Abstract
This thesis is an archaeological study of the stamp mill, often referred to as a ‘stamper battery,’ that is one of the iconic features of New Zealand’s historic goldfields. After the Otago gold rushes started in earnest in 1861 thousands of men flocked to the alluvial diggings, and they were soon searching for the quartz reefs that they were sure were the source of the river and stream gold. Hard-rock mining started in 1862 in Otago and Coromandel, and machines were erected to crush the rock and release the gold that it (hopefully) contained. These machines were stamp mills, a mechanically simple hammer mill that raised and dropped heavy weights onto the quartz in order to reduce it to the consistency of sand. The first few mills were improvised locally from materials at hand, and these were soon followed by a number of ‘engineered’ stamp mills imported from foundries in Melbourne. A local manufacturing industry quickly grew up, and other mills were imported from Britain and America. Today many examples of these mills survive in the old goldfields in varying states of preservation. They constitute archaeological evidence of two important aspects of the goldfields: technology, and a place of work.
Much Industrial Archaeology has traditionally focussed on technological details, and this is the starting point for this research. Contemporary industry literature is used to describe and understand the engineering of the stamp mill, and this understanding is then applied to the archaeological record. The results of a wide-scale survey that covered sites from Fiordland in the south to the Coromandel in the north are considered in terms of technological adoption, adaption and innovation in order to determine how and why gold milling technology came to New Zealand. The results indicate that the majority of the technology was imported, with Australia acting as a source of conventional technology, and Britain and America as sources of more innovative designs. However, far from being completely technologically dependent on these places, it is argued that New Zealand was a technological participant in the international mining industry. There is ample archaeological evidence for local agency in New Zealand, whereby technology was chosen and adapted to suit local requirements, with some local designs then being re-exported. New Zealand was admittedly never more than small player in this international field, but it was nevertheless an active one.
The thesis then turns to the second issue: the stamp mill as a workplace. Since the 1970s commentators have pointed out that Industrial Archaeology should take note of social issues in the industrial world, but much subsequent work has been criticised because of its focus on technology and structures. By taking the same engineering analysis of the archaeological evidence of the New Zealand stamp mills as used in the discussion of technology, the mill as a place where people worked is considered. Evidence of wear, repair, modification and pragmatic adaption is discussed to identify the work that was actually carried out by the mill workers, and detailed volumetric analysis of various mill parts is used to quantify some of the tasks in relation to contemporary records of workmen’s abilities. Finally, the workplace environment is also considered, including hazards such as noise, dust and poisons. The results of this, unsurprisingly, find that the battery house was by modern standards a very dangerous place. However, it is also observed that in a world without social welfare, the battery house represented employment and income that was vital for the working man and his family.
In conclusion, the stamp mill is part of an archaeological landscape that has both international links and individual social meaning. Modern New Zealand society evolved in melting pot of the nineteenth century, and the gold mining industry played an important role in that development. The combination of evidence of international influence and local agency in mining technology, and the role and experiences of the mill workers, provides a small insight into the emergence of the complex modern world.