Presented in partnership with the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology.
Industrial-scale metal mining has long been a feature of developing economies. Processing ores to recover minerals has generated large quantities of waste rock, tailings and contaminants. Mining-related deposits, along with associated soil and water geochemistry, river modifications and other environmental changes are a product of the nature, scale and intensity of past operations. These artefacts of historical mining create anthropogenic landscapes that extend far beyond individual sites due to the dispersal of mine waste by rivers and pose enduring threats to human and ecosystem health. Their presence and significance, however, is often overlooked by heritage and environmental managers.
To be acknowledged as artefacts of the historical mining industry, landscape features must be identified and characterised with reference to the human activities that triggered their formation. This requires an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates anthropogenic landscape change at a regional scale. Archaeological, geomorphological and geochemical evidence are integrated to identify and analyse mining-related changes to the Loddon River valley in Victoria, Australia.
Nineteenth-century gold mining caused extensive erosion of creeks and gullies and mobilised sediments that filled channels and spread over floodplains. In addition, tailings deposits concentrated arsenic at levels significantly above environmental background conditions. Recognising these legacies of historical mining is vital to understanding mining heritage and to managing healthy rivers, environments and communities.
About the speaker: Professor Susan Lawrence teaches archaeology at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her expertise is in the archaeology of British colonialism, gender, urbanisation, and resource extraction. Susan is the author of over 90 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and seven books. Her monograph Sludge: Disaster on the Victorian Goldfields (Black Inc 2019), co-authored with Peter Davies, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. She has been a member of the Heritage Council of Victoria’s Archaeology Advisory Committee, is a past-president of the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Society of Antiquaries of London.
An online lecture, and part of the 2024 ASHA Seminar Series and the 2024 National Webinar Series. Find the series details here.
When: 6-7.30pm AEST, Monday 20 May 2024
Where: Online via Zoom
Registration: https://events.humanitix.com/naw-webinar-and-asha-seminar-series-2024-characterising-mine-wastes-as-archaeological-landscapes
For more information: https://asha.org.au/event/naw-national-webinar-series-and-asha-seminar-series-2024-characterising-mine-wastes-as-archaeological-landscapes/