 
So, welcome everyone to the Hyde Park Barracks,
we’re absolutely thrilled to have you here
for this live from the vault archaeology event.
My name’s Naomi Manning and I work here
at the museum and we would like to hear
from you and know that you can hear us.
So, I’m going to read, there are about
30 schools here today.
I’m going to read through and when I read
your name I want you to wave, okay.
So, Kurrajong North Public School, Echuca,
Auburn North, Bradbury Public School,
Brisbania Public School, Connell’s Point Public School
give us a wave, Darcy Road Public School,
Dee Why Public School, Euabalong West,
we saw you before, hi, Eungai Public School,
Eureka Public School, Hornsby South,
I can see you, hi Hornsby South,
Junee North Public School, Karuah Public School,
Kincumber Public School, Lake Cathie Public School,
Lansvale Public School, Lavington East, I can see you,
Mendooran Public School, Metford Public School,
Pendle Hill Public School, so cool seeing
you all wave, Taree West, Thornleigh West,
Wadalba Community School,
Wingham Brush Public School,
Parramatta North Public School,
lots of you there,
hi Parramatta North,
Ropes Crossing Public School,
I can see a few of you, Wagga Wagga High School
and Warren Central School.
Welcome, everyone.
Okay, so it was nice to hear you there you
were all unmuted to say hi, welcome.
So, you are so lucky to be coming on this
excursion for your last lesson on Friday and
you are going to see things that you would
not usually get to see,
you’re going to go to 2 places.
Firstly, you’re here and we call this
the vault.
This is an archaeology storeroom and there
are thousands of artefacts in this room
that are not shown to the general public
and we’ve picked out some of the rarest objects
for you to have a look at that cannot be on display
because they’re so precious.
And you’re not just going to hear from me
you’re going to have an expert who is also
a trained archaeologist, Dr Fiona Starr and
she’s going to take you through those things.
Then you get to cross to a dig and you’re going
to go to an archaeological excavation site
and there you’ll get to see where artefacts
come from and learn a bit about context.
So, we’re going to start by explaining
a bit about this site
and you’re going to look at a couple of slides.
So, first we’re going to look at a slide
that shows Sydney Cove around the time
the barracks was being built.
So, Sydney Cove was a landing point for 80,000
of the 166,000 convicts who came to
the Australian colonies and I know a lot of you
have been learning about the colonies,
you told us that when you decided
to do this conference.
And about 50,000 of those convicts, go to
the next slide, actually came to this building.
You’re looking now at the barracks when
it was first built, okay.
So, the barracks was built by convicts as
an accommodation, a place for them to stay,
it wasn’t a prison but they weren’t allowed
to leave.
And so we’re going to look now, that’s
in the past, this is the building that we’re
standing in at the moment, this is the barracks
today as it looks and thousands and thousands
of people still come and visit this old convict
building that the convicts made so many years ago.
Now, this site it was used for lots of different
purposes but it became a dig in the 1980s.
So, we’ll look at the next slide.
You can see in this slide all of the area
outside, a lot of the area outside
was dug up into trenches so they could
look for artefacts.
And even inside you can see on these next
slides they actually pulled up the floorboards
and archaeologists excavated inside as well.
And that’s where we got these artefacts,
in fact we got about 120,000 artefacts of
things people left behind, many of which were
convicts.
So, now we might cross to you and I want to
ask you because I actually know a lot of you
have been studying this, who knows what an
archaeologist is?
Hands up, hands up if you know and
we’ll pick someone.
So, do I see some hands in
Wingham Brush Public School?
Wingham Brush we can hear you.
Who knows, say it again,
what is an archaeologist?
An archaeologist is somebody
who digs up artefacts
from past years and …
Wow, that is a really great answer, you’ve
been doing some really good work in class,
that’s exactly how I was going to describe
it, people who dug up things from the past,
all sorts of different things.
So, you can mute your microphone again now,
thank you Wingham Brush Public School.
And they use those to tell us a bit
about history.
So, let’s talk to … mute your microphone
again, thank you Wingham Brush.
So, let’s now talk to Fiona who is the curator
here at the barracks and her speciality
is in studying and caring for artefacts.
So, and she’s going to tell us about these
really rare ones that we’re going to look at
and tell us a few stories about them.
So, Fiona do you want to tell us a little
bit about what an archaeologist does?
Sure, I’d actually like to throw the question
again to the classrooms.
I think it might be fun to think about
one of the most famous archaeologists
that probably all of you know so I want you
to put your hand up
if anyone’s seen the Indiana Jones’ movies.
There’s a lot of hands out there, good,
that’s good.
Now, another question, keep your hand up if
you think Indiana Jones is like real archaeologists.
Any hands?
A few hands.
A few hands is good, alright.
Well, actually you probably guessed that real
archaeologists are not actually like
Indiana Jones, they don’t go chasing
golden treasures most of the time,
mainly archaeology is about old rubbish.
So, really seriously it’s old rubbish that
people from the past have left behind
but it’s really interesting rubbish
because it tells us a lot about
how people used to live and depending on
the way you look at it
and the way you study it you can get
all kinds of information from it.
So, I guess what’s really important to remember
is that it’s not what you find,
it’s about what you find out
from the artefacts.
So, what we’re going to do today is
show you some really amazing,
quite very rare things that were left behind
here at the barracks and show you
how an archaeologist starts to think
and we’d actually like to get you guys
to starting thinking like archaeologists
so we’re going to ask you
some questions in a minute or two.
So, Fiona we’re going to look at these
really rare ones
but this whole room is filled with
artefacts isn’t it?
Can we show what some of these boxes
hold to the kids?
You can see behind us we’ve got all these
grey boxes, this is the rest of our collection.
We’ve got some things on display in the
museum but most of it we can’t display
because there are thousands of them.
What we’ve got here in the boxes has been
sorted by different types of artefacts,
so there’s ceramics and there’s glass,
there’s metal artefacts, bone,
all kinds of different things and we even have
textiles and paper,
so fabrics and paper which is really quite rare
to find at an archaeological site
because they were found under the floorboards
where it was really dry.
So, most of what we’ve got here is those
really difficult types like ceramic and glass.
I just want to show you inside
one of these boxes.
Archaeologists have spent hours and hours
sorting and cataloguing,
cleaning these things and studying them.
So, you can see inside the box here
all the different bags.
This is a box of clay tobacco pipe,
so for example here on the bag
you can see all the cataloguing information.
I’ll open it out so you can see what’s
inside, sorry it’s the bowl, what we call
the bowl of a clay tobacco pipe and this one
looks like it hasn’t been used,
there’s no smoke, carbon residue inside,
no evidence of it been smoked.
So, that’s just to show you a little bit
of what the rest of our, what the main part
of the collection here is at the museum.
What we’d like to do now is actually to
show you 3 incredibly rare things that have
been left behind, they’re quite rare as
I said, they’re textiles,
so it’s not normal to find these kinds of things
in archaeological sites because
they don’t survive underground which is the way
archaeologists mainly like to excavate.
These have come from inside the building here.
So, this is a rare treat for all of you I
have to say, we don’t have this on display
and not many visitors to the museum
get to see this.
Alright, so what we’re going to do …
Yeah, I think we might cross to you guys now
and ask you to think a little bit like archaeologists.
So, archaeologists found this.
Who do you think might have owned this shirt?
Put up your hand if you have an idea
and want to answer.
Okay, I can see Parramatta North,
there’s lots of hands up,
so Parramatta North do you want to unmute
your microphone and someone can stand up
and say who do you think
might have worn this shirt.
Who, sorry?
One of the convicts uniforms.
Excellent.
Well done.
It is one of the convict’s uniforms.
And why did you think that?
Because it looks like something that
they would wear.
It’s really well worn, is that what you said
or like the sort of things,
yeah, they’re two really good points.
Something like the sort of thing they would
have worn and also it’s really worn.
The main bit of evidence that we have actually
to know for sure that this is a convict shirt
is over this side of the shirt.
So, I think we’ve got a detailed slide of this,
it’s a little red stamp
and the next slide, see the letters BO
and there’s what we call a broad arrow stamp.
The letters BO stand for Board of Ordinance
and the broad arrow
is a mark of government property.
So, we know from that stamp the Board of Ordinance
is the government store that issued
all of the equipment and everything that
the convicts needed.
So, that stamp tells us for sure
that this is government property
and that it was a convict shirt.
And does anyone else, other people
thinking like an archaeologist,
do you want to say what sort of work
might this person have done
in looking at how the shirt is used
or how it’s left to us?
What sort of work might they have done?
Any guesses from our budding archaeologists
and historians?
Have a good look here, can everyone see
this patch here?
So, is that Taree West Public School?
Would you like to tell us?
Unmute your microphone.
Somebody mining.
Mining.
Mining, that’s a good guess.
What about the shirt made you think that?
Because it’s got length, it’s worn and
holes and everything.
Definitely.
Is that what the archaeologists decided Fiona?
That’s exactly it, you’re looking at that
kind of evidence,
all those little clues that you can see
on this object, this artefact
help us to have a good guess about what this,
the worker, the convict worker
who wore this what he might
have done for a job.
Remember, all the convicts were working for
the government, so whatever he was doing,
it was for the government.
And we know a lot of them used to work on
the roads, making bricks, there were stonemasons
cutting stone and my best guess from the wear
on this shirt is that this convict was doing
one of those kind of rough jobs maybe even
carrying bricks or stone.
Because if you’re doing that, your shirt
wears thin doesn’t it?
You get lots of holes in your shirt, if you’re
doing that day in, day out.
Convicts only got 2 shirts like this every year,
only 2 per year so you can imagine how
this would have happened for most of the convicts.
And we hardly have any of these shirts do we?
How come this one survived?
So, this one was found we think, we’re not exactly sure
and archaeologists didn’t exactly
find this shirt, it was one of the builders
who was restoring the building
and they told us that it came from,
it was under one of the treads of the stairs,
so under the staircase.
And that’s a bit of a curious point too,
why would a convict
stash his shirt under the stair tread?
Who wants to guess why would someone
have done that, hidden their shirt?
Okay, so we’ve got Kincumber Public School.
So, they could get rid of it …
Yeah, they wanted to get rid of it
so they could escape
and we know some convicts did
try to escape this building,
is that what people concluded,
what the …
Absolutely, so we do know that the good thing
that archaeologists can do
especially with Australian history is to use
our information from the artefacts
and compare them with historical sources.
So, there’s a lot of documents that say
that convicts used to escape from the barracks
by getting over the wall at night, throwing
off their uniforms and they’d have other
clothing underneath and then they’d go and
have a good night somewhere, when they come
back they’d put their uniform back on and
come back into the barracks.
So, you’re exactly right, he might have
stored it there for later when he came back.
And of course we know convicts only got
2 shirts so maybe this one he was really
trying to take good care of it,
he didn’t want other convicts
to steal it so he stashed it away.
They didn’t have wardrobes you see
in their dormitories.
So, we might let’s move to our next artefact
that we want to show you.
You might wonder why my hands
are blue as well,
I’m wearing these gloves to protect
the artefact because the oil and the grease,
the sweat from our hands is quite damaging
to old objects so in museums
we always wear these gloves
when we’re handling old objects.
Is that alright like that?
I’ll take it out.
Okay, the next wonderful thing we’ve got
here that was found here at the barracks
is this amazing, it looks like a dirty old shoe
and it is but this is not just any
dirty old shoe, well, it’s a convict shoe
we know again.
And how would we know that?
You guys are thinking like archaeologists,
can you see anything using the information
we got about the shirt, is there any sign
on here that can tell us
it was a convict’s shoe, not someone else’s shoe?
Any hands up, how did we know that
was a convict’s shirt?
What was the sign?
Now, I can see, has anyone got their hand up
at Eungai Public School?
Can you unmute?
rubber … leather … shoelaces ..
Okay, so you’re referencing the materials,
that’s a pretty good thought
that we could know they were convict shoes
because of the materials that were used.
I think we have a slide.
So, the one clue again it’s like the convict shirt,
the one clue we have,
you probably can’t see it just from
looking at the shoe here
but we’ve got a great slide for you
shows you the detail inside the shoe
which once again it shows the inside of the shoe
and once again it’s a stamp,
so it says BO, again Board of Ordinance
and there’s a little broad arrow.
So, again it confirms for us that this is
a government issue shoe.
And let’s look at it closely, like the archaeologists
just did when they found it.
Do we think this shoe is worn or not?
What do you think based on what you can see?
Okay, I can see, have I asked Taree West
a question before?
Taree West I can see lots of hands.
It’s worn out.
It’s worn out.
It’s worn and it’s worn out.
Yeah, you’re exactly right and the other thing is
if you have a look at the shape of it, that way.
So, you can see, everybody look down
at your shoes and see how
the left and the right ones are made differently,
they’re different shapes aren’t they?
And that’s how they come when you buy them
in the shops.
But when these shoes were made
the left and the right shoes
were made in the same shape,
it’s called straight lasted.
So, this shoe is straight lasted
and that helps us to date it too,
it’s early nineteenth century, early 1800s.
So, that was just the way the shoes were made.
And we can tell it’s been worn because even
though it looked identical to the other shoe
when it was new, it’s now sort of
shaped around the convict’s foot.
So, you can see it’s on his left foot isn’t it?
So, before we go to our next artefact …
There’s one more thing, why do you think
this shoe would have been left,
again stashed below the floorboards?
Any answers?
Hornsby South, I can see some hands there,
why do you think that?
Why was it hidden?
Because the convict wanted new shoes.
He wanted new shoes.
Maybe.
Good answer.
Yeah, good answer.
Again, convicts didn’t get many shoes during
the year, I think they only had 1 pair
and we do know again archaeologists can look at
the historical source and tell us that convicts
used to actually trade their shoes even when
they got them fresh out of the store,
they’d immediately trade them,
in other words sell them so that
they could get some food or something
that they wanted more than a pair of shoes.
And we’ve got a really fun picture coming
up for you next which shows a group of convicts
outside the barracks and you can see,
if you look really closely,
have a look at their shoes and their uniforms.
There’s one of the convicts, he’s got
only one shoe on.
So, he might be the one, who knows who left
this, this might be his other shoe
or his one shoe that you can see in the picture there,
he probably sold the other one.
So, we might put the shoe back
and we won’t show you this final one
that we’re going to show you
which is really rare,
we will show you something else first so that
you can deduce what this mystery one is.
So, put up your hand
if you know what these are.
Have you learnt about these?
Do you know what convicts
would have done with these?
Ropes Crossing Public School.
They’re quite heavy.
I might do this to help you.
So, Ropes Crossing Public School
we’re listening to you.
Handcuffs.
Handcuffs.
Well, I’m putting them on my hands
so that is quite confusing
but they were worn on their ankles
weren’t they Fiona?
And some of them got really heavy.
These are called leg irons.
So, this was a common way for, well,
bad convicts to be punished,
they had to wear these around their ankles
and they could only be fixed on by a blacksmith
who would put a hot rivet through here
and hammer it down.
Convicts couldn’t take them off
and some of them had to wear them
for months and months while they were working
on the roads or whatever work they were doing.
I have to say well you can’t tell but we
can tell you they’re pretty heavy.
It would be very uncomfortable wearing these,
not just the weight,
the noise that you would make every time
you walk around,
you make this clunking noise and people
would hear you coming and the metal would cut
into your skin and the bone around your ankles,
so really uncomfortable.
So, let’s see if you guys could work out
what this special artefact is.
Something to do with the leg irons.
How do you think the leg irons
that are worn around the ankles
and this artefact that was found,
how do they link together?
Hands up, let’s see, we haven’t heard
from Darcy Road Public School,
so do you want to tell us, Darcy Road?
How do you think the leg irons fits in with
the artefact that we have here?
Darcy Road unmute your microphone, great.
So, I can’t hear you Darcy Road, I’m sure
that you’re talking but I can’t hear you,
so let’s cross to someone else, what about
… Yeah, I could hear you,
say it again Darcy Road Public School.
It’s a locking mechanism.
A locking mechanism, that’s good thinking
Darcy Road.
Fiona, they’re on the right track,
aren’t they?
It is the right track, you’re right.
Remember we said it’s really uncomfortable
to wear a pair of leg irons
and you can’t take them off.
Well, some of them did get a bit tricky and
they tried to get them off but you had to
wear this for months, so, it’s made from
leather and it’s a cuff or a protector
to go around your ankle, between your skin
and the metal of the leg irons.
So, you can see it’s got these little straps
that hold the basils or the rings
of the leg irons going through there
and some holes here
which might have had some string to tie it
all together to hold it onto your ankle.
So, the other 2 artefacts that we had
were both things that were issued
by the government
and they had that broad arrow sign.
Put up your hand if you think this is going
to have one of those marks on it as well.
We’ll have a look in a minute.
Put up your hand if you think this would be
issued by the government and have their mark.
Lots of hands, lots of people think it would,
was it Fiona?
Well, another question,
do you think the government,
do you think the authority would want
the convicts to suffer a bit
or would they want them to protect their skin
and make it comfortable?
And this was only the ones that offended again,
most of them weren’t wearing the leg irons,
only if you’d been rude or tried to escape
or been lazy, what do you think?
Put up your hand if you think the government
would have wanted it to hurt more,
for them to suffer with the leg irons.
Yes, me too.
Okay, so the biggest clue on this,
well, that’s one clue,
we can kind of guess that the government
probably wanted it to hurt.
But the biggest clue is that,
remember the shirt and the shoe both had
that broad arrow and the BO,
Board of Ordinance stamp
to say that they’re government issue,
this one doesn’t have.
So, archaeologists can look
at that and say
‘Mmm, this might not have been
government issue’.
And probably it was just made by a convict
who was good at working with leather
and he made it either for himself or just to sell
or maybe trade with another convict.
So, very, very rare, this is the only one
we know about in Australia,
the only one that’s survived.
So, we are running out of time,
so what would be lovely
before we go is to maybe cross to you.
Before we cross to the dig,
does anyone want to ask Fiona
some questions about archaeologists
or the artefacts or the barracks?
What about, do we have somewhere Lansvale,
I know you’ve been doing studies
you said about primary sources,
does anyone at Lansvale have a question for Fiona?
What is the best thing that you’ve ever found?
I think we’ve just shown you
three of the best things,
they’re three of my favourites
from this collection for sure.
What about, that’s a good question.
What about some of the high school students,
is Wagga Wagga High there?
Wagga Wagga, do you want to unmute
and ask a question?
We’ll just give you a chance to unmute.
We can hear you Wagga Wagga.
(inaudible)
What a good question.
Okay, here’s a funny story I heard actually
just this morning,
not funny story, curious,
it’s mind blowing if you like.
We know another kind of punishment
that convicts had to do was to walk
on this treadmill, so this treadmill was to grind
the corn that they ate for their breakfast
and the government started to discover
that some convicts actually gained weight
when they went on the treadmill after doing it
for a couple of weeks
and some convicts lost weight
when they went on it.
So, then they started to weigh the convicts,
weigh them before they went on the treadmill.
It was a kind of medical experiment
or something of the time, so that’s a bit funny.
We don’t have any artefacts for it but it’s
a little bit of related history.
Great question.
There’s two other schools that I know
had really interesting questions
that they sent through beforehand.
So, Kurrajong North Public School,
I know you asked really great questions
about where to dig and so on.
Do you want to ask any of your questions now,
Kurrajong North Public School?
Great.
Have you found anything real big?
Really big.
In fact you can see how big this box is,
this is the biggest thing
that was found here at the barracks.
We’ve shown it to you, so you’re lucky,
it’s like I said it’s a real treat for you today.
And yeah, the building itself
is also something we use,
to deduce things, about stuff.
So, I just wanted to say before
we cross over to the next section,
I’m really impressed
with all the information that all the schools
have sent in so far and so pleased to hear
that so many of you are really interested in
convict history and archaeology and some
of you even want to become archaeologists
and if you want to pursue that, you just keep
going through your studies,
study history into high school and then
when you get to university
you can study archaeology, it takes 3 years.
And if you ever wanted to do
an archaeological excavation
you’ve got to make sure you apply to …
in NSW it’s called the Heritage Council.
So, not everybody, you can’t just go out
and do a dig,
you need to get a permit to do it.
And if you do find anything by accident you
also need to let the Heritage Council know.
So, just keep that in mind before you start
digging in your backyard or whatever,
even a trained archaeologist
needs to get a permit.
I didn’t know that, that’s really interesting.
So, we’ve looked here at artefacts and
the stories that they’ve told us,
that’s what Fiona has talked to us about
but we haven’t looked at artefacts in context,
Fiona mentioned at the start but it’s really important
exactly where they were found.
So, all of these artefacts in here and in
our museum, that information is recorded
but we can’t show you it because
the archaeological dig has of course
been filled in and now people come here
and see this building as a museum.
But we’re going to cross to a dig and it’s
only about 2 kilometres down the road,
it’s in The Rocks in Sydney and we’re going
to crossover and look at the place
where it came from and look at how
archaeologists work there.
So, let’s throw over to you,
Fabian and Susan.
… here around 1820.
So, hopefully you’ll be able to see
a painting on your screen
that shows how Windmill Street
looked in the 1840s.
And number 17 it’s the small house on the
right, it has a yellow circle around it.
We’ll show you a photo of what
Windmill Street looks like today
and it’s seen from the same spot
and the house at number 17
in the photograph is gone and now there’s
a modern apartment block here instead.
The remains of the house at number 17
were discovered by workers
who were digging out an underground carpark.
Development on that car park
was halted while archaeologists
were brought into conduct a dig here.
Afterwards the developers of the apartments
decided to leave the dig
as a place that people could visit.
So, you should be seeing a yellow circle
that shows the front door to the dig site
and it’s in exactly the same position
as the front door of that 1820s house.
But today it’s actually well below
street level and that’s because
the original dirt road has been surfaced
and then resurfaced so many times
over the years that the level of the road
has built up by about 2 metres.
So, today walking inside that doorway
you can see feels like going underground
but of course back in the 1820s this house
was built out in the open air.
From the outside the house here at
Number 17 would have looked
very much like the house that you can see
on your screen which was located actually
on the opposite side of Windmill Street.
So, as you can see it had 2 front windows
and the front door in the middle.
We’re now inside the dig site underneath
the apartment building.
So, you’re actually looking down
from the entry level of the original house
and you’re looking down onto
the basement level of that building.
Now, most of the house here at number 17
was pulled down and demolished in 1870,
the only parts that survived for the archaeologists
to find much later on were the very lowest
sections of the walls, so really the foundations
of that original house.
So, I’ve got a question for you to think
about, I can’t actually ask you to answer
this question right now but talk about it
maybe amongst yourselves,
what do you think the foundation walls
of the building here at number 17
were made from looking at what
you can see here?
So, have a little bit of a think about it,
I think you might be able to tell from just looking.
If any of you have guessed that the foundations
and the walls were made of stone
or maybe even if somebody thought of sandstone
you are absolutely correct.
So, of course there’s also mortar
which is like a cement or a glue
that sticks the blocks of stone together.
So, the early colonists here in Sydney
they called this part of Sydney The Rocks
and they did that because it was so rocky here,
there were all these steep sandstone ridges
all around this area and they provided
the stone blocks for building.
So, a lot of the very earliest buildings in
Sydney were made of sandstone.
Now, the land on which this house was built
actually slopes quite strongly
down to the water and down to the harbour.
And hopefully you can see a drawing on your
screen right now which gives you
an idea of what the view would have been like
from the back of the house
and that drawing was made in the 1860s.
So, this house was actually over time gradually
expanded from that original small house
into a much larger L-shaped building.
So, the original house was a square shape
and it had 4 rooms at the street level
and the basement level which is what we can still
see here today had 4 rooms as well.
So, at this time most food was cooked over
an open fire, people didn’t have ovens
and stoves like we have today, so kitchens were
always in the basement of the house
where the dirt or the stone floor even reduced
the risk of there being a fire.
As the only room with a chimney,
that small corner room over there
on the other side must have been the kitchen
and we’ve actually left an orange marker
on the floor there to show you the position
of what would have been the fireplace.
So, we know that fresh water
was not actually piped into this area
of The Rocks until about 1860.
So, now hopefully you’re able to see
a section of the floor plan that shows
a circle marked with a red dot.
Can everybody see that I hope so?
And it’s just outside the kitchen door.
So, I wonder if any of you think that that
might have been the toilet?
Very often that’s what people assume
when they see that and in fact
it wasn’t the toilet at all, it was a well or
a source of water for the family
that lived here in this building.
So, to make this well a hole was dug
straight down through the sandstone.
The well is a metre and a half in diameter
and it is four and a half metres deep.
So, you can also see that there was
a large block of stone just placed right here,
kind of like a ledge to lean up against
as you were pulling up a bucket of water
and to prevent people from possibly falling in.
Now, around as I said, around the 1860s
fresh water was being piped to this area of Sydney
so there was no any need for a well and because
it wasn’t needed as a water source anymore
it actually turned into a little bit of a
rubbish dump, a bit like a tip,
just ended up throwing their garbage in here.
So, this became a really rich resource
of artefact for archaeologists.
As Fiona told you earlier archaeologists don’t
you know generally find lots of gold and treasure
they generally find more rubbish
but rubbish tells you
an enormous amount about how people lived.
So, now I’ll actually hand you over to Susan
who’s going to tell you about the last room
that was built on in this house and you’ll
solve the mystery of what type of room it was.
So, students and teachers, hello and welcome.
I’m standing inside the last room
to be added to this house.
If you remember before you looked at
the floor plans, there was a 4 room house,
different rooms were added,
this large downstairs room
was the last room to be added.
And in this room we’re going to work together
thinking like archaeologists
to look at the physical evidence in the room
and try and work out how this room was used.
Now, let's just see behind me along this wall,
this room has 3 built in features
which are really important and helpful clues
to help us work out how this room was used.
So, here’s the first clue here on this side.
I’m going to get you in a moment
to chat in your classroom and talk together
and see if you can work out
what it was used for.
From where you’re looking I think it probably
just looks like a long piece of sandstone.
From where I’m standing I can see that
this block of sandstone has been hollowed out,
so it’s a bit like the empty bottom
of a shoe box.
You see how I can put my hand right in
and the wall is about that thick.
So, I’m going to give you a minute
to just chat inside your classroom,
see if you can come up with your best guess
about what you think
the purpose of that was and then
when I tell you in a minute,
you can check whether or not you were right,
off you go.
Okay, times up.
It was actually a stone sink.
Can you see how it’s a bit like the sink
in one of your rooms might be at home?
It’s just at the right level to stand and
put your hand inside when it’s full of water.
Okay, so that’s the first of
the 3 built in features in this room,
here’s the middle one, the second one,
have a good look at that,
discuss amongst yourselves,
decide jointly what you think
the purpose of this built in feature was.
There’s a big empty space and if I put my
hand up inside I can stretch it right up inside,
there’s a hole that goes up inside this wall.
Have a think.
Okay, times up.
If you guessed fireplace you were right.
So, that’s a fireplace and the big hole
up behind this wall is where the smoke
from the fire escaped through a chimney.
Over there we’re going to look at
the third built in feature of this room
and there’s a bit of an archway here
and a shelf going inside
with a space going deep inside
built inside the room.
Have a look at that, see if you can recognise that,
maybe you’ve got something
a bit like that at home, maybe you’ve seen
something like that when you’re out,
have a look and have a guess and I’ll check
in a moment and see if you’re right.
Okay, times up.
If you said oven you would be right.
I don’t know about you but when I go to
eat pizza, the pizza place I go to
has an oven, a wall oven where they put
the pizzas inside which looks just like that,
it’s a very traditional design of an oven.
So, now putting together the 3 clues that
we’ve just identified together,
the sink, the fireplace and the oven, now have a talk
in your classroom amongst yourselves,
see what you reckon might be the use of
this whole room with these 3 special built in features:
the sink, the fireplace and the oven.
Check with you in a moment
to see if you’re right.
Okay, if you guessed that this room
was a kitchen, we agree with you
and so do the archaeologists
who look at this room,
we don’t know for sure,
we’re really just looking at
the evidence of the room itself
and making our best guess
based on what we know about
the way kitchens were built at this time in history.
And a stone sink, an open fireplace for
cooking in pots and a wall oven maybe for
baking bread and roasting meats,
very typical of a kitchen of the time.
Now, have a look at the floor here,
this floor is paved with sandstone.
It’s a bit broken up now because it was
put down a very long time ago
but originally the whole floor of this room
would have been completely covered
with blocks of sandstone.
And that kind of confirms our thought that
this was a kitchen because
you’ll probably remember Fabian told you
the kitchen of that original 4 room cottage
was in the basement because kitchens
in the basement needed to be there
because the floor was either going to be dirt or
sandstone to reduce the risk
of fire burning down the house.
So, actually the floor of that basement kitchen
that you looked at earlier where you saw
the orange marker, that had a dirt floor.
Here, it’s got a stone floor which is quite
a bit fancier, this room is also
twice as big as that other kitchen you saw.
So, this was a bit mysterious to think about
why they might have added it on.
There’s another feature I’m going to get
you to look at now, it’s along this wall.
So, this is the long wall of this room and
this wall is made of sandstone.
And along the top of the wall
is a series of quite deep small holes
all in a row, all at the same level.
So, once again I’d like you to talk amongst
yourselves in your classroom
and see what you all think, listen to each other’s ideas
and jointly decide what might be
the purpose of those holes,
they give an important clue
about this section of the house.
They’re quite a bit higher than my head,
a bit like reaching up when you’re inside
a room as high as you can reach.
Okay, if you guessed that those holes were
probably put there to support pieces of wood
which ran across the room to support the ceiling
we think you would be right
and so do the archaeologists who worked here.
But have another look, above the level of
those holes, can you see how they didn’t
stop building the stone wall, whoever built
that stone wall kept building the wall higher
and that’s another important clue because
if they wanted to stop there because
they were going to put the roof on, they wouldn’t
have bothered to keep building the stone wall.
So, that gives us an important clue that very
likely there was another room upstairs,
a second storey above this room.
Now, for a house like number 17 Windmill Street
which as you saw was originally
just a 4 small roomed house, this was an unusually
large and very well equipped kitchen
to have attached to that small house.
And behind it is a very large, very cool cellar
and there’s an upstairs room.
So, there’s a bit of a clue that was given
to us by the artefacts that
the archaeologists found here,
many of the artefacts that
the archaeologists uncovered in this section of
17 Windmill Street were to do with eating,
to do with drinking and also to do with gambling.
So, that had led the archaeologists who worked
here to guess that possibly
that big upstairs room above this very large kitchen
which also had ready access
to the well just outside, that this upstairs space
was very likely used as a restaurant
or a café or maybe even a pub.
Fabian’s going to talk to you again now
because she’s going to show you
some of the artefacts that were found
in this section of the 17 Windmill Street
and they’re actually on display here today.
She’s going to show some of them to you now.
Over to you Fab.
Thank you Susan.
So, we’re going to actually look at some
of the artefacts now that were uncovered here
by the archaeologists and that helped to give
us this clue or these clues
as to how that big extension was used here at
17 Windmill Street just as Fiona and Naomi
were explaining to you not long ago
that what’s really important
about artefacts is where they are found.
So, around that part of the dig site,
I’ll show you a couple of the sorts of things
that archaeologists found.
So, just have a look over here,
the first thing I want to point out
is the small plate sitting on top of the larger plate.
That has a lovely willow pattern
which is around the 1840s
and it is what’s known as an eel plate,
that small plate that’s sitting on top.
Now, an eel plate is essentially used to serve
seafood, probably eels at some point
but other types of seafood probably as well.
The second thing that I want to point out
is this object here and it’s a bigger plate,
it’s actually referred to as an oyster plate.
It was used to serve oysters that had been
opened up, it’s quite deep as you can see
and it’s got that sort of pattern around the edge.
Again, this was a very common type of dish,
it’s often found, fragments of dishes
like this are often found by archaeologists in
Sydney and oysters were a really popular choice
for people living in Sydney because they grew
naturally on the rocks all around
and they were actually really easy to find.
I want to show you a couple of items that
are over here on this side as well
and we’ve got some metal objects that are
just here on the far side
and right in the centre there
the black piece is actually a kind of tap.
And it would have been pushed into a barrel
or a keg and you would have turned
the little top of the tap to actually let out
the you know pour out the alcohol
which speaks to this idea that perhaps
there was a pub here
or some kind of commercial restaurant
or something like that.
Just next to the tap there we’ve got some
coins and then also these things
in the centre are homemade gaming pieces.
So, by gaming pieces we mean things
that would have been used
to play all different kinds of games
and quite possibly games
that would have been gambled on.
So, people would have been betting money on
who was going to win or lose.
They’re mainly ceramic so they’re handmade
or homemade obviously from
broken pieces of plates or other types
of ceramic objects.
And then next to those are some handmade marbles
and they’re made of clay.
So, again marbles was another type of
common game played in 19th century Sydney.
One final thing I’d like to show you is
on this side and again these are the types
of artefacts that suggest to archaeologists
that the use of that extension built onto
the house here was something like
a commercial food operation.
We’ve got these glass bottles here.
So, on the far side are bottles that would have
contained alcohol, spirits, wine
and probably spirits and then on this side
we’ve got glass bottles that would have
contained condiments and things like
oils and pickles, things that you would use
to make meals or to serve meals.
So, there’s quite a lot of the artefacts
dug up here by archaeologists that do help us
to understand the use of that space in
that room down there and once you combine
the artefacts with the physical remains of
the building, you’re getting this
strong indication of what was happening
on the site.
So, I think we’ve sort of run out of time now, 
we’re just right at the very end
of our time we’ve got a few minutes left so
I’m going to invite Susan to come on over
and stand with me here because if anybody
has any questions that they would like
to ask us, we actually do have
a couple of minutes.
So, if anybody wants to raise their hand,
I’m just looking at the screen
to see what’s happening, we can answer
one or two questions.
So, let’s have a look, who’s got a question
they’d like to ask?
Anyone.
I can’t actually see.
What about Euabalong?
Do you have a question,
Euabalong West Public School?
Alright, unmute and ask your question.
Did they have any other signs like …
Signs of …
(inaudible)
Can you say that again I didn’t quite catch that?
Does the government have any other,
did they ever have like,
apart from the BO and the arrow ..?
Apart from the broad arrow?
Any other signs, is that what you mean?
Yes.
Yeah, so the broad arrow and the lettering
BO was the signs that they basically used
for anything that belonged to the government.
So, I’m not aware of any other signs,
you sometimes didn’t see the BO
and the broad arrow, sometimes you just saw BO,
sometimes just the broad arrow.
But they were the most commonly used.
So, at this site because it wasn’t a convict
site that the artefacts that were found here,
don’t have any of that kind of government
stamping on it.
These would have all been things that belonged
to the residents of the house,
just regular people that lived here in The Rocks.
But I thought you were going to ask whether
there was any other evidence
about what this house was being used for,
what this extension was being used for.
And one thing that we could be doing if you
wanted to do a lot of extra research is to
go and look and see what’s in
the written records about this site.
We could look up the newspapers of the day
and try to track back to see
what was happening here and whether there’s
anything written about a pub operating here
or some illegal gambling happening on this site.
So, you can combine evidence which is in the
written records that exist
with the physical things that remain on the site
to actually start to answer these questions.
Alright, I think we might have to finish up
there but we would just like to
thank you very much for being part of today,
it’s been a really big event for us
and we’ve been really excited to be able to
come down here to Parbury Ruins.
We hope you really enjoyed yourselves,
thank you very much
and we hope to see you again another time.
We actually are going to have for teachers
who are listening in, we’re going to have
an archaeology videoconferencing program
regularly available, Sydney Living Museums
will be offering that from about mid 2016
which will be for Stage 3 and 4,
so please look out for that and we hope
you might join us for one of those programs again.
Thank you very much.
Bye everybody, happy holidays.
Have a great Christmas.
Thank you, bye.
