Southern Archaeology Ltd

18/10/2025

A very pleasant surprise outcome for the research project at St. John's Cemetery in Milton.

02/07/2025

More goldfields recording work in various locations in Central Otago. Pick marks in tunnels speak of the sheer hard work that was involved in historic mining: the human stories are often forgotten when viewing industrial sites.

11/04/2025

Out and about in the Otago and West Coast goldfields in the last few weeks.

19/10/2024

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/dressed-and-ready-ride

Dunedin residents should keep their eyes peeled for a penny-farthing tomorrow, when the annual Tweed Ride rolls through town. Dunedin Gasworks...

26/09/2024

Revitalisation of historic industrial sites in London shows the potential of these places for modern communities, and provide ideas that we can use here in Dunedin. The Kings Cross Gasholder Park is a pocket park set within one of the old restored gasholder frames that have been re-erected beside the Regents Canal. The Dunedin Gasworks Museum has a smaller gasholder frame, as well as a set of spare gasholder columns that could be used to create a similar pocket park for South Dunedin: a potential future community use for the tar well site on Hillside Road? It was the site of Dunedin's first gasholder in 1862.

16/07/2024

Two recent excavations in the south have found historic dog remains. Dogs are a commensal species for people, and their archaeological remains are found in occupation sites around the world, including Māori and European sites in New Zealand. Dogs have provided companionship, protection and sometimes food for people throughout the human history of the country.

30/04/2024

Recent urban archaeology in Dunedin: a late 1870s latrine that contained a hand-made toy boat and a carpenter's hammer. The house on the property had been built by William Spence, a carpenter and storekeeper who had emigrated from Unst in the Shetland Islands to NZ with his wife Elizabeth and three young children, with a fourth born here. The boat is made from kauri, so was made in NZ, almost certainly by William for his children. Their home town was Haroldswick, a fishing base, and the boat represents the herring & cod boats used there. Along with clothes pegs and a locket the assemblage represents the domestic life of the newly arrived Spence family and memories of their home encapsulated in the toy that William made for his children.

26/04/2024

Industrial archaeology this week in the Murray Creek goldfield near Reefton. The remains of the Ajax and Inglewood gold mines, all (reasonably) easily accessible along tracks maintained by DOC. Most of the tracks are historic themselves, being the old tracks and tramways developed for the gold and coal mining.

08/03/2024

Some very sad news for Chinese history and archaeology in Otago and New Zealand with the death of Jim Ng. Jim and Eva were an enormous help during the Southern Cemeteries Archaeological Project.

Prominent Otago historian Dr James Ng died on Wednesday in Dunedin, aged 87. Dr Ng was celebrated for numerous national and community roles...

20/02/2024

A bit of underground archaeology in the Tuapeka goldfield (Otago). An 1860s water race tunnel that changes level and alignment half way through. It drops about two metres at this point, so there would have been an underground waterfall. The tunnel is only 750mm high, so crawling room only. Not for the claustrophobic.

16/01/2024

Iron, wood and stone in the high country.

16/11/2023

https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/conservation/historic/by-region/southland/archeology-of-the-antipodes-islands.pdf