Flavours That Unite and Exclude: A Multi-method Zooarchaeological Study of Food and Identity (Re)creation In Migrant Communities in Late 19th To Early 20th Century Queensland

Marc Cheeseman

Zooarchaeological evidence from historical sites in Queensland has received relatively little study. Further, most publications that discuss faunal remains from broader Australian historical sites focus on single sites and Anglo-Australian contexts and typically overlook considerations of how sociocultural identity interacts with food choice, favouring instead economic interpretations of food choice and consumption. Additionally, despite its increasing popularity, ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) has so far been limited to methodological rather than interpretive studies in most contexts. This presentation will provide an overview of a recently completed PhD project comparing zooarchaeological (including ZooMS) evidence from Chinese and British settlement contexts at two Late 19th/Early 20th century sites across Queensland, Australia: Frog’s Hollow, an urban context in Brisbane’s modern CBD, and Ravenswood, a gold mining town in North Queensland. Through an exploration of human-animal relationships in 19th century southern China, colonial Australia, and the British Isles, it will be argued that despite both British and Chinese settlers adapting their food practices to this ‘new’ environment (i.e., ‘localisation’), both groups were actively seeking and consuming culturally significant and ‘familiar’ foods. Furthermore, while dietary choices regarding meat and marine resources reflect many aspects of their personal and cultural histories, local social and business relationships are also evident in the faunal evidence. These findings highlight the contingent way that cultural influences underpinning food choices and food behaviours inform the character and materiality of colonised spaces such as Australia.