So what is the Ōtautahi Christchurch archaeological archive? Essentially, it’s all the material recovered from and about archaeological sites in and around Ōtautahi Christchurch since the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. It’s data about all the artefacts and samples recovered from the sites, as well as the maps, plans, photographs, elevation drawings and all of the historical data about all of those sites. To put it another way, it’s all the information that’s pertinent to the archaeology of a given site, the information that allows us to tell the story of that place and the people who were there. This might include all the historical information about who owned the land and who lived or worked there in the 19th century; a site plan showing where archaeological features were found; and detailed information (and photographs) about all the artefacts recovered from the site, including where they were found, what they looked like and where they came from. It might also include information about who deposited the artefacts and when and why they did so. From all of these puzzle pieces, archaeologists (and others!) can piece together a picture of life in the past, whether it’s the use of the land , the nature of people’s lives – their habits, lifestyle changes, interaction with the world around them – or the stories of the objects themselves.

As well as all this historical, site and artefact data, the archive contains a lot of information about 19th century buildings. That’s because, in Aotearoa, standing buildings are treated as archaeological sites, meaning that they are recorded by an archaeologist prior to and during their demolition. This means that the archive contains lots of photographs of buildings, as well as elevation drawings, floor plans and a lot of detailed information about what each room in the building looked like and how it changed over time. There’s also information about how buildings were constructed, and information about the samples taken from buildings, such as timber, bricks and wallpaper.

To give you a bit more understanding of the nature of the archive, we tried to quantify it. The reality is that that’s hard to do so currently, but we estimate that there have been at least 1500 archaeological projects, with over 1 million artefacts found, and approximately 200 buildings recorded. These artefacts come from across the city (and there are a few from the nearby settlements of Lyttelton, Kaiapoi, Rangiora and Akaroa, too) and from a range of site types: houses, businesses, factories, shops, churches, roads, drains, schools, tramways, farms… Basically, every kind of site you can think of that’s related to how a city was built.

These sites and artefacts were excavated and recorded during archaeological work carried out as a result of legislation that protects archaeological sites in Aotearoa New Zealand that were formed prior to 1900. This legislation requires that, if an archaeological site is going to be modified or destroyed, information about it is recovered first. You can find out more about that process here.

Why do we keep this material? Well, archaeological excavation is an inherently destructive process: once a site is fully excavated, it is destroyed. It’s somewhat obvious to state that it cannot be excavated again – but this is kind of the point. One of the things that’s fundamental to science (and we could argue all day over whether archaeology is a science or an art…) is that it should be possible to recreate an experiment. So that’s why the bit about not being able to re-excavate a site is important. And because we can’t re-excavate a site, but because people might want to re-examine the conclusions drawn about a site, or look at it in light of new research questions, it is best practice to retain all the documentation about the excavation to give researchers the best tools with which to do this. While it might be best practice for this material to be retained, in Aotearoa New Zealand there is no legal protection of this data and nowhere for it to be stored in a permanent and publicly accessible way. We don’t think that’s good enough, so we’re trying to do something about it.

The data’s not just important because of the destructive nature of archaeological excavation. It’s important because of what we can learn from it, and because we can’t learn that information from any other source. Central to archaeology is the analysis of material culture: physical, tangible things. These things provide us with a different way to examine the world and to explore people’s beliefs and interactions with the world around them. Often these things are not what the people of the day documented, such as the plates they ate off. It seems a very mundane sort of a detail, but all the decisions that went into buying, using and throwing away the plate tell us about the people who made these choices and the culture and society they were a part of. We talk about objects – artefacts – as material culture because when these things, even the most mundane and seemingly uninteresting (a brick, a set of nails, egg cups!), are combined with the way people used them, we’re not just looking at objects, we’re looking at cultural and social behaviours. At this broader level, something like a plate can also tell us about people’s social and cultural identity, about technological changes (manufacturing techniques), trade (what was available to purchase in 19th century Christchurch), fashion (what was fashionable at the time and why it was fashionable), what people valued in their households, how they managed domestic rubbish, their dining rituals and more. Retaining and making available the information gathered from such artefacts, as well as the items themselves, is crucial: there are so many questions that can be asked and answered using this kind of archaeological dataset.

Ultimately, archaeology is about the study of people in the past, about how and why they did what they did and were who they were, and the artefacts, buildings and the archaeological footprints we find in the land all help us better understand the world as it was and tell the stories of the people who came before us.