History of Mining

The Archaeology of the Come in Time Quartz Battery, Bendigo, Otago, New Zealand

by Lloyd Carpenter

Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue)
NB: This is not a peer-reviewed Journal.
The PDF I have provided is NOT a copy of the 'Archaeology in New Zealand' article. It is a version I have used for teaching and contains many more illustrations than the journal could afford to offer.

This paper discusses the archaeology and historical narrative of the mining site of the 'Come in Time Battery' in the... more This paper discusses the archaeology and historical narrative of the mining site of the 'Come in Time Battery' in the Rise and Shine Valley, Bendigo, Central Otago.
It discusses what is at the site, using the quartz stamper (crusher) battery as the key archaeological feature, detailing the mining history there, noting some of the key personalities involved.

Beyond Spectacular Beauty: The Heritage Experience at the Central Otago Mining Town of Bendigo.

by Lloyd Carpenter

L.W. Carpenter, University of Canterbury, Published in the Conference Proceedings of: 'On The Surface: The Heritage of Mines and Mining' Conference, (April 14-16, 2011, Innsbruck, Austria).

Beyond Spectacular Beauty: The Heritage Experience at the Central Otago Mining Town of Bendigo


... more Beyond Spectacular Beauty: The Heritage Experience at the Central Otago Mining Town of Bendigo




For seventy years alluvial miners, sluicing syndicates, quartz companies and dredgemen focused their efforts, investment capital and lives on Bendigo in Central Otago, New Zealand. Historical evidence of this quintessential nineteenth century mining settlement survives in shafts, sluice faces and quartz battery sites, while echoes of its people remain in four abandoned townships. This starkly beautiful location is a magnet for photographers, but these vistas, while spectacular, decontextualise Bendigo as a place of habitation; absent the narratives of its founders, the site risks becoming a meaningless Arcadia, profoundly divorced from its mining heritage.

Hence the challenge to the government custodians of Bendigo, who must oversee its transfer from farm holding to public ownership to ensure its preservation as an historical reserve. Present visitors are forced to reconstruct Bendigo from visual cues alone, with little to conclude from the hotel sites, house ruins and mining detritus except that these are traces of a tough life lived by anonymous people from a long forgotten past.

My role, in collaborating on a heritage-quality narrative of Bendigo for public presentation at the site, is to populate its ruins with the people who lived, loved and lost there, telling the mining story, but telling also the reality of daily life and work; placing people in the town when it was a community of immigrants in a new and strange land. This narrative must be constructed in association with the New Zealand Department of Conservation, an owner constrained by reduced funding and increasing responsibilities; an organisation with conflicting goals, charged with satisfying the mounting interest from locals, amateur historians and tourists keen to understand and experience the Otago goldfields ‘Heritage’.

Business cluster internalisation: a quantitative analysis of the connectivity of British free-standing mining companies and their directors, 1820-30

by Jeffrey Snyder

Draft Only
Comments and suggestions most welcome.