Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Skeletal remains tell history of goldfields
Researchers at the University of Otago’s department of anatomy have used isotopic evidence from the hair and teeth of 18 unidentified individuals to determine nutritional patterns and lifestyles of settlers in the Otago goldfields.
The research was derived as part of the Southern Cemeteries Archaeological Project, which aims to realise the life stories of settlers.
Individuals sampled in the research have been identified as the remains of nine European males, one European female, and eight Chinese males buried in Ardrossan St cemetery, Gabriel St cemetery, and Cromwell Cemetery between 1860 and the 1890s.
Charlotte King, who led the project, said the research highlighted diverse life experiences in the goldfields.
“Teeth form in childhood, and do not change throughout a person’s life, so by analysing their chemistry we can look at the diet in childhood, while by looking at hair on a centimetre-by-centimetre scale we can look at diet, month by month, leading up to time of death,” King said.
The research found many settlers in the sample experienced late weaning, later than 3 years of age. It was particularly true for Chinese settlers, some of whom had not been fully weaned until they were aged 4 or 5. And while all individuals had a diet involving staple crops and vegetables, the Chinese settlers in the sample had more meat and fish in their diet than European miners, a finding researchers found surprising given the marginalisation of Chinese miners at the time.
“It is possible that the emphasis that the Chinese had on community afforded them better collective access to meat,” King said.
“We know that there was a really strong community of Chinese miners at Lawrence,
an expectation that newcomers would be cared for, and a communal pig oven for food sharing.
“We also know that Chinese stores on the goldfields had their own supply chains and were popular even with the European miners,” she said.
The findings match historical records and oral history that Chinese merchants had good imported supplies of dried foods including dried fish, dried flavoured meats of pork and duck, dried vegetables and dried salted plums.
“Life on the goldfields has been heavily mythologised, and the realities of people’s individual experiences lost within these narratives,” the research found. “The preservation of their hair … gives us a chance to reconstruct their last months of life and better understand them as people.”
One Chinese settler’s remains showed a big drop in consumption of fish and meat about 10 months before they died. “It is possible that this … is associated with movement between areas of differing ecology or resource availability,” King said. “Maybe it reflects the timing of arriving on the Otago goldfields. Alternatively, it may simply reflect a sudden lack of availability of certain resources on the goldfield.”
Meanwhile, a female European’s long hair revealed insight into potential stress episodes. “Dramatic spikes across a 16-month period may be suggestive of sporadic meat shortages, short-lived periods where she ate lots of fish, acute periods of nutritional stress, or even stresses associated with pregnancy and lactation.”
There were also toxic levels of mercury in their hair, likely used for medicinal
purposes. “Regardless of the cause, their isotopic variability suggests that their life close to death was tumultuous, involving frequent changes to diet and health status,” King said.
Studies on the hair of the individuals revealed significant variation in food. “While the goldminers may have shared some experiences of hardship, there is no single story that defines ‘goldfields life’.
“I think one of the most important things this does is help us to see history as made up of real people … not just boring dates and facts,” King said. “Every person on the goldfields had their own story, their own set of reasons for being there, and this helps us to bring them to life.”