Jonathan Prangnell

Soil temperature calculation for burial site analysis.

The effect of air and water temperature upon the decomposition of human remains and upon biological activity has been extensively studied. However, less attention has been devoted to the temperature of the soil surrounding burials, despite its potential influence upon chemical reactions involved in the decomposition of human remains, drugs and toxins, as well as upon microbial and insect activity. A soil temperature calculation equation usually employed in civil engineering was used to calculate soil temperature at various depths in a cemetery located in Brisbane, Australia, in order to explain the extensive degradation of human remains and funerary objects observed at exhumation. The results showed that for the 160 years of the sites history, ground temperature at burial level had been sufficiently high for biological activity and chemical degradation reactions to continue right up until the time of exhumation. The equation used has potential in the analysis of both cemetery and clandestine burials, since it allows ground temperature to be calculated from ambient air temperature figures, for a variety of depths, soil types and vegetation conditions.

Power relations and community involvement in landscape-based cultural heritage management practice: an Australian case study.

Collaborative conservation between Aboriginal people and archaeologists in Australia presents new and innovative opportunities for community control in cultural heritage management practice. Community approaches to heritage emphasise cultural landscapes and Indigenous relationships to land and sea. In this paper we illustrate the value of a community‐led cultural heritage management project in a case study from North Stradbroke Island, southeast Queensland, Australia. We document the process whereby Aboriginal traditional owners worked collaboratively with archaeologists to design and implement a method for a cultural heritage assessment that met not only legislative requirements relating to archaeological sites but also Indigenous needs regarding culturally significant landscapes. Our results demonstrate that places of Aboriginal community heritage value exist even where no sites of archaeological significance occur. In our case study we demonstrate that effective heritage management can be undertaken in accordance with appropriate Aboriginal law and community control.

Hearts and minds: Public archaeology and the Queensland school curriculum

Abstract The school education system is an important public sphere where popular notions of archaeology and the archaeological past are produced and reproduced. Within the framework of an interpretive public archaeology, schools represent a significant social context in which archaeologists might seek meaningful engagement with the wider community. Analysis of the Queensland Education Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) syllabus reveals that there are many opportunities for the inclusion of Australian archaeology examples in the curricula of both primary and secondary schools. In this paper we develop a public outreach strategy for engaging the Queensland school curriculum and report on two case studies from southeast Queensland where this strategy was implemented.

A Lang Park mystery: Analysis of remains from a 19th century burial in Brisbane, Queensland

Salvage excavation of the Suncorp Stadium (Lang Park) redevelopment site in Brisbane revealed almost 400 graves. Originally known as the North Brisbane Burial Grounds, it was the site of Brisbanes principal cemetery between 1843 and 1875. A grave in the Anglican section of the cemetery yielded several teeth and associated non-dental bone fragments, and stature data derived from the coffin indicate a child burial. Observation of the stages of tooth eruption, resorption, and formation revealed evidence for two children, one aged approximately three years old and the other aged 12. An examination of the coffin furniture showed that the coffin was bought by a wealthy Anglican family, and DNA analyses suggest that the older individual was of Eastern European descent. These results suggest the burial of the older child in the same grave as the younger was most likely clandestine, and highlight the importance of post-excavation analyses to the interpretation of Australian cemeteries.

Kin, fictive kin and strategic movement: working class heritage of the Upper Burnett

The Upper Burnett district of southeast Queensland, Australia is a landscape of working class resilience in the face of natural and institutional oppression. The Upper Burnett was the site of numerous small goldmining towns throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Physically, most of these towns now survive only as archaeological remnants, yet both the tangible heritage elements and the intangible forms of labour heritage, such as stories in the landscape and of movement between places, contribute to the shared and continued attachment of the Burnett community to its mining history. Historical archaeological, sociological and landscape studies, including long-term projects working with descendents of the mining families, have provided detailed insight into the palimpsest of meanings applied to the social landscape of the working class inhabitants. Oral history, documentary and archaeological research have been conducted on the townships of Paradise, Mount Shamrock, Monal and Cania. The cultural landscape of these towns can be seen as a complex heritage of working class pastimes, networks of labour through kin and fictive kin relationships, strategic movement across the region and the interaction between communities. Although the local museums tend to memorialise the physical heritage of the goldmining through collecting and displaying the impressive material culture (such as stampers, berdan pans, mine wheels, etc.), it is the stories, meanings, diaries, and the continued attachments to these places today that play the larger role in the remembering of the working class past.

Children in Paradise: growing up on the Australian Goldfields

Paradise, a gold mining town in Queensland, Australia, was occupied only briefly towards the end of the 19th century, a single fleeting moment in the boom-and-bust cycle of the Australian gold rush. At its zenith, Paradise was home to more than 600 people, and contrary to popular expectations about the nature of the goldfields, a substantial proportion of the inhabitants were children. While the presence of children in the archaeological record is frequently overlooked, evidence from Paradise not only confirms the existence of children at the site but also illuminates community attitudes toward children and the nature of childhood in colonial Australia. The evidence from Paradise strongly suggests a deep-rooted tension between middle-class Victorian ideals of childrearing and the realities of life in a frontier mining town.

'The truth will out': Recycling of packing timber to construct a nineteenth century Australian coffin

Professional wood species identification of timber from a lead-lined coffin excavated from the North Brisbane Burial Ground, Brisbane, confirmed the wood as Pinus sibirica , a native of northern Asia and Russia. Its presence probably represents the reuse of wood from a packing case originally used to import goods to the colony.

Colonialism and the Peel Island Lazaret: Changing the World One Story at a Time

Archaeology tells interpretive stories about the past. My experiences as a migrant to Australia and my working-class background have created the archaeologist that I am and the stories of the past that I choose to tell. Here I reflect on my own childhood and early adulthood, and their impacts on my archaeological practice and my affinity with Aboriginal political ambitions. An investigation of the embedded and institutionalized racism experienced by Aboriginal inmates of the Peel Island Lazaret is used as a case study to express my desire to change the world one story at a time.