ABSTRACT

During the nineteenth century, New Zealand was promoted as a land of plenty, promising a ‘better life’, to encourage families to settle and develop the growing colony. This paper characterises the life-course of early settlers to New Zealand through historical epidemiological and osteological analyses of the St John’s burial ground in Milton, Otago. These people represent some of the first European colonists to Aotearoa, and their children. The analyses provided glimpses into the past of strenuous manual labour, repeated risk of injury, and oral and skeletal infections. Mortality of infants was very high in the skeletal sample and the death certificates outlined the varied risks of infection and accidents they faced. Osteobiographies of seven well-preserved adults demonstrated the detailed narratives that can be gleaned from careful consideration of individuals. The skeletal record indicates childhood stress affecting growth and risk of injury prior to migration. However, the historical record suggests that occupational risks of death to the working class were similar in the new colony as at home. The snapshot of this Victorian-era population provided by these data suggests that the colonial society transported their biosocial landscape upon immigration and little changed for these initial colonists.

摘要

在 19 世纪，新西兰被宣传为一片富饶的土地，承诺“更好的生活”，以鼓励家庭定居和发展不断壮大的殖民地。本文通过对奥塔哥米尔顿圣约翰墓地的历史流行病学和骨学分析，描述了新西兰早期定居者的生命历程。这些人代表了第一批到 Aotearoa 的欧洲殖民者和他们的孩子。这些分析让我们得以一窥过去的繁重体力劳动、反复受伤的风险以及口腔和骨骼感染。骨骼样本中婴儿的死亡率非常高，死亡证明概述了他们面临的各种感染和事故风险。七名保存完好的成年人的骨传记展示了可以通过仔细考虑个人而收集到的详细叙述。骨骼记录表明，儿童时期的压力会影响移民前的成长和受伤风险。然而，历史记录表明，新殖民地工人阶级的职业死亡风险与在家相似。这些数据提供的维多利亚时代人口快照表明，殖民社会在移民时转移了他们的生物社会景观，而这些最初的殖民者几乎没有变化。