Christine Williamson Heritage Consultants

11/06/2026

GEORGIA EXCAVATION PART 1

This month one of our archaeologists, Miette, is taking part in an overseas excavation season in the Lower Caucasus mountains in Georgia. Rabati is an ongoing project run by GAIA (Georgian Australian Investigations in Archaeology) which consists of a collaboration between the Georgian National Museum and the University of Melbourne. The site is a settlement mound on the Erusheti Plateau, overlooking the Kura River, where there is evidence of occupation dating back well into the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000—2500 BCE) topped by crumbling Medieval Ottoman fortification. Of particular interest are the key cultures of Trialeti, Bedeni and Kura-Araxes that spanned across the Bronze Age throughout this period, all of which feature significantly in the material culture found at Rabati.

Last season, Miette completed her Honours dissertation on a topic relating to Trialeti pottery found at the site of Rabati, gathering her data from the dig season. She also did a small case study concerning the Georgian tradition of qvevri, clay vessels used to age and store wine. This qvevri tradition is ancient and holds great significance, as the earliest known evidence of winemaking has been found in Georgia, dating back at least 8000 years.

Miette plans to send through an update on how the excavation is going later in the season. In the meantime, more information on the dig can be found on the official Instagram account or through the Rabati blog posts on the Unimelb website.

02/06/2026

Warning – this post contains the name and image of a deceased Aboriginal person.

June the 3rd is Mabo Day - the day we celebrate the life and impact of Eddie Koiki Mabo.

Eddie Mabo was a Torres Strait Islander man, born on the Torres Strait Island of Mer in 1936, where he grew up immersed in Meriam language and culture. As a child he soon learnt that traditional Meriam Ways and Malo Law had to be practiced mostly in secret following the arrival of missionaries on the island.

As an adult, he moved to Queensland, where he took on many new roles from pearl and sugar cane harvests to working on the railways, until around the 1960s when he came upon a new passion: politics. While he began in trade union politics, he quickly moved on to become a leader for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Queensland, serving on boards, campaigning for land-rights and having a hand in pivotal laws of the time including the 1967 Referendum which was the first time Indigenous peoples we recognised as part of the Australian population. He went on to become involved in education, founding the Black Community School in Townsville in 1973, with an emphasis on teaching Indigenous children their language and cultural traditions, leading him to be involved with the National Aboriginal Education Committee and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Education Advisory Committee. A multi-facetted man, Mabo had a talent for performing Torres Strait Islander music and dance and as such was also involved with the Australian Council for the Arts for several years in the 1970s.

His most famous campaign, however, came a little later in the 1980s. Upon finding out that his home did not belong to the Murray Islanders by law and instead that it was considered ‘Crown Land’, Mabo launched a case alongside several of his fellow Meriam people in 1982 to regain land ownership. In the first case, the Queensland Government at the same time passed a law that would cancel any existing native title, which became Mabo’s first fight. In 1988, the High Court found in favour of Mabo and his colleagues, ruling that the recent legislation breached the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975, thus giving Mabo his first win. This case became known as Mabo v. Queensland (No.1).

Following this, the original goal returned and the next campaign began, with the land claim being passed from the High Court to the Supreme Court in 1986. The case continued on until the 1990s, with only two of the original five plaintiffs remaining involved. On the 3rd of June 1992, in the High Court, the outcome of Mabo v. Queensland (No.2) was achieved. It was officially ruled that Australia was not Terra Nullius or ‘land belonging to no one’ when the European settlers arrived and the Meriam peoples were ‘entitled as against the whole world to possession, occupation, use and enjoyment of (most of) the lands of the Murray Islands’. It was a landmark outcome to a landmark case, which recognised the original sovereignty and ensuing continual dispossession of Indigenous peoples in Australia and the Torres Strait.

Unfortunately, Eddie Koiki Mabo did not live to hear the outcome of his case, passing away in January of 1992, but his legacy is a great one. Memorials to Mabo and his success echo across the country, from a post-humous Human Rights Award by the Australian Human Rights Commission (1992) to film and TV to the establishment of the annual Mabo Day. Eddie Koiki Mabo’s legacy ripples onwards.

By Miette Lane Welsh

REFERENCES/RESOURCES
https://www.indigenous.gov.au/stories/what-mabo-day
https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case
https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/mabo-edward-koiki-eddie-16122

Every year on 3 June we celebrate Mabo Day, which commemorates the life of Eddie Koiki Mabo and marks the anniversary of the historic 1992 Mabo decision.

28/05/2026

Thursday the 21st of May was International Tea Day. You may not have had it on your radar, but the United Nations established International Tea Day in 2019 to celebrate tea’s economic importance, health benefits and cultural heritage. So, pour yourself a nice fresh cuppa while we tell you about the history of tea.

There is a legend that in 2737 BCE, a Chinese Emperor by the name of Shen Nung was resting beneath a tree while travelling. Shen Nung was boiling his water to make it safe to drink when a few leaves from the tree fell into his water, colouring it. When he tried the accidental beverage, he found himself over come with a sense of calm, and thus he stumbled on tea.

The shrub the legend refers to is known today as Camellia sinensis and, depending on the way that it is processed, it is the source of white, green, oolong, black or red tea. By the time of the Tang dynasty (between 618-907 CE), tea had become a national drink of China and was one of their main exports, often pressed into bricks for transportation.

Tea’s popularity spread quickly through East Asia, then into the world beyond, reaching South Asia and Africa during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It wasn’t until the 16th century that the ever-growing powers in the West began to engage with the joys of tea, beginning with the Portuguese and the Dutch who had trading relationships in East Asia, primarily with Japan. Missionaries were another route via which tea was slowly introduced to Europe, and eventually the drink began to get a small foothold within European society, being sold alongside coffee in some coffee houses, which were also rising in popularity.

In the mid-17th century, tea found its way to London. The marriage of Princess Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, to King Charles II of England was the boost that tea needed to rise in popularity in Britain. Sweetened by trade routes that came with the eastern expansion of the British Empire via the East India Company, the Brits soon came to prefer tea over coffee, which was likely also due to the British East India Company being strongarmed out of the Mediterranean trade by the French and the Dutch which made the acquisition of coffee a little bit harder. From there, the English cultural relationship only grew, spreading throughout the British Empire and becoming the association we have today.

These very sweet teawares illustrate the importance of British tea culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. These items are from the Bendigo site we just finished cataloguing. They present a wide variety of patterns, colours and types, indicative of the increasing tea-based economy by this point in Western history. One example even has the words ‘Think of me’ in gold across the front, an may be a gift or a keepsake from one loved one to another. We have yet to find ye olde ‘World’s Best Mum’ mug, but we are keeping our eyes peeled!

By Miette Lane Welsh

25/05/2026

22/05/2026

Today is the final day of National Archaeology Week!

For us, every week is Archaeology Week, but in the Australian calendar, the third week of May every year is set aside to celebrate the role archaeology has in society. If you get online, you can find amazing events, lectures and activities inspired by archaeology. The aim of the week is to get everyone thinking about how important its is to recognise our unique Australian cultural heritage, as well as all of the wonderful work being done by archaeologists, both in Australia and internationally, to continue to gain better understandings about who we are, where we’ve come from and where we might be going.

So join the festivities, give a wave to your friendly local Heritage Advisor and always keep your eyes peeled for inklings of those who came before us!

By Miette Lane Welsh

https://archaeologyweek.org/

14/05/2026

We see it constantly: it fills our stores and our bins, our waterways and nature spaces, our households and workplaces. But did you know that some early plastics were actually created in an effort towards conservation?

The word ‘plastic’ initially referred to a state of being malleable or pliable, and it wasn’t until quite recently that it became synonymous with a category of materials called polymers. Polymers consist of long chains of molecules and can occur in nature, but over the last two centuries people have learnt to create synthetic versions out of things like plants and petroleum.

Up until the 19th century people were limited in their creations by the natural materials available, using things like wood, metal and bone for a significant portion of our products. For example, billiard balls were always made from elephant ivory. However, the rising demand for billiard balls meant that elephant ivory became increasing scarce and price increased dramatically, which left producers scrambling. There was a sudden awareness of the limits of continually harvesting natural resources, but no clear alternative to use in its place.

In 1864, an American company called Phelan & Collender announced a challenge to the public: create a substitute for ivory that could be used to create their new billiard balls, and you could win $10,000. “The material or composition of the artificial ivory must possess the qualities of elasticity, density and hardness,…[be]… easily turned of a perfect spherical form in the lathe,… readily colored and polished. It must not shrink, warp, or crack under ordinary variations of atmospheric temperature. Its specific gravity must be equal to that of natural ivory,… Its cost…must be at least fifty per cent less”

Enter stage right, John Wesley Hyatt, a printer from Albany in the state of New York. Hyatt decided to try his hand at this seemingly impossible challenge, and so celluloid was born. Made of cellulose nitrate, camphor and ground cow bone, the new and improved material was a hit! Hyatt was business savvy, and decided to patent his design in 1869 and start his own company, rather than accepting the reward and signing his design away. Today, celluloid is regarded as a significant innovation in the history of plastic objects. There was just one hitch: celluloid is an extremely flammable material.

In use as billiard balls, as Hyatt himself once observed, “occasionally the violent contact of the balls would produce a mild explosion like a percussion guncap. We had a letter from a billiard saloon proprietor in Colorado, mentioning this fact and saying he did not care so much about it, but that instantly every man in the room pulled a gun.”

This non-descript, tired-looking badge from our Bendigo assemblage (pictured) was identified by our team as being made of celluloid. It shows just how diverse the uses of this material were, and reminds us to never underestimate the story behind an object, even if it looks plain on the outside!

By Miette Lane Welsh and Isobel Simpson

REFERENCES
https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/classroom-activities/role-playing-games/case-of-plastics/history-and-future-of-plastics/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-plastics-went-from-a-sustainability-solution-to-an-environmental-crisis/
Rasmussen, S.C. (2021) ‘From Parkesine to Celluloid: The Birth of Organic Plastics’, Angewandte Chemie - International Edition [Preprint]. doi:10.1002/anie.202015095.
Neves, A. et al. (2023) ‘Best billiard ball in the 19th century: Composite materials made of celluloid and bone as substitutes for ivory’, PNAS Nexus, 2(11). doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad360.

30/04/2026

Have you ever come across a ring adorned with a tiny buckle?

Buckle rings have been around since the Middle Ages, symbolising memory, fidelity and love. In the Victorian era the buckle was a romantic motif that was inspired and popularised by the romance between Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. The buckle became a powerful symbol of the binding of two people in love or friendship. Buckles were put on all sorts of jewellery, from brooches to bracelets, but intricate buckle rings were particularly popular. The rings themselves could have represented promises and betrothals as well as loyalty and closeness—perhaps a nice gift for your best friend this Christmas?

The fragment of buckle ring shown here was found at a site in Bendigo, and its delicate engraved details and traces of shiny gold gilding have survived the test of time.

Following Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria entered a lengthy period of mourning and retained her ‘widows’ weeds’ until her death at the age of 81 in 1901. The Queen’s black garb dictated fashion into the late 19th century. As a result, during the late Victorian period black jewellery became very fashionable, in solidarity with the Queen’s mourning jewellery. While the favoured material was jet—a natural mineral formed from petrified wood—various imitation materials entered the market to increase accessibility to those of lesser means, including black glass. Black glass buttons, like the one shown here, which was found at a site in Melbourne, are a fantastic example of how this mourning fashion was incorporated into clothing. The buckle symbols also took on a new importance, signifying connection beyond death, as well as strength and connection maintained through the mourning period.

The impact of the buckle symbol continued into the 20th century. The blue glass buckle-shaped bead shown here is from a buckle bracelet that probably dates from the early to middle 20th century, and this item may have been inspired by the earlier styles. In fact, let’s bring buckle bling back into fashion!

By Miette Lane Welsh

https://artofmourning.com/mourning-fashion-jewels-during-victoria/
https://artofmourning.com/ecclesiastical-jewels-in-the-middle-ages/
https://antiquevintageelegance.com/sentimental-jewellery-the-symbolism-of-antique-buckle-rings/?srsltid=AfmBOoprnYzp5G7d5K3SXxQcAqC9aK67Z43iX38rozYvGZqLqdp8Xnz4
https://iaja.com/2024/04/03/buckle-jewelry-a-victorian-love-token/

23/04/2026

“Gold was a gift to Jesus. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!” – Mr. T

Here’s a curious artefact: these little bowls are mini crucibles called cupels. They’re used for a process known as cupellation, which has been a common method used for the extraction of precious metals for millennia. Some of the earliest evidence for this technique dates back as far as the Early Bronze Age when it was used independently on a global scale to separate desirable ‘noble’ metals, namely silver and gold, from ‘base’ metals like lead. The method itself involves heating the metals to a high temperature (around 850-980°C) in a cupel until the lead is completely oxidised, leaving behind a concentrated bead of pure silver or gold. The cupels were generally made of bone ash or clay with a very high quantity of bone ash incorporated, which gave them very porous properties allowing them to absorb the oxidised lead, leaving the refined precious metal in its place.

In the world of 19th century gold mining, cupellation was useful in the assaying process—determining the gold and silver content of mined ores. According to Ritchie (1997) portions of crushed ore would be melted down in a crucible and then allowed to set, at this point full of all sorts of base metals. It was then cupellated until only the gold and silver remained. The amalgamated gold and silver button was weighed, then the silver was separated using hot nitric acid, at last leaving only the gold.

The cupels pictured in this post were found at a site in Bendigo, the heart to the Victorian goldfields. They provide an insight into the involvement of our site’s inhabitants in the glittery Gold Rush era.

Eleanor Cornish and Miette Lane Welsh

Ritchie, N. and Ho**er, R. 1997. “An Archaeologist’s Guide to Mining Terminology,” Australasian Historical Archaeology 15: 3–29.
Sun, A. et al. 2024. “Identifying recipes of historical cupels from Yunnan, China,” Advances in Archaeomaterials 5.
https://breckhistory.org/the-history-of-breckenridge-co-the-assay-process/
https://medium.com/.jewels/cupellation-and-the-birth-of-precious-metal-refining-67157fe618b8
https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-906065/assaying-cupel/ #:~:text=Small%20cupels%2C%20usually%20made%20from,from%20more%20robust%20refractory%20fabrics.

16/04/2026

On Thursday and Friday last week, three of our staff were very lucky to participate in a Lithic Analysis Workshop taught by Nicola Stern and Rebekah Kurpiel.

Eleanor, Isobel and Miette spent two days at the Abbotsford Convent listening to interesting lectures on geological materials used for the creation of stone tools, the history of stone tool analysis in archaeology and recognition strategies before applying it to an expansive reference collection. One of our highlights was the discussion of the analysis of core rejuvenation, which can tell us a lot about the techniques and preferences a person might have had when they were making their tools. We also enjoyed the strong focus on human story: understanding what a lithic artefact can tell us about the people moving through the landscape and the marks they left behind rather than simply recognising the artefacts as implements. There was a wonderful reference collection available for us to look at, with a lot of different geological materials and artefact types. Among the collection were several examples of tool types from traditions in other parts of Australia, which were fascinating to learn about. Burins, for example, are not a common tool type in Victorian contexts, so it was very interesting to learn about them alongside the more familiar forms. We also were able to meet and learn alongside a great group of people from the industry, which is always a pleasure!

26/03/2026

In the Melbourne assemblage we just finished cataloguing, we came across a variety of interesting clerical artefacts—sometimes it was like shopping at ye olde Officeworks! Among these objects we found evidence of pens, which had me wondering about the invention of such a handy little tool.

What we currently know to be the earliest form of writing, cuneiform, came about in Mesopotamia around 5000 years ago. The clay tablets, covered in marks made with a stylus, are iconic. Fast-forward a few millennia and we have new languages to communicate with, and new technologies to convey them.

Throughout the 19th century, the humble pen began to take a form we can recognise today. For centuries up until the 1800s quill pens were used for writing. Using feathers had few advantages: a slight flexibility allowed for ease of movement over the writing surface; they could be cut to create very fine points for finer details and the hollow shaft of the feather held ink in a similar way to an ink reserve we find in modern pens. From the late 1700s into the early 19th century there were several attempts at the introduction of metal pens. As Henry Bore noted in his 1890 study on the invention of metal pens, none of the many original attempts really caught on until the 1820s and 1830s in Birmingham, where their popularity began to boom. The pens were known as dip pens, formed by a metal nib attached to a shaft and dipped into ink frequently. We have found both dip pens nibs and ink bottles at our site, showing how popular the pens were throughout the century, with their popularity growing alongside the growing literacy rates in the western world.

Later on, the fountain pen began to outshine its predecessor with its convenient ability to store ink within the shaft. While the initial invention is credited to a patent by Frederick Folsch in 1809, following iterations by Poenaru and Waterman in 1827 and 1884 accompanied the rise of the pen’s popularity. It wasn’t until 1945 that the Hungarian Laszlo Biro (I think we can all see where this is going) invented the ballpoint pen, which became particularly successful as the distribution of ink was not reliant on the downward pressure of gravity. This meant that the ballpoint pen worked just as well at high altitudes, a realisation that led to the purchasing of Biro’s patent by the British government for use in the Royal Air Force.

By Miette Lane Welsh

https://frederickfolsch.com/blogs/news/frederick-folsch-the-inventor-of-fountain-pen?srsltid=AfmBOooCIlcGPb1Tihv_sEjRj8ZR0hRXUUei3mYRt_oRedIuQSzDz6DJ

https://www.invent.org/inductees/laszlo-josef-biro

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9954/pg9954-images.html
https://www.officemuseum.com/Pens.htm