The Same Old Rubbish: An Analysis of Local Variation Within the Global Material Culture of 19th Century Christchurch

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Nineteenth century Christchurch, like other British colonial settlements, was primarily supplied with goods by the global trade networks of the British empire. The city’s material culture – and nineteenth century archaeology – shares characteristics with other British colonial settlements throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and across the wider global landscape of British imperialism and colonialism. Yet, this material culture was filtered into Christchurch through a framework of supply and distribution influenced and shaped by local agents and adapted to the particular economic and cultural circumstances of the city’s foundation and development. This paper presents results from PhD research into the material culture of Christchurch through macro-scale assemblage analysis and a ‘city as site’ approach that analyses local and global patterns in the supply and distribution of domestic commodities to the city during the nineteenth century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow