Not just horsing around

Horses were a big part of everyday life in 19th century Christchurch and were integral for transport and farming endeavours. They were present on the Canterbury Plains long before the Canterbury Pilgrims arrived in 1851, with John Deans having imported three mares for his Riccarton farm in 1843 (Orwin, 2015: 52). But horses were not just for transport or farming, they were also a big part of the community’s leisure time, with horse racing becoming a beloved pastime for many Cantabrians. While horses are used a lot less for transport and farming these days, horse racing is still a widespread sporting activity.

Photograph of a boy riding a toy horse and buggy in c.1920-1930s. Image: Roland Searle, 1920-1930s.

The settlement of Canterbury had been underway less than a year before a public meeting of colonists was called to discuss the establishment of a jockey club in the fledging township in September 1851 (Lyttelton Times, 6/9/1851: 1). The results of this first meeting appear to have been promising, with many of the leading names among the colonists pledging support. They were already discussing their intention to select a site for a racecourse in Riccarton and to have the grounds prepared in time for the first Canterbury Anniversary festival races which were to be held in December 1851.

The objectives for forming such an institution went beyond the mere establishment of horse racing for sport, but also for encouraging the breeding of good horses which “has always been considered a truly English object” (Lyttelton Times, 20/9/1851: 5). The Canterbury plains were considered particularly well adapted for the production of superior horses, and it was hoped that such breeding establishments would stimulate economy and cause an increased demand for locally grown oats, hay, and straw.

Despite the promise shown at the first meeting, for reasons not outlined in the contemporary newspapers, the jockey club was not established in 1851. Nevertheless, even without a jockey club, Cantabrians would not be without horse racing. For the first three years of settlement horse races were held for the December anniversary festival in Hagley Park, organised by a committee of volunteer citizens (Lyttelton Times, 20/12/1851: 6, 25/12/1852: 10, 3/12/1853: 12).

Advertisement to form anniversary race committee in November 1853 (Lyttelton Times, 5/11/1853: 1)

A public meeting to discuss the formation of a jockey club in Canterbury was held for a second time in September 1854 (Lyttelton Times, 16/9/1854: 1). Many of the same gentlemen were present at the second meeting as at the first, and the same high objectives were discussed, but this time the meeting proved successful and the Canterbury Jockey Club (C.J.C.) was formed (Lyttelton Times, 8/11/1854: 4). The first general meeting of the C.J.C. was held in early December 1854 to establish the rules of the club and elect its first officers (Lyttelton Times, 29/11/1854: 1). The annual Canterbury Anniversary races were not held in December 1854 in ‘consequence of the general unsuitableness of the season’ and instead they were postponed until the following March (Lyttelton Times, 20/12/1854: 5). As an alternative to the anniversary races, the C.J.C hosted a New Year’s Day race on their ‘new course’ on 1st January 1855 – utilising for the first time the racecourse at Riccarton (Lyttelton Times, 23/12/1854: 4).

Photograph of Phar Lap galloping in c.1920s. Image: Te Papa Tongarewa.

The C.J.C.’s first official race meeting was held at the Riccarton Racecourse in March 1855. The festivities comprised two days of events which included a hurdle race and races over a half mile, one mile, two miles, and three miles (Lyttelton Times, 17/2/1855: 1). The meeting was well patronised with attendance on the course being numerous (Lyttelton Times, 14/3/1855: 4). Since its inaugural race in 1855, the Riccarton Racecourse has continued to be the home of racing in Christchurch and since 1865 it has been the location of the annual New Zealand Cup race.

Map of the facilities at the Riccarton Racecourse in 1939. Image: Evening Post, 5/8/1939: 22

Just as it had been predicted in 1851, the formation of the Canterbury Jockey Club and the establishment of horse racing in Christchurch stimulated the Canterbury economy. The breeding of thoroughbred racehorses was quickly taken up, and numerous advertisements for stud horses of fine racing lineage began to appear in the local newspapers.

Advertisement to stud the well-known thoroughbred horse Joe Miller (Lyttelton Times, 20/10/1855: 2)

Auction houses were also erected for the specific purpose of selling horses. David Barnard had constructed his horse repository on Cashel Street (near the corner of High Street) by the beginning of 1863 (Press, 3/1/1863: 6). Within three years Barnard had erected a specialised area within the auction house specifically for the sale of racehorses which he called “the Christchurch Tattersall’s” (Lyttelton Times, 8/6/1866: 2). The name Tattersall’s persisted, and the Tattersall’s auction houses remained a fixture on Cashel Street until the 1930s. Barnard’s horse repository also became closely linked with the Canterbury Jockey Club, with the club using the premises as its club rooms for a number of years (Lyttelton Times, 17/7/1865: 2). A description printed in the Lyttelton Times in December 1865 indicates just how popular and well patronised the horse bazaar was:

It is well known that at Barnard’s repository thousands almost congregate every Saturday. It is the Christchurch fair, where all classes, high and low, rich and poor, are to be found. Horse dealers, horse buyers, horse sellers, and horse breakers are always to be found here (Press, 14/12/1865: 3).

Photograph of Tattersall’s horse bazaar (originally Barnard’s repository) on Cashel Street in the c.1880s. Image: Christchurch City Libraries.

Back in 2014, we excavated part of the site of Tattersall’s horse bazaar, and while we didn’t find remains associated with the bazaar itself, we did uncover a cellar structure which you can read about here.

With horses playing such a big part of everyday life in 19th century Canterbury, it is no surprise that horses appear in the archaeological record. Horseshoes are ubiquitous on every site, which attests to the ubiquitous nature of horses as the primary source of labour and transport prior to automation [1].  I’m reminded of the ‘Great horse manure crisis of 1894‘, the notion that in the late 19th century the issue of removing horse manure from the street was one of the major issues facing urban transport and development. To remove the manure, you’d need to bring in more horse and carts to remove it, which just produces more manure! It’s horse manure all the way down!

Anyway, we also find the remains of horse bridles, yokes, and other accoutrements, further attesting to the primary role of our equine accomplices in hauling everything (including their own manure) that the fledgling city of Christchurch needed.

Horse workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your yokes!

Toy horses have always been popular, and we find these on sites as well.

Toy horse (left ) and horse shoe (right). Image K. Bone.

The remains of the horses themselves are also relatively common. Less so than sheep, pig, or cattle, but isolated horse bones are often parts of an assemblage, likely the remains of some butchered for dog feed. On occasion we find whole skeletons, not of racehorses, but likely of work horses submitted to the earth for their final rest.

Horse skeletons found associated with a stable at the Isaac Theatre Royal Site (left) and at in a farming context at Redcliffs (right)[2].

A selection of ceramics showing horse imagery.

And in the very end…

Early 20th century Gloy Glue pot. Image: J. Garland. To read more about 19th century glue, see here.

Lydia Mearns

Footnotes

[1] Ed – Unfortunately, by nature of being excavated, any luck contained therein these shoes has already slipped out.

[2] Ed – Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet/ Feels shorter than the Day/ I first surmised the Horses’ Heads/ Were toward Eternity

2022 – Turns out it can get worse.

With the dawn of a new year (yes, we know it’s already April May June July, no we are not accepting constructive criticism at this time) the Under Over team has hit the ground running. The dream of a leisurely start back to the working week was quickly dashed with the rise of the new Court Theatre build. Kirsa assured us it would be a straightforward and easy site. Kirsa was in fact wrong. We have also been juggling many other sites, as per usual.

So, what have we all been up to? Our historians are hysterically working their magic, Clara is buried somewhere in the lab, while Jamie and Carly are sticking it out in Moncks Bay and the redzone. Nigel is in a brick barrel drain and Ashburton AND Akaroa (at the same time?!), Hamish is covered in rust, and Tristan is glued to a microscope. Our lovely lab team, Wendy and Naquita have frantically been washing shoes and torpedo bottle bases, Kirsa has been on field school (lucky) and invoicing (unlucky), and Neda, Rebecca, and Alana can be spotted in the wild somewhere in the CBD. All in all, the whole team has been putting in some major mahi these past few weeks months, and we thought we’d kick off the blog this year with some of our cool finds (It’s still technically the start of the year because we haven’t hit June July August yet, that’s our story and we’re sticking to it). We’ve summarised it down to our most dastardly sites and exciting finds for you (translation: we wrote most of this in early March… we’ve been busy).

Buckle up kids.

Court Theatre – Performing Arts Precinct

If any of you readers have been watching or reading the news recently (yes, we are famous now) you may have heard about the Court Theatre site. Additionally, if you  visited the library in January or February you may have spotted us working at the new Court Theatre site on the corner of Colombo Street and Gloucester Street. We were easy to spot given we were in full cover white asbestos suits – which are great in 30-degree heat (Rebecca here, did you know you can still get sunburnt through a full coverage suit? *Single tear smiling face*). Fun fact: asbestos itself is one of the few weaknesses of the archaeologist (along with alcohol free beer and snakes – naturally).

Figure 1. An archaeologist in the wild. If you listen carefully, you can hear them begrudging the asbestos.

The new Court Theatre site was originally home to Cookham House, a boot factory in operation from 1851. Many other businesses were soon established on the site facing Colombo Street. These included grocers, a butcher, a jeweller, a China and glassware shop, a confectioner, photographers, solicitors, drapers, and more. Essentially, this was a major boujie shopping centre, comparable to The Crossing or Merivale (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Colombo Street looking south in the 1880s. Image: Burton Brothers Studio, c.1884c.

With it being the site of a former boot factory, we had initially joked about how we would find large pits full of shoes. Unfortunately, the joke was on us as this was literally what we found (Figure 3). Feature 1 was a very large rubbish pit with “an entire archaeological layer of compressed shoes” (any Douglas Adams fans out there?). How many shoes you ask? Two fridges full.

Figure 3. Feature 1 half sectioned with the compressed layer of archaeological shoes, some bottles, and underlying roofing slate.

In total we encountered 49 archaeological features. I too was disappointed we didn’t have one more to get to 50 but believe me 49 was plenty. We encountered all sorts of features including rubbish pits of the large, extra-large, and outrageously large variety; multiple wells and artesian bores; building remains such as foundations and pile holes; a brick cesspit; a latrine; an infilled gully; and much more. With bulk earthworks only recently finishing we haven’t completed our analysis just yet, so stay tuned for future updates. But in the meantime, here are some photos!

Figure 4. X marks the spot of yet another very large archaeological feature.

Figure 5. A brick cesspit – don’t wonder too hard about what those layers are made up of.

Figure 6. A red brick well!

Figure 7. A yellow brick well! (follow, follow, follow, follow)

Figure 8. A clay smoking pipe recovered from a rubbish pit at the Court Theatre site – we may have an upcoming blog on clay pipes so stay tuned!

Superlot 15 – Cambridge Terrace

Much like the name suggests, there were many super things about Superlot 15. The ground was super hard, it was super hot, and the archaeology was super cool. Unlike the Court Theatre rebuild, which featured a fun viewing platform shaped like a large library, you probably didn’t see us digging at Superlot 15. This is because we were hiding a metre below the surface in the one corner on the site that was filled to the brim with archaeological features. Fun fact – the metre-high edge-of-excavation was to the west, so we spent a lot of time baking in the sun! Luckily, we had Brent on site who took it upon himself to build us a sunshade made up of various bits and pieces lying around on site, which we highly appreciated. We love an innovative king. He also gave us biscuits. Is he the best digger operator ever? We think so.

Figure 9. Local archaeologists grateful for shade on hot day. Photo also featuring variations of the ‘sexy sunhat’ and ‘naughty neckshade.’ Safety first, everybody! Make sure to bring electrolytes to site on a hot day (it’s got what plants crave).

The area currently dubbed ‘Superlot 15’ is an area originally made up of parts of 6 town sections, which was used for residential purposes. The houses were owned and built primarily by Edward Coxhead Mouldey and Charles Wellington Bishop. While the Bishop family likely lived on the section until the 1890s, Edward Mouldey owned Town Sections 229-233, and we suspect he did not personally live in all 8 houses on his own. Following his bankruptcy in 1888, ownership of Town Sections 229-233 eventually passed to Alfred Bullock, who leased the 8 dwellings. Aerial imagery from the 1940s suggests the 19th century houses survived well into the 20th century!

Figure 10. Detail from Strouts’ 1877 map of Christchurch showing buildings present on the relevant town sections. Town Sections 227 and 228 (coloured blue) were owned by the Bishops until the 1890s. The project area is indicated in red. Image: Strouts, 1877.

Figure 11. Aerial image from 1946, showing buildings previously on Superlot 15. 263 Cambridge Terrace (Town Sections 227 and 228) indicated in blue. The project area is outlined in red. Image: LINZ, 1946.

We had already spent quite a bit of time on Superlot 15 since works began and had found a scattering of archaeological features across the site, but nothing too dramatic. Turns out this gem was truly saving the best (?) for last. In the space of two days, we went from 10 features to 29, and we entered what I like to call ‘Survival Mode.’ There’s nothing quite like densely packed earth to push your excavation skills to the limit. The crew at Superlot 15 were very patient with us while we desperately tried to wrap our head around these features.

Figure 12. A small portion of our small area, showing rubbish pits in the fore, mid, and background.

Figure 13. Facing the opposite direction from the previous photo, some more features. A lot of the features on this site appeared to be connected for various reasons; these rubbish pits were connected/disturbed via a 20th century drainpipe. It made for some interesting digging!

A large amount of drainage features were encountered on site – earthenware pipes, a brick sump, and a brick chamber for an artesian well. This confirmed what we had suspected all along – whoever was living here did at some point have running water and plumbing – wow! The rubbish pits on this site came in all shapes and sizes, mostly containing a lot of household refuse typical to the 19th century including a wide range of ceramics, torpedo bottles, condiment bottles, tonnes of sheep bones, piles of oyster shells, and some other fun finds. Pictured below is Rebecca holding an anchovy paste jar. You can see by her expression that she is shocked people would eat something so repugnant. Another fun find was the Cavalier smoking pipe pictured below. This site is not yet finished, so stay tuned for more hard-packed earth.

Figure 14. Rebecca gasping at the anchovy paste jar recovered at Superlot 15. Endorsed by her Majesty Queen Victoria, we however, remain sceptical of the product.

Figure 15. Local French man featured on smoking pipe.

Figure 16. A half-sectioned rubbish pit with layers. From this view we can tell the rubbish was being deposited from the west (right) side of the feature. Feet included for artistic purposes only.

Updates from The Lab

The stoneware bottle pictured below is an unusual find. It was made for a specific pub, but not a pub in Christchurch, or even New Zealand. The impression on the bottle reads “BRAY/ Six Bells/ Chelsea base: FULHAM/ STONE/ POTTERY”. This tells us the stoneware flask was made by the Fulham Pottery, which was founded by John Dwight in 1672 and primarily manufactured stoneware up until the 1950s (Oswald, et al., 1982). Six Bells was a public house located at 197 Kings Road in Chelsea, that was established by at least 1722 and is still operating today as a restaurant. Members of the Bray family are listed as the publicans from at least 1823 until at least 1866. By 1881, a Christopher J. Aston is listed in the post office directories as the manager, indicating that the Bray’s association with the pub ended sometime after 1866 and before 1881 (pubwiki, 2022).

This suggests then that the stoneware flask was made by the Fulham Pottery specifically for the Bray family and the Six Bells pub – in Chelsea. It is hard to date the flask based on the available evidence, but a manufacture date range from approximately 1823 until 1866 is assumed.

While examples have been found on other Christchurch archaeological sites of table wares that have been commissioned specifically for hotels, there have not been any examples of stoneware bottles commissioned by, or for businesses located outside of New Zealand. Searches of Heritage New Zealand’s digital library revealed that it is probable that this is the first example of this type of bottle found on a New Zealand archaeological site. Google Image searches could not find a similar bottle, suggesting that either not many of the bottles were produced, or that not many have survived and that they are rare. It is likely that the stoneware bottle was brought specifically by Mr Bowley to New Zealand. Further historical research would need to be conducted into the Bowley family to determine what their connection to Chelsea and the Six Bells pub was, but the presence of the bottle would suggest that there was some connection.

Figure 17 . The stoneware bottle manufactured for the Six Bells pub in Chelsea.

To Conclude

All in all, the team have been working really hard (as per usual) and it’s been a rather exciting start to the year. Christchurch continues to surprise us with new archaeological discoveries and while we jest about how exhausting our sites have been recently, we wouldn’t have it any other way (Rebecca here – still advocating for a three-day weekend personally). While we quietly pray for a brief reprieve from field work to tackle our reports, we do in fact thrive in the chaos. Stay tuned for future finds as rumour has it, someone has a stadium to build or something.

-Rebecca and Alana <3

The archaeology of uncertainty

Evening, love, how’s your day?

Part 1: the archaeology of uncertainty

As a discipline, archaeology carries with it a lot of uncertainty. A number of times, I’ve been faced with an artefact, feature, or stratigraphic sequence that is difficult to figure out, and that could be one or a combination of several things. Sometimes further investigation clears it up, and sometimes you just have to come to terms with the fact that you may never know for sure. We don’t have a time machine, or ghosts that we can ask to recount their life stories. Radiocarbon dates sometimes have error margins of several decades, which mean we may never know the exact day Māori set foot on Aotearoa. When we excavate a rubbish pit in Christchurch, we try to associate it with a particular occupant, but are often in a situation where the uncertainty of the artefact dates means that an assemblage could have belonged to one or more family groups over a long period of time. A large part of the discipline is interpretation, and there’s a joke among archaeologists that goes something like: “if you put one archaeologist in a room with a question, they’ll come out with two different answers”. People commonly conceive of the past as something that is solid and unchanging in a way that the future is not, but we are constantly re-evaluating our understanding of the past based on new evidence. Looking into the past is like looking into the horizon on a hot day, the farther you look, the hazier it gets. As an archaeologist, uncertainty is just something you just have to get used to.

chicken feeder

Sometimes we figure out brief mysteries pretty quick, like Clara’s identification of this chicken feeder recently featured on out Facebook page.

Features 41 and 56, at the CJESP site, a pair of  likely privy pits formed in the 1880s. These privy pits, and the artefacts within them, may have been associated with Richard Brown,  a bootmaker, or a Mrs. Rose, a dressmaker, or perhaps both. Both were active at the corner of Durham and Tuam Streets around the time the artefacts were deposited (Williams, et al. 2017).

upside down bottle feature

Still a mystery. A circular feature of carefully placed upside-down bottles at the Christchurch Convention Centre (Trendafilov et al. in prep). We’re still not sure exactly what the purpose of this was. Image: Hamish Williams.

Part 2: The archaeology of uncertainty

At the start of the February, I went on a three-week holiday to the exotic ‘northern hemisphere’. At the start, the recently reported coronavirus seemed restricted to China. Three weeks later, heading home from the UK, that country was reporting 8 or so cases. Our flight through Hong Kong got re-routed through the US. On 28 February, New Zealand reported its first case of covid. Less than a month later, NZ case numbers surpassed 100, and NZ went into Alert Level 4 on the 25th of March. Time was running wild.

As I’m writing this, the global total of the coronavirus pandemic has surpassed 30 million cases, and just passed 1,000,000 deaths. Not a good one at all. The west coast of the USA is being ravaged by wildfires, just as the east coast of Australia was at the start of the year. Apparently approximately half the world’s population is in some sort of lockdown restrictions. The ‘travel bubble’ between NZ and Aus that was discussed optimistically in the middle of the year now seems unlikely to occur before 2021. I googled ‘trans-tasman bubble’ and got internet reckons ranging from ‘weeks away’ to ‘mid-2021’ so who the blimmin’ heck knows. Don’t speak too soon, the wheel’s still in spin.

When I talk to people about this period, I often remark how we lived in a world without plans (though the return to Level 1 across the country has reproduced some kind of normality). The spectre of uncertainty has devoured the ideas of all those kiwis who planned to make an overseas trip, or start an OE or a business, or buy a house. An untold number of people don’t know when they’ll see loved ones again. Uncertainty isn’t a peculiarity of our current phase, but it seems more present to us because so much of our modern mode of living, things we took for granted, have been affected by the pandemic and the human response to it. In truth, we are constantly exposed to change, both in our natural environment, and in the behaviour of our fellow humans. The outlook for Thursday? Your guess is good as mine.

So what does archaeology tell us about uncertainty and how people responded to it? Much of the archaeological approach to uncertainty is related to the variability, both seasonal and year to year, of the environment and the resources we use and consume. The change of the seasons may be regular, but there can be great variability, and therefore, uncertainty in these seasons: really rotten weather, temperatures, winds, pests, and so forth, all affecting seasonal produce, and causing pressure from the hinter to the heartland. This variability is not solely environmental (if such a thing exists), but is also exacerbated by human activity like overharvesting, overstocking, habitat destruction etc. etc. etc. For a local example of seasonal variability, my bloody cauliflower hasn’t seen fit to sprout heads this year, so I’m going to have to look elsewhere for ingredients for my aloo gobi. Every time I thought I’d got it made, it seemed the taste was not so sweet.

cauliflower traitors

Traitors.

The environment – natural and cultural – offers us good years and bad years, or even less specifically, good times and bad times. Archaeologists generally lump cultural responses to food variability and scarcity into four categories: mobility (go somewhere else), diversification (eat a bunch of different stuff), storage (eat some stuff that you have now, later), and exchange (get some stuff to eat from somebody else; Halstead and O’Shea, 1989). Some of these approaches are better suited for dealing with different kinds of variability, and some strategies mesh better in combination: mobility and diversification work well together because food resources tend to be environmentally scattered, whereas mobility and storage are often considered non-complimentary because large surpluses have to be left behind if you’re moving elsewhere. Our modern global food system tends to be a combination of diversification, storage, and exchange, the latter two combining to mean that lots of seasonal produce is now available year-round. If you’ve ever done seasonal harvest work or fly-in fly-out work, mobility will be a familiar part of the economic system to you.

As a buffering strategy against uncertainty, storage effectively turns a seasonally available surplus of food into future food for less productive seasons and can see you through a bad harvest in the future. A cucumber might go off in a week or so, but you can move into a new flat and find a pickle jar from the 1980s still lurking in the back of the cupboard. I like to think of a refrigerator as a one-way, slow-moving time machine. Every time you put something in there, you’re sending it a short length of time into the future, though it does continue to age slightly slower on its journey. Storage of food is not a uniquely human behaviour, but we’ve certainly nailed the greatest diversity of techniques  – including drying, freezing, fermenting, etc. – and food stored or preserved in some way forms a major part of the human diet worldwide. The development of animal husbandry could also be seen as a way to store meat ‘on-the-hoof’. My homemade lockdown kimchi (yes, I’m a hipster) is part of the grand tradition that includes 2000 year old beef jerky and 9,200 year old fermented fish. Storage is often related to the conversion of a resource that occurs in substantial amounts over a relatively short period of time, so is associated with aggregate communities (often dispersed) coming together to harvest and prepare. In Aotearoa, Māori used and continue to use a range of techniques to store and preserve food, including smoking the huge numbers of tuna/eels that migrate out to sea each year, and the preservation of the annual tītī/mutton bird harvest in pōhā/bull kelp containers (Anderson 1997, 1998). A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but a bird in vacuum-seal might be a bit more expensive this year seeing the season was cut short.

eel poha

Preparing pōhā in 1910. Image: Basil Keane, ‘Te Māori i te ohanga – Māori in the economy – The Māori economy’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/25761/poha-containers (accessed 2 October 2020). Story by Basil Keane, published 11 Mar 2010

dry

Drying eels at Waihora/Lake Forsyth, Canterbury, 1948.
Image: John Wilson, ‘Society – Food, drink and dress’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/2542/drying-eels (accessed 2 October 2020). Story by John Wilson

bog butter

Bog butter, and its wooden container, from County Kildare, Ireland (National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology). This was butter was buried to preserve it almost 2,500 years ago, but evidently never retrieved. Image: Tristan Wadsworth.

Perhaps the most archaeologically visible form in storage in New Zealand archaeology is the kūmara storage pit. One of the most commonly recorded archaeological features from Horomaka/Banks Peninsula right up to the top of the country, these semi-subterranean pits are the remains of roofed storage facilities for kūmara and other crops. The cool, dry conditions allow the kūmara to keep for longer, both for food over winter, but also to ensure a supply of seed crops for the next year’s planting (Davidson et al. 2007).

Remains of kūmara  storage pits, Auckland. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

In 19th century Christchurch, preserved foods perhaps are over-represented in the archaeological record, as they tend to be associated with storage containers that survive through to the modern day, whereas fresh ingredients do not. So we often find vinegar bottles, branded and unbranded preserving and canning jars, and the classic stoneware ‘oyster jars’ for pickled oysters or fish and other food pastes.

‘Oyster jars’. Often used for storing pickled oysters. Image: Chelsea Dickson.

A typical wide-mouth pickle jar. Good for preserves of all sorts. Image: Clara Watson.

An Anchovy Paste jar found in Christchurch and accompanying recipe from 1904. Image: J. Garland, Otago Witness 17/08/1904: 67.

I also want to talk about one of the sites we’ve covered on the blog before: a bonded warehouse that is one of our largest and, to me, most interesting central city sites, and one of multiple bonded warehouses that existed in nineteenth century Christchurch. Jessie’s blog describes how the bonded warehouse was a building in which “goods could be stored and remain exempt from customs duties. They were usually used to store goods and bulk merchandise until they were distributed for retail, at which time those duties and taxes would have to be paid.” The rubbish pits from this site contained remarkably uniform deposits of numerous, identical, and still sealed alcohol bottles, interpreted as stock – full bottles – that had been destined for sale in Christchurch, but that never made it to market, and were instead discarded. Now I’m certainly no economist (Don’t want to be a richer man, and couldn’t tell you the difference between a $4b fiscal hole from an $11b one), but it seems to me that at least in part, the bonded warehouse represents an adaptation to the uncertainty of the international import market. Stock could remain in storage, exempt from customs tax, until such time as it was profitable to sell. However, the discarded stock we find at these sites shows us that trying to wait out the market uncertainty didn’t always result in a final positive outcome (Garland et al., 2014).

One of the rubbish pits found at a bonded warehous site, containing a large number of J & R Tennent sealed bottles. Image: J. Hughes.

A couple of the J & R Tennent sealed tops found in the rubbish pit shown above. The side of the seal reads: “Bottled by J & R Tennent” and (not pictured) “Betts & Co / Patent / Patent / Trade Mark / London.” Betts & Co were the original patentees and manufacturers of metal bottle capsules like these. They were founded in 1804, but weren’t established in London until 1840. The company continued to manufacture bottle capsules until the 1960s: these particular seals were probably made between 1860 and 1915 (Nayton 1991). Images:  J. Garland.

Straying a little further from physical archaeology, I wanted to touch briefly upon the notion of insurance as a modern approach to risk and uncertainty (though I’m not trying to sell you insurance). When we talk about exchange as a buffering strategy for resource variability, it’s not just the modern exchange of currency for goods, but more generally any way in which “present abundance is converted…via social transactions, into a future obligation in time of need.” (Halstead and O’Shea, 1989). This works a bit like storage, except the method of conversion is social rather than physical, and is based around the reciprocal nature of human relationships. Friends and families tend to take care of each other in turn during tough times, and there’s a sliding scale in terms of how formalised the nature of that reciprocity tends to be.

When conducting historical research for some of our sites, we regularly come across insurance claims, particularly reports of fire in local newspapers where the value the building and effects are explicitly listed (see The City Remains for the story of the destruction by fire of the Christchurch Librarian’s house in 1894 but also check out this blog post for a dodgy insurance claim and the mysterious Case of the Severed Hand in Taylor’s Mistake. Insurance companies can be seen as modern, communal but corporatised methods of ‘exchange’ – as buffering strategies against the uncertainty of events such as fires, unexpected death and injury, converting small surpluses in the present to future reciprocal aid. In 19th century Christchurch, those social supports were often associated with fraternal orders such as the Freemasons or Oddfellows, the latter of which’s support was largely aimed at the working class (but just men, because patriarchy).

I don’t know if all that helps with consideration of the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic world, but one of the takeaways for me is that buffering strategies are typically reliant on community action and existing relationships. Mass harvest and the preservation of resources requires community organisation, and exchange is based on the inherently reciprocal nature of human relationships, where we help out others in tough times, because we know they will do the same for us. In both cases, the products of communities are greater than the sum of their parts, and we’ll be together, yeah, together by design. Shoutout to my Ma and Pa for the venison, to my outlaws for the preserves, and to Kirsa and Lou and Hamish for the fruit and veg and homebrew that I consumed over lockdown. I’ll leave you with this. According to Dr. John Wikipedia the first company to offer life insurance was the ‘Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office, founded in 1706 in London. In the ‘current times’ I wish all of you out there all the Perpetual Assurance, and Amicable Society you need.

Chur,

Tristan

Also, don’t hoard toilet paper.

References

Anderson, A. ‘Historical and archaeological aspects of muttonbirding in New Zealand.’ New Zealand Journal of Archaeology 6 (1997): 35–55.

Anderson, A., 1998. The welcome of strangers : an ethnohistory of southern Maori A.D. 1650-1850. Dunedin: Otago University Press.

Davidson, J.M., Leach, F., Burtenshaw, M. and Harris, G., 2007. Subterranean Storage Pits for Kūmara (Sweet Potato, Ipomoea Batatas L. Lam.): Ethnographic, Archaeological and Experimental Research in New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Archaeology, 28 (2006), pp.5–49.

Garland, J., Carter, M., and R. Geary Nichol. 2014. The Terrace, Christchurch: report on archaeological investigations. Unpublished report for Hereford Holdings. NZHPT Authorities 2013/757eq & 2014/134eq.

Halstead, P. and J. O’Shea. 1989. ‘Introduction: cultural responses to risk and uncertainty’ in Halstead, P. and J. O’Shea. 1989. Bad Year Economics: Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trendafilov, A., Garland, J., Whybrew, C., Mearns, L., Lillo Bernabeu, M., Hennessey, M., and K. Webb. In prep. Christchurch Convention Centre Precinct. Final report on archaeological monitoring under HNZPT authority 2017/280eq.

Williams, H., Garland, J. and Geary Nichol, R., 2017. Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct Archaeological Report. Unpublished report for the Ministry of Justice.

70 years of quarantine: the archaeology of Ōtamahua/Quail Island

Today Aotearoa continues to take tentative steps back into level 2 of the Covid-19 response, so you might think it strange that I would be voluntarily stepping back into quarantine. But we’re the stepping back into the history – all  figurative-like – of Ōtamahua/Quail Island in Lyttelton Harbour, which acted as a quarantine station throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. For an archaeology nerd, Ōtamahua has such an interesting range of history and archaeology. It’s been a mahinga kai and/or nohoanga, quarry site, a quarantine station for immigrants and animals, a leper’s colony, farmland, ship’s graveyard, and is now managed by the Department of Conservation. There’s a lot of history to Ōtamahua, so strap in, this is going to be a big(ish) one.

Whakaraupō/Lyttelton Harbour with Ōtamahua/Quail Island in the centre. Image: Jessie Garland.

Ōtamahua has a long history, its name meaning “the place where children collected seabird eggs”. Another name, Te Kawakawa, refers to the pepper tree which grew there (Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, 2020). There are several recorded archaeological sites on the island that attest to Ngāi Tahu, and earlier Māori groups’ long history in the area. A beautiful pou named Te Hamo o Tū Te Rakiwhānoa, made by the Whakaraupō Carving Centre was recently erected on the island by Ngāti Wheke.

Te Hamo o Tū Te Rakiwhānoa. Image: Tristan Wadsworth.

Ōtamahua, and the smaller Aua/King Billy Island off to the southwest have both been quarried for basalt by Māori and Pākehā, the latter for stone building blocks, and the former for the manufacture of adzes and other tools. The island also boasts one of my favourite kinds of Māori archaeological features: a fish trap! Though it may look like a boring old circle of stones in the tide, these sites are pretty rare. The engineering principles are simple and effective: fish come in at high tide and get stuck inside the circle when it recedes. In the words of our endemic poets: “tide rolls in, tide rolls out, let the [numbers of fish] inside begin to grow”.

I love a good fish trap. Image from Trotter and McCulloch, 2000.

The use of Quail Island for quarantine of either animals or people starts as early as 1855, when it was set apart as a quarantine ground for diseased sheep (Lyttelton Times, 19/9/2855: 6). The idea of quarantine is pretty familiar to New Zealanders (especially in this day and ), not just for folks coming from overseas who might be sick, but also for animals. During the late 19th century, European colonisers were doing a whole-scale transformation of Aotearoa to European-style agriculture, and then as now, New Zealanders took steps to protect lives, industry and livelihoods from harm from viruses and infectious disease. The use of Quail Island as a place for quarantine would sit alongside its farming history for the next century, including its use as a place to quarantine animals for several Antarctic expeditions between 1901 and 1929 (Mclean, 2013).

If you asked me to come up with a satirical 19th century bureaucratic job, I would come up with “Inspector of Sheep”. Source: Lyttelton Times, 19/9/2855: 6

A reconstructed kennel (the foundations are original) in which dogs were quarantined as part of Antarctic expeditions. Source: Mclean, 2013.

Group including Robert Falcon Scott, with Mongolian ponies, on Quail Island. Ref: 1/2-031141-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23184103

Same here, Antarctic pony, same here.

Initially, shipboard isolation was the only method of preventing transmission of disease on the long journey to New Zealand, but due to increasing numbers of immigrants, and insufficient facilities, this came to be considered ineffective, and the need for large quarantine stations was recognised (Kelly, 2018). Although there were also several mainland quarantine stations, islands were considered perfect spots for quarantine; water on all sides helps maintain the level of isolation one requires to prevent transmission of illnesses, and only truly unhinged individuals would dare swim or even paddle board across the harbour, in defiance of a perfectly natural and not at all phobic distrust of large bodies of water.

Ed. Removed for space, the story of the leprosy patient who escaped Quail Island across the water, reappearing in Charteris Bay in disguise as an Invercargill clergyman. Source: New Zealand Herald, 12/1/1925: 6.

In 1874, the Canterbury Provincial Council bought the land on Quail Island, and a quarantine station was set up, to replace the existing station at Ripapa Island and Camp Bay, which was considered overcrowded (Star, 8/8/1874: 2; Lyttelton Times, 9/10/1874: 2; Globe, 9/10/1874: 3). All the major cities had a wee island they could put freshly-minted residents on for a bit to counteract the transmission-friendly tight and unhygienic quarters of a long ship journey. Wellington had Matiu/Somes Island, Auckland had Motuihe Island, Dunedin had the creatively named “Quarantine Island” (Kamaautaurua), and Christchurch had Quail Island, all of which were in use by the 1870s (Kelly, 2018). Lots of remains from the quarantine station remain on the island: piles and other foundations from many of the former quarantine buildings, stone retaining walls (built by prisoners from Lyttelton jail) and terrace relating to the initial reshaping of the hillsides for construction, and the Skiers Beach barracks building, built in 1875, and one of only two 19th century quarantine buildings remaining in New Zealand.

The quarantine station men’s barracks, built in 1874. Image: Annthalina Gibson.

A stone retaining wall, likely built by prisoners of the Lyttelton Gaol (Trotter and McCulloch, 2000). See here for more on these prisoners who built Lyttelton. Image: Annthalina Gibson.

Detail from 1907 survey plan (SO 4813) on Quail Island showing the buildings within the South Bay area. The layout of the quarantine station reflects partially the requirements of the station, but also the social mores of the time, with separate quarters for men and women. Image: LINZ 1907.

Skiers Beach, looking northeast, showing some of the quarantine station buildings in 1906, including, from left to right, the caretakers cottage, barracks, cookhouse, barracks and the single men’s cookhouse at the extreme right at Whakamaru Beach. Image: Weekly Press from Jackson, 2006, p. 30.

In November 2019, three of our team (Angel, Jo, and I) visited Quail Island to undertake some excavation on the terrace bearing the quarantine station’s cookhouse. It was a real privilege to be part of the project, and we stayed in the newly done up DOC hut, which is a nice, early-20th century cottage that housed the caretaker for the Department of Agriculture’s animal quarantine station.

Angel gives Jo a makeshift tarot reading during our stay.

During the works, Angel found a penny dating to 1873, a year before the station was built. It’s very unlikely the coin was lost and deposited the same year it was minted, but it’s a nice coincidence. Artefact photo: Clara Watson.

On the cookhouse terrace, we found archaeological remains of the cookhouse terrace building itself, including stone piles, fragments of metal sheeting, the remains of some metal containers that might have been associated with the kitchen. There was also evidence for a shell paving layer that went right around the building.

Artefacts from the quarantine station, including a lead fishing weight (top right), keg tap (centre), and domestic pigeon bones (bottom right). Image: Clara Watson, Jessie Garland.

Among the finds were the bones of the introduced domestic pigeon, which are very rare finds in New Zealand archaeology. We couldn’t find any specific historical evidence for pigeons being kept or quarantined on the island, so it’s not quite clear what this particular bird’s story was, or if it was just a rogue pigeon that ended up in the pot.

In 1906, the quarantine station was repurposed for a different form of isolation. Will Vallance was diagnosed with leprosy at Christchurch Hospital, and was put in quarantine on the island. The station had seen less use for quarantining immigrants over the recent years, as most infectious cases were being treated in mainland hospitals, and now saw its second life of quarantine as a leper colony. Author and historian Benjamin Kingsbury says that although leprosy was only mildly contagious, it was probably more stigmatised than any other disease. If you are interested in the lives of the inhabitants, and their treatment, I strongly recommend these two stories on the Spinoff by Benjamin Kingsbury, who has written a book on the subject. After a year on the island, a small hut was built to house Vallance, who had previously been living alone in the much larger barracks. Having spent a few university summers nigh-alone in a large, typically-thriving hall of residence, I could see how that could be a lonely (and spooky) experience. A few more huts would be built between 1907 and 1924 to house further leprosy patients, totalling nine (Kingsbury, 2019, 2020). In 1924, the Mt Herbert County Council proposed the removal of the leper station, the given reason primarily the ongoing shared use of the island to quarantine stock, and that “importers of valuable stock do so with “a feeling that should not exist” (Press, 15/4/1924: 9). The eight remaining leprosy patients were transferred the next year to Fiji, far from the homes and contacts they knew (Trotter and McCulloch, 2004). It seems callous that a feeling of discomfort (largely unwarranted and self-inflicted) held by those looking over their economic investments should be put above the lives of human beings, those suffering from a chronic disease, but that was the world of the 1920s.

In 2002, archaeologist Michael Trotter, together with DOC and the Catholic Cathedral College of Christchurch undertook an excavation of one of the hut sites associated with the leper station, in order to construct the replica present on the hillside today. The excavation revealed the bricks of a fallen chimney (classic Christchurch), but little evidence of burning, suggesting that at least this hut was largely taken off site rather than burnt, as mentioned in the local newspapers at the time. The underfloor deposit hinted at the creature comforts enjoyed by the isolated patients: glass marbles from aerated drink bottles, thin glass likely originating from pictures, and a tin for holding  and mixing watercolour paints (Trotter and McCulloch, 2004). It’s not a bad view out over the harbour from the huts that housed the leprosy patients, after all.

Plan of the leprosy station hut excavated in 2002. Source: Trotter and McCulloch, 2004.

The east side of the island is also home to a nationally significant ship graveyard, where the hulks of 13 ships were intentionally scuttled between 1902 and 1951. If you’ve not been, it’s definitely worth a visit. Low tide reveals the skeletons of steamships, barques, and so on, as they seem to slowly rise from the still waters of Whakaraupō/Lyttelton Harbour. In the words of our endemic poets “tide rolls in, tide rolls out, let the [shipwrecks] inside begin to [emerge from the harbour]”.

The ‘dissenters’ ship’s graveyard had to be placed somewhere else. Can’t have ships intermingling after death. Image: Tristan Wadsworth.

One of the great things about Ōtamahua/Quail Island is that so much of its heritage is visible from just the short walk around the island. I’m looking forward to getting back, next chance I get. Stay safe out there peeps, and take care of each other.

Chur.

Tristan

 

Further reading

The ghosts of Quail Island

He is unclean; he shall dwell alone: A sad and startling story of leprosy in NZ

The cruelty – and small kindnesses – of quarantine 100 years ago

Bittersweet existence for the dogs of Antarctica

 

References

Globe [online]. Available: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Jackson, P.J., 2006. Ōtamahua/Quail Island – A Link With The Past. 2nd ed. (r ed. Christchurch: Ōtamahua Quail Island Restoration Trust.

Kelly, A., 2018. Third Time’s the Charm: An Investigation into the Quarantine Landscape of Lyttelton Harbour. Archaeology in New Zealand, 61(2), pp.41–50.

Kingsbury, B., 2019. He is unclean; he shall dwell alone: A sad and startling story of leprosy in NZ. [online] The Spinoff. Available at: <https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/07-10-2019/he-is-unclean-he-shall-dwell-alone-a-sad-and-startling-story-of-leprosy-in-nz/> [Accessed 15 May 2020].

Kingsbury, B., 2020. The cruelty – and small kindnesses – of quarantine 100 years ago. [online] The Spinoff. Available at: <https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/05-05-2020/the-cruelty-and-small-kindnesses-of-quarantine-100-years-ago/> [Accessed 12 May 2020].

LINZ, 1907. SO 4813, Canterbury. Landonline.

Lyttelton Times [online]. Available: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Mclean, G., 2013. Quail Island, Lyttelton Harbour (1875). [online] NZHistory.govt.nz. Available at: <https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/quail-island> [Accessed 12 May 2020].

National Libraries [online]. Group including Robert Falcon Scott, with Mongolian ponies, on Quail Island. Ref: 1/2-031141-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23184103 [Accessed 12 May 2020].

New Zealand Herald [online]. Available: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Press [online]. Available: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Star [online]. Available: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, 2020. Ngāi Tahu Atlas. Kā Huru Manu. Available online: <http://www.kahurumanu.co.nz/atlas/> [Accessed 12 May 2020]

Trotter, M. and McCulloch, B., 2000. Archaeological and historical sites of Quail Island and King Billy Island, Lyttelton Harbour, Canterbury. Report for the Canterbury Conservancy, Department of Conservation.

Trotter, M. and McCulloch, B., 2004. Archaeological Excavation of a Quarantine Station Hut Site on Quail Island, Lyttelton Harbour. Unpublished report for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

Seize the means of production! The archaeology of tools and labour.

For a lot of us, Labour Day is celebrated in the same way as a lot of public holidays: not thinking about work, catching up the gardening and odd jobs around the house, going away for a long weekend, having a barbie, that sort of thing. But unlike say, New Year’s Day, or Boxing Day, or The Day After New Year’s Day, or Queen’s Birthday (Down with the Monarchy!), Labour Day is a public holiday with actual historical and national significance beyond an excuse for a day off. Labour Day is among our oldest holidays and was first celebrated on 28 October 1890, a year after the establishment of the Maritime Council, a collection of transport and mining unions (Atkinson, 2018).

Union members march in the first Labour Day, Dunedin, 1890. Generally, I try and avoid a large group of people wearing white, but these guys seem alright. Derby, 2016.

The day was not yet a public holiday enshrined in law, but instead a day of collective action.  In Christchurch, newspapers report that “the crowds of merry-making children were scarcely happier than parents and elder relations” (Star, 29/10/1890: 2). The Star described it as “the greatest popular demonstration seen in Christchurch since the day when the people of Canterbury assembled in thousands to demand the West Coast Railway” (Star, 29/10/1890: 4). There was a procession of unions, too many to list, but including carpenters, joiners, plasterers, tailors, butchers, labourers, bookbinders, shipwrights, shop assistants, bricklayers, carriers, bakers, boilermakers, engineers, plumbers, gasfitters, and bootmakers. The annual parades and recognition of Labour Day were political in nature, with workers and unionists lobbying for the enforcement of a universal eight-hour working day (among other advances), a right that workers in some industries already enjoyed, while others did not. Though the eight-hour working day never made it into the legislation, Labour Day was made a public holiday by act of parliament in 1899 (Atkinson, 2018).

Eventually ‘Mondayised’ to make everyone’s lives easier.  (Evening Post, 2/11/1899:2).

As Christchurch archaeologists, most of the material culture we find is domestic, and related to consumption- both the commercial consumption kind, and the ‘nom nom nom’ kind. When excavating a domestic Pākehā site in Christchurch, we’re most often faced with a bevy of teacups, plates, platters, bottles and other refuse in a rubbish pit; all products, all artefacts of consumption. In contrast, the reverse is true of Māori archaeological sites, where the majority of artefacts we find are by-products from the manufacture of tools. In the case of Pākehā sites, it can seem a stretch to reconnect these products to their production, and to the hands, machine, and labour that created them. Today’s blog attempts, in honour of good old Labour Day, to reconnect artefacts to labour and production (the first step in the life-history of an artefact), by looking at some of the common tools we find in Pākehā archaeological sites in Christchurch. I won’t be talking about the processes of artefact manufacture per se (but if you’re interested in that, check our earlier blogs here and here).

I’m of the opinion that no shed is complete without a spade, a shovel, a family of spiders that refuse to give you their name or say a polite hello in the mornings, a rake, and a jar of snake specimens in formaldehyde that you stole from your last job (don’t worry, they won’t read this). Digging tools are crucial for construction, agriculture, and household chores, and would’ve been the tool of choice for digging the rubbish pits that are our bread and butter here at Underground Overground Archaeology. Canterbury’s first industry was agriculture, and many of the suburbs surrounding the central city have been converted from market gardens, orchards, and farms (Wilson, 2005). Even as the residential area spread, many people kept animals and gardens, and it’s no surprise that some of the most common tools or implements we find are representative of the agricultural labour that formed early Christchurch’s backbone, the construction associated with the city’s gradual expansion, and the conversion of the surrounding farms. Just as the last eight years have seen a construction boom in Christchurch, construction was a burgeoning industry in the early decades of settlement thanks to steady growth, as the Pākehā population grew from stuff-all to over 50,000 over the course of six decades (Thorns and Schrader, 2010).

Truly ground-breaking tools. Spade and shovel blades from the Justice Precinct, F38. Ca. 1860s-1870s. Williams, et al., 2017.

A very toothless rake from a site in Johns Road, Harewood. Bradley et al. 2016.

Stop.

Hammer time. Also, a sweet pair of pliers. Both from a site on Oxford Terrace,, F45. Ca. late 1860s-early 1870s. Garland et al. 2014.

Of course, not all labour is hammers and shovels. In the first decades of Christchurch settlement, ‘industry’ largely involved small-scale manufacture of products like beer, soap, shoes, and dairy-products (Burnard, 2000; Pickles, 2000). Many of the commercial and/or industrial sites we encounter in Christchurch reflect this small scale, often being small businesses and the homes of their operators. To contrast with picks and spades, we also find the archaeological remains of planning, drafting, and other sketchy workplace behaviours (you’ll see what I did there when you get to the photos). We also often find artefacts commonly  associated with the manufacture of clothing, like scissors, bobbins, pins, sewing machine fragments, and off-cuts of cloth and leather. Sometimes these are from sites of professional tailors and dressmakers, but often they are from households of other occupations, and represent the often-unrecorded, unpaid, and underappreciated labour of the domestic sphere, largely done by women. These are a helpful reminder that even though the majority of artefacts we find are associated with consumption of the ‘nom nom nom’ type, they also represent the uncredited labour of those who prepared food and drink throughout the past.

Left:  A hinge from a folding ruler, Tuam Street. Right: a set of “Studley” (I’ll say) callipers from the Justice Precinct.  Ca. 1860s-1870s. Williams, et al., 2017.

A drawing compass, and a protractor, complete with measurements incised on the surface, St Asaph St, c. 1860s-1870s. Dooley et al. 2016.

A feature of leather off-cuts from shoe manufacture. Ca. 1860s-1870s.  Williams et al. 2017.

Half of a pair of scissors (a scissor?), from a site on Kilmore Street. Williams and Watson, 2019.

Tailoresses at work, clothing factory, Christchurch. Ref: 1/1-008930-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22763367.

Of course, Christchurch was founded during the western industrial revolution, with artisanal and  small-scale manufacture gradually giving way to larger factories, like that shown above, and increasing mechanisation of what had previously been handmade (Pickles, 2005). We’ve excavated sites of smithies, workshop and foundries in central Christchurch, places where tools and machinery were forged, perhaps including some of those shown above.  Initially, most of the city’s tools were imported from the UK, but the development of local foundries soon filled the gap, and between the late 1800s and early 1900s, Christchurch was New Zealand’s major manufacturing centre (Williams, 2005: 131). Foundry workers forged the agricultural implements and machinery that farmers used to produce the food that fed the labour force and drove a major portion of the economy. The foundries and workshops also produced and assembled the carriages and locomotives that formed the backbone of New Zealand’s early transport network, making vital connections to distant towns. On foundry sites, we not only find rubbish pits chocka with scrap metal, off-cuts and extras from the manufacturing process, but we’ve also been lucky enough to find the remains of furnaces, factory floors, and other structural features that help to bring these workplaces to life, and to illustrate the lives of the workers that produced the tools and machinery that ran the colony.

Foundry workers at the firm of P. & D. Duncan, Christchurch, possibly their Tuam Street premises. Webb, Stefano, 1880-1967: Collection of negatives. Image: Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Ref. 1/1-019285-G. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23193943.

Two of a row of five brick features surrounded by ash and charcoal-stained soil,  likely representing furnaces, at the site of the P. and D. Duncan foundry. These may be the same furnaces shown in the photo above. Dooley et al. 2018.

A rubbish pit filled with scrap metal, from a central city foundry site.

Remains of farming machinery from a central Christchurch foundry site.

One of the challenges in archaeology is trying to connect the artefact to the person that made or used it. It’s a little easier in historical archaeology, where we can use documents to roughly equate the dates of features to the occupants of a property at that time, but it’s an imprecise process. Rarely do we get an artefact that we can directly infer, rather than suggest, a connection with a particular individual. Well, if you didn’t think the previous sentences were a lead-up to a picture of an artefact with a specific person’s name on it, YOU ARE SORELY MISTAKEN AND BAD AT READING FORESHADOWING.

Boom. Check this out. A broken file with an embossed handle reading “J. GILL” and a second illegible word reading “B(or R)OW..S..”. Williams and Watson, 2019.

A carpenter’s tool associated with a particular named carpenter! There is a 1909 reference to J. Gill from Christchurch who was a carpenter and joiner, but there is no known association between Gill and the site where this was found (Star, 05/08/1909: 3). The file was part of an underfloor deposit at St Luke’s Vicarage on Kilmore Street, and it is possible that Gill lost or discarded the file between the floorboards while at work at the vicarage. We may not know much about Gill, but this file is a tangible remnant of the man and his work. When we talk about putting all our ability and effort to a task, we talk about putting all our “blood, sweat, and tears” into it. Though these things leave no (or little) trace behind to tell of the labour and effort we expend over our lifetimes, many of the physical remains of this labour remain, as do the tools we use to produce them. The archaeological record preserves these remains, and can give us an insight in to the labour that went into the formation of Christchurch, and the lives of its inhabitants.

Here are a couple of my favourite tools: a sickle that I liberated from my Grandad’s when we cleared it out, and my trusty trowel.

Possibly been in the family for generations. I primarily use this now to take the heads off of thistles.

An archaeologist’s best friend.

Finally, I wish you good weather, good company, good food, and good times for the Labour Day weekend. I leave you with a photo of some folks celebrating Labour Day the way many New Zealander’s have for decades, and a poem from the first Labour Day.

“Farmers and friend, having a beer at the end of the day (note the beer being poured from a glass half gallon jar) Labour Day, Southbridge, 1949, at an agricultural fair.” Source: Kete Christchurch.

Tristan Wadsworth

References

Atkinson, N., 2018. ‘Labour Day’, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/labour-day, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 19-Jun-2018. Accessed 23 October 2019.

Bradley, F., Webb, K. and Garland, J., 2016. 448 Johns Road, Christchurch: report on archaeological monitoring. Unpublished report for the New Zealand Transport Agency.

Burnard, T. 2000. ‘An Artisanal Town – The Economic Sinews of Christchurch’ in Cookson, J. and Dunstall. G. 2000. Southern Capital – Christchurch: Towards a city biography 1850-2000. Canterbury University Press, Christchurch.

Derby, M. 2016. ‘Strikes and labour disputes – Early labour disputes’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/artwork/20469/first-labour-day-procession-dunedin (accessed 24 October 2019).

Dooley, S. Haley, J., and Dickson, C. 2018. Laneway area, 93, 103, and 105 Manchester Street, 196, 204, and 206 Tuam Street, 221 and 227 St Asaph Street, Christchurch (M35/1132): report on archaeological monitoring. HNZPT authority 2016/701eq. Unpublished report for Ōtākaro Ltd.

Dooley, S., Whybrew, C., Garland, J. and Mearns, L. 2016. 150 St Asaph Street, Christchurch (M35/1164, M35/1165, M35/1166): report on archaeological monitoring. HNZPT authority 2016/435eq. Unpublished report for Southbase.

Evening Post, 2/11/1899:2. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/.

Garland, J., Carter, M. and Geary Nichol, R., 2014. The Terrace, M35/1050, Christchurch: Report on Archaeological Investigations, Volumes 1-2. Unpublished report for Hereford Holdings.

Pickles, K. 2000. ‘Workers and workplaces – industry and modernity’ in Cookson, J. and Dunstall. G. 2000. Southern Capital – Christchurch: Towards a city biography 1850-2000. Canterbury University Press, Christchurch.

Star, 29/10/1890: 2. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/.

Star, 29/10/1890: 4. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/.

Star, 05/08/1909: 3. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/.

Thorns, D. and Schrader B., 2010., ‘City history and people – The appeal of city life’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/graph/23512/population-of-the-four-main-cities-1858-2006. Accessed 23 October 2019.

Williams, H., Garland, J. and Geary Nichol, R., 2017. Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Volumes 1-3. Archaeological Report.  Unpublished Report for the Ministry of Justice by Underground Overground Archaeology Ltd.

Williams, H., and Watson, C. 2019. St Luke’s Vicarage (former), 185 Kilmore Street, Christchurch: report on archaeological work under HNZPT authority 2017/757eq. Unpublished report for Maiden Built Ltd.

Wilson, J. 2005. Contextual historical overview for Christchurch City final draft report for comment. Christchurch; Christchurch City Council.