ABSTRACT
This paper presents some of the findings from the 1994 Cumberland Street/Gloucester Street excavation in Sydney’s Rocks district, which demonstrate the potential of urban archaeology to throw new light on social, cultural and urban history. This excavation allowed an exploration of the material worlds of working people in this neighbourhood between c. 1790–1900, that is, from the convicts and ex-convicts through successive generations of immigrants and colonial-born. It presents a window onto the period of Sydney’s growth from colonial origins to one of the largest cities in the world; and onto the great, slow shift from pre-industrial outlooks and patterns of the convict period to a more modern and industrialised urban world. Throughout the 19th century, and in subsequent historiography, the Rocks was portrayed as a vile slum, a place of urban ills, of poverty, dirt, disease and depravity. The things beg to differ: archaeology reveals a striving for cleanliness and moral rectitude, domestic comfort and careful attention to dress and personal care. What does this fundamental disparity between words and things tell us? The examination of material culture in broader historic/cultural contexts both challenges long-held assumptions and images about urban working people, and offers unique insights into the development of urban culture in one of the world’s most urbanised countries.
