Planning and initiating the project's first phase: A focus on complex industrial aspects of the World Heritage-listed Port Arthur site and the Tasman Peninsula.

On 13–16 March, UNE hosted a visit by two key project partners: Dr David Roe, Archaeology Manager for the Port Arthur Historical Site Management Authority and member of the Tasmanian Heritage Council’s Archaeology Advisory Panel, and Dr Richard Tuffin, a Research Fellow in Humanities at UNE and soon-to-be Research Assistant for the Landscapes of Production Project.

The project team met to initiate and plan the first phases of the project, which will focus on complex industrial aspects of the World Heritage-listed Port Arthur site and the Tasman Peninsula. The team, including UNE’s Professor Martin Gibbs and Associate Professor David Andrew Roberts, also met with Head of the Humanities at UNE, Professor Lloyd Weeks, an archeologist who specializes in the study of ancient societies in Iran, the Arabian Peninsula and the Ancient Near East.

A particular focus of these early discussions was on how the research may be used to add significant depth to the management, interpretation, public outreach and education tools of Port Arthur sites.

Dr Tuffin used the visit to offer a presentation for UNE’s Archeology Society, canvassing the preliminary findings from the 2016 Penitentiary Ablutions archaeological excavation at the Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasmania. The site once housed the amenities blocks, exercise yards, shelter sheds and Day Room associated with the Port Arthur Penitentiary and is a vital key to understanding how Port Arthur’s most iconic structure operated as a place of incarceration. The archaeological excavation, part of a suite of ongoing conservation, interpretation and research works, was by far the largest ever carried out at the site and one of the largest research investigations of the convict-period undertaken in Australia. A team of seven professional archaeologists spent over four months on site, their findings already beginning to challenge existing views of how convicts and the authorities interacted within this space.

Of particular interest was the advanced recording methods used to conduct the investigation, including the generation of a highly detailed 3D representation of the site using photogrammetric techniques. Peter Rigozzi’s astonishing 3D model of the excavation of the Port Arthur Penitentiary laundry.

[Image: Richard Tuffin, Martin Gibbs and David Roe present the findings from the 2016 Port Arthur archaeological excavations to the UNE Archeology Society, 15 March 2017.]

Contact: David Roberts

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