Material Culture and Consumer Society: Dependent Colonies in Colonial Australia (The Springer Series in Underwater Archaeology)

The establishment of a consumer society in Australia has not been a particularly well explored area of academic inquiry. My interests lie in the concepts and meanings that underlie the material world; ideas like, in the words of Madonna, "I am a material girl and I live in a material world" (terminology taken to be not gender specific), the classic graffiti paraphrasing of Descartes: I shop therefore I am or perhaps simply in the "world of goods" in the more academically respectable terms of Douglas and Isherwood (1979). This book arises out of my longstanding interest in the early colonial period in Australia. In part it represents an extension of the purely "historical" research conducted for my Master's thesis in the Department of History at the University of Sydney which explored aspects of the diet, health and lived experience of con­ victs and immigrants during their voyages to the Australian colonies within the timeframe 1837 to 1839 (Staniforth, 1993a). More importantly, it is the culmina­ tion of more than twenty-five years involvement in the excavation of shipwreck sites in Australia starting with James Matthews (1841) in 1974, through the test excavation of William Salthouse in 1982, continuing with my involvement between 1985 and 1994 in the excavation of Sydney Cove (1797) and most recently with shore-based whaling stations and whaling shipwreck sites. In this respect, this book may be seen as an example of what Ian Hodder (1986, p. Throughout history, material goods have been valued for more than their usefulness; they have also been symbols of status and wealth. During the colonial period of Australia, material goods took on an even more important role for the new arrivals to the island. Material Culture and Consumer Society argues that material goods were a necessary adjunct to the successful colonization of Australia demonstrating that it was necessary to establish trade networks that provided adequate supplies of culturally 'appropriate' food, drink and other consumer goods for the newly arrived colonists. Material goods were used: * to distinguish the colonists from Indigenous groups ; * to reassure the colonists about their place in the world; * to help establish the colonists' own networks of social relations. Material Culture and Consumer Society contends that the role of consumption and the part played by material goods were more important to the negotiation of social position in the colonies than in the homeland. This work will be of interest to underwater, historical and cultural archaeologists, social historians, cultural heritage managers, and graduate students of these fields Front Matter....Pages i-xvii Introduction....Pages 1-12 The Archaeology of the Event....Pages 13-31 Capitalism, Colonialism, and Consumerism....Pages 33-45 Methods and Sources....Pages 47-64 Port Jackson and the Wreck of Sydney Cove (1797)....Pages 65-99 Port Phillip and the Wreck of William Salthouse (1841)....Pages 101-123 The Swan River Colony and the Wrecks of James Matthews (1841) and Eglinton (1852)....Pages 125-141 The Meanings of Things....Pages 143-151 Conclusion....Pages 153-158 Back Matter....Pages 159-185