Doing Historical Archaeology in Australia

Abstract

Historical archaeology studies the colonial past of Australia—the places and artifacts that have been left behind by over two hundred years of non-Indigenous activity. Britain officially colonized Australia in 1788, when the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove carrying 717 convicts, 191 marines and 19 officers. There had been contact between Indigenous people and Europeans long before this date along both the northern and western coasts of Australia (see Chapter 2), but 1788 heralded the first influx of foreign people desiring permanently to colonize the Australian continent. An enormous range and variety of people from many different countries have since settled either temporarily or permanently in Australia, so much so that until 1880 the majority of white Australians were immigrants, rather than native born (Camm & McQuilton, 1988:142). Throughout the nineteenth century these immigrants were drawn from places as diverse as the UK, Japan, Russia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Germany, China, Pakistan, India, Turkey and the Pacific Islands. As a result, historical archaeology deals with the varieties of material evidence that have resulted from more than two centuries of this colonial occupation and is much more than just the archaeology of British colonization.

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