EXTENT REVEAL REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES ON EARLY MELBOURNE
On Friday 7 February two of our archaeologists Sarah Janson and Chris Clark presented the exciting results of two recent Extent Heritage investigations in the Melbourne CBD at the Victorian Archaeology Colloquium at Latrobe University.
The excavations, at the Munro Site adjacent to Queen Victoria Market and nearby on Elizabeth Street, opened a window on Melbourne's pre-contact environment around the William Creek watercourse. The creek ran along the line of Elizabeth Street to the Yarra River (or ‘Birrarung’ in Woiwurrung language) before establishment of the Hoddle Grid led to its enclosure and eventual conversion to a storm drain.
Excavations in the Munro Site uncovered a cross section of the creek, from which analysis of pollen and other environmental evidence enables detailed recreation of the pre-contact landscape and environment. This discovery has been paralleled remarkably by investigations nearby on Elizabeth Street itself that revealed an amazingly preserved tool production and food processing site which appears contemporary with the early city, demonstrating the continued use of the area by Aboriginal people at that time. Analysis of the recovered artefacts, undertaken in collaboration with a range of universities and other specialists, provides extraordinary insights into individual tool use and the species, including marsupials and ducks, that were exploited.
Together these sites, and the analysis to which they have been subjected, paint an incredible picture of this part of early Melbourne and the extent to which the land has since been modified to create the city of today.
