Raurimu frontier town 1900-1925 : a social archaeological perspective

Abstract

Sites associated with railway construction have received little attention in New Zealand historical archaeology, partly because their transient nature has left virtually no mark in the archaeological record, and partly through poor or lost documentation. In the case of the camps associated with the building of the central portion of the North Island Main Trunk Line, some were 10 evolve into thriving sawmilling towns. However, the finite nature of this extractive industry and the change from a rail to a road centred transport system eventually condemned many such towns to obscurity. This volume aims to reconstruct, through the usc of archival evidence and archaeological reconnaissance, the trajectory of the settlement of Raurimu from its origins as a Main Trunk construction camp to its eventual establishment as a sawmilling / railway town which was devastated by fire in IlJ25. Situated in the immediate vicinity of the highly publicised Raurimu Spiral, the construction camp embodies the problem of bias inherent in much archaeological or historical research that involves the juxtaposition of the transient and the monumental. Typically. the monument has been privileged at the expense of the mundane. I consider a multitude of social issues with a specific focus on gender as well as briefly addressing transient communities, the private enterprise that accompanied them, and relations between the co-operative workers and the Public Works Department. As a microcosm of the established town's economic vicissitudes, the Spiral Refreshment Rooms provide the material for a short case slUdy. The destructive and "preservative" role played by fire in the settlement is also considered. The functional transition from railway construction to sawmilling is found to be parallelled by a physical transition from one locality to another. Indicators of permanence are traced through changes in the occupational base of the population, increasing numbers of women, an increase in permanent housing and the establishment of Government facilities and community institutions.