A hierarchy of servitude: ceramics at Lake Innes Estate, New South Wales

Abstract

A British colonial estate in eastern Australia, built by 1830 and abandoned 20 years later, survives as the ruins of the Big House surrounded by stables, a farm and servants' quarters. The authors recovered pottery assemblages from a number of different servants' dwellings and here show that they differed from each other, revealing a ‘hierarchy of servitude’. It is natural to think that such a situation would provide helpful analogies for earlier empires, like the Roman, but historical archaeology has its own framework, varying even from country to country.