady riding side-saddle (top), 19th century penny (bottom). Image: J. Garland.

As an archaeologist and anthropologist, the variety that exists among people isn’t something that I should be surprised by, but I have been a little, I think, in this context. The ‘English’ origins and culture of Christchurch are so often talked about as one of its defining characteristics as a city, yet we’re finding connections to places all over the world in its archaeological record.

What do you think it says? Photo: J. Garland.

Our message in a bottle, found in a bottle of English beer on a Christchurch site with German and Danish history. Photo: J. Garland.

We’ve found artefacts from Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the USA, Canada and China on sites throughout the city. Many of these are just as varied in their uses as they are in their origins, from children’s toys to unusual foods, messages in bottles and barbaric or ill-conceived medical products. We’ve also come across the stories of settlers from as far afield as Palestine and as close to home as Australia, settlers who came from every echelon of society, with all kinds of social and professional backgrounds. Connections like these – to people, places and materials – remind me that Christchurch wasn’t just a small colonial settlement at the bottom of the world. Instead it was an integrated part of a much broader story of migration, trade, globalisation, and changing ways of living in the English-speaking world during the 19th century. The archaeology of this city has as much to contribute to that story as it draws from it.

However, it’s not just where these people have come from that stands out to me, but also what we’ve learned of their lives here in Christchurch, particularly the way so many of them contributed to building of this city. There’s a real sense of entrepreneurship in much of the archaeology and history of Christchurch, in the stories and products of people like John George Ruddenklau, James and William Jamieson, H. F. Stevens, John Baxter and George Bonnington, James and William Willis , John Grubb, Thomas Raine and all of the city’s soda water manufacturers – even Charles Henry Cox, our resourceful shoe-polish fraudster. So many of these people built and ran successful businesses from the ground up, in a totally new and untested environment and, regardless of whether those businesses were successful or not, it’s this adventurous, entrepreneurial spirit that, I think, plays a large part in the character of Christchurch – both at its origins and now, as the city rebuilds after the earthquakes.

Katharine Watson and Jessie Garland

The archaeology of an archaeologist’s desk

Posted on 14 February 2014 by Katharine

This week’s post is a bit different. It’s not directly about Christchurch archaeology, but it is about an archaeologist working in Christchurch. We’ve taken a bunch of photographs of one of the desks in our office and we want you to take a look at them and tell us what you think the material culture on that archaeologist’s desk tells you. Which is pretty much what archaeologists do every day, albeit with things we find in the ground, or in old buildings – that is, we look at objects (artefacts) and try and interpret people’s behaviour, thoughts, beliefs, etc, from them. And it’s what everybody everywhere does all the time. We make all sorts of assumptions about a person based on the clothes they wear, the car they drive and the house they live in, amongst many other things. It’s just that archaeologists put quite detailed research into understanding the artefacts they recover, and the context from which they are found – because, after all, the past is a foreign country.

Post your thoughts in the comments (yes, I know the equation thing is a pain, but you should see the spam we were getting), and we’ll get back to you early next week with all the details about that desk…

You can think about some basic things, like what they’ve been working on, or go a bit deeper, and consider how they work.

NB: The scale in the photographs is, quite literally, to give a sense of scale. It’s not part of the story!

The desk.

The pile of papers above, ‘excavated’.

A changing world

Posted on 24 January 2014 by Katharine

Last week, Jessie’s post mentioned MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese, an early 20^th century foodstuff we found in Christchurch. This cheese pot, which looked so insignificant and sounded so odd, represents one of the steps en route to our modern culinary world. Even finding it on a site in Christchurch is representative of much that was changing in the 19^th century. Today we think nothing of eating food from all over the world, some of which arrives on boats and some on planes. In fact, for many of us, much of what we eat probably isn’t produced in New Zealand, in spite of the importance of farming and horticulture in our current economy – and historically.

MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese: then and now. Images: J. Garland & Clockwork Lemon.

What was this MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese? Modern descriptions – yep, you can still buy it – describe it as grated cheddar, but it looks like anything but. Sure, the cheddar might have been grated, but then a few other things are no doubt mixed in. Today, a range of preservatives have probably been added. In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, who knows what it was. But even then, it’s unlikely just to have been grated cheese, as that probably wouldn’t have survived the journey from Canada to New Zealand in good condition.

There are a range of things that are interesting about MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese turning up in early 20^th century Christchurch. Firstly, it’s an ‘added value’ product, and those weren’t nearly so common in the 19^th century as they are now. It represents a divergence from the sale of plain old ordinary cheese (or not so ordinary in some cases ) to something that has led to the plastic cheese slices that many of us probably had in our school lunches – or, if you’re American, to Kraft cheese, which was possibly quite closely related to MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese.

Secondly, even in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, New Zealand was producing a lot of dairy products. Not quite on the scale we do now, and we couldn’t export it then. So why on earth would we need to import Canadian cheese? (No offence to Canadians.) And how could it compete on the New Zealand market when it had been shipped that distance? And what on earth had been added to it to make it last that long? These aren’t questions we necessarily think about much these days – the speed of travel often means that nothing needs to be added to a food product to make it last the journey half way around the globe. And then there are other products with a shelf life of five years. Five years. Unimaginable in 19^th century Christchurch.

A 1902 article discussing the sale of MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese (albeit with a spelling mistake). Image: Evening Post 10/7/1902: 4.

An early 20th century grocer’s advertisement. Image: Poverty Bay Herald 13/6/1902: 2.

Which brings me to the third point that makes MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese in turn of the century Christchurch so interesting. People mostly bought fresh produce in the 19^th century. There was no such thing as a supermarket, although grocers did sell a range of products. You might have kept a dairy cow, pigs and/or chooks to supply some products (yes, even in the city); meat would have come from the butcher (or maybe from one of those pigs); and you might have grown your own vegetables, or bought them from the greengrocer, who probably only sold locally grown vegetables. Now, let’s not get too rose-tinted spectacles about this: it would’ve meant no – or very few or very expensive – bananas, oranges, blueberries, aubergines or any of those other things we love so much.

As mentioned last week, Kraft now own and produce MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese. And MacLaren’s may not have been that dissimilar to the original Kraft cheese, which was first manufactured in 1915, by one James Kraft. James was a cheese seller, peddling his cheddar from his cart around the city of Chicago. His business wasn’t doing too badly but the problem was that his cheese went off pretty quickly in the Chicago heat. But then he discovered that if he melted his cheese, while stirring it constantly, the fats didn’t ‘bleed out’ and he could pour the resulting mixture into a can and sell it. And it didn’t spoil in the heat (Moss 2013: 162-163). Voila! A revolution that changed the world. Think I’m overstating the case? Maybe. But look at Kraft’s position in the world today. And think about our current obesity epidemic, and all the causes that have been cited for that.

That seemingly innocuous jar of MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese, then, represents change. Change from a relatively local diet – and yes, to use modern parlance, a relatively low impact diet – to one where, in theory at least, anything in the world can be eaten anywhere at anytime, processed food can have a shelf life of five years, and all the change that has wrought.

Katharine Watson

References

Clockwork Lemon, 2012. Savory cheddar chive shortbread. [online] Available at: http://www.clockworklemon.com/2012/12/cheddar-chive-shortbread.html.

Evening Post. [online] Available at: http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.

Moss, M., 2013. Salt Sugar Fat: How the food giants hooked us. W. H. Allen, London.

Poverty Bay Herald. [online] Available at: http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.

Tales of a house

Posted on 10 January 2014 by Katharine

So, that message in a bottle? Well, it turns out it wasn’t the only interesting thing about the site it came from. A fellmongery, German Danes, shoes… read on!

First up, the bottle came from under a house built in 1887 (the land transaction records had suggested 1885, when the first mortgage was taken against the land; LINZ 1885). From the outside, this looked like a fairly standard 1880s villa (albeit modified), but inside – and its history – were not quite so standard. The differences inside weren’t that huge, but you have to understand that, in the 1880s and 1890s, there was little deviation from the standard plan for single-storey villas, so even the smallest difference is telling. On the outside, your standard villa might be flat-fronted or have a bay or two, and there might be some variation in the number of windows on the street-facing façade (depending on how much money you wanted to spend). Inside, villas of this type tended to have four rooms in the main body of the house, two on each side of a central hall. And there might have been some additional service rooms to the rear of this.

The house. The conservatory on the left was originally a veranda. Photo: K. Webb.

As I said, this one wasn’t so very different. Instead of a central hall, it had a sort of T-shaped hall, with six rooms opening off it. Not only was the hall a different shape, but there were more rooms than usual in the main body of the house, although the house was roughly the same footprint as the standard villa (and the house’s layout had barely been modified since it was built). And only one of the front rooms opened off the front hall – normally both did. While this detail seems particularly small, it’s actually more significant than the hall shape/position.

In the standard villa design, the front hall and the two front rooms, both of which opened off it, were the ‘public’ part of the house, where visitors were likely to be entertained. Usually, this part of the house was separated from the ‘private’ part by an arch in the hall, and guests were unlikely to pass from the public area to the private area. One of the front rooms was the parlour or drawing room and the other was the master bedroom, where guests might leave their coats (Stewart 2002). It’s always seemed slightly odd to me that the master bedroom was part of the public area of the house, and clearly it wasn’t in this house. Visitors would only have gone into the parlour, nowhere else.

The house’s history revealed that it was built for Neils Carl Heinrich Püschel (without recourse to a mortgage) and transferred shortly thereafter to Tryphona Püschel, his wife. The Püschels owned the house until 1896, when it appears to have been sold as a mortgagee sale (LINZ 1888).

Püschel. Not a very English name, that. The family was of German origin, although Neils – who was generally known as Carl – was born in Denmark. In fact, three Püschel brothers came to Canterbury, only one of whom was born in Germany. John, the eldest, and Carl established a fellmongery (where sheepskins were prepared) in Rangiora, before setting up a fellmongery in Avonside in the late 1870s. That’s right, Avonside – hard to imagine now! By 1887, however, Carl Püschel was no longer part of the business, which William Püschel continued to run on his own, albeit with funding from John Püschel (Macdonald n.d.: P610, 611; Watson 2013).

So could the layout of the house be explained as a fusion of New Zealand and German/Danish architecture? We don’t know, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

During our work on the house, we were fortunate enough to meet Jenny, the most recent owner. Jenny’s parents had bought the house in the 1920s, and Jenny had grown up there and lived there until the earthquakes changed everything. Jenny told us some awesome stories about the house, including how, after they’d bought the house, her parents journeyed to Christchurch on the train, complete with Dolly the cow. As a teenager, Jenny and her friends had played tennis on the lawn in front of the house (where Dolly had once grazed), with the aim of catching the eye of the local lads!

Not only did Jenny share her stories with us, she also shared her collection of early 20^th century shoes – her father was a Pannell of the Pannell bootmaking business. And she showed us a catalogue produced by the Pannells in c.1903-1904, containing all sorts of information about the most wonderful sounding shoes: Goloshed Balmorals, Watertight Bluchers or Lorne Shoes, anyone?

Lace-up lady’s ankle boots, with a military stacked heel and machine stitching along the vamp, tip and back quarter of the upper, c.1900-1920. Photo: J. Garland.

And then there’s that message in a bottle. But first, the bottle itself, which a number of you commented on, with a couple of you identifying the label. Jessie’s research indicates that the label represents two different companies: Read Brothers and Bass Brewery. The Read Brothers Bottling Company was founded in 1877 by William Thomas Read and John Walter Read. They were based in London and were among the largest, if not the largest, of the London bottling companies, inventing their own bottling machines as well as buying up and reusing old alcohol bottles from across London. The Bull Dog trademark, along with the ‘Dog’s Head’ brand, was registered by them in 1877 and featured the image of a bull dog in a circle on the label (Hughes 2006).

Read Brothers were closely associated with the Bass Brewery and their products, originally bottling only Bass sparkling champagne, cider and Guinness. By the early 1900s they were the largest exporter of Bass Pale Ale in the world. Bass Brewery, usually represented by the red triangle seen on the label, was founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton upon Trent. Their characteristic red triangle has the distinction of being the first trademark registered in the UK, under the Trademark Registration Act of 1875 (Hughes 2006).

Advertisements in New Zealand newspapers frequently link the two companies from 1878 until 1886, after which the two are mentioned in separate advertisements for quite a time. Then in 1911, they appear again in the same advertisements. We’re not sure exactly what this means!

An 1878 advertisement for Bass’s Pale Ale, bottled by the Read brothers. Image: New Zealand Herald 13/6/1878: 4.

As for the message itself, well, I reckon that one of my colleagues got it right when he suggested it was a prank. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. Firstly, although the names on the message are difficult to make out, we couldn’t find any of the possibilities we tried in Papers Past – or at least, we couldn’t make any that we found work, in terms of time, place and/or occupation. And you’d expect an ‘Hon.’ to turn up the newspapers, even if a humble labourer didn’t. Secondly, the spelling mistakes, including of some quite basic words, such as bottle. Thirdly, since the earthquakes, we’ve seen a number of time capsules reported on. There’s something about time capsules that’s undeniably appealing, perhaps through that sense of a very direct message from the past. So, perhaps some workers on the site thought they’d have a good laugh by aping those time capsules and leaving their own message for the future.

Kirsa Webb, Jessie Garland & Katharine Watson

References

Hughes, D., 2006. “A Bottle of Guinness Please”: The colourful history of Guinness. Phimboy, Berkshire.

LINZ, 1885. Certificate of Title CB105/33. Landonline.

LINZ, 1888. Certificate of Title CB133/286. Landonline.

Macdonald, G. R., n.d. Macdonald dictionary of Canterbury biography. Canterbury Museum.

New Zealand Herald. Available at: http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.

Stewart, D., 2002. The New Zealand Villa: Past and present. Penguin, Auckland.

Watson, K., 2013. Avonside wool scour: an archaeological assessment. Unpublished report for CERA.

Christchurch uncovered

Exploring Christchurch's past through archaeology

Author Archives: Katharine

French Farm: an archaeologist’s observations*

After a couple of weeks off from the blog, we thought it’d be a good idea to give you a run-down of what we learnt at French Farm. These are preliminary observations only, and could well change as we do more research! In no particular order, here you are.

Three years on…

Buildings

Artefacts and people

The archaeology of an archaeologist’s desk

A changing world

References

Tales of a house

References