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The archaeology of convict Sydney

Afamily — mother, father, children — sitsdown on chairs at a table for a meal.

Their table is set with good qualityedged-ware, with a blue-rimmed, rather deep-welled dinner plate and matching bread andbutter plate for each person, lidded tureensand large meat platters. The walls in the roomare tinted pink and there are pictures andceramic plaques with religious exhortations,decorated with borders of leaves and flowers.The windows are hung with curtains, there isa wash-set with ewer, basin and porcelainsoap box and a chest of drawers. On a smalltable, or perhaps a mantelpiece, stands an ele-gant, tasteful and expensive piece of bocage,a modelled tree with leaves and flowers whichsupports and frames an elegant figure.1

Are we peering into the home of a middle-class family, comfortably settled in astucco and iron villa in one of Sydney’s betternew suburbs of the 1840s? No, this is thehome of a Rocks family, probably that of atradesman and woman, and it might date any-where between 1790 and 1810. One or bothof the adults arrived in Sydney as convictsunder sentence of transportation. In the1790s the house itself was a wattle and daubhut, with doors hung on leather straps andwindows with woven wattle panels instead ofglass, and a roof either of fire-prone thatch, orporous, sagging clay tiles.2 By 1810 though,this early hut might stand to the rear of amore substantial house of rubble stone, withwalls finished in tinted plaster, a shingle roof,

proper glass windows and a large stone hearthand chimney.3

The Rocks, rising abruptly in rugged tiersand outcrops of sandstone on the westernside of Sydney Cove, was the convicts’ side ofthe town from the earliest years of Europeansettlement. The neighbourhood that grewthere represents the emergence of Sydneyfrom their perspective. It also represents therest of convict Sydney, for the same sorts ofpeople lived in the same way on the east sidein George, Pitt and Castlereagh Streets anddown to the south. When we remember thatconvicts made up the bulk of the population,the importance of the view from the Rocksbecomes clear: convict settlers were theprime makers of early Sydney.4

The recovery of the archaeological recordof convict Sydney, together with the archae-ology of the documentary record, haverevealed the convicts’ unequivocal interest indomesticity, cleanliness and comfort, inrefinement at the table, and in the consump-tion of goods which made it all possible. It isa vision which certainly jars with, evenupends, the more traditional portrayals ofearly Sydney. The ‘gaol town’ is supposed tohave been a place of misery and exile, impris-onment and forced labour, poverty andscarcity. Life for the faceless prisoners wassupposed to be nasty, brutish and short, andthe profile of their material life shouldinclude the ball and chain, the wooden bowl,the whips and barred windows, a paucity offood remains. Alternately, or perhaps in addi-tion, the convicts were a proletariat, arriving

ENGAGING ARTEFACTS

URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY, MUSEUMS AND THE ORIGINS OF SYDNEY

GRACE KARSKENS

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with a ready-made sense of class-conscious-ness and grievance, exploited by the capital-ist system dressed up as the convict system,haters of authority, forerunners of the inde-pendent, self-reliant, roaming bushmen of theAustralian Legend.5

A culture of consumption and domestic-ity is, of course, antithetical to both the prisoner and the proletariat model. Yetarchaeologists and historians who explore theculture of convicts, rather than their civilcondition as prisoners, have revealed a mostacquisitive set of people, a society driven bypossessive individualism, marked by constantbuying and selling, and a strong and livelypopular culture.6 We know from archaeologi-cal evidence and detailed historical researchthat these convicts, men and women, dressedlike dandies in fine figured satins andwell-made shoes, drank tea from handlelessChinese porcelain tea cups, stirring in sugarwith silver teaspoons, and some of them atesoup from beautifully decorated porcelainbowls.7

Perhaps this domestic and consumer culture at the heart of our European originsshould not be so surprising. If we look at thefindings of Stephen Nicholas and his team inConvict Workers, it appears that a consider-able proportion of convict men and womenhad valuable skills, and a higher rate of liter-acy than their English counterparts. Mostcame from the recently and rapidly urbanisedtowns and cities of England, though Irishconvicts tended to come from rural areas.8

This is reflected in their deep reluctance to goto rural areas once they got to New SouthWales. They ‘congregated’ instead in Sydney,grabbing and occupying land, building houses, vigorously leasing and selling asthough they held title to it (which many didin the end). And many of those feverishlybuilding, buying and selling, on the Rocks inSydney at least, were women convicts andex-convicts. As Portia Robinson and othershave exhaustively demonstrated, the womenof Botany Bay were energetic businesswomen,marriage partners and family women.9 The

household, not the gaol or the gang, was fundamental to both early Sydney’s societyand economy.

The convicts, then, were for the mainpart not from the mass of the very poor ofBritain, who, as historian Neil McKendrickargues, did not have the means to participatein the new consumer behaviour spawned by the commercial revolution ofeighteenth-century England. This revolutionwas one of things and everyday domestic lifeand its impact was not limited to the wealthyand comfortable ranks. As historian CaroleShammas has shown, over the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even sections of the lower orders, artisans, smallshopkeepers, labourers, had begun to seeksome measure of comfort in their homes, toown and use ceramic dishes, cutlery, to drinktea and coffee laced with sugar, to buy fromshops rather than making at home, and towear fashionable clothing.10

But while archaeology shows that earlyconvict Sydney shared a culture of domestic-ity and consumerism with succeeding genera-tions of middle-class emigrants, it alsodemonstrates the ways in which these groupswere clearly distinct from one another.Rather than being a fixed template, the samein every place and time, consumerismexpressed as gentility and domesticity appearsto have had as many permutations and versions as there were social and economicgroups who practiced it.11 So my openingvignette of the convict household was carefully censored to exclude all the thingswhich could not have occurred in the homesof the better-off, better-educated and farmore genteel villa-dwellers of the 1840s andthereafter. I left out the servant, assigned orfree, who, as part of the household, probablyshared the table, food, drink, crockery andglassware with the family. In later middleclass household servants were not thought ofas ‘family’ members, and kept much more atarms’ length.12

I neglected to mention that this house,though it could be large, probably had only

GRACE KARSKENS Engaging Artefacts

middle classes, who owned not only sufficientglasses for each person, but also differentglasses for each type of drink.14

The culture of the first convict genera-tions thus drew together disparate elements:unrespectable, pre-industrial culture, and themore genteel culture of domestic and person-al commodities spawned by the commercialand consumer revolutions. Archaeologyreveals much that is surprisingly familiar to us— matched dinner sets, walls painted in softcolours — particularly in the context of com-mon assumptions about life in early Sydney.But, combined with detailed documentaryresearch, it also challenges our mental associ-ations, it reminds us that the past is a “foreigncountry”.15 The juxtapositions of early Sydney are strange to us: refined, individu-alised tableware and communal drinking and gambling; crude hand-made pottery hungover the open fire and sophisticated, elegantfigurines; curtained windows looking outonto slaughteryards; good clothes, clean bodies and the bloodied noses of men andwomen unaccustomed to notions of individu-al decorum and the increasingly constrictiverituals of self control.16 In these contrasts wecan glimpse acceptable lifestyles andbehaviour, aspirations, and notions of‘respectability’, from the convicts’ own per-spective, rather than that of their Victoriansuccessors, or from our own standpoint.

The Cumberland/Gloucester Streetsproject: An integrated approach tourban archaeology

The radically new view of convict life,culture and society in early Sydney presentedhere would not have been possible withoutarchaeological evidence. While references tohouses and rooms, bowls and tumblers, shoesand buttons abound in early official reports,letters, newspapers and advertisements, properly researched archaeological sites offeran actual record of material life which can bematched to real people — groups of convictand ex-convict residents with names, families, histories. An archaeological site17

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Humanities Research Vol. IX, No. 1, 2002

one or two rooms, with all the functions ofthe household, eating, cooking, sleeping,dressing, and caring for children, integratedtherein. There was little sense of privacy, andfew or no separate rooms for designated functions, like halls for receiving guests,rooms solely for beds, drawing or diningrooms and so on. While, as historian Linda Young has outlined in her study of genteel culture in Australia, the hallmark ofthe middle class was the gendered separationof work and home, in many homes of earlySydney both men and women worked to contribute to the household. Home and workwere often seamless, since tradesmen andwomen, shopkeepers and publicans operatedfrom their own homes and yards. Bakers builtstone bakehouses at the rear of their houses,butchers slaughtered cattle in their own back-yards, so the fragrance of baking bread or thestench of rotting offal mingled with thesmells of the household. The yards wereregarded as useful and valuable in a practicalsense, spaces for growing fruit and vegetables,drying laundry, storing building materials,rather than as ornamental spaces for flowers,shrubs and paths.13

Inside the hotels and around those domes-tic tables, the neat, good quality individualplates were filled with stewed meat and vegetables ladled directly from a commoncooking pot hung over the open fire in thesame room. And men and women who werefriends commonly shared the ‘circling glass’,most likely the plain, hand-blown tumblerfilled with rum or other spirits from adecanter or bottle. Two or three people passedthe glass from hand to hand, mouth to mouthas they talked and sang together. This cultur-al practice, together with the excise on glass,which made it quite expensive in the earlycolonial period, may well explain the relatively low numbers of glasses found in thisperiod. It seems that while eating had beensomewhat refined, modernised and individu-alised, drinking still belonged to an older,more communal realm of behaviour. Ofcourse, this was unthinkable for the later

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also offers the kind of integrity that, say, acollection of objects drawn from differentplaces and times cannot. Archaeologicalinvestigation allows us to make associativelinks through observing and recording thepatterns of deposition, it insists that weexamine the less engaging artefacts alongwith those that delight us, the ubiquitousfragments as well as the things which survived pleasingly intact. The jarring juxtapositions and the flashes of recognitionare essential if we are to grasp the materialworld of early Sydney in its entirety, ratherthan only aspects which catch our eye.

In this paper I have drawn largely on thefindings from the Cumberland/GloucesterStreets archaeological project (1994–1996),with some comparative and corroborativematerial from other sites and excavations.The Cumberland/Gloucester Streets site, inSydney’s historic Rocks area, encompassestwo half-city blocks and the remains offorty-two dwellings, shops and hotels, togeth-er with yards, lanes and outbuildings. ItsEuropean residential history dates from the1790s to the early twentieth century when itwas razed and redeveloped for industrial pur-poses. The site was excavated for the thenSydney Cove Authority in 1994 by a teamassembled by consultants Godden MackayLogan Pty Ltd and directed by RichardMackay.18

This project was an opportunity to try anew collaborative and integrated approach tourban archaeology. It drew together the skillsand knowledge of the archaeologists and specialists, the broad concepts, ideas andresearch of social and cultural historians andarchaeologists, the local history of the Rocksfrom my own work, and the detailed researchof family historians.19 A number of compo-nents was essential to the project’s successfuloutcome. Most fundamentally, it involvedexemplary archaeological method and a highstandard of completed post-excavation analysis. The process of excavation andrecording in the field was followed by thepreparation of coherent accounts of the site’s


development, providing a permanent recordof how and where the thousands of archaeo-logical contexts had occurred on the site andhow they were related to one another. Specialists skilled in various fields — ceram-ics, bone, glass, metals, building materials, aswell as palynology, soils, and macrobotanicalremains, also prepared detailed reports. Partof my task as project historian was to integrate these findings for the interpretativevolume, that is, to partly dismantle theboundaries between artefact categories, to seeacross them. This interpretative report wasthen rewritten for a general audience andpublished in 1999, while Godden MackayLogan published the excavation and artefactreports for the specialist audience.20

Archaeological context is of course essential to the interpretative phase. Forexample, on its own, that marvellous fragment of expensive bocage mentionedabove is merely an object which conveys little beyond its own aesthetic qualities andits method of manufacture. But knowing thatthis particular piece was from a very earlycontext, and associated with a convict hutdating from the 1790s, it takes on enormouscultural meaning. It helps to open up theworld of convict taste, consumption and aspiration hidden for so long behind imagesof chain gangs, floggings and ‘desolate shores’.

In order to grasp the significance of thisparticular artefact, how it changes our ideasabout the past, we have to engage with thoseideas. We cannot simply ‘dig up the past’.Contrary to the more traditional rhetoric ofarchaeology and of some “born-again materi-al culturalists”,21 artefacts do not ‘speak’ forthemselves. In the absence of words, and historical and cultural contexts, they sit there“mutely, like toads”, to use Jane Lydon’s memorable words.22 On their own, artefactsand buildings cannot really tell us muchabout the people who used them, beyondsuch basic observations as ‘they smoked claypipes’ or ‘they bought pickles in bottles’ or‘their houses were small’. These historical andcultural contexts were not, and should not be,

of ‘historical assemblage’ of the site, by gathering as much data as possible about it,and its occupants. Although it is often saidthat convicts and the later generations ofobscure working people are not recorded, thisis not so. With the help of scores of familyhistorians from all over Australia, a databaseof residents, now numbering nearly 500, wasbuilt up, recording names, callings, births,deaths and marriages, period of occupancyand so on. Some people even sent preciousphotographs, personal recollections and family stories about their ancestors. Thedatabase provided a family and communitycontext for the archaeological evidence. Itgave us an accurate picture of the residents’socio-economic standing, the gender ratio,family and household structure and howoften people moved house. It made women,children, and lodgers visible, countable, itput names, histories and sometimes evenfaces on the anonymous mass of people whomoved over the site for just over a hundredyears. This kind of intimate understandingwas an essential step, for it allowed us toprovenance the artefacts in an accurate andmeaningful way, to say, for example, thatconvicts and ex-convicts were the ownersand consumers of the artefacts from the earlycontexts. In some cases it even allowed us todiscern the possessions of particular peopleon the site.25

At the same time, it is clear that artefactsand structures, and sites as a whole, are notequally yielding in significance and meaning,and also that no single approach, model orresearch question will serve to access thatmeaning. The material culture of convictSydney was complex and diverse, and eachstrand of this tangled skein — food, drink,houses, personal items, has its own historyand ‘genealogy’.26 The archaeological record,a fraction of the original totality, is itselfshaped by deposition patterns, site formationand incursions, and also by excavation meth-ods and the current, fairly rigid, notions ofartefact categories.27 This record, like anyother, informs us in different ways and at dif-

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ironclad, seamless grids of ‘facts’ into whicharchaeological evidence is slotted, allowing itonly to ‘fill in gaps’ or ‘illustrate’ what we‘know’ already. As Graham Connah argued in1983, “problem oriented research” is neededif archaeology is to yield “increased under-standing” rather than being an activity akinto “stamp collecting”.23

Before the excavation commenced, I wasasked to develop, in consultation with mem-bers of the team, a series of open-ended questions especially for urban sites in Sydney.At one end, these were broad, dealing withthe impact of the Industrial Revolution on acity which had begun as a largely pre-indus-trial town; changes to women’s lives andexperiences; the debate about standards ofliving; the changing role of government; andquerying the historical reputation of theRocks as a disease-ridden slum, a place which,it seems, had always been something of a ‘sep-arate space’. At the other end, there were‘small’ questions, tailored specifically for thesite, and focused on, say, buildings we wantedto find, or people we knew about. For exam-ple, we wanted to know whether the convictbutcher George Cribb slaughtered his beastsin his own backyard, in the more pre-industrial fashion, or whether that noisomework was already carried out far from home inthe 1810s (the former was the case). In themiddle, there were questions about changingpatterns in the built environment and consumer behaviour, readable in the series ofartefacts and the buildings. When did housesbegin to follow street-lines, when did thetown become more orderly? Did people eat ina communal, shared fashion, or did they usethe matching sets of individualised crockerywe are familiar with today? When did theystart buying manufactured toys for their chil-dren? How did they dispose of their rubbish?Did the methods change? These questions(there are many more) tried to suggest ways ofobserving patterns of change and continuityover time, and so make the major questionsmore accessible.24

At the same time, we also built up a kind

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ferent levels. Some artefacts tell us a greatdeal, and offer unique evidence; others corroborate one exisiting interpretation overanother; still others are ambiguous, and sug-gestive. Some can be read as a single artefact,others must be seen in concert; some seemincapable of telling us very much at all, whileothers are enigmatic, and leave us to wonder.A good measure of flexibility, a realisitc eye,and the avoidance of over-rigid models andapproaches are necessary when examining,recording and researching the assemblages.28

It did occur to me as I was working on theinterpretative volume that my being directlyinvolved in the project itself, particularlythrough the regular research meetings, andbeing completely familiar with the historyand archaeology of the site, helped enor-mously with writing its story. I could alsoreadily consult the other members of theteam for further explanations or information.How will a future researcher manage withoutthese advantages, and distanced from theexcavation by time and space?Paradoxically, an archaeological excavationis at once an act of preservation and ofdestruction.29 Although elements like artefacts, samples and structures may be preserved, the site itself is utterly destroyed,lost forever. This is why recording of theexcavation, the site, in as much detail and inas many media as possible, is essential. In thecase of the Cumberland/Gloucester Streetssite, a great deal of time and effort went intoensuring the adequate recording of the sitefor posterity. It was exhaustively numbered,mapped, photographed, and recorded. Thethree-quarters of a million artefacts wereentered on a database, which is now availablefor statistical research.30 The specialists whoprepared the artefact reports tried as far aspossible to include observation of value to allfuture research, not only current interests.While the site itself will probably eventuallybe redeveloped, the artefacts, wrapped,tagged, numbered and boxed, are stored bythe Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority,and hopefully will remain safe and intact.kjhjhjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


(Not all collections are so fortunate).But even with the most meticulous

recording, recapturing that level of immedia-cy, the familiarity with the site and its exca-vators, would be extraordinarily difficult, andtake an inordinate amount of a futureresearcher’s time; perhaps it is importantexcavations provide an interpretative frame-work, and ask appropriate questions. Briefsand tenders ideally should include costing forinterpretative work, something which rarelyhappens at present.

Historical Archaeology and Material Life

At the core of the innovative approach tothe Cumberland/Gloucester Streets project,then, was that concern to integrate historyand archaeology, springing from the recogni-tion of the essentially inseparable relation-ship between things, ideas and experiences,between material and mental worlds. If wethink about the nature of everyday life inearly Sydney, and the role of material culturein it, it is immediately apparent that materialand mental worlds are indivisible. Every artefact has a history, a cultural context, andpractically any document from early Sydneycontains some reference to material life —bodies, things, food, clothing, buildings,roads, the environment — underscoring theentanglement, then, as now, of things, wordsand actions. It is artificial, and distorting, toconsider one without the other, as separatespheres.31

Then there is the role of objects in thisparticular society. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiargues that, in Western culture in particular,material objects help us locate ourselves,“keep our ideas straight”, acting as the “sensory template that gives boundary anddirection”. “Without external props”, he says,“even our personal identity fades and goes outof focus”.32 Surely this is especially true forthose who emigrate, willingly or unwillingly,to a new land. Convicts made or bought, leftor brought a great range of things to exploit,to make the new land familiar, to hold fast to

recycled, exchanged, auctioned, lost, reappeared in other forms.36

People knew their possessions, and thoseof others, instantly, by sight. They could identify the body of a murder victim by theprint of the gown she was wearing, by thecloth-covered wire buttons which had fastened the sleeves at her wrists.37 Peopledescribed lost possessions in great detail andposted rewards for them: “Reward for a singlesilver spoon”, ran Daniel Mackay’s advertise-ment, “1oz weight colonial made plain withan impression something like a lion on theback”. Women in particular had the quality,patterns and textures of fabrics firmly fixed inthe minds.38 People also enjoyed simply looking at objects which were artful, unusualor curious. Mrs Ikin had a fine model of a brigon display at her house on the Rocks in 1805.The grief-stricken parents of a child who diedof snakebite seem to have taken some comfort in the “stone intended to entombthe relics” which they had carved with aheartfelt poem. It was proudly “exhibited topublic inspection” before being erected at theburial ground.39

We even know that the populace wasmost likely familiar with the term ‘cabinet ofcuriosities’, for Jane Jones, evidently anincorrigible magpie, had a house on theRocks in 1805 which was “tolerably furnishedwith articles which were mostly recognised as having been only borrowed from her benefactors”. The ‘benefactors’ were probablythe Atkins family, for whom she worked as acharwoman. Sydney Gazette editor GeorgeHowe went on, tongue-in-cheek, “Her cabi-net of curiosities contained a number of toys,to which several members of the junior orderpreferred an undisputed title”.40 Her, evidently irresistible, hunger for things landed her a seven-year stretch in distantKings Town (Newcastle).

Archaeology in the museum

Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that manyarchaeological collections, after their strange

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who they were, and to remind those theywould never see again of their existence.Those about to embark smoothed coins toblanks, then scratched, stippled or engravedthem with messages of love, remembrance,promises of fidelity and gave them to theloved ones left behind.33 Other messages,“puncture[d] with gunpowder”, pricked withink, were carried on their skin as tattooswhose iconography opens a window ontoemotional life: hope, devotion, despair, defi-ance, humour, a bitter kind of triumph.34

Clothing and accessories brought along founda ready market in fashion-conscious earlySydney. Bought, bartered, stolen and sold,they might allow one woman to get enoughcapital to start a little shop, while anotherdecked herself in the sort of finery whichdefied the very idea of the degraded, banishedconvict.35 Every stage of life has its materialdimension, setting, and expression, from thefirst step out of the jolly boat onto the shing-ly shore to the hammocks slung in rows at thebarracks, or the ticking mattresses laid in thecorners of skillions and smoky kitchens; fromglances exchanged over a tumbler of rum andwater to the exchange of a wedding ring or apair of earrings, the setting up of a new house-hold; from cradles and baby clothes toshrouds and cedar coffins. At every point,every juncture, in every journey, objects andideas, things and meanings were inextricable.

So much energy was expended on thesheer, pragmatic quest for material well-beingand the accumulation of property in earlySydney. As I have shown above, and arguedelsewhere, the convicts were very materiallyminded people. Their material worlds werenot all of a kind, but multifarious, an aston-ishing profusion of things and structures, eachwith its own history, with multiple layers ofsignificance and meaning, these in turn shift-ing and transforming in different contexts.Things, like their owners, moved constantlyalong their own historical trajectories in theearly town, they passed from hand to hand,were arranged in certain ways with otherthings, shucked off when people moved on,

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and roundabout journeys, come to rest inmuseums. The sheer bulk of materialretrieved from Sydney sites over the last twodecades or so presents the formidable andutterly pragmatic problem of where thesemillions of artefacts can be safely and perma-nently housed. Without such arrangements,artefacts have a tendency to wander off, con-tinue along their historical trajectories, andwe lose sight of them once more.41 About halfthe material excavated from other urban sitesin Sydney has therefore found its way intomuseums; the rest is in private hands or withgovernment authorities such as the SydneyHarbour Foreshore Authority. Museums,more particularly those committed to socialhistory, seem to offer appropriate havens forthese collections. Ideally they provide safeand secure storage of both artefacts and sup-porting documentation, conservation skills,access for future researchers to study them, aswell as the hope that archaeology will bemade widely available as part of exhibitions.

Museums of social history are appropriatein another important way. As MargaretAnderson and Tom Griffiths have argued, theidea of social history museums is itself rela-tively recent, for until the infiltration ofsocial history curators, history and museumshad little or no common ground at all, muse-ums being more the ‘realm of the scientist’,and the connoisseur. This shift was also apotentially radical one. Some social historymuseums began to challenge long-held ideasabout empire, nation, race and gender, andabout science and progress; hence theyturned a critical, searching eye upon the pur-poses and agendas of the museum itself.42 Thearchaeology of urban sites dovetails withthese concerns: it most often deals with thestructures and artefacts of workplaces, house-holds, neighbourboods, and thus women’s,family and community lives in extraordinarydetail. It retrieves and works from a directrecord concerning the lives and experiencesof people often entirely omitted from ‘domi-nant consensus models’ and unquestioned,‘given’ narratives about progress and nation-


hood. Archaeology has the power to shock,to silently but insistently destabiliselong-held assumptions about ‘the masses’ —convict people, ‘slum’ dwellers, the ‘workingclass’.

Museum curators are assured by archaeol-ogists that archaeological collections arevaluable and irreplaceable, that they can ‘tellus about people’s lives’ or have the potentialto open ‘new views of the past’, both formuseum visitors and future generations ofresearchers. And so they do, as our excursioninto the material life of convict Sydneyreveals.

But some curators can see little evidenceso far of these values and benefits, are frus-trated by the costs of keeping the material,and impatient with these seemingly dumb,often most unlovely mountains of artefacts.Broken, stained by long burial, frequentlymundane and stubbornly unyielding to boot,they seem like Cinderella collections, com-pared with whole, provenanced and oftenmore artistic, or otherwise engaging artefactswhich museums collect.43 Michael Bogle atthe Hyde Park Barracks Museum points outthat historians, many evidently still convinced of the primacy of the writtenword, seldom consult any of the collectionsheld at the various properties maintained bythe Historic Houses Trust in New SouthWales.44 More surprisingly, few archaeologistsseem to use the collections either. Severalthousand dollars a year, and a great deal ofcuratorial time and space are devoted tothousands of boxes of artefacts which, so far,are mute, and which very few people ask tosee. Here it seems that archaeology has notbeen a rich and irreplaceable resource, butsimply a financial and administrative burden.

The keen professional and public aware-ness of the value and potential of archaeolo-gy is enshrined in legislation and expressedboth by the vast amounts of money investedin it, and in the intense public and mediainterest whenever archaeological sites areexcavated.45 Why, by contrast, do some cura-tors throw their hands up in frustration over

gists, like architectural historians, have tend-ed to focus on structures, their histories, theircomposite materials and finishes, and theirconservation and recording. Scatters of win-dow glass or brick fragments, peeled-back lay-ers of wallpaper, drains and bricked-up doorshave eclipsed the rather more problematic,less tightly measurable people who occupied the structures, and the things theylost or threw away.49

Archaeologists are thus collectors, com-pelled by the discovery of sites, artefacts,buildings and landscapes to record, retrieveand inventory for posterity, and for the greatdesideratum, ‘future research’. The early ‘rescue archaeology’ carried out in Sydneyand on the Rocks in the 1970s and early1980s in particular distills the ethos, theurgency of heritage collecting, for the archae-ologists’ endeavours were indeed “suffusedwith a sense of salvage, objects are rescuedfrom out of time itself”.50 This collecting hashad far less to do with iconoclastic social his-tory, than with the eighteenth and nine-teenth century traditions of systematiccollection. The “great enterprise of collectingthe world”, as archaeologist Denis Byrne putsit, saw objects of all sorts converge in thegreat museum, which could then become amicrocosm of the world.51 But in anothersense it constitutes significant social history,that of the heritage and conservation move-ment itself. As heritage planner MeredithWalker recently pointed out, actions taken tosave, to collect, to salvage were necessarilypolitical acts, concerned not so much withmeaning and research as with the struggle toensure that material heritage survived in thefirst place.52 In both these ways, collectingbecame an end in itself.

What is significant here is the separationof collection and interpretation. Standardarchaeological practice still tends to placethem at opposite ends of the procedures: firstexcavation and the assigning of artefacts intocategories, followed ideally by thoroughpost-excavation cataloguing and analysis; andfinally, if at all, interpretation — often

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the archaeological collections? Why have thecollections been ignored once they are ‘safely’in the museum? The usual problems spring tomind, of course: inadequate funding, and aconsequent lack of researchers available toundertake such projects. But there are deepercultural explanations as well, concerned withways of seeing material things, and ways ofmaking histories. For archaeological artefactsstill hang in the uneasy, as yet unresolvedspace triangulated between the idea of muse-ums as repositories for scientific research,their aesthetically-inclined collection andpresentation, curation and exhibitionregimes, and the more recent, potentially radical inroads of social history.

There have been long-standing problemsin the short history of urban historicalarchaeology in Sydney, concerning the lackof interpretation and integration, problemswhich the Cumberland/Gloucester Streetsproject was specifically designed to address.46

As archaeologist Susan Lawrence points out,there has been an odd lack of interest in arte-facts among archaeologists themselves. Inspite of the rhetoric about their importanceand research potential, some of the assemblages remain uncatalogued; sometimesreports have been left uncompleted. Count-less boxes full of objects, some separated fromtheir archaeological contexts and with dubi-ous documentation, have told us relativelylittle about the past. Until very recently therewere few published articles based on artefactual evidence and fewer major texts.47

The beginnings of historical archaeologyin Sydney coincided with the rise of heritagemovements in the 1970s, and its early effortswere most often similarly focused on thestruggle to save and conserve our materialinheritance. Many archaeologists entered thevaried fields of cultural resource manage-ment, while freelance consultants carried outexcavations required by the Heritage Act1977, and assessment components of heritageand environmental impact studies.48 Theessential, increasingly complex battle for her-itage and conservation means that archaeolo-

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regarded as someone else’s problem. PeterEmmett accuses archaeologists of becoming“bored, myopic” once the excitement of thedig was over and the sifting and sorting ofartefacts began.53 Research into wider histor-ical and cultural contexts was, as a result, notgenerally considered essential for archaeolo-gy-as-collection. If contextual research wascarried out at all, it tended to be rudimentaryand site specific: perhaps a list of names ofoccupants from directories, a timeline ofdevelopment on the site. Even in the betterresearched excavations, the focus tended tobe upon explaining how the site developed,the more detail the better, rather than onasking what important things it could revealabout the past.54

As well, there are inherited intellectualtraditions which set things and words alongdivergent paths. While many historianseschew objects as “merely the brute outcomesof thoughts, feelings and actions, without anyactive role of their own”, some archaeolo-gists, equally, deeply distrust the written word(both primary but more particularly sec-ondary sources) as something which will onlyconfuse, prejudice and corrupt their pure anddirect examination of material things.55

The separation of collection and interpre-tation also, ironically, fractures the continu-ity of collecting itself, that “very humanactivity”.56 The work of archaeologists andcurators is, after all, distantly descended fromthe convicts’ collecting. They too, as we haveseen, were avid hunters, collectors, creators,keepers and arrangers of all sorts of memen-tos, souvenirs, household goods and objectsof monetary, symbolic or sentimental value.In this sense archaeological assemblages arecollections-of-collections, steadily diminish-ing, scrambled, reformed over time with eachphase of assembly, loss and recovery. But collecting which is absorbed in itself, concerned only with retrieving and arrangingobjects for their own sake, cannot recognisethis continuity, cannot glimpse the rationale,the desires, the aspirations, the curiosities,the reassurances that shaped those original


collections. As Susan Pearce acutelyobserves, the “painfully familiar artefactualdeadness arises from a failure to integrate thematerial world and the world of thought andaction, and yet this integration is how we alllive our lives”.57

How do these factors, problems and possi-bilities actually translate in the museum situation? Is it possible to carry out meaning-ful research on archaeological assemblages?How does one go about it? Imagine the caseof a social history curator in one of Sydney’slarge museums, already busy with diverse projects and the myriad tasks attendant uponcaring for, curating, recording and keepingtrack of the vast universe of things which is amuseum. She has been charged with theunenviable task of ‘doing something’ withsixteen boxes of carefully wrapped artefacts,allegedly from the site of the original wing ofthe Powerhouse, in Mary Ann Street, Ultimo, or possibly from the Old SydneyGaol (now the Regent Hotel) site, an early‘rescue’ excavation. They appear at a glanceto be typical of assemblages from urban sitesall over Sydney, indeed, all over the world:broken transfer-printed ceramics, shards ofglass, and bones from meals eaten long ago.She asks “old timers” (as she calls long-termstaff) where they came from, who excavatedor collected them, but no-one can remember.So far there are no site reports, no artefactreports or catalogues, nothing to link thesethings with the place where they had come torest, although, in an echo of the first archae-ological search and recovery, they may yet befound.58

What, then, can be done with free-float-ing artefacts like this, ‘rescued out of time’?One could measure them, weigh them,describe, count and catalogue them, and asthere are infinite ways of doing these, thiscould occupy a very long time. An imagina-tive museum curator may well find someeye-catching way of displaying them, perhapsin the way china doll parts are displayed atthe Museum of Sydney: in a sleek and stylishdrawer against a background of newspaper

multi-sourced research and approaches;through looking outward from sites as well asintensely into them; and through devisingand asking ‘important questions’ throughoutthe process, rather than shifting them to achimerical ‘future research’ phase. The marrying of permanent, intelligible archaeo-logical recording with the desire to ‘increaseour understanding of the human past’ acts asa springboard, a starting point for furtherresearch. For example, archaeological collec-tions held in Sydney museums are about to bereinvestigated in an ambitious and timelyscheme successfully initiated by La TrobeUniversity in partnership with the relevantmuseums, and heritage and managementorganisations in Sydney. Projects like Cumberland/Gloucester Streets have provided meaningful research directionswhich can be drawn out and further exploredthrough the cataloguing and database analysisas well as the detailed historical research proposed for this new project.61 These strate-gies promise to unlock the dynamic potentialof the assemblages held by museums by offering conceptual frameworks for under-standing them. They ‘make history new’ bymaking accessible the stories, the patterns ofmaterial life, the great silent underside, whichso often runs counter to complacent, unquestioned historical narratives.62

Let us move out of the storage rooms, andvisit those museums where archaeology is displayed, to see what is fashioned from them.

The ‘Real Thing from the Real Past’:Exhibiting Archaeology

Despite the paucity of research programs and the difficulty of working withthe collections, a considerable amount ofarchaeological material has, nevertheless,been displayed at various Sydney museums.Although curators until recently had fewinterpretative story-lines to work with, anumber of quite successful and visuallyimpressive strategies has been employed in aneffort to circumvent the general non-engage-ment of artefacts and specifically expressed

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stories about murder and dismemberment.Neither of these constitutes meaningfulresearch, however, and would not offer us agreater understanding of our past. Dependingon the extent of the collection, it might bepossible to regard it as a, largely unprove-nanced, generic ‘slice’ of urban material cul-ture, whose numbers and characteristicscould be quantified and compared to otherSydney collections, and the material cultureprofiles of other nineteenth-century cities.59

This would be the equivalent of analysingartefacts retrieved from, say, landfill, wherethe specific place, time and social context oftheir origins are unknown or lost. The loss ofhistorical and archaeological contexts meansthat questions would always hover over thematerial. Where did it come from? Whatactors shaped its deposition and its recovery?And, perhaps most importantly, whose mate-rial culture was this?

These have been rather discouraging circumstances, and the potential of archaeol-ogy for research, and for informing us aboutour urban past through exhibition, haveclearly been rather limited. For both researchand exhibition, the existence and quality ofsupporting documentation and interpretativeframework for the archaeological collectionsare obviously vital. If they are not available,the question is whether any of this can beretrieved or viably developed. Ironically, it isthe disconnectedness of collection andresearch, between archaeology and history,which has diminished the very value of thematerial record which systematic collecting issupposed to create, protect and make available.

But here the more recent projects givegrounds for optimism. The Cumberland/Gloucester Streets excavation, like otherresearch projects carried out by archaeologistssuch as Susan Lawrence and Jane Lydon,demonstrates that historical archaeology, inits true sense, is a discipline which broachesthe gulf between things and words.60 Properlycarried out, it connects collecting and inter-pretation through cross-disciplinary,

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historical meaning. Themes and approachesinclude the wonders of archaeological discov-ery and the processes of excavation and anal-ysis, with archaeologists themselves as keyfigures. Simple ‘lifeways’ themes are oftenemployed: ‘this is what people ate, wore orused in the past’, with artefacts arranged incategories such as ‘recreation’ (always containing clay pipes) or ‘family’ (alwayscontaining children’s toys). Artefacts aresometimes displayed as though they wereobjects in art galleries, with low-key labelslisting artist or artisan, date/s, material, andsize. Other displays focus narrowly on thetechnical aspects of their production. “Thetree-like pattern on this large [‘Mocha’ ware]bowl”, its label earnestly tells us, “was produced by a chemical process involvingtobacco juice and urine”.63

At Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks Museum,a striking display turns back to gaze at archaeology itself, for it recreates, in a glasscase, the masses of artefacts as they werefound, crammed under the floorboards of thebuilding. Fabrics, clothing, jewellery, medal-lions and a hundred other things had beendropped, stashed or carried about by rats during the building’s occupation by convictmen and later by women immigrants. Hereviewers may re-experience the astonishmentof this discovery, the long-hidden cache coming suddenly to light during the restora-tion of the building in the 1980s. In the nextcabinet, the processes by which archaeolo-gists impose their order on material ‘chaos’are displayed. Different types of artefacts aregrouped on a vast table engridded with string,representing at once the measured, recordedtrench or underfloor area, and the tablewhere artefacts are sorted, examined andrecorded. A transparent wall reveals the wallsof stored artefact boxes, their colour-codeddots spelling out the time and money put intothe endless cycles of conservation treatment.

In other displays at the Barracks, and atthe Sydney Visitor’s Centre, curators anddesigners have generally selected artefactsfrom their archaeological collections which


illustrate particular themes. The displays arevisually highly sophisticated and pleasing,while the themes themselves are often fairlyloose in focus — the female immigrants ofthe Barracks, for example, or a collage-likematerial ‘slice’ of ‘life in early Sydney’. Theobjects chosen — neat bonnets, paisleyshawls and bits of pretty jewellery — are,understandably, generally those which appealto the eye, to the senses, for what they con-vey in these ways about the fabric of past lives.

At the Sydney Visitors’ Centre, the for-mer Sydney Sailors’ Home in George Streetat the foot of the Rocks, a similar exhibitionbegins to recognise (albeit still rather dimly)the potential of historical archaeology. Heresome new interpretations of early Sydneyspringing from archaeological assemblageshad been undertaken, and ‘story lines’ andthemes were available to curators and design-ers in one form or another. What is intriguingis that, despite this, history and archaeologyare often literally, curiously, bifurcated,reflecting the continued gulf between thehistorian, archaeologists and the museumdesigners employed for this exhibition. Onthe first floor, along relatively narrow galleries which were once lined by sailors’tiny cubicles, glass cases of archaeologicalartefacts from various Rocks sites64 stand onone side, while historian Max Kelly’s poetichistorical narrative proceeds on the other.The two move literally parallel, now disen-gaged, now crossing, sometimes unintention-ally contradicting one another, at other timesconsciously so. The words portray early Sydney as “a gaol ... at the world’s furthestend ... another planet ... the cruellest penitentiary on earth”, but the things beg todiffer. The cases blithely display the solid claytiles from the houses where convicts lived,oyster shells from the oysters they gorgedthemselves with, blue and green edged-warefrom their dinner sets (relatively plain, but byno means cheap and nasty), a simple,full-bellied creamware jug. Do the visitorswho come to the Rocks to see ‘the birthplaceof a nation’, moving from side to side,

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between words and things, catch sight of thismarvellous rebuttal?

Further along, an attempt has been madeto fit the archaeology into the standard historical understanding of the nineteenth-century Rocks as rigidly separated by classand topography — the wealthy lived on theheights of the ridges and the poor lived onthe lower reaches. Accordingly, one case,entitled “Living on the Ridges”, gatherstogether seemingly “impressive” and “luxuri-ous” items, stemmed wine glasses, a Chineseporcelain statuette, some fine Egyptian andGreco-Roman collectors’ pieces, the displaycrowned by a large, pink, exuberantly transfer-printed ewer. These are meant todemonstrate “the material comfort of thoseliving high up on the ridge”, well-off peoplewhose goods were “intended to affirm theirstatus”. Links are made with such wealthySydney collectors as Charles Nicholson andthe Macleay family. The next case, entitled,“Overcrowding” features much more modestpieces — earthenware bowls, tinware platesand teapots, blacking bottles and someendearing sewing equipment, demonstratingthe lives of the poor who inhabited the lowerstreets of the Rocks. It is conceded that “contrary to the historical information”archaeology reveals “living standards ... werehigher than, say, similar areas in London orManchester ...” but overall, the ‘slum’ imageprevails, for this display concludes that “poorsanitation and a low standard of building ...certainly earned the Rocks its slum reputation”.

But many Rocks sites are mazed with sewerage, water and drainage pipes, and withthe foundations of solid and substantialbuildings, alongside some of poorer quality.And what the designers completely missed intheir search for suitable artefacts to illustratethis ‘historical’ dichotomy was the fact thatthese ‘fine’ and ‘modest’ wares alike camefrom exactly the same sites. Ordinary middlingand working people of Cumberland Street,and not wealthy upper and middle-class people, were the owners of the faience

Ushabti figure from Egypt, the large, floweryewer, the elegant stemmed glasses, as well asthe blacking bottles and the tinware.65

Archaeology forces us to look more closely atthe idea of strictly class-based residential patterns gleaned from the scribblings of nineteenth century outsider observers. Thatso-called ‘slum-dwellers’ should so clearlyaspire to, and often achieve, their preferredform of gentility, made available by consumerculture, industrialisation, and by their inter-est in collecting, is the sort of ‘shock’ insightarchaeology delivers. It challenges long-heldideas about the culture and stance of workingpeople, about the Rocks as a ‘slum’, about thevery notion of ‘slums’ itself.66 It is indeed iron-ic that such an exhibition did not quite graspthese most obvious insights — new insightswhich are important for understanding oursocial and urban past. The problem here isone of museum practice, for clearly if histori-cal/archaeological contexts are ignored,archaeological collections become merelyvast repositories of things from which ‘appro-priate’ selections are pulled out to ‘illustrate’the very concepts or models they actuallysubvert.

Hence the power objects have in convey-ing a “more archaeological understanding ofour history”67 is also dispersed, lost. As Pearceobserves, words are such a clumsy, ineffectivesubstitute for what the eye falls upon andgrasps in an instant. No amount of writtendescription can substitute for these treasures,for the sight of the elegant blanc-de-chinebowls from George Cribb’s well, delicatelytraced with red enamels and silver flowers.68

Displayed objects offer “sensuous enjoyment”,the wonder of the three-dimensional “realthing from the real past” which connects pastand present.69 It is this sheer physicalitywhich looms largest for curators, and so theirfocus is upon “the poetics of space ... the relation of things and senses, spatial and sensory compositions” in order to “exploit thesensuality and materiality of the museummedium”.70

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But looks are not everything. The deeper“erotics of the museum” as Julie Marcusobserves, lies with both the pleasures of thematerial forms and with the “flashes of under-standing which bring to light an unseen orderwith a bearing on daily life ... a moment ofnew knowledge”.71 The jolt of recognitionpartners the excitement of discovery throughthe “quick spirit that moves between people”,72 that arcing link museums providebetween those who study, interpret and display the artefacts and those who come tosee them. Marcus argues that the moment ofenlightenment springs from the engagementof objects with narrative, and thus with connections and evaluation.

In the beautifully designed archaeologicaldisplays at the Museum of Sydney, however,such narratives, connections and evaluationswere deliberately erased or avoided. Therewere no meanings here, only vague, pulsatingthemes such as ‘power’ ‘environment’, ‘trade’,and criss-crossing voices, murmuring andindistinct. Here, the separation of materialfrom words, collecting from interpretation,reached its apotheosis, and intentionally so.The exhibition of historical archaeology tooka strange, expensive, full-circle journey, forthe deficiency in interpretation was transformed into a kind of virtue. It wasargued that we cannot ‘know’ the past, thatall our accounts of it will inevitably be mereconstructs reflecting our own obsessions, andso archaeological artefacts were, for the mainpart, presented as a plethora of beautiful, curious, unexplained objects, jumbled flotsamand jetsam from an unexplainable past. Thegreat glass wall encasing the major archaeo-logical display is a reversion to the cabinet ofcuriosities, to ‘pure show’, eschewing classifi-cation (scientific, historical or functional) byarranging objects in deliberately improbableways.73 Historical and archaeological contextsand provenance are evidently regarded not asthe keys to understanding the material, but asyet more distorting encrustations, and so theyare not offered. Apart from some Sydneyplace names and compass points artfully

printed on the glass wall, viewers are noteven told where the artefacts came from.They are ‘freed’ to make own conclusionsfrom what they see, filtered through individ-ual experience and cultural background, soall meaning collapses into individualresponse, each as valid as any other.

But how can this approach, this refusal tonarrate, to inform, fulfil the important, criti-cal objectives of the social history museum?How can it overturn oppressive narrativesabout race, class, empire, nation, power andscience, the very narratives this museumespecially sought to critique and subvert?74

What can the visitor seeking an insight intoearly Sydney as it was lived, rather than asthe authorities portrayed it, discover from a profusion of things floating in “text-free innocence”?75 Concerns of this sort seem tohave prompted the museum’s curators toreconsider, for more recent exhibits do offernarratives. One of them, a space “dedicatedto the Cadigal people and all surviving Aboriginal descendents of the Sydneyregion” acknowledges, documents andmemorialises the fate of Aboriginal peopledispossessed by European invasion. The storyis told simply and firmly, with words andthings.

The additional archaeology exhibit doesnot fare so well. Mounted beside the first, itattempts to provide some themes and contexts for further ‘small things’. A range ofsmall artefacts is set in glass boxes accompa-nied by contemporary pictures and maps,some archaeological plans, labels and text.Close-up, though, we find the display hasrelapsed into simple collage, with the famil-iar, myopic, now perplexing disengagementof history and archaeology. A brief paragraphof historical data is followed by an equallybrief paragraph describing archaeologicalsites and artefacts. Some of the artefacts havenothing to do with the themes outlined,apart from a rather tenuous geographic prox-imity,76 while some of the themes do not askthe obvious questions: those about power andnegotiation. “Redemption”, dealing with the


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building of St James’ church, makes no men-tion, for instance, of the convicts’ spiritualbeliefs, or lack of them, or of the complex andcontradictory role of the church in maintaining the rule of governors, law andadministration. Despite the availability ofinterpretative research on Rocks sites andartefacts for some years now, the theme entitled “Rocks” once more focuses lightly onthe social heterogeneity of the area. The textmentions ironwork and snuff bottles, whichstand for a convict blacksmith and residentsof an “affluent dwelling” respectively. It wonders idly whether a pair of discardedshoes found in a well is “perhaps the handiwork of an 1830s cobbler?”

Let us pause to look closely at one partic-ular artefact, the age-blackened cedar coffinfrom the early Sydney burial ground, nowlocated in the first, large display, the processof its decay suspended surreally by carefulconservation and clear perspex props. Thenew display offers some explanation of thisitem. We are told of its archaeological discovery, and something of the old SydneyBurial Ground where it was first interred.The accompanying quote tells of the burialground’s poor, neglected and disorderly condition in 1849. The small display boxholds some cedar fragments and corrodediron coffin-handles But no questions areasked of the coffin itself, or, despite thetheme-title “burial”, about what a burial likethis might have signified in early Sydney.Proper coffins, with nameplates, handles androws of coffin nails or studs (still evidencedby the groove around the perimeter of the lidand the retrieval of some studs), were unam-biguous marks of care for the dead person, ofconcern for the security of the corpse. Thiscoffin means that a proper funeral and burialhad taken place, and this in turn indicatesthat the deceased (who could easily havebeen a convict or ex-convict) had at leastsome means, as well as a circle of family andfriends to mourn him or her. These are sym-pathies and communal networks which runcounter to the images of a brutal penal soci-

ety, inured to death and suffering, incapableof human sympathy and care. Here, then, isan eloquent artefact which informs us aboutearly Sydney’s deathways, about an aspect ofpopular culture determinedly established inthe new country, in a way which documentsalone cannot.77 Again, the point of whatarchaeology is about has somehow beenmissed. Despite the Museum’s courageousdecision to step outside the historiographicalscaffolding of empire and authority, order andprogress, these excursions do not ask the veryquestions of the material which might revealthe ‘lived town’, the town of the people, surging beneath.

Conclusion

Historical archaeology, in reconnectingobjects and meaning, integrating things andwords, in examining changing or continuouspatterns of use and discard over time, has thepotential for much more than “straightfor-ward show-and-tell presentation”.78 It canmove beyond the slightly self-absorbed displays about archaeological processes, oruncritical ‘lifeways’ themes which somehowmiss the meanings of the material evidenceitself. Historical archaeology can challengeboth disabling historical stereotypes and morecomplacent, comforting visions of the past,the notion that past peoples were “little dif-ferent from us”.79 It can convey those startlingrecognitions — a lively consumer cultureamong people portrayed as degraded prisonersor hapless slum dwellers, for example. But atthe same time, it reveals the equally signifi-cant discontinuities, the now-unfamiliar outlooks and habits which make us realisethat the convicts of early Sydney, with theireighteenth century pre-industrial culture,were in many respects not “like us” at all.80

Museums are slow-moving bodies, as Griffiths cheerfully observes, for they “canonly reinvent themselves slowly” and find itdifficult to erase the outlines of their “earlierselves”.81 It is not surprising, then, that thedemonstrated potential of archaeological

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collections, the new insights, the journeysinto past material and mental worlds have yetto work their way through the “stilling quali-ties of minds and institutions”,82 the inertia ofaccepted curatorial practice and ways of seeing and displaying objects, not to mentionthe realpolitik of dominant narratives andinterests which often decree who and what isrepresented in museum exhibitions.83

Most archaeological excavations attractthousands of visitors interested in seeing thestructures and artefacts resurrected slowlyfrom the earth, and in watching the archaeol-ogists and volunteers at work. Especially popular are the boxes of (unstratified) arte-facts which people can pick up, hold in theirhands, and examine closely. Over 10, 000people came to see the Cumberland/Gloucester Streets excavation in 1994, whileintense media coverage brought the site totens of thousands more. Public interest inarchaeology, the way people are drawn to theearlier places, structures and artefacts of theircity, and to gaze into the glass cases of muse-ums, suggests that the funding of genuineinterpretative research projects is justifiedand worthwhile. But this will involve a considerable shift in the way much publicarchaeology is currently carried out, both during the excavations and in the museums.It requires an incorporation of genuine interpretative work into the processes ofmeticulous collecting and recording, aheightened awareness of the human contextof rediscovered artefacts, and a recognitionthat “sensuality and materiality” must partner“rational analysis and synthesis”.84

For archaeological understandings, wealso need real conversation, interchange andcollaboration between archaeologists, historians and museum curators, rather thancompartmentalised approaches. We need toset aside the defence of disciplinary and institutional boundaries, to see what liesbeyond the confines of narrow specialistinterests, to continually confront the entan-glement of “the written and the wrought”.85

We must write and speak so that others can

understand us; we need to be generous, tokeep open minds, to exchange, to cross over.

A longer version of this article was firstpublished in Tasmanian Historical Studies,

Vol 7, no. 1, 2000. Reprinted by permission.

Endnotes

1 Drawn from Graham Wilson, “Ceramics andTobacco Pipes Artefact Report”, and Kevin Barnes“Building Materials Artefact Report”, in GoddenMackay Logan and Grace Karskens, TheCumberland/Gloucester Streets Site, The Rocks:Archaeological Investigation Report, 6 vols (Sydney,Godden Mackay Logan, 1999), vol. 4 pp. 133, 162,311–15, 317, 322. References to curtains, picturesand furniture from advertisements, auction lists andreports in Sydney Gazette, 1803 c1810. For fullerdiscussion and references see Grace Karskens, Insidethe Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood,(Sydney: Hale & Iremonger 1999), pp. 50–74.

2 Graham Wilson “Trench A Report”; MartinCarney, “Trench C Report”, in Godden MackayLogan and Karskens, Cumberland/Gloucester StreetsSite, vol. 3, pp. 32, 35, 144–6, 157; J.M. Freeland,Architecture in Australia: A History, (Melbourne,1968), pp. 18, 28; P. Bridges, Foundations ofIdentity: Building Early Sydney 1788–1822,(Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1995), pp. 11ff.

3 Carney, “Trench C Report”, Nadia Iacono, “TrenchD Report”, Dominic Steele “Trench F Report”,Barnes, “Building Materials”, Carney “Glass andBottle Stoppers Artefact Report”, in GoddenMackay Logan and Karskens, Cumberland/Gloucester Streets Site, vol. 3, pp. 146ff, 200, 257–61;vol. 4, pp. 102, 162. See also series ofadvertisements for sale of houses in Sydney Gazette,1803–1810, for example 12 October 1811.

4 Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney,(Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1997),chapters 3–6; Grace Karskens, “The Dialogue ofTownscape: The Rocks and Sydney, 1788–1820”, inAustralian Historical Studies, vol. 28, no 108, (1997),88–112.

5 See for example Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: AHistory of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia1788–1868, (London: Collins Harvill, 1987); R. W.Connell and T. H. Irving, Class Structure inAustralian History: Documents, Narrative andArgument, (Melbourne: Longman & Cheshire,1986), chapter 2; Ken Buckley and TedWheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, (Melbourne:Oxford University Press, 1988), chapters 2, 3 and 4;


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Russell Ward, The Australian Legend, (Melbourne:Oxford University Press, 1958).

6 Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, PublicLeisure: A History of Australian Popular Culture since1788, (Sth Melbourne: Longman Australia, 1995),chapter 1; Karskens, The Rocks, chapters 7, 14, 18;D. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: Simeon Lord andhis contemporaries 1788–1821, (Melbourne: CassellAustralia, 1968); Jane Elliot, “Was there a convictdandy? Convict consumer interests in Sydney1788–1815”, in Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26,no. 104, (1995), pp. 373–92.

7 Karskens, The Rocks, pp. 152–3, 206–7, 238;Karskens, Inside the Rocks, chapters 1 and 2; Elliot,“Convict dandy?”; Wilson, “Ceramics”, pp. 312–13;Rebecca Bower, “Leather Artefacts Report”, inGodden Mackay Logan, Cumberland/GloucesterStreets Site, the Rocks, vol. 4 pp. 123, 131; WendyThorp, “Report on the excavations at Lilyvale”,(draft), unpublished report prepared for CRI,(Sydney, 1994), section 4.2; silver teaspoons wereoften reported stolen in Sydney Gazette, for example7 April 1810.

8 Stephen Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers:Reinterpreting Australia’s Past, (Sydney: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1988).

9 Portia Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay: AReinterpretation of the Role of Women in the Origins ofAustralian Society, (Sydney, Macquarie Library,1988); see also Monica Perrott, A Tolerable GoodSuccess: Economic Opportunities for Women in NewSouth Wales 1788–1830, (Sydney: Hale &Iremonger, 1983); Karskens, The Rocks, pp. 28, 85,207ff, 235.

10 Nell McKendrick, John Brewer & J. H. Plumb,The Birth of a Consumer Society: TheCommercialisation of Eighteenth Century England,(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982);Carole Shammas, The Preindustrial Consumer inEngland and America, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1990).

11 Compare with Linda Young, “The Struggle forClass: The transmission of genteel culture to earlycolonial Australia”, PhD thesis, (Flinders Universityof South Australia, 1997).

12 Young, “Struggle for Class”; Karskens, The Rocks,chapter 15; compare with Christine Stansell, City ofWomen: Sex and Class in New York 1789–1860,(Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1987), p. 12.

13 Karskens, Inside the Rocks, pp. 52–5; Karskens, TheRocks, pp. 220–1; compare with John Demos, LittleComonwealths: Family Life in Plymouth Colony, (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1970). p. 39 and

Stephen Mrozowski, “Landscapes of Inequality” inRandall McGuire and Robert Paynter (eds), TheArchaeology of Inequality: Material Culture,Domination and Resistance, (Oxford: Blackwell,1991), p. 79; Young, “Struggle for Class”,Introduction.

14 Wilson, “Ceramics … Artefact Report”, pp. 312–14, 327; Martin Carney, “Glass ArtefactReport”, pp. 85, 94–5, 99, 100, 102; R. J. B. Knight& Alan Frost, in Journal of Daniel Payne 1794–97,(Sydney: Library of Australian History and NationalMaritime Museum, Greenwich, 1983), p. 30;Karskens, Inside the Rocks, pp. 69–74; Linda Young,“Staying British: The continuities of middle classculture in colonial Australia”, paper read atAustralian Historical Association conference,(Sydney, July 5–10, 1998).

15 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country,(Cambridge, 1985).

16 Karskens, The Rocks, chapters 7 and 19; comparewith Young, “The Struggle for Class”, especiallychapters 3 and 6.

17 By ‘site’ I am referring not only to the areainvestigated, but also to all its archaeologicalcontexts, features, structures, and the artefacts andsamples drawn from it.

18 See Godden Mackay Pty Ltd with GraceKarskens, “The Cumberland Street/GloucesterStreet Site Archaeological Investigation:Archaeological Assessment and Research Design”,report prepared for the Sydney Cove Authority andthe NSW Heritage Council, (Sydney, 1994);Godden Mackay Logan and Karskens, TheCumberland/Gloucester Streets Site, The Rocks:Archaeological Investigation Report; Grace Karskens,“Crossing over: Archaeology and History at theCumberland/ Gloucester Street Site, the Rocks,1994–1996”, in Public History Review, vol. 5/6,(1996–97), pp. 30–48. The contextualisation of theproject and the resultant richness and depth of thefindings from this site, directly counter Lydon’sclaims that “archaeological reports ... do not, orcannot, contextualise a site within a broader socialand physical picture” and that “no one site, howeversignificant, can tell us very much about the past”,see Jane Lydon, “Sites: archaeology in context”, inMuseum of Sydney, Sites: Nailing the Debate,Archaeology and Interpretation in Museums, (Sydney:Museum of Sydney, 1996), p.141.

19 See Lydon, “Sites”; and Grace Karskens, “TheCumberland Street/Gloucester Street Site, theRocks: An Historical Discourse”, report prepared forGodden Mackay Pty Ltd and the Sydney CoveAuthority.

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20 Karskens, Inside the Rocks; Godden Mackay Loganand Karskens, The Cumberland/Gloucester StreetsSite.

21 John Dixon Hunt, “The Sign of the Object”, inSteven Lubar and W. David Kingery (eds), Historyfrom Things: essays on material culture,(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993),p. 294.

22 Jane Lydon, Many Inventions: The Chinese in theRocks 1890–1930, (Melbourne: MonashPublications in History, 1999), p. 176; “Artifacts bythemselves do not produce questions, discourse oranswers”, see Mark P. Leone and Barbara J. Little,“Artifacts as Expressions of Society and Culture:Subversive Genealogy and the Value of History” inLubar and Kingery, History from Things, p. 161. Seealso Tim Murray, “Historical Archaeology loses itsway: Bairstow at the crossroads”, in AustralianArchaeology ,Vol 20, (1985), pp. 121–32.

23 Graham Connah, “Stamp collecting or increasedunderstanding? The Dilemma of HistoricalArchaeology”, in Australian Journal of HistoricalArchaeology, vol. 1, (1983), p. 15.

24 See research questions and discussion in GoddenMackay, “Archaeological Assessment and ResearchDesign”, pp. 72–6, Karskens, “Historical Discourse”pp. 71–80, Karskens “Crossing Over”, pp. 30–8.Most of these questions were developed from thosesuggested in Grace Karskens and Wendy Thorp,“History and archaeology in Sydney Towardsintegration and interpretation”, in Journal of theRoyal Australian Historical Society, vol. 78, parts 3and 4, (1992), pp. 52–75.

25 Grace Karskens, “Cumberland/Gloucester StreetsArchaeological Investigation: Database ofResidents”, unpublished database, (1994 –1999);and “Cumberland/Gloucester Streets ArchaeologicalInvestigation: Detailed Occupancy List”,unpublished typescript, (June 1994). A list of familyhistorians who participated appears in Karskens,Inside the Rocks, pp. 223–4, in which see alsodiscussion of the possessions of the Byrne and Cribbfamilies, for example, chapter 1.

26 Compare with Brian Egloff, “From Swiss FamilyRobinson to Sir Russell Drysdale Towards changingthe tone of historical archaeology in Australia”, inAustralian Archaeology, vol. 39, pp. 1–9; and withMatthew Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism,(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 202–8.

27 The collections themselves are sorted andcatalogued not by historical period or by thematic orfunctional relationship, as they might be from asocial history perspective but largely by material, sothat specialists find themselves researching objects

which are incidentally related, for example, ceramictea-sets and clay pipes, or metal pots and bronzedrawer handles, rather than tea-sets and teaspoons,or butchered bones and the pots in which they werecooked. See artefact reports in Godden MackayLogan, The Cumberland/Gloucester Streets Site,The Rocks: Archaeological Investigation Reportvol. 4; for further discussion see Birmingham, “ADecade of Digging: Deconstructing Urban HistoricalArchaeology”, in Australian Journal of HistoricalArchaeology, vol. 8 (1990), p. 16 and Lydon, “Sites:Archaeology in Context”, pp. 143–4.

28 Compare with John Dixon Hunt, “The Sign of theObject” in Lubar and Kingery, History from Things,p. 293.

29 Sharon Sullivan, “Archaeology, Sites andMuseums” in Museum of Sydney, Sites: Nailing theDebate, p. 49.

30 Godden Mackay Logan, The Cumberland/Gloucester Streets Site, The Rocks: ArchaeologicalInvestigation Report, vol. 6, “Artefact Database”CD-ROM, (Redfern, NSW: Godden McKay Ltd,1999).

31 This debate has a huge literature; compare forexample Susan Pearce, Museums, Objects andCollections: A Cultural Study, (Leicester: LeicesterUniversity Press, 1992), p. 195 with GrahamConnah, “Historical Reality: ArchaeologicalReality: Excavations at Regentville, Penrith, NewSouth Wales, 1985”, in Australian Journal ofHistorical Archaeology, vol. 4, (1986), pp. 29–42; andessays in Lubar and Kingery, History from Things; seealso note 49 below.

32 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Why we need things”,in Lubar and Kingery, History from Things, pp.22–23.

33 Michael Field and Timothy Millett (eds), ConvictLove Tokens: The Leaden Hearts the Convicts LeftBehind, (Kent Town, South Australia: WakefieldPress, 1998).

34 Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Ian Duffield, “SkinDeep Devotions: Religious Tattoos and ConvictTransportation to Australia”, in J Caplan (ed.),Written on the Body: the tattoo in European andAmerican History, (London: Reaktion Press andPrinceton, Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 129; see also James Bradley and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, “Embodied Explorations: InvestigatingConvict Tattoos and the Transportation System”, inIan Duffield and James Bradley, RepresentingConvicts: New Perspectives on Forced LabourMigration, (London: Leicester University Press,1997), pp. 183–203.


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35 Sarah Bird, Letter to her father c 1798, publishedin Helen Heney (ed.), Dear Fanny: Women’s lettersto and from New South Wales 1788–1857, (Canberra:Australian National University Press, 1985), pp.16–17; Karskens, The Rocks, p. 153, 207–9; Perrott,A Tolerable Good Success, p. 56; D. D. Mann, ThePresent Picture of New South Wales, first publishedLondon 1811, facsimile edition (Sydney: JohnFerguson, 1979), p. 44.

36 Karskens, “Historical Discourse”, pp. 1–2; GraceKarskens, “Revisiting the world view: thearchaeology of convict households in Sydney’sRocks neighbourhood”, in Susan Lawrence andGrace Karskens (eds), in Historical Archaeology(forthcoming 2003). The constant movement ofthings in the early town is especially apparent inthe Sydney Gazette.

37 Accounts of murder of Mary Smith, SydneyGazette, 18 and 25 January 1807. Smith wasmurdered by John Kenny when she pursued him forthe return of some property he had stolen from hersome months before.

38 Sydney Gazette, 14 August 1803; 2 July 1814(evidence of Mary Anderson at trial of DennisDonovan); 7 February 1827 (evidence of ThomasSidderson at trial of Samuel Pasfield).

39 Sydney Gazette, 13 January, 17 February 1805.

40 Sydney Gazette, 20 May 1805; 30 June 1805, 27April 1806; Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay,p. 169. Sentenced to seven years transportation, tofollow on from her original sentence, she was sentto Kings Town (Newcastle) in April 1806, but notbefore Mrs Rafferty (most likely Rocks dealerElizabeth Rafferty) successfully charged her withhaving in her possession yet more “sundry articles ...stolen from her house”.

41 See, for example account of the artefacts from the“Little Lon” excavation in Melbourne, Tim Murrayand Alan Mayne, “(Re) Constructing a LostCommunity: “Little Lon”, Melbourne, Australia”, inLawrence and Karskens, in Historical Archaeology(forthcoming 2003); Lydon, “Sites: archaeology incontext”, pp. 143–4.

42 Margaret Anderson, “Selling the past: History inMuseums in the 1990s”, in John Rickard & PeterSpearritt, Packaging the Past? Public Histories,(Carlton, 1991), pp. 130–41; Tom Griffiths, “SocialHistory and Deep Time”, in Tasmanian HistoricalStudies, Vol 7, no. 1, 2000; Peter Emmett,“WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] on thesite of First Government House”, in Museum ofSydney, Sites: Nailing the Debate, pp. 110–20.

43 Compare with Birmingham’s wry description ofhistorical archaeology as an “aestheticallychallenged discipline” whose possibilities in themuseum were “never marketable”, JudyBirmingham, “Museum of Sydney: AnArchaeological Focus” in Museum of Sydney, Sites:Nailing the Debate, p. 257–8.

44 Including the collections at Rouse Hill House,Rouse Hill, Vaucluse House, Vaucluse, ElizabethFarm, Parramatta, Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney.Personal comments from Michael Bogle, Curator,Hyde Park Barracks Museum, (April and November1999). The museum nevertheless does feature somefine displays of archaeological material.

45 Richard Mackay, “Political, pictorial, physical andphilosophical plans: Realising archaeologicalresearch potential in urban Sydney”, in Museum ofSydney, Sites: Nailing the Debate, pp. 126–7;Karskens, Inside the Rocks, I. 17–18; Sullivan,“Archaeology, sites and museums”, pp. 52–3;Richard Mackay and Grace Karskens, “HistoricalArchaeology in Australia: Historical or hysterical?Crisis or creative awakening?”,in AustralasianHistorical Archaeology, vol. 17, (1999), p. 112.

46 Mackay, “Political, pictorial, physical andphilosophical plans”, pp. 128–9; Egloff, “From SwissFamily Robinson”, pp. 3–4; Karskens and Thorp,“Historical Archaeology in Sydney”, pp. 52–3.

47 Susan Lawrence, “The Role of Material Culture inAustralasian Archaeology”, Australasian HistoricalArchaeology, vol. 16, (1998), pp. 8–15. In response,the following volume of Australasian HistoricalArchaeology published a number of papers focused onartefacts, as well as soils and pollens, see vol. 17,(1999).

48 Tracey Ireland, “Excavating National Identity”, inMuseum of Sydney, Sites: Nailing the Debate, pp. 90–1; Mackay and Karskens, “Historical Archaeology inAustralia”, pp. 110–15.

49 Richard Flanagan, “Crowbar history: Panel gamesand Port Arthur”, in Australian Society, (August1990), pp. 35–7; compare with discussion of“archaeological preciousness” in Sullivan,“Archaeology, sites and museums”, pp. 54–5.

50 Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: TheAntiquarian Imagination in Australia, (Melbourne:Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 25; JaneLydon, “Archaeology in The Rocks, Sydney: FromOld Sydney Gaol to Mrs Lewis’ Boarding -house”, inAustralasian Historical Archaeology, vol. 11, (1993),pp. 33–42.

51 Denis Byrne, “The Ethos of Return: AboriginalVisibility in the Historical Landscape” in Lawrence

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and Karskens, in Historical Archaeology (forthcoming2003); Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections, pp. 68–88, 91.

52 Meredith Walker, response to Alan Mayne,“Ethnographies of Place: ‘Slum’ Stories From theInside Out”, paper given at “Engendering MaterialCulture—Fifth Women in ArchaeologyConference”, (Sydney, 4 July 1999).

53 Peter Emmett, “WYSIWYG”, p. 115.

54 As Birmingham observed, the archaeological anddocumentary evidence usually “go past each otherwithout apparent engagement”; see “A Decade ofDigging”, p. 14.

55 Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections, p. 195,and see discussion Chapter 2; Bernard Smith,“History and the Collector” in his The Death of theArtist as Hero: Essays in History and Culture,(Melbourne, 1988), p. 97. Compare with Flood’sdiscussion of the debates among prehistoriansregarding ethnographic versus ‘pure’ archaeologicalapproaches to interpreting Australian rock art; seeJosephine Flood, Rock Art of the Dreamtime:Images ofAncient Australia, (Sydney: Angus & Robertson,1997), pp. 20–24.

56 Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections, p. 91

57 Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections, p. 205.Compare with discussion in Sullivan, “Archaeology,sites and museums”, pp. 52–3.

58 Personal comments by Wayne Johnson,Archaeologist, Sydney Harbour ForeshoreAuthority; the curator wishes to remain anonymous.

59 Personal comments by Eleanor Casella, (29October 1999).

60 Susan Lawrence, Dolly’s Creek: An Archaeology ofGoldmining, (Melbourne: Melbourne UniversityPress, 2000); Jane Lydon, Many Inventions.

61 Personal comments by. Tim Murray, Departmentof Archaeology, La Trobe University; the project isentitled “Exploring the historical archaeology of themodern city: Sydney 1788–1900”.

62 John Dixon Hunt, “The Sign of the Object”, p. 294.

63 For discussion of the usefulness of ‘lifeways’ themesin interpreting archaeological sites and artefacts, seeKarskens, “Crossing Over”, pp. 37–8. The mochaware bowl appears in case 3 (item 4) of thehistorical and archaeological exhibition at theSydney Visitors’ Centre, George Street, the Rocks.

64 For an overview of these sites, see Lydon,“Archaeology in The Rocks”; see also Max Kelly,

Anchored in a Small Cove: A History and Archaeologyof the Rocks, Sydney, (Sydney: Sydney CoveAuthority, 1999).

65 See Thorp, “Report on Lilyvale”; compare withsimilar findings in Godden Mackay Logan andKarskens, The Cumberland/Gloucester Streets Site andKarskens, Inside the Rocks, chapters 3–5.

66 Karskens, Inside the Rocks, chapters 4 and 5; GraceKarskens, “Small Things, Big Pictures: NewPerspectives from Sydney’s Rocks Neighbourhood”,in Alan Mayne and Tim Murray (eds), TheArchaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations inSlumland, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000).

67 Smith, “History and the Collector”, p. 100.

68 The well was excavated on the Cumberland/Gloucester Streets site, see Carney “Trench CReport”, pp. 154–7; Wilson, “Ceramic ... Artefactreport”, pp. 313–14; Karskens, Inside the Rocks,pp. 40, 138–40.

69 Smith, “History and the Collector”, p. 97; Pearce,Museums, Objects and Collections, pp. 22–24; onsensory response and reading of artefacts see alsoJules David Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture”in Lubar and Kingery, History from Things, pp. 1–19.Compare with Birmingham’s assertion that, forarchaeologists, “visual appeal is no substitute forintellectual-based rational analysis and synthesis”,Birmingham, “Museum of Sydney: AnArchaeological Focus”, p. 258.

70 Emmett, “WYSIWYG”, p. 115.

71 Julie Marcus, A Dark Smudge Upon the Sand: Essayson Race, Guilt and the National Consciousness,(Sydney: LhR Press), pp. 37–50.

72 Helen Garner, True Stories: Selected Non-Fiction,(Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1996), p. 174.

73 Grace Karskens, “A Visit to MoSotSoFGH:Museum of Sydney on the Site of First GovernmentHouse”, in Phanfare, no. 117, (November 1995), pp. 1–3; Marcus, “Erotics and the Museum ofSydney”, p. 42; Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors, p. 24.

74 Marcus, “Erotics and the Museum of Sydney”, pp. 42–3; Emmett, “WYSIWYG”, pp. 111–12.

75 D. P. Dymond, Archaeology and History: A Plea forReconciliation, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1974), p. 83.

76 For example, the theme ‘Toll’ is focused on theearly toll-gate on George Street West, but the solelink with the artefacts displayed seems to be thatthey were found in same general area (site of


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Dixon’s steam mill on Darling Harbour, theBrickfields, and University Hall, Glebe).

77 Judy Birmingham and Carol Liston, “Old SydneyBurial Ground 1974”, in Studies in HistoricalArchaeology No 5, (1976); Anthony Lowe andRichard Mackay, “Old Sydney Burial Ground”, inAustralasian Historical Archaeology, vol. 10, (1992),pp. 15–23; Grace Karskens, “Death was in His face:Dying, Burial and Remembrance in Early Sydney”,Labour History, no. 74, (1998), pp. 21–39.

78 Birmingham, “A Decade of Digging”, p. 13.

79 John McPhee, “Bleak Colony in Close-up”. reviewof “Convicts” exhibition, Hyde Park BarracksMuseum, Sydney Morning Herald, (8 November1999).

80 Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, pp. 4, 340–5.

81 Griffiths, “Social History and Deep Time”.

82 Greg Dening, “Between Worlds”, in AustralianHistorical Studies, vol. 112, (1999), p. 172.

83 Anderson, “Selling the Past”, pp. 134–41.

84 Emmett, “WYSIWYG”, p. 115; Birmingham,“Museum of Sydney: An Archaeological Focus”, p. 258.

85 Mary Ellin D’Agostino and others (eds), “TheWritten and the Wrought: ComplementarySources” in Historical Anthropology, Special Edition ofthe Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, no. 79,(1995).

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