Abstract
New Zealand cities in the nineteenth century were rapidly changing and expanding from small colonial outposts to established urban centres. Transformations of the city environment can be investigated through archaeological analyses, which offer unique perspectives to the field of urban research. Archaeology can reveal the physicality of the past, showing what actually took place as well as giving an insight into the lives of those not commonly represented in historical narratives. Contract archaeological work in New Zealand has produced a large amount of data from excavations in urban centres; however, few studies have utilised these records or provided a broader synthesis of what has been uncovered. This thesis uses archaeological data from the grey literature to track the changing form and function of Te Aro, an inner-city suburb of Wellington, as well as to investigate the socio-cultural contexts behind these changes.
This thesis implements a Geographical Information System (GIS) methodology to overcome the limitations of the smaller fragmentary datasets often produced in New Zealand archaeology and to experiment with a novel way to effectively use the data from grey literature in an academic context. A diachronic map was constructed on ArcGIS containing digitised archaeological data integrated with historical and environmental information. The map illustrates the transformation of the urban environment and provides a contextual web where archaeological data can be situated, aiding synthesis and comparative observations. The combination of multiple lines of evidence reveals inconsistencies between the datasets giving insight into the nuances of urbanisation. The study's limitations reveal the shortcomings in the current understandings of the archaeological signatures of socio-cultural identities in a nineteenth-century New Zealand context. Additionally, this study serves as an evaluation of the usefulness of contract archaeological excavation and data collection in New Zealand, indicating how we can better utilise this data source and advance archaeological practice in the future.