Abstract
Melbourne was a major global city in the nineteenth century. Founded by pastoralists in 1835, the settlement grew explosively following the discovery of gold in 1851, and within a decade the population had reached half a million people. New settlers and new wealth brought a boom in housing construction, manufacturing, civic institutions, and transport and communication infrastructure, as the city became the leading urban center in Australasia. The structure and fabric of the city today expresses much of its colonial development, when “Marvellous Melbourne” was among the most remarkable metropolitan centers in the Asia-Pacific region. In the last ten years, the intersection of more rigorous heritage protection and a boom in large-scale urban development means that there has been a fluorescence of historical archaeological work carried out in Melbourne, especially in the central business district. We draw upon this extensive archive of material to highlight the results of major archaeological discoveries that have occurred in recent years.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Attwood, B., and Doyle, H. (2009). Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne.
Davison, G. (1978). The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Hayes, S. (2014). Good Taste, Fashion, Luxury: A Genteel Melbourne Family and Their Rubbish, Sydney University Press, Sydney.
Hayes, S., and Minchinton, B. (2016). Cesspit formation processes and waste management history in Melbourne: evidence from little Lon. Australian Archaeology 82: 12–24.
Godden Mackay Logan (2008). Former Carlton & United Brewery, Melbourne. Heritage Victoria.
Lydon, J. (2004). “This Civilising Experiment”: photography at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station during the 1860s. In Harrison, R., and Williamson, C. (eds.) After Captain Cook: The Archaeology of the Recent Indigenous Past in Australia, Altamira, Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 59–74.
Mayne, A., and Lawrence, S. (1998). An ethnography of place: imagining “Little Lon.” Journal of Australian Studies 57: 93–107.
Murray, T., and Mayne, A. (2001). Imaginary landscapes: reading Melbourne’s “Little Lon.” In Mayne, A., and Murray, T. (eds.), The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 89–105.
Orser, C. E., Jr. (2010). Twenty-first-century historical archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 18: 111–150.
Serle, G. (1963). The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851–1861, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Smith, C., and Hayes, S. (2010). Managing the commonwealth block archaeological assemblage: an Australian case study. Collections 6(3): 171–187.
Smith, J., Bugh, B., Miller, M., and Tucker, C. (in press). Flour power: public archaeology at the Moses Thomas mill site. In Spry, C., Frankel, D., and Lawrence, S. (eds.), Excavations, surveys and heritage Management in Victoria Volume 5, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Thomas, D., Hewitt, G., and Kent, A. (2013). Splitting Hehrs: untangling the stratigraphy of a sequence of historic farmstead buildings at Wollert. In Lawrence, S., Frankel, D., Spry, C., Canning, S., and Berelov, I. (eds.), Excavations, Surveys and Heritage Management in Victoria Volume 2, La Trobe University, Melbourne, pp. 31–36.
Vines, G. (2015). The Scottish pastoral landscape in Tullamarine, Victoria. In Spry, C., Frankel, D., and Lawrence, S. (eds.), Excavations, Surveys and Heritage Management in Victoria Volume 4, La Trobe University, Melbourne, pp. 59–68.
Young, L. (2003). Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lawrence, S., Davies, P. & Smith, J. Introduction: The Archaeology of “Marvellous Melbourne”. Int J Histor Archaeol 22, 1–5 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-017-0416-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-017-0416-3