Study of unmarked graves at Drybread Cemetery shifts to new point

A gravestone at the Drybread Cemetery in Middle Otago. Photo / Cosmo Kentish-Barnes

By RNZ

After uncovering 20 unmarked fatal at the 150-year-old Drybread Cemetery, analysis workers will now shift their focus that would building a picture of the deceased’s everyday life.

“I suspect that very first township as it would have existed within a mid-1860s is quite deeply buried. So we know where it was but The truth is don’t think we’ll ever get to where it was, ” Petchey said.

Despite that, he hoped to come back later this summer to search for more proof of it.

“One for the things with archaeology is you have a tendency to raise as many new questions as you are answer.

“There’s way more questions to go and answer, the case I’d like to go back later in the summer and as a result dig a few more holes if possible. inches

“We were able to specify two of the Chinese people using the names still on the coffin plate and [find] tantalising clues about another of the Europeans – the only female we got, actually, ” she said.

About a year’s worth of would go into researching all those who had been exhumed.

During the month-long dig, co-director Peter Petchey conjointly searched for the settlement which credited its name to the cemetery, but not many clues were unearthed.

Petchey said he located mirror, ceramics and evidence of structures that could have scattered around the diggings of the 19th century, but not the arbitration itself.

The month-long excavation finished earlier in December.

Drybread, north of Alexandra, was an 1860s gold dash off to settlement.

The cemetery dates back to that time, but is in use today and the fear it future planned burial plots would probably already contain remains led to an excavation.

The dig’s co-director, Professor Hallie Buckley, rumoured 12 graves were exhumed counting six Chinese people and not one but two infants.

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