"Improving Our Condition" An Archaeology of Improvement in Taranaki, New Zealand, 1841-1860

Abstract

This research uses archaeological means to investigate the materiality associated with the ethic of Improvement as it is reflected in the everyday lives of two settler families to New Plymouth in the mid-19th century. The Jury and Autridge families, from North Cornwall in Britain, arrived on a free passage emigration scheme as members of the ‘labouring classes’. They arrived amongst the first flurry of organised emigration to New Plymouth in 1841, the year after the Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi with Māori, forming the basis of the colonial nation of New Zealand. Within this transformational period in New Zealand’s history during the 1840’s and 1850’s these families purchased land and settled themselves at Omata, to the south of New Plymouth, until the first Taranaki war beginning in 1860 saw them leave their farmsteads and their homes destroyed. This doctoral research tracks the lives of the two families from what is known of their lives in Britain through to the final destruction of their small farm cottages, and reveals, through archaeological excavations on both sites, how they lived out their vision for a better life. Members of the ‘labouring classes’ were otherwise largely invisible in the historical record and the Jurys and Autridges were no exception to this. Many of this group of first emigrants did not leave written records, and archaeology now provides what is largely the only material evidence of their lives at this time. While the 1860-61 war in Taranaki caused anguish on both sides, these same wars left behind a valuable archaeological resource in the form of the remains of the farmsteads of many of these early European settlers, as nearly 200 buildings were destroyed across the district. The short term occupation of these sites provides a rare and unique opportunity for a closely contextualised and fine-grained analysis of the material remains associated with these particular families. Using a lens of Improvement through which to contextualise the aspirations of the settlers, finely detailed and nuanced understandings are gained into the daily lives of the settler farmers, and how the motivations and values of the settlers may have been expressed through the acquisition, use, and discard of material culture, and through the landscape of the family farm. The history and the archaeology of the two households reveals the processes of Improvement relating to factors such as emigration, working on the land, improving the house and the domesticity within, children and education, attitudes to alcohol and tobacco consumption and also health and hygiene.