Dog’s Dinner? Archaeological evidence for meat consumption on Chinese historic sites in the Pine Creek region

Abstract

Historians have lamented the scope and quality of the documentary evidence which is available concerning early Chinese activities in the Northern Territory (e.g. Bell 1989:4; Giese 1995:24; Jones 1990:xi; Tamblyn 1990:74). Thousands of Chinese sojourners flocked to the gold fields in the Pine Creek region of the Northern Territory, 200 km south of Darwin, during the 1870s and 1880s. Although they formed most of the non-Aboriginal population of the Territory until 1911, virtually all of the written records of their activities were made by Europeans (Mitchell 1995a:6-7). Those who wrote these accounts were typically apathetic, patronising or more frequently openly hostile to the Chinese. As a result, the calibre of written evidence concerning a whole range of Chinese activities, including their dietary practices, is indifferent at best. Archaeological evidence has an important role in expanding and refining our knowledge of Chinese settlement in the Northern Territory. To date, however, the usefulness of archaeological evidence in illustrating Chinese dietary practices has also been somewhat indifferent. In the Pine Creek region of the Northern Territory animal bones and other faunal remains are absent from most Chinese archaeological sites. Nonetheless, many of these sites contain artefacts related to the preparation of meat such as meat cleavers and stone pig ovens. It would be simple to dismiss the apparent absence of faunal remains as the result of taphonomic processes, such as the consumption of bones by dogs, except that preserved containers re also rare or absent from Chinese sites in this region. As McCarthy (1986, 1989, 1995) has pointed out, archaeological evidence concerning meat consumption at Chinese historic sites represents something of an enigma. Using recently collected archaeological data, this paper explores two hypotheses which may explain the apparent scarcity of faunal remains on Chinese archaeological sites in the Pine Creek region. These hypotheses concern the destruction of bone by taphonomic processes (labelled here the bone destruction model) or Chinese dietary preferences (labelled here the vegetarian model).