March 22, 2007 — Residents of 19th century estates often are described as either having a posh "upstairs" or more servile "downstairs" existence, but excavation of a British colonial estate in eastern Australia suggests those hierarchies were more complex.
Social and financial class systems in that era were particularly extreme in Australia, where convicts worked alongside professional free laborers. But the researchers believe comparable servant social ladders also existed in Europe and the United States.
Since little was written about servants, the archaeologists based their analysis upon tableware, and other food and drink-related items, found at five different laborer dwellings at Lake Innes Estate, built in 1830 at what is now New South Wales.
Their findings are published in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.
"This study is an example of how historical archaeology can inform us about the everyday life of people who were seldom considered in detail in the documentary record," said co-author Alasdair Brooks, a postdoctoral fellow in the Archaeology Program at La Trobe University.
Brooks studied ceramics that co-author Graham Connah, emeritus professor of archaeology and anthropology at the Australian National University, excavated at the estate between 1993 and 2001. They focused on five sites: a servants' cottage, a laborers' hut, a coachman's dwelling, a blacksmith's hut and a farm cottage.
The researchers believe the lowest-ranked servants lived in the laborers' hut, which was "discreetly situated out of sight and sound from the Big House."
Convict workers assigned to the estate probably lived there, the researchers concluded, as they could only identify basic whiteware ceramics that appeared to have been recycled from other parts of the estate.
"They were convicts transported from Britain for a wide range of crimes who were then assigned to land-holders and others as both skilled and unskilled labor" Connah explained.
Many of those criminals were poor British citizens who resorted to petty crimes, such as minor theft or forgery, but some many have committed more serious offenses.
At the top of the servant social heap was the coachman, according to Brooks and Connah. They identified bone China and Chinese porcelain, as well as blue and marble-patterned vessels, in what appears to have been the coachman's family dwelling.
