For a lot of us, Labour Day is celebrated in the same way as a lot of public holidays: not thinking about work, catching up the gardening and odd jobs around the house, going away for a long weekend, having … Continue reading →
On Wednesday I celebrated my six year anniversary working at Underground Overground Archaeology. I did plan on marking this milestone by staying up all Tuesday night to bake a special six-tiered chocolate cake to bring in to work and share … Continue reading →
All good things must come to an end, and so this post marks the final blog in our Life Before Plastic series (here’s part one, two and three if you’ve missed any). Speaking of endings, today we’re going to be … 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 →
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 →
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 →
Archaeologists are often faced with the question of what happens to artefacts after an excavation is complete? As is the case for a lot of excavations, artefacts can find themselves housed in museums. This centuries old institution found its beginning … Continue reading →
Most of the work I do as a buildings archaeologist focuses on the humble 19th century cottage. These types of buildings, their construction methods and materials have become well trod territory in post-earthquake Christchurch, meaning we now have a fair … Continue reading →
The temperatures are heating up, there’s Christmas decorations in shops around the city and we’re on the countdown to summer holidays. In our penultimate blog post for the year we’re going to look back on some of our best artefacts … Continue reading →
When it comes to personal fragrance (continuing on from our post a couple of weeks ago), exactly which perfumes and deodorants we choose to wear can reveal a lot about us, as individuals and as a society. How we define … Continue reading →
During excavations under the floor of a house in Akaroa, we found a large assemblage of labelled bottles. Labelled bottles are always an exciting find, firstly because they tell us what the bottle held at the time of its disposal, … 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 →
How did people get around Christchurch in the 19th century? People certainly walked, or rode, perhaps on a horse, or in a wheeled vehicle pulled by a horse, such as a dray, gig, hackney, or hansom. And let’s not forget … Continue reading →
When I first started studying to become an archaeologist, the dangers and difficulties of working with asbestos wasn’t really something that had ever crossed my mind. I knew what it was, in a vague sort of way, and that it … Continue reading →
Late in 2014 we were contacted by contractors working on a rebuild project in Christchurch’s city centre. It was reported that a number of bottles had been uncovered during routine earthworks and the area cordoned off until our arrival. The bottles … 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 →
In yet another segue (there’s clearly a theme to my blogs this year), today on the blog we’re going to go into more detail on something we touched on in last fortnight’s blog. Last time on the blog we broke … Continue reading →
Last time on the blog we looked specifically at the beer bottle labels from our Akaroa site. Today’s blog post is essentially a part two, where we’re going to take a look at the other labels found on the site. … Continue reading →
Archaeologists and whisky go well together. I agree with that universal truth. However, I fit in the gin lovers team at the office. So, as Jessie did one year ago, I’m writing a post combining two of my favourite things: … Continue reading →
Whether you share your home with one or not, they say that you’re either a cat person or a dog person. Hamish’s mid-week ‘hands up if you’re a dog person or a cat person’ office poll revealed that most of … 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 →
‘If you dig a hole through the centre of the Earth, you would arrive in New Zealand’. As Spanish children, we learnt that at school. Spain is the Antipodes of New Zealand. Both countries are at the same time joined … Continue reading →
When people first settled in Aotearoa, they had no idea that they were sitting upon a slice of one of two supercontinents; Gondwanaland. Around eighty-three million years ago this slice we now live on, known to us as Zealandia, broke … Continue reading →
Lately I have been doing quite a bit of Job Safety Analysis paperwork (because safety in the workplace is number one priority, folks), and that got me thinking about how the people of early Christchurch might have managed their own … 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 →
A selection of the most interesting bits and pieces we’ve been working with recently here in Christchurch. Jessie Garland
Presenting, with the aid of illustrations, the tale of an intrepid archaeologist, her trusty team and her quest to untangle the history of a house. It’s the story of a long lost age, a story for the ages, an age old story, a coming … Continue reading →
What would we do without glue? Well, it’s estimated that each person in U.S.A and the U.K. uses 18.2kgs of glue annually. I’m probably more of a Sellotape/Blu-Tack person myself, but those statistics sound impressive! The development of commercial synthetic … Continue reading →
Part the First Movember is upon us once again, and to celebrate Undershaved Overgrown Archaeology brings to you a brief history of facial hair in Aotearoa. Movember is all about men’s health, and we’ve previously covered health in the blog … Continue reading →