Late 19th-Century Neighborhood Uncovered in Australia

QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA—The Age reports that more than 200 artifacts dating to the late nineteenth century, including tobacco and opium pipes, leather goods, bottles, crockery, books, and animal bones, have been unearthed in Brisbane, a city located on Australia’s eastern coast. Archaeologist Kevin Rains of Niche Environment and Heritage said the site was the city’s original Chinatown area, and that the objects belonged to people who moved there at the end of the gold rush in the 1880s and founded a working-class neighborhood known as Frog’s Hollow. The residents included people from China, the South Sea Islands, and other parts of Asia, Europe, and Britain, Rains explained. “It had food shops, opium dens, hotels, lots of boarding houses, and a mix of grocers, all sorts of things,” he added. Rains and his team have also identified the sites of a hotel, a saddlery, and other shops among the walls and foundations they uncovered. To read about material culture unearthed in other early Chinese immigrant communities, go to "America's Chinatowns."