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This paper discusses the Australian boab tree and its potential for research as living historical archaeology. Boab trees play an important role in the economy, culture, and cosmology of Indigenous people in northwest Australia and continue to hold a powerful presence in the Kimberley region today. Working with Nyikina and Mangala Traditional Owners we have undertaken to document examples of this iconic tree and its cultural and historical associations, particularly in the form of carvings and inscriptions embedded in the bark. Focusing on four individual trees located in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia, we propose that the modification of boab trees, as a practice undertaken by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, offers important insights into the everyday lives and historic events that shaped this cultural landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative analysis of artifact assemblages is simultaneously enticing and daunting. New research questions can potentially be addressed but a number of limiting factors can hinder the process. The first section of this paper will examine these limitations; the remainder of the paper proposes a model for conducting comparative research via archaeological biography, data mining, and tracing material and quality-of-life trajectories. The model was developed for the Gold Rush Lives project, which seeks to trace how everyday people faired in gold-rush era cities in Victoria, Australia. Drawing from the comparison of two households in Little Lon, Melbourne, the paper will make the case for comparing material trajectories rather than data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological deposits build up inside standing buildings both under and between floors and these have the potential to provide considerable information about human behavior in the past. Under and between floor spaces provide a unique depositional environment that allow the survival of rare and fragile organic materials that typically do not survive in other archaeological contexts, including paper, cardboard, fabric and other fibres, seeds, leather, and human hair and skin cells. However, they require a clear understanding of depositional processes to allow their interpretation. Experimental archaeology was conducted to understand the process of artifact deposition and the interpretation of underfloor deposits in twelve standing buildings in Western Australia. Floors were built and a range of artifacts swept across them to determine how artifacts travelled across floorboards or fell through gaps between boards. Size, shape, and angularity of artifacts were key determinants of the likelihood of deposition. Sweeping activity makes it more likely that material will be deposited around the margins of rooms, and particularly, to either side of doorways. Underfloor deposits excavated from two specific Western Australian buildings, Ellensbrook Homestead, and the York Residency Museum, are interpreted based on the results of these experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in Melbourne, including the papers in this volume, has shed new light on the archaeology of this major nineteenth-century urban center. But how does Melbourne compare to other important contemporary cities, particularly those outside the British Empire? This paper compares “Marvellous Melbourne” against the “Paris of South America,” Buenos Aires, with a focus on exploring consumer behavior and transnational trade. Two case studies are considered, Casselden Place (Melbourne) and La Casa Peña (Buenos Aires) and while some differences are encountered, the overall similarity in results points to the interconnectedness of the world during the period under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Melbourne branch of the Royal Mint officially opened in 1872. Built on a site that had previously accommodated Melbourne’s original Exhibition Hall, the complex comprised the extant Administration Building and flanking Guardhouses and substantial “operative departments” to the rear. The latter were demolished in the early 1970s but recent investigations have revealed that substantial remains survive. This paper discusses our new appreciation of the Mint’s archaeology – one of an increasing number of Melbourne archaeological sites where subsurface deposits are supplementing our knowledge of places long acknowledged for the importance of their built heritage. The remains reveal important evidence relating to the minting process and responses to industrial urban air pollution in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glass bottles were a valuable commodity in colonial Australia, and the commercial reuse of these vessels ensured that they were used to their full potential. The 2009 excavations at 19–37 A’Beckett Street, Melbourne, uncovered architectural features and occupation deposits associated with four bottle merchant businesses operating from Lot 35–37 between 1875 and 1914, providing a rare opportunity to study this little-known but significant light industrial trade. This paper draws on archaeological data from 35–37 A’Beckett Street to examine the role of bottle merchants and marine store dealers in nineteenth-century Melbourne. It also seeks to determine an archaeological signature for bottle merchants through comparison with other contemporary sites, and briefly touches on the implications of bottle reuse when identifying patterns of consumption in archaeological assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Langlands Iron Foundry was an early and significant industrial operation in Victoria, responsible for assembling the first iron paddle steamer and making the first locomotive boiler in the colony. Remains of the foundry were uncovered in June 2014 during an archaeological program preceding development of a site in Flinders Street in Melbourne. The site was located on the remains of a garden created by John Batman, one of the two “founders” of Melbourne in 1835 and was superseded by a commercial shipping butcher in 1864. In this paper we present archaeological and historical evidence relating to the garden and iron foundry to illuminate important aspects of working life and conditions in early Melbourne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, the 150th historical archaeology project was conducted in the central city area of Melbourne. Almost all of these investigations have been undertaken since the introduction of the Victorian Heritage Act 1995. With the Act recently under review, it is timely to look back on the lessons learned by heritage managers and archaeologists over the last 25 years. It is also an opportunity to review current practices to ensure that future site investigations are conducted efficiently and achieve meaningful outcomes. How can information obtained from the previous 150 projects inform and enhance the research frameworks of future work? What can we learn about Melbourne’s historical archaeology that we do not already know? How can community benefits be optimized? This paper will evaluate the successes and failures associated with the implementation of historical archaeology legislation in an urban setting and consider how the past 25 years of archaeology in the city can inform our approach to future opportunities in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most profound consequences of the 'Columbian exchange' set in motion by Europe's fifteenth- to nineteenth-century expansion overseas was the introduction of the horse to parts of the world where it had previously been absent. Alongside the internationally well-known Plains of North America, these regions included several southern hemisphere drylands: Patagonia; the Karoo and Kalahari of southern Africa; and the deserts of Australia. This paper explores the equestrian adaptations developed by the Indigenous inhabitants of these three areas and tries to explain the variability apparent in the speed and consequences of their adoption of the horse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'modern world' of recent centuries is characterized by colonialism and imperialism, greater instances of cultural encounter and competition, increasing global connectivity, and the enhanced movement of resources and people especially for their labor (Falk 1991; Orser 1996). Northwest Australia provides important insight into these elements of modernity, as a region where the capitalist production of resources for international markets followed British colonization and relied on forms of non-European labor, both Indigenous Australian and Asian. This paper describes Barrow Island in the Northwest Australian maritime desert where archaeological research at recently discovered historic settlements indicates the deliberate translocation of Aboriginal people to the island presumably by white pearlers. The sites provide new information regarding commercial extractive industries, particularly the colonial pearl fisheries and their multicultural and exploitative nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quarantine was used by British colonial authorities and later by Australian governments to manage and control the introduction of infectious diseases. Facilities at North Head, Manly, New South Wales, were initially built as a specialist institution but as the need for mass quarantine declined over time, the site was used for other forms of social regulation and welfare. This paper explores an enduring tradition of memorialization, commemoration, and in some instances, resistance to the conditions of isolation and confinement found in the mark-making practices of people held at the Quarantine Station from the 1830s to the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's quarantine regulations have their roots in colonial practice. This paper is concerned with the 'matter' of quarantine-its location, spatialization, and materialization-and the ways in which it contributed to the colonial agenda. Through an exploration of Sydney's North Head Quarantine Station, quarantine is shown to be a technology through which the colony and the continent were framed as simultaneously pure and vulnerable. These colonial roots of quarantine practice are then brought back to the present, drawing on Stoler's (2008) concept of 'imperial debris' to contemplate the contemporary ruins, both material and ideological, of colonial quarantine practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first use of bone collagen stable isotope analyses for the purpose of reconstructing historical animal husbandry and trade practices in Australia. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of 51 domesticate and commensal specimens demonstrate that meats consumed at the mid to late nineteenth-century Commonwealth Block site in Melbourne derived from animals with a diverse range of isotopic signatures. Potential factors contributing to this diversity including animal trade and variability in local animal husbandry practices are discussed. From these results we suggest that stable isotope-based paleodietary reconstructions have significant potential to illuminate a variety of human-animal relations in Australia's historical period as well as other New World contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]