ABSTRACT
Mining colonists also transform landscapes by assigning social and cultural meaning to landscape elements. The recursive relationship between meaning and landscape includes representations of prior social and cultural identities and learned knowledge needed to live in the new environment. Consider, for example, domestic architecture. Mining landscapes often include the archaeological remains of specific buildings or structures that reflect the interplay. Neville Ritchie’s (1993) study of the domestic and landscape architecture of migrant Chinese settlements in the goldfields of southern New Zealand offer a good example. He found that the buildings typically followed pre-existing Western models and reflected adaptation to local environmental conditions but also retained some traditional Chinese elements. For example, they used locally available construction materials (e.g. turf, mud bricks and puddled mud, forest trees, canvas, corrugated iron sheets, cobblestones) and sites (e.g. rock shelters) and often took advantage of abandoned buildings. Although they did not have the typical “high culture” Chinese architectural elements of upturned eaves, decorative eave brackets, tile roofing, and fretwork patterns on fascia boards, the buildings often retained some elements of traditional Chinese rural architecture, such as being windowless and having hut shrines, door inscriptions, and a chopping block placed just outside the door.
