This paper focuses on a collection of objects deliberately concealed beneath the verandah of a ward for middle-class, female, paying patients at Australia’s longest continuously operating mental health institution, the Royal Derwent Hospital in Tasmania. Cached in small discrete mounds across an area of some 50 square metres, the collection was probably concealed in the mid-20th century and contains over 1000 items of clothing, ephemera and other objects dating from 1880 to the mid-1940s. In achieving a possessional territory of such magnitude, this patient achieved a level of personal self-expression that is rarely encountered archaeologically, particularly within an institutional context. Analysis of this collection as an ‘underlife’ illuminates both functional aspects of the hospital and the hopes and desires of this particular, though still anonymous, patient and her vibrant world of things.

本文着重介绍了一组故意藏在中产阶级女性病房阳台下的物品，这些物品是在澳大利亚运营时间最长的塔斯马尼亚州皇家德文特医院（Royal Derwent Hospital）内经营的，营业时间最长的患者。该收藏品藏在面积约50平方米的离散小土丘中，可能藏于20世纪中叶，其中包含1000多种衣物，属植物和其他物品，可追溯到1880年至1940年代中期。在获得如此巨大的占有领土时，该患者达到了个人自我表达的水平，这在考古学上很少遇到，尤其是在机构环境下。将此收集物分析为“未成年”，既可以说明医院的功能方面，也可以了解该医院的希望和期望，