The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne. Questo articolo non è disponibile.The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Melbourne’s Little Lonsdale Street – locally known as ‘Little Lon’ – was notorious as a foul slum and brothel district, occupied by the itinerant and the criminal. The stereotype of ‘slumdom’ defined ‘Little Lon’ in the minds of Melbournians, and became entrenched in Australian literature and popular culture.

The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne tells a different story. This groundbreaking book reports on almost three decades of excavations conducted on the Commonwealth Block – the area of central Melbourne bordered by Little Lonsdale, Lonsdale, Exhibition and Spring streets. Since the 1980s, archaeologists and historians have pieced together the rich and complex history of this area, revealing a working-class and immigrant community that was much more than just a slum. The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne delves into the complex social, cultural and economic history of this forgotten community.

Barbara Minchinton is an independent researcher and volunteer at the Public Record Office Victoria. Since completing her doctorate on settlement in the Otways under Victoria’s 19th century land acts she has worked on projects including the urban archaeology of Little Lon, soldier settlement in Victoria after the First World War, and women as landowners in Victoria.

Tim Murray joined the Program in 1986 as Lecturer and was appointed to the Chair of Archaeology in 1995. He has also taught at the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, Cambridge University, the University of Leiden (The Netherlands), the Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), and the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales (Paris), Peking University, Goteborg University, the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and the Nordic Graduate School in Archaeology. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003 and Fellow of the Academy of the Humanities in Australia in the same year. He is editor-in-chief of The Bulletin of the History of Archaeology. From 2009-2014 he was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and in 2010 was made Charles La Trobe Professor of Archaeology. In 2015 he became Director of the Centre for the Archaeology of the Modern World (CAMW) based at La Trobe University.

Justin McCarthy is an archaeologist and the managing director of heritage consulting firm Austral Archaeology Pty Ltd. After graduating from Sydney University in 1982, he was archaeological consultant to the South Australian State Heritage Branch from 1983 to 1987. He directed some of the earliest and largest excavations in South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania. He has been a member of Australia ICOMOS since 1981 and is currently an Adjunct Research Fellow at Flinders University. Austral Archaeology is currently an industry partner with Flinders University.

Jeremy Smith is Heritage Victoria’s Principal Archaeologist, and has been a member of the Archaeology Advisory Committee of the Victorian Heritage Council since 2002. He has worked on sites throughout Australia and the Middle East, and has contributed to a number of publications on significant excavation projects in Victoria, with a focus on the archaeology of early Melbourne. He was also a key contributor to the award-winning book Ned Kelly: Under the Microscope (CSIRO Publishing, 2014).

Geoff Hewitt first graduated in metallurgy and pursued an engineering career in the shipbuilding and repair industry. An active diver, his first taste of archaeology was shipwreck excavation as a volunteer. This led to undergraduate and postgraduate studies in archaeology at La Trobe University and a new career as a contract and consulting archaeologist.