As a bit of preface for this blog, for anyone not reading it on or around the 20th of August, 2021, New Zealand is back into a full lockdown and the whole country has gone a bit silly. So, in … Continue reading →
For a change of pace, a group from Underground Overground Archaeology spent last week out of the office, and out of Christchurch at the New Zealand Archaeological Association Conference on Stewart Island. The New Zealand Archaeological Association (known affectionately as … Continue reading →
Food, in all its myriad forms, can be one of the most intrinsic and expressive aspects of culture and society – throughout time and across the world. From the customs surrounding the preparation and consumption of food to the ingredients … Continue reading →
People have lived in the Christchurch area for at least 700 years, and one of the earliest large settlements was at Redcliffs – Raekura – where a wide variety of naturally occurring foods could be obtained. There were shellfish on … Continue reading →
Today on the blog we are discussing my favourite site of 2019. We already talked about part of the site’s history last fortnight on the blog- that it contained the store and offices for Walton, Warner and Co. and their … Continue reading →
It’s been a busy month for Underground Overground Archaeology as we’ve been actively involved in New Zealand Archaeology Week 2018 running displays, historical tours, and talks – all of them highly successful thanks to history and archaeology lovers across the … Continue reading →
The pen is mightier than the sword – and before the days of ball-points, one needed ink bottles to fire up their weapon of choice – that being the quill, the dip pen or the fountain pen. Ink bottles are … Continue reading →
As a researcher for Underground Overground Archaeology, I spend my time searching written and visual sources for historical information on the sites the archaeologists are working on. The newspapers available on Papers Past are some of the best sources for rediscovering … Continue reading &...
He is bed maker to the dead. The pillows which he lays never rumple. The day of interment is the theatre in which he displays the mysteries of this art. Thomas Lamb 1811. Nothing in this would can be … Continue reading →
And just like that another year has passed us by. 2018 has been a year of changes here at Underground Overground. It’s with a very heavy heart we’ve said a few goodbyes to some tremendously talented archaeologists; Chelsea, Shana, Matt, … Continue reading →
It’s been a while since we last did one of these, so here are some of our most interesting finds from the past six months. Clara Watson References Coysh, A., & Henrywood, R. 1982. The Dictionary of Blue and White … Continue reading →
Every year on the 14th February we celebrate St. Valentine’s day with the exchanging of small tokens of our love and affection with our significant others. As so often is the case, the exact origins of this holiday are clouded … Continue reading →
Every January I find myself saying the phrase “new year, new me” any time I do anything remotely healthy or out of the ordinary. Ate a salad: new year, new me. Went to the gym: new year, new me. Read … Continue reading →
In the beginning there was no Te Wai Pounamu or Aotearoa. The waters of Kiwa rolled over the place now occupied by the South Island, the North Island and Stewart Island. No sign of land existed. Before Raki (the Sky … Continue reading →
Lyttelton is a fun and exciting place to do archaeology. I’ve been lucky enough to get to do a bit of archaeology in Lyttelton in the last few months, mainly out in the road, because of the digging that’s been … Continue reading →
“It must have been a happy household,” was the remark made by one of our team members when she saw the artefact assemblage we are discussing on today’s blog post. Whilst children’s artefacts are relatively common finds on New Zealand … Continue reading →
If you walk along the Avon River by Cashel Street you might catch a glimpse of the small gondolas taking their fares for a leisurely punt through the city and botanical gardens. Today this attraction is aimed largely at tourists, … Continue reading →
Anyone in the office will tell you that I have a keen interest in military history, especially anything related to the World War 2 period. I like my airplanes, yes (hats off to the de Havilland Mosquito, that twin engine … Continue reading →
This week on the blog, a selection of chamber pots for your perusal, ranked according to my entirely objective, and not at all arbitrary, assessment of how fancy they are. This is accompanied by my very best attempt at using … Continue reading →
Down on the corner of a Lyttelton street, there was a butcher, a courier and a large family to meet… Or at least, one could have met them about 150 odd years ago when three early settler families in Lyttelton … Continue reading →
Today, art is my inspiration, at least as a starting point. The title of this blog post may seem whimsical, but it is both a practical description of our subject today and a reference to the art of centuries past. … Continue reading →
In 1848, when the City of Christchurch was nothing but a design concept of the Canterbury Association back in London the idea of a ‘little slice of England’ (but half the world away) was born (Rice 2014, 9). Exactly how … Continue reading →
When we are recording a standing structure we might be lucky enough to discover wallpaper hidden behind plasterboard or tucked under skirtings. In some houses we can find layers of wallpaper, each revealing a stylistic period. While many of the … Continue reading →
Continuing on from our last FAQ post, here are the answers to a few more of the questions we face regularly here in Christchurch. 1) Are you doing this for a school project? Yes, seriously. This gets asked more often … Continue reading →
Gender matters. And it’s complicated, which is why writing this blog post has been particularly difficult. Why is it so complicated, from an archaeological standpoint? Well, let me try and explain. Historical archaeology developed as a discipline in the mid-20th … Continue reading →
Last time on the blog we introduced our Life Before Plastic blog series, and today we’re continuing the series by discussing packaging. A lot of what we find in the archaeological record are containers, which are a form of packaging. … Continue reading →
‘Rubbish’ is the most common thing we find on our 19th century archaeological sites. I have ‘rubbish’ in quotation marks because to us what we find isn’t rubbish, it’s the material evidence of what life was like in the early … Continue reading →
Class is a complicated concept, historically and in the present day. It’s difficult to define, somewhat ephemeral, and yet so clearly there in our societies and our cultures. For better or for worse, social stratification has been part of human … Continue reading →
Last time on the blog we talked about packaging and how our Victorian ancestors made do without plastic trays to wrap their cans of coke in (and all the rest of it). This week we’re going to take a closer … Continue reading →
Picture this. A summer’s day: clear blue skies and the heat of the afternoon sunshine, just the hint of a breeze. You might be in a garden, sheltering from the sun in the shade of the tree or under a … Continue reading →