Archaeologists conducting a dig on a CBD site hope to find rare relics related to Melbourne’s settlement days, including John Batman’s cottage.
The site, next to Young and Jacksons on Swanston Street in the CBD, is being surveyed over the next few weeks while construction workers prepare to begin work on the Metro Tunnel.
Excavation Director Meg Goulding said they were hopeful of finding more items linked to the city’s early history.
“We have been given this time – around about 12 weeks to do a really good excavation of the site and then we can let the guys get in there and build their tunnel,” she told Ross and John.
To date, they have uncovered a newspaper from the 1900’s as well as other relics.
“What we do know is that there were some of the earliest European occupation on this site.
“We think there’s possibly the remains of a structure that John Batman himself built.”
Click PLAY to hear the full interview
JOHN MASANAUSKAS, CITY EDITOR, Herald Sun
May 22, 2018 7:05pm
ARCHAEOLOGISTS hope that a CBD site linked to Melbourne pioneer John Batman will reveal a treasure trove of the city’s early history.
Already, a dig next to Young and Jackson Hotel on Swanston St has uncovered items like antique bottles, coins, metal spoons, marbles and even human teeth.
The excavations were made possible when several buildings were demolished for work on the proposed Town Hall underground station as part of the $11 billion Metro Tunnel project.
Swanston Street in 1875.Senior archaeologist Cornelia de Rochefort with a section of the
Herald newspaper stuck to stonework dating back to the early 1900s. Picture:
David Caird
Batman paid 100 pounds for the land just two years after Melbourne was founded in 1835 and built a timber cottage that soon became the city’s first girls’ school.
Excavation director Meg Goulding from archaeological consultants Ochre Imprints said that a possible location of the structure had been identified but more digging was needed to find the footings and even original timber posts.
“If we find Batman’s cottage it would be very significant as finding something structural from the 1830s would be quite rare,” she said. Another part of the site has yielded the remains of a doorway and fireplace, probably dating to the 1840s.
Heritage Victoria principal archaeologist Jeremy Smith said it appeared to have been a two-room cottage. “The artefacts will tell us, was it a factory, was it a pub, a residence, a school potentially,” he said.
“That first generation of Melbourne’s history, the pioneers — this is where they’ve settled, this is what they’re doing in those very first years of the city’s settlement.”The site changed dramatically during the Gold Rush with Batman’s school razed in 1853, and Young and Jackson, or Princes Bridge Hotel, opening in 1861.Over the decades the rest of the land was variously used for warehouses and businesses including an iron monger, chocolatier and dentist.More than 100 archaeologists, field workers and students will survey the site, as well as another Metro Tunnel site at La Trobe St, for several more weeks.Viewing windows have been installed at both locations to allow the public to see the digs in action.Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said that the northern CBD site dig had already produced thousands of items, including highly decorative pottery and clay tobacco pipes.“The viewing windows will give locals and visitors the chance to get up close to the biggest archaeological digs in Victoria’s history and watch as treasures from Melbourne’s past are unearthed,” she said.It is hoped the dig will find John Batman’s cottage. Picture: David Caird
FOUND ITEMS FROM LOST MELBOURNE
Antique torpedo bottle Metal spoons Coins Herald newspaper fragments from early 1900s Human teeth
We have found the oldest archaeological item at our 377-391 Swanston Street so far: a tree stump from Melbourne’s pre-colonial woodland. The stump was once a large Eucalyptus, which formed part of the extensive woodland that characterised the area before European settlement.
Why do you think such places in Melbourne are never conserved and interpreted, when Sydney has numerous examples?
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Halfway through the six month excavation next to Young & Jackson pub in Swanston Street, clues to our ancestors’ lives are being unearthed daily.
Some had appalling tooth cavities, or smoked opium in glass bongs made from cut up beer bottles.
There is a jet earring, modelled on Queen Victoria’s mourning wear. There’s a child’s crude slingshot and a bone-handled fork.
The artefacts will be preserved but the ruins will make way for the Town Hall underground station to be built as part of the Metro Tunnel Project.
The project will put select artefacts from here and from the second dig site at the corner of Swanston and La Trobe streets (earmarked for State Library station) on display at its visitor centre opposite Melbourne Town Hall from September 24.
At the site near Young & Jackson, excavation director Megan Goulding said she felt history ‘‘hovering around us’’, with building footings dating from the 1830s gradually emerging.
‘‘It’s quite evocative,’’ she said. ‘‘Every aspect of our European past is here on the site and you can still see it.’’
Passersby peering through windows into the site often ask whether staff have found bodies, or a gold hoard (no to both) and are hungry to learn more about the early buildings.
The buildings include one of our earliest girls’ schools, Nichola Cooke’s Roxburgh Ladies’ Seminary (1838); Freemason’s hotel (1856); and Powell’s hardware store (1850s).
Ms Goulding says two cart ruts date back to a few years after Melbourne’s 1835 founding.
There were several dentists on the block, hence the 1000 teeth found in pipes or sediment.
The most prominent dentist was JJ Forster, who practised at 11 Swanston Street from 1898 to the 1930s.
He was extremely wealthy, and in 1909, a 16-year-old boy threatened to bomb and shoot Forster, unless he handed over 50 pounds.
Forster’s newspaper ads boasted he could remove teeth ‘‘truthfully without pain’’.
But in 2018, Melbourne University dental school Associate Professor Mark Evans is skeptical.
Dr Evans, an endodontist who specialises in root canal therapy, said early 1900s anaesthesia, for tooth removal by lever and forceps, might involve cocaine, novocaine or nitrous oxide.
But the drugs were not as reliable or long-lasting as today’s lignocaine or articaine. There was no paracetamol or ibuprofen for post-procedure pain, and no antibiotics to fight infection.
Anaesthetic was often not used for fillings. The dentist would hollow-out your cavity using a vibrating, pedal-driven drill. ‘‘It would have been horrible,’’ Dr Evans says.
Dr Evans, who identified the teeth for conservators who are cleaning and cataloguing the artefacts in the Nicholas Building in Swanston Street, said many of the teeth had ‘‘massive cavities’’ which represented years of pain.
Ms Goulding said the teeth gave us an "intimate" connection to people’s lives 100 years ago, and conveyed the suffering of patients for whom ‘‘dental care was often a last resort rather than a preventive measure’’.
The ‘other’ with the teeth would be long time (~20 years) Melbourne archaeologist Jenny Porter.
Regards,
Dr Shaun Canning |
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Updated 28 Aug 2018, 7:53am
An unprecedented archaeological dig is underway beneath Melbourne's CBD.
In order to make way for the Metro Tunnel — a rail network that will include five new stations — a team of more than 100 archaeologists, students and staff are overseeing excavations at two locations.
Here's a look at some of the 500,000 artefacts they've found in the digs so far:
Yes. It's disgusting. More than 1,000 human teeth were found at one of the locations, next to the Young and Jackson pub on the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets.
Excavation director Meg Goulding said there used to be a dentist on the site.
"This guy clearly disposed of a lot of his teeth down the pipe, down the sink," she told ABC Melbourne's Richelle Hunt.
The teeth, some of which could date back to 1898, are especially disgusting by modern standards.
"A lot of them are unattractive because they've got very big holes in them," Ms Goulding said.
"So they instantly say to you pain and agony, both in terms of people suffering for the length of time that they must have had some of these teeth in their mouths, but also just the extraction process."
A number of objects highlight the different businesses which have stood on the sites during the 180 years since the European settlement of Melbourne.
Hundreds of lead print types were discovered, left behind by a stationer and printer who worked in the area in the late 1800s.
There are also labels from James Dickson & Co ginger ale bottles, a company which started in a Richmond shed during the 1850s gold rush before moving to the CBD in 1869.
Heat-resistant ceramic crucibles may have been used in a printing workshop or sold by stationery shops.
Gambling dice and gaming discs have also been unearthed, mostly made from cattle bone or ivory.
At least 20 dice were recovered from 13 Swanston Street, a site formerly occupied by hotels, along with corks, corkscrews, glass tumblers, wine glasses, swizzle sticks and alcohol bottles.
Archaeologists also uncovered 34 glass discs which suggest that opium lamps were manufactured in the area.
Items left behind by wealthy patrons who would have visited the hotels include an opulent jet earring which probably fell through the floorboards, lost for more than a century.
Plenty of children's toys have also been uncovered, including a toy soldier that dates back to the 1850s.
It was likely made in Germany and depicts a British army drummer around the time of the Battle of Waterloo.
There's also a yellow bird-shaped whistle that dates back to at least the 1860s and the head from a china doll.
The doll is believed to be a Frozen Charlotte, which were popular toys that got their name from a song about a vain girl who refused to cover up and froze to death on a winter's night.
When the excavations from European settlement are complete, traditional owners will be invited on site to excavate older deposits.
Ms Goulding said the area was used by Indigenous people camping by the Yarra River.
"Towards the end of our historical archaeological program we then move into the Indigenous archaeological program."
The team is processing the hundreds of thousands of artefacts uncovered in the first four months of the dig.
"A conservator does conservation work on the very fragile ones and then the artefacts get catalogued and they get processed properly," Ms Goulding said.
Some of them will be put on display at Metro Tunnel HQ located at 125-133 Swanston Street from September 24.
Our #Archaeology students are gaining hands-on excavation experience at the site of the @Melbourne's new @metrotunnelvic project.
Maybe it’s related, or parallel, with the tooth fairy belief? That there’s something magic about lost teeth?
“ Fear of witches was another reason to bury or burn teeth. In medieval Europe, it was thought that if a witch were to get hold of one's teeth, it could lead to them having total power over him or her.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_fairy
Perhaps paying for baby teeth was originally a method of averting witches – the tooth fairy took over the associated risk from children, and defused it. Building extracted teeth into a wall might have originated as a way of keeping them out of the hands of witches?
Jeannette
From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Gary Vines
Sent: Tuesday, 30 October 2018 9:50 AM
To: OzArch
Subject: {OzArch} Re: Melborne Metro Archaeology updates
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----- Original Message -----From:oza...@googlegroups.comTo:"OzArch" <oza...@googlegroups.com>Cc:Sent:Mon, 29 Oct 2018 15:50:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:{OzArch} Re: Melborne Metro Archaeology updates
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Opium lamps and slingshots! Two more fascinating finds from our Town Hall Station archaeology site near the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets. Find out more about our archaeological digs at: https://bit.ly/2Oy0rzO