We have a lot of data: site plans, stratigraphic profiles, building elevations, floor plans, photographs of everything, details of who owned land, who lived at a site (so, yes, we might have information about your forebears or your house!) and information about all the artefacts recovered from these sites. It’s an incredible taonga and sheds light on so many different aspects of Ōtautahi’s past. The problem is, the data is currently sitting in hundreds of different files in different locations and is both difficult to access and difficult to use (trust us, we know from experience…). As such, its research potential cannot be realised. Fortunately, we’ve received funding from Manatū Taonga (Ministry for Culture and Heritage) to build a database to hold all this information, and to make it freely available via a website. The database and website will be operational by mid-2024. Follow us on social media (see the links at the bottom of the page) to keep up-to-date with our progress, and read on below for a bit more detail. Or, if you’re more of a listening person, check out this podcast from Aotearoa Unearthed, which is all about the database and why we’re doing this.

The database will contain a range of data relating to sites investigated by Underground Overground Archaeology under earthquake archaeological authorities. These were special archaeological authorities issued by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga to expedite the demolition and recovery process following the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 (other archaeological consultants also carried out work under these authorities, but the bulk of the work was undertaken by Underground Overground - it is anticipated that the data from other consultants will be added in the future, along with data from non-earthquake authorities). The information included in the database will include the project data, site data (such as the archaeological features found), historical data, buildings archaeology data and artefact data. All of this will be put into a relational database, allowing questions from the small scale (who lived here) to the large scale (show me all the sites in Ōtautahi Christchurch where clay tobacco pipes have been found). The database is being purpose-built by us for the good folks at local company Intranel. Underground Overground Archaeology is one of our key partners for our work in general, and will be assisting us in particular on this project with business and administrative support, meeting space and providing space for the data entry personnel to work.

Pulling all this data together into an accessible format requires the development of both a standardised terminology for recording this data and guidelines for digitally archiving projects. Documents that cover these topics will be two of the key outputs of the project. To ensure that these documents are robust - and, indeed, that the database itself is - we will be calling on the expertise of others. As such, we’ll be holding workshops with experts in artefact analysis and buildings analysis. We’ve also established a project advisory group, consisting of Professor Atholl Anderson, Dr Rebecca Phillips, Vanessa Tanner (Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga) and Dr Tim Evans. We’re really fortunate to be working with such a fantastic group of people.

As well as building the database, we’ll be continuing with our blog and social media work, and are grateful to be supported in this by the fantastic team at Underground Overground Archaeology. We’ll also be putting on events as part of New Zealand Archaeology Week in April 2024. And there’ll be a launch! Because this is something worth celebrating.