Hangmans gaol volunteers book (original) (raw)
In 2013, the University of Western Australia and the World Heritage Site Fremantle Prison signed a Memorandum of Understanding to allow archaeological investigation of the Prison over a five year period, under the title “The Fremantle Prison Project”. This paper reports briefly on the first two years of that project. The project, designed to link with the UWA archaeology curriculum, and to meet heritage needs of the Prison, has produced a range of successful outcomes, including three research theses and two field schools. Initial research outcomes include a better understanding of refuse disposal practices within the Prison and the way it functioned as an industrial site in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Everyday Artefacts: Subsistence and Quality of Life at the Prisoner Barracks, Port Arthur, Tasmania
Archaeology in Oceania, 2015
This study focuses on the archaeology of the circa 1835-77 Prisoner Barracks constructed at Port Arthur, the domestic quarters for civilian, military and incarcerated occupants spanning almost the entire convict period. Faunal and artefact analyses of the assemblage uncovered at this site were used to provide a more complex understanding of institutional life. Quality of life of the occupants, and how they chose to improve it, is identified through a range of documentary and archaeological sources. It is shown that the barracks complex was a place of domestic life within the confines of an institution. It is evident in the material culture that everyday activities of occupants included the preparation of food, presentation of the home and self, manual tasks such as the production of domestic items, and recreational activities including tobacco smoking and hunting. By assessing indicators of quality of life within an institutional framework, namely the supply of local and imported goods and the material culture of recreation, this work is able to explore potential activities of the occupants that are often hidden from official records. This is examined through a number of scalar units, considering global, local and individual perspectives of the Prisoner Barrack's landscape.
Excavation in the Fremantle jail
Following a request from the Building Management Authority, archaeologists from the Anthropology Department of the Western Australian Museum agreed to undertake a watching brief on excavations of historical fills in parts of the Fremantle gaol complex. Archaeologists attended the site on six different occasions to supervise work, to excavate and to examine sediments and fills which were to be removed. Discussions on techniques and methods to be followed were held with B.M.A. staff and contractors and advice was given concerning the procedures to be followed. This report describes some of the methods used and discoveries made during the attendance of the archaeologists, however there has been no attempt made in this report to interpret the numerous portable cultural objects found during excavation
Execution as Exhibition: public and private hangings in colonial Australia
Peer Reviewed Proceedings of the 8th Annual Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ) Conference: 11-24. ISBN: 978-0-473-41892-2, 2017
When the British established a penal colony and military outpost in New South Wales, in 1788, they transformed the Great Southern Land. This reimagination of the continent was the result of transposing, from the Kingdom of Great Britain to the far side of the world, cultural and social practices as well as ideas of justice and punishment. This paper looks at how the tradition of the public execution was brought to Australia with the First Fleet. This is done through highlighting some colonial experiences—three public hangings and one hanging undertaken behind prison walls—of execution as exhibition. These are: the first man hanged in the new settlement (Thomas Barrett, 27 February 1788); the man they could not hang (Joseph Samuels, 26 September 1803); the man who drew an enormous crowd (John Knatchbull, 13 February 1844); and the most famous Australian man to be hanged (Edward Kelly, 11 November 1880).
Legacy of the ‘Fatal Shore’: The Heritage and Archaeology of Confinement in Post-Colonial Australia
Journal of Social Archaeology, 2004
Why does the theme of 'confinement' link historic-period heritage places across the continent of Australia? This article explores incarceration as not only a dominant theme in heritage-listed and archaeological sites from post-contact Australia, but also as a central underlying element in both Anglo-Australians' sense of ambiguous difference from their European origins, and indigenous Australians' painful experiences of engagement with the state. It considers the shared experiences of 'confinement' through a wide variety of registered convict, post-convict and indigenous heritage places in order to question how and why this theme has come to hold such a special resonance for different communities within modern Australia. Expanding upon Bruce Trigger's classic definitions of 'alternative archaeologies', the authors suggest this resonance has resulted in the emergence of a post-colonial form of heritage practice within this settler nation.
2013
"Historical archaeology in Australia has countless artefact assemblages awaiting research and analysis. This thesis is the study of one such collection; the artefacts of personal consumption recovered during the first archaeological excavation at Port Arthur. The site was the Prisoner Barracks and was excavated in 1977 by Maureen Byrne and a team of volunteers but was never fully analysed due to Byrne's sad death the same year. The assemblage, with all artefacts excluding the faunal material, has been catalogued and analysed for this thesis. The results present an interpretation of the assemblage, considering personal consumption and the effects of hierarchy on the general ways of life of the occupants. This thesis uses archaeological and documentary evidence to build on the understanding of the site's history. It explores who the occupants were; privileged convicts in the early phases, and military regiments, constables or officers and their families in the later phases of the nineteenth century. Through the artefact analysis, everyday life is examined, revealing how consumption was a combination of occupants adapting to make do and also reaching supplies beyond the settlement's confines. The physical and institutional isolation added complexity to the acquisition and consumption of goods, while these elements of the site also changed over time. By exploring the potential of the site and collection, this thesis also establishes the assemblage for further research involving larger scale comparisons."
The Journal of Art Historiography, 2015
When the Royal Academy showed the exhibition Australia late in 2013, promotional and critical discourse revolved around two ideas that lay at the heart of the enterprise. One was that artists' responses to the landscape, coming to know its colours, forms, textures and moods, underpins most Australian art - a concept familiar to those who may know of Bryan Robertson's Recent Australian painting at Whitechapel in mid 1961 or the Australian Painting exhibition at the Tate in January 1963 and in any case requested by the Royal Academy for 2013.1 A second, less familiar, idea is the way in which Australians have come to understand the land, not as a motif for naturalistic, expressionistic or abstract landscapes, but as places that harbour stories and cultural attributes not always evident to the Western eye yet sensed by the mind. In August 1957 anthropologist, photographer and curator Charles Mountford had shown his collection of Aboriginal art at the ICA, London.2 A few months ...
Another pit, another post-hole: Are we learning anything new from Parramatta's 'convict hut' sites?
Australian Archaeology, 2024
This paper explores the archaeology of one of the more recently excavated 'convict hut' sites, the structures associated with early convict occupation (c.1788-1818) of the colonised agricultural landscape of what is now Parramatta in New South Wales. The paper primarily examines what substantive conclusions can be drawn from what could be considered repetitious archaeological sites: one hut in a long line of huts. The work focuses on the temporal and spatial constraints of evidence from the Club Parramatta site, building on the legacy of excavations that have occurred over the last 40 years. The results are framed through a conceptual lens of assemblages of practice and make use of comparative artefact analysis of three huts. We argue that New Materialism is particularly helpful for avoiding dualistic interpretations, such as convict/free, and instead allows for more nuanced and active understandings of people in the past.
The convict road station site at Wisemans Ferry: an historical and archaeological investigation
The Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology, 1984
In examining the contribution of the convicts to Australia's early material history, archaeologists and architectural historians usually focus on impressive, durable structures such as public buildings and bridges. The convict road station site at Wisemans Ferry presents an alternative record. It comprises the remains of the temporary, rough dwellings of the convict gangs which constructed the Great North Road between 1826 and 1836, and it is particularly valuable because of the absence of detailed written records dealing with such accommodation. The site was recently acquired by the New South Wales State Government, and arrangements are being made for its protection and eventual public presentation. In this paper Grace Karskens, Historic Buildings Research Officer for the National Trust of Australia (N.S.W.), examines the development of road-gang accommodation in the 1820s and 1830s and seeks to interpret the above-ground remains in the essential historical context.
Convict depots inhabited between 1850 and 1875 were excavated in the Western Australian regional towns of York and Toodyay. The project examines the regional characteristics of the convict system through the evidence of lifeways of the depots’ inhabitants. Excavations at York recorded four depot structures: the commissariat, stables, a previously unknown privy, and the extant Superintendent’s building. Excavations at Toodyay recorded seven depot structures: the convict barracks, hospital, kitchen, Warder’s quarters, privy, Superintendent’s quarters and commissariat. A range of structural styles and techniques were recorded, the result of limited supervision of a constantly changing convict workforce with variable skill levels. At both sites less than 30% of the total contexts and approximately 10% of the deposits could be confidently attributed to the convict-era.
2001
The archaeology a/the penal settlernent a/NO/folk Is/and;s a substantially untapped source ofil?formalion aboul cOf/vict life. as revealed by the assemblage of artefacts excavated in J987 from the Civil (convict) Hospital privy (in use c./845-/855). Artefacts such as syringes, medicine cups. cupping glasses, medicine and alcohol bottles, clay IObacco pipes, buttons, toothbrushes and hair combs; and doclfmen/GlY reports of life in the flospiwl, reveal aspects of the material circumstances, daily activities and medical care of the convicts. They allude to the convict experiences qf I!fe, health, disease, pain Gnd death in the Civil Hospital. They represent aspects ofofficial control and the disciphning of the convict hfes~yle and body, the types of nulimefltGJJ! treatments to which convicts were exposed and theforms ofconvict resistance and reactions to the discipline imposed upon their lives. Such themes are presented as important jar expanding our understanding ofthe convict experience in Australia.
Inside Out: issues and insights from the Fremantle Prison art collection
Fremantle Prison houses one of the best collections of prisoner art in Australia. Largely a legacy of the last decades of the Prison’s operational years, it incorporates murals, graffiti, painted furniture, and works on canvas. Unlike much of the Fremantle Prison Collection, it speaks in the unmediated voice of the prisoner, rather than the institution. This paper will give an overview of the history of the prisoner art program at Fremantle Prison and some of its alumni, including artists of national and international renown such as Jimmy Pike and Revel Cooper. The complexity of many of the works provide new opportunities for interpreting prison life, however preserving, researching and interpreting the collection also presents its share of challenges. Many of the works, created and executed on ill-prepared surfaces using poor quality paints, have severely degraded since the Prison closed in 1991, and issues of copyright and privacy have ramifications for researching and interpreting the collection, including placing limitations on its digital dissemination. There are also other, more subjective considerations, such as whether some of these works may be regarded as unsuitable for public display, given the use of violent or sexual imagery.