“Suitable food for old and worn out persons …”4

​Introduction

The archaeology of institutions holds an outsized place in Australian historical archaeology. This is in part due to their continued physical presence in the cultural landscape, but also stems from a popular narrative which cites the origins of the Australian identity in convictism, in particular, and institutionalisation, more broadly (Casella and Fredericksen 2004). While only a small proportion of Australian migrants in the early colonial period experienced confinement in institutions, focusing on food highlights the impact that these places had on culture beyond their walls. For example, we see how forms of institutionalisation spread beyond the confines of prisons and barracks into whaling camps, ration depots and the domestic sphere. Surprisingly limited attention has been given to the specific roles of food both within Australian residential institutions and in Australian society more broadly by archaeologists to date. This is a significant oversight given the ways in which food has been used to control and manage populations historically, but also how significant it has been in the formation of identities and as a means of resistance. This chapter provides an overview of the emergent archaeology of institutional food in Australia, showing how institutional forms of consumption have shaped Australian foodways and colonial identities more widely. At the same time, this survey points to the need for improved methodologies and increasingly sophisticated analytical frameworks that are specifically adapted for historical archaeology in Australia.

​What is institutional food?

Institutions are organisations dedicated to the care, confinement or mobilisation of a particular population, encompassing not just the physical facilities, but also the people and organisational structures that make up the institution. Importantly, they are characterised by the presence of two distinct non-familial groups between which there is an inherent power imbalance, with one supervising the other, for example teachers and schoolchildren, or staff and patients (Goffman 1961). Institutions also mark inhabitants spatially and temporally by association with a set location and time period. Since institutions occupy a spectrum from the totally voluntary (such as community associations) to fully coercive (such as prisons), the extent of this marking varies greatly (Winter 2015). In voluntary institutions, such as many religious institutions or community groups, the members are marked only briefly during the time they come together as a group. At the other end of the spectrum, Erving Goffman (1961) calls the most coercive institutions “total institutions” because of their all-encompassing nature. They are characterised by a lack of separation between places of sleep, play, and work. In institutions like prisons, inmates are marked by separation from the community for the length of their sentence.

Institutional food, then, is the food that is prepared and consumed within the context of an institution. By food I mean substances (including beverages) taken into the body orally to nourish the body, including those consumed for recreational purposes and sociability, such as alcohol and tobacco. Medicine is not examined in detail here, but it is acknowledged that some substances once considered medicinal would now be categorised as foods, and that nutrition continues to be an integral part of disease prevention and health care.

Food in disciplinary institutions serves a variety of functions, including fuelling labour and creating a social hierarchy, but it is used most broadly as a form of coercive control for punishment and/or reform (Brisman 2008; Farrish 2015; Godderis 2006; Johnston 1985). At the same time, institutional residents can use food and its associated material culture to subvert the rules, create and maintain identities, and exercise power over others (Dusselier 2002; Earle and Phillips 2012; Godderis 2006; Ugelvik 2011). Finally, the unofficial trading and selling of food can be used to solidify relationships between inmates and to create social obligations (Casella 2007, 80; Cate 2008). Archaeology adds to discussions about these functions because of its ability to see illicit and hidden behaviours that are rarely recorded in official records and which inhabitants may be unwilling to discuss with ethnographers (Casella 2009).

In this chapter I categorise institutional food in two ways: 1) rationing, which is the provision of fixed quantities of ingredients or the components of a meal, and 2) institutional dining, where prepared meals are served inside institutions like prisons, schools and hospitals. The details of these two types are explored below, but the distinction is important because it teases apart the logistical and affective differences between these modes of institutional provisioning, which are generally collapsed. Archaeologically, these two forms of institutional food leave different material traces and the type of institutional food system in use at a site should inform both method and interpretation.

Rationing refers here to the organised distribution of ingredients (or, occasionally, meal components such as bread) in set quantities to individuals or groups at given intervals of time. Rationing as a technique for managing populations is highly transferable, meaning that it can be applied to different groups. In the Australian colonial context, for example, rationing was used for sailors and the military, for convicts, First Nations communities and free settlers. The exact contents of the rations varied depending on age, gender, occupation and function (e.g. to reward or punish certain behaviours). For those doing the rationing, whether individuals, philanthropic groups or government entities, it provides a measure of surveillance and control over the diet of the population. Anthropologist Tim Rowse (1998) has shown, for example, how rationing systems used on Aboriginal families in central Australia served a variety of purposes including producing flexible labour forces, establishing European norms around food and enforcing the transition to waged labour.

Notwithstanding the fact that ration systems are highly coercive and associated with limited quantities of poor-quality food, counterintuitively, they also provide a certain measure of agency. Since uncooked ingredients are the foundation of rationing systems, ration users can choose how to prepare their meals, when they want to eat, who they want to eat with, how to spread the food over the time before the next distribution, whether to barter some of their supplies and how to supplement their rations.

By contrast, institutional dining is characterised by the provision of cooked meals and by a lack of choice about what, when and where to eat. In institutions like prisons and workhouses, food is produced on a large scale for the whole institution at once and meals occur on a strict schedule with everyone eating together, or in shifts. This is true even in more open institutions such as homeless shelters or school dining halls where the choice to attend requires acceptance of the given hours and menu. Other options to acquire food are typically limited, leading to illicit acquisition of food through trade, smuggling, theft and unsanctioned food production, although it is also common for food to be available to purchase (as in a commissary) to encourage participation in work or in return for good behaviour.

In practice, rationing and institutional food provisioning are two sides of the same coin, and institutions may alternate between the two systems or apply them to different groups. Prior to the New Poor Law in Britain, for example, workhouses often provided both indoor and outdoor relief simultaneously. Indoor relief, where individuals entered the workhouse for accommodation and meals, constituted a form of institutional dining, while outdoor relief included a rationing system with money and food distributed to people living in the community. While these two types of institutional food have notable differences, they are both ways of managing populations through regulation of individual bodies or what Michel Foucault (2003) calls “biopower” or power focused on human life at two levels – the individual body and the population as a whole. Food served in institutions functions to normalise certain behaviours through regulation, producing subjugated citizens who are more efficient and more obedient (Foucault 1995 [1975], 128–9, 138). In institutional settings, the emphasis on repetition and uniformity leads to standardisation of consumption patterns and individuals learn self-regulation, which encourages adherence to norms even after leaving the institution. Tim Rowse’s (1998) analysis of rationing in Aboriginal communities in central Australia illustrates this duality (see also Farry 2021; Nettelbeck and Foster 2012). By bringing groups of First Nations peoples together at the mission or the ration depot, rationing facilitated surveillance and the construction of a body of administrative knowledge about the population as a whole, while simultaneously making available a flexible pool of labour (Rowse 1998, 5–8, 17, 86–8). At the level of the individual, rationing normalised consumption of European foodstuffs, their material corollaries (indoor dining, cutlery and crockery) and associated norms (of the nuclear family, for example) (Rowse 1998, 5–8).

​Institutional food in Australia

​Earliest rations

The first dietary scale (the written daily or weekly food allowance) in the Australian colonies was produced for the convicts on board the 11 ships of the First Fleet in 1788 and was developed from the British navy dietary. By the end of the eighteenth century, the British navy was responsible for keeping hundreds of ships provisioned. It used a dietary laid down in the late-seventeenth century which remained remarkably stable until the introduction of canned meat in 1847 (Macdonald 2014). Governor Philip, who led the British colonisation of New South Wales, was fully aware of the health consequences of long voyages on naval rations due to his experience as a naval captain and he made careful preparations for provisioning the fleet and insisted on sourcing fresh food in intermediate ports.

Upon their arrival, marines and convicts alike moved to a weekly shore ration of 7 lb bread or flour; 7 lb salt beef or 4 lb salt pork; 3 pt pease (dried peas, split peas or lentils); 6 oz butter, and 1 lb flour or 1/2 lb rice. Marines and male convicts received the full ration, while women received two-thirds of the male ration and children between one- and two-thirds (Government Printing Office 1892, 143, 184). The rations were supplemented with fresh fruit and vegetables, soft bread (instead of hard tack), and fresh meat when possible. The only official distinction in diet between the marines and the convicts was the addition of 1/2 pt spirits per day for the marines, which was not enough to avoid resentment since the marines expected to have better rations than the convicts (Gilling 2016; Newling 2021, 38–9).

Convict rations varied over time as food supplies were more or less abundant and as the convict system developed between 1788 and the 1860s (Steele 1997). Maize was substituted for wheat in the early years, while tea and sugar were added over time, especially for women (Cushing 2007; Steele 1997). Some of the items introduced in the early convict rations period, such as pumpkin, would become signatures of the Australian diet, while others like maize, tainted by the association with the convict rations, would almost completely disappear for the remainder of the nineteenth century (Cushing 2007; Santich 2012, 5–12).

In spite of these variations, the basic convict rationing system laid out the essential ingredients of the Australian institutional and indeed the wider diet for most of the nineteenth century: meat (salted beef or pork at first, later fresh mutton or beef), bread or flour, tea and sugar. Different versions of this system would be used on board ships for assisted immigrants, in post-convict institutional settings and in partial payment of wages by employers (Byrne 1848, 99; Haines 1997, 49; Malone 1854, 258).

​Convicts

While convict life is marked by incarceration in the popular imagination, the lives of convicts varied depending on their legal status, assignment, location and the timing of their transportation. Many convicts lived freely in the community where they had substantial control over their lives and consumption practices, whereas those living on their employers’ properties or in institutional settings had much less choice in what and how they ate.

Excavations in The Rocks neighbourhood on the western side of Sydney Cove, an area strongly associated with the convict and emancipist (ex-convict) community, gives us a fascinating insight into their food and foodways. A large excavation of parts of two city blocks – called the Cumberland/Gloucester Streets site – in 1994 provided insight into the lives and diets of early residents and, particularly, convict butcher George Cribb. Transported in 1808, Cribb was able to take advantage of opportunities for skilled convicts by working as a butcher almost as soon as he arrived. He received a conditional pardon in 1813 and amassed substantial property in The Rocks until the failure of his businesses around 1824 (Karskens 1994, 23–27, 2009). Cribb’s business served a community which reflected his own household where convicts, probationers, ex-convicts, those born in the colony and free settlers lived side by side. Since the population of The Rocks was mobile and residents moved fluidly between legal statuses, it is generally not possible to assign the archaeological material to particular households, but it is possible to associate the material with the convict and ex-convict community more broadly. Looking at these assemblages gives us a broad understanding of the food and foodways of this community as a whole (e.g. Voss 2008).

Faunal assemblages at both convict institutions and convict homes are dominated by four species not native to Australia: sheep, goat, cow and pig.5 During the earliest period of convict occupation of the Cumberland/Gloucester Streets site (1788 to c. 1810) most of the bones came from cows (55 per cent) and sheep (40 per cent), but by the end of the second phase when Cribb was active (c. 1810 to c. 1833), the proportion of beef and mutton decreased to 51 per cent and 35 per cent respectively as the total number of species represented increased (Table 5.1) (Godden Mackay, Steele and Johnson 1996). The predominance of beef and mutton is consistent with documentary evidence of the early Australian economy, but the proportions of different animals and changes in consumption over time remain poorly understood. Pig bones are particularly underrepresented compared to the historical documentation of convict rations. This could be the result of the provision of imported salt pork or the use of boneless products like bacon, which would explain the limited recovery of pig bones at sites like Cribb’s butchery (on salt pork in archaeology see Simmons 2011).

The extent to which colonists consumed native Australian foods has been hotly debated by historians. Settlers starving in a land of plenty because they refused to eat local foods has become a trope, but more recent scholarship suggests that colonists consumed a variety of indigenous plants, seafood, shellfish, birds and mammals (for rejection of ignorance of native foods see Beckett 1984; Davey, Macpherson and Clements 1945, 193; Jupp 2004, 176; McIntyre and Wisbey 2009; Newton 2014, 243–4; for use of native foods see Bannerman 2006, 2019; Newling 2021; O’Brien 2016; Santich 2011, 2012, 28–75). The archaeology at the Gloucester/Cumberland Streets site provides interesting insight into this debate because it provides evidence for the collection of shellfish and fish, but not of birds and mammals. The almost complete absence of native mammals has been interpreted as evidence of cultural conservatism on the part of European settlers: “The lower orders were conservative in their taste, sticking rigidly to mutton and beef and a little pork. They seem to have had a deep distaste, even horror, of eating strange meats from other animals…” (Karskens 2003, 46). This raises the question of how much class played into the adoption or rejection of different native foods and whether, for example, convicts were particularly conservative in their tastes because of their social precarity or if this resulted from differential access to particular species and equipment for acquiring them.

Interesting evidence comes from one of the few faunal collections reported from a convict institution, the Port Arthur Prisoner Barracks in Tasmania (c. 1835 to 1877). Bones from medium-sized mammals including sheep (NISP = 166)6 and pigs (NISP = 161) were most frequent, while cow bones were less abundant (NISP = 38). However, wallaby (NISP = 38), unidentified macropod (NISP = 26), wombat (NISP =1), leopard seal (NISP = 1), rabbit (NISP = 2), chicken (NISP = 7), duck (NISP = 2) and pheasant (NISP = 1) as well as more than 1,400 fish bones and nearly 1,000 shells including oysters, periwinkles, abalone, mussels, clams and sea-snails were found (D’Gluyas et al. 2015, Supplementary Table 1; Hamilton 2013, 41–2). D’Gluyas and colleagues (2015) point to the complexity of interpreting these remains where the presence of native species could be the result of illicit hunting by convicts, officially sanctioned supplementation of the diet when food supplies were unstable, or of recreational hunting by civilians and officers within the institution.

Plant remains provide another potential source of information for convict diets. At the Cumberland/Gloucester Streets site, identified species included apricot, cherry, coconut, fig, grape, hazelnut, lemon, melon, passionfruit, peach, pea, plum, pumpkin, raspberry/blackberry and perhaps apple, brassicas, mustard and prickly pear (Godden Mackay, Lawrie, et al. 1996; Godden Mackay, Steele, et al. 1996, 14). However, the lack of a formal botanical report or clear provenance of the plant remains complicates their interpretation. Pollen from imported fruit and nut trees as well as vegetables, cereals and herbs is found in samples from nearby Parramatta, painting a picture of the remarkably varied range of foods available in early Sydney (Macphail 2004; Macphail and Casey 2008).

Analysis of ceramics, glass and metal also provides insights into food production and dining practices. In penal institutions like Hyde Park Barracks (Sydney, NSW) and the Ross Female Factory (Tasmania), ceramic pipes and alcohol bottles found in underfloor occupation deposits speak to illicit consumption by convicts and to a trade in prohibited goods, while the discovery of an illegal still stashed in George Cribb’s well shows that such behaviours were also present among convicts living in the community (Casella 2010; Karskens 2003, 44; Starr 2015). The use of drug foods and intoxicants to alleviate the challenges of convict life are not a surprise, but the presence of decorative, high-quality imported ceramics, Chinese porcelain and glassware may be. Evidence from The Rocks and other residential sites suggests that the convicts and emancipists who had the choice were enmeshed in global consumer markets and chose increasingly ornate tableware (Karskens 2003; see also Brooks and Connah 2007).

​Work camps

From the earliest period of colonisation, the organisation of labour gangs in a remote and frequently harsh environment was critical, initially for convicts and later for free migrants working in agriculture, infrastructure and resource extraction. Sustaining these remote workers was not without its challenges. Anthropologist Richard Wilk (2004) argues that labour gangs were provisioned by an early globalised food system adapted from semi-industrial rationing systems previously used to feed European navies and militaries. The components of these diets will be familiar from the convict system described above: bread or hard tack, salted meat or fish, and stimulants including alcohol, coffee, tobacco and sugar. Demand for these products not only reshaped environments globally and facilitated technological developments in food preservation (such as canning and refrigerated shipping) but also produced new food cultures.

Archaeology provides evidence of the experiences of those labouring in work camps, which are often poorly recorded historically. In Australia, there has been extensive survey and excavation of camps for a variety of industries including sealing, whaling, fish-curing, pearling, agriculture, logging, mining and manufacturing (Lawrence and Davies 2011). The evidence suggests that the diet at these sites was dominated by bread or flour, meat from domesticated animals, sugar and tea. This was supplemented with purchased condiments, alcohol and tobacco, as well as opportunistic hunting and gathering of native resources such as fish, shellfish, birds and mammals as diverse as emus and quokkas (Davies 2002; Gibbs 2005; Lawrence and Tucker 2002).

As with many of the other forms of institutional food discussed in this chapter, scholars understand the broad components of diets at these sites but have paid less attention to how food in these institutions shaped people’s identities and relationships. On the one hand, the historical tendency to focus on rural, masculine sites of pastoralism, mineral extraction and industry has excluded both women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from histories of colonial Australia (Ireland 2003, 62). Even within the stereotypically male work camp, women were often present. Focusing on women’s food-related work presents the opportunity to recognise their contribution more fully. This challenges the central place of masculine mateship in the Australian story, enhancing the visibility of women and their contribution to these industries and the economy (Lawrence 2010).

On the other hand, to what extent did male-only work camps produce new food cultures? Frontier communities were based on homosocial bonding promoted by men working, drinking and gambling together in an environment often marked by deprivation and violence (Perry 2001, 21; on masculine food cultures see Conlin 1979; Earle and Phillips 2012; Vester 2015; Wilk and Hintlian 2005). In a North American context, Wilk and Hintlian (2005) have conjectured that this environment produced a pattern in which quantity was more important than quality, with a staple diet of plainly cooked preserved foods punctuated by occasional bingeing. It is interesting to consider what specifically Australian forms of bush masculinity can be inferred from the presence of delicate teawares, fashionable transfer-printed ceramics or the stem of a glass cake plate in a miner’s tent (Cheney 1992, 40; Lawrence 2010).

The construction, maintenance and negotiation of ethnic and racial identities through food is another potentially significant theme for the study of institutional food in ethnically segregated camps and settlements. Archaeologically, sites associated with Chinese labour have attracted the most attention (see Chapter 6), but studies of foodways relating to Afghan cameleers, South Sea Islander sugarcane workers, Cornish miners, Indian hawkers, and Italian, Polish, German and Irish settlers may be equally fruitful.

Chinese migrants to the Australian colonies played a large role in the development of the mining, fishing and agricultural sectors, and a number of camps are specifically associated with Chinese labourers (Bowen 2008; Mitchell 1999; Rains 2003; Smith 2003). Interpretations of Chinese foodways have moved away from cultural conservatism to emphasise cultural fluidity and individual agency, with sites showing both efforts to import traditional Chinese ingredients, utensils and tablewares, and simultaneous integration of European products (Lawrence and Davies 2011, 234–6; Rains 2003). The benefits of such analysis are borne out in studies of worksites overseas which demonstrate the complexity of assigning artefacts to a single ethnic origin (Ross 2012; for an Australian example see Harrison 2002). Attending to the complicated meanings of such “transnational artifacts” (items with fluid identities and global origins) also raises the question of how artefacts can link different types of institutional sites and forms of institutional food provisioning. How, for example, did the structures set up to provision Chinese labourers affect Australian cuisine more broadly? The presence of longan, loquat and lychee fruits at sites in Sydney, including within the institutions of Hyde Park Barracks, points to the importation of fruit trees and/or fruit for the Chinese market spreading to consumers who were probably not of Chinese heritage (Connor 2023; Fairbairn 2007; Lydon 1993; Porter 2019). Gordon Grimwade’s chapter in this volume (Chapter 6) highlights the role that roast pork played in mining communities throughout Australasia.

​Institutions of First Nations incarceration

As a part of the colonial process, First Nations peoples in Australia were incarcerated and institutionalised from the early nineteenth century. Places such as missions and “Native Institutes” focused on control of the population, as well as racial and cultural assimilation. While much has been written of missions and institutionalisation of First Nations peoples, little attention has been played to the role of food in these places (for an exception see Morrison et al. 2010; for missions and institutionalisation see Andrew and Hibberd 2022; Burke et al. 2023; Casella and Fredericksen 2004; Dewar and Fredericksen 2003; Paterson 2006, 2011, 2017; Paterson and Veth 2020; Roberts et al. 2021; Winter et al. 2020; for food beyond those discussed below, see Harrison 2002; Smith 2000).

The most commonly excavated sites associated with institutional food for Aboriginal communities in Australia are missions (using the expansive definition offered by Graham 1998). The nature and chronology of the Australian mission system varied from colony to colony but was inherently both racist and carceral in nature. Its ostensible goals were to convert, protect and “civilise” First Nations peoples, both through “education” and control of reproduction and family networks (Middleton 2020). The success of the missions’ program of cultural assimilation was measured by the extent to which inhabitants adopted British material culture and practices, including foodways (Lydon 2015). Archaeological evidence, often in conjunction with oral histories, shows both the long-term effects that these institutions had on Aboriginal lives and cultures, and the failures of colonial authorities to fully enact their goals.

The archaeological evidence for dining and food at mission sites is locally and temporally specific, but a striking feature to emerge from studies of many missions is the combination of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander food cultures with that of European food cultures. Continued traditions of hunting, gathering and consumption of bush foods, especially game and shellfish but also plants and wild honey, is evident from the Torres Strait to the Bass Strait (Ash, Manas and Bosun 2010; Birmingham and Wilson 2010; Dalley and Memmott 2010; Morrison, McNaughton and Shiner 2010; Ebenezer Mission in Victoria is a rare exception, see Lydon 2009). These foodstuffs complemented institutional diets which could incorporate both rationing and institutional dining. At Killalpaninna Mission, for example, rations were distributed to people living at campsites around the mission while Aboriginal women on the mission produced meals for the communal mess hall (Birmingham 2000).

One of the challenges for many missions was their remoteness and, as a result, their reliance on sometimes tenuous supply routes. How much bush foods contributed to the diet and the extent to which such supplementation was officially encouraged is often unclear. At the Weipa Mission (1892–1966) in the Western Cape York Peninsula, mission residents exchanged sea turtle, dugong, wallaby, kangaroo, emu, duck, fish, crab, shellfish, wild honey (sugarbag), fruits, nuts and tubers for credit at the mission store (Morrison et al. 2010, 2015). Evidence for the scale of this practice, especially the extent of sugarbag harvesting, led the archaeologists to conclude that not only did bush food contribute substantially to the mission diet but also that “Unlike language, marriage, religious practices, or other Indigenous social institutions, knowledge around food does not seem to have been targeted by the missionaries for reform” (Morrison et al. 2010, 107).

However, given that the archaeological, anthropological and historical literatures suggest that food was routinely targeted for reform within mission, an alternate reading might be that the meaning of food was contested within the institution (Birmingham 2000; Birmingham and Wilson 2010; Foster 2000; Lydon 2009, 2015; for American examples see Lindauer 2009; Surface-Evans 2016). Rowse (1998), in particular, has argued that a key feature of rationing systems for First Nations peoples was their openness to different interpretations by the missionaries and First Nations communities. Bush foods could be both “a site of resistance to assimilation” and provided ongoing connection to Country, culture and an opportunity for inter-generational knowledge and skill transmission (Morrison et al. 2010, 107). Conversely, for missionaries, trading bush foods for European commodities was part of the strategy of “mercantile evangelism” with bartering understood as an intermediate stage on the way to participation in the wage economy (Rowse 1998, 89; see also Fowler, Roberts and Rigney 2016; Griffin 2010, 163). In particular, missionaries might support First Nations women’s food production, including gathering of bush foods, because it could facilitate men’s participation in waged industries such as pearling and fishing by freeing up male labour (Ash et al. 2010).

Beyond the missions, two recent studies of the animal bones and charcoal from a late nineteenth-century pearl diving site on Barrow Island in Western Australia have revealed some of the dynamics of food provisioning in an Aboriginal work camp (Byrne et al. 2020; Dooley, Manne and Paterson 2021). Intriguingly, there is no evidence for domesticated animals in the faunal record, but instead, the archaeologists recovered evidence of bandicoot, possum, wallaby, wallaroo and sea turtle as well as various fish and birds (Dooley et al. 2021, 3). The authors interpret this as demonstrating insufficient provisioning of Aboriginal divers by the colonial pearlers as well as ration supplementation by the divers in order to provide themselves with sufficient food and to perform traditional forms of masculinity (Dooley et al. 2021, 568). Yet the over-representation of the lower limbs of macropods may also demonstrate how hunting practices were affected by the institutional setting (Dooley et al. 2021, 567).

There is significant potential to understand the ways in which rations were distributed, consumed and supplemented through archaeological study of food at other institutions associated with First Nations peoples, including reserves and stations, Native Mounted Police camps, and ration depots. Archaeological studies of the different locations associated with rationing including “the pastoral lease, the mission enclave, the police station, the welfare settlement,” would contribute to a burgeoning historical literature on ration systems and their effects (Rowse 1998, 5; on rationing see Brock 2008; Farry 2021; Levi 2006; Nettelbeck and Foster 2012; Smith 2000). While the rationing that developed for Aboriginal peoples in Australia was an amplification of the use of state power against a population, it was not a new invention, but an adaptation of the existing rationing system. The system which reached its apogee in the ration depots of outback Australia had already shown its value for surveilling and managing convicts, marines and settlers. More research is required to understand the relationships between the two systems, but they clearly shared a number of functions including surveillance and integration into capitalist forms of production by giving food in return for labour (Farry 2021; Newling 2021).

​Confinement and care

In the post-convict era, two major types of institutions dominated the Australian landscape: institutions of confinement, like prisons and reformatories, and institutions of care like lazarets, hospitals and asylums. While the aims of these institutions may seem remarkably different, in practice many institutions like industrial schools and quarantine stations combined the functions of care and confinement, and there was often significant overlap in the ways that they were organised, particularly with regards to food.

Recent research from the St John’s girls’ reformatory in South Australia points to the potential of artefact studies at these types of institutions. Decorated ceramics, primarily food-service dishes and teawares, evince a domestic rather than a uniformly institutional setting and highlight the ambiguous nature of care institutions, perhaps especially those for young women (De Leiuen 2015, 149; see also Connor 2023). These sites – which were often designed to explicitly and/or implicitly train women in gendered roles and housekeeping skills – may lack the extreme uniformity popularly associated with punitive institutions like prisons. At the same time, the mismatched ceramics suggest an ad hoc approach to sourcing, reflecting that the idealised function of institutions was constrained by the practicalities of funding and a lack of choice in the goods that were available (De Leiuen 2015, this argument mirrors what De Cunzo [1995] argued for the Magdalen Asylum in Philadelphia). While many recent studies of the physical infrastructure of lunatic asylums, destitute asylums and reformatories have yielded interesting results (e.g. Kay 2015; Longhurst 2017; Piddock 2007), artefact-focused studies have not been as forthcoming, even though they are likely to be equally informative.

Institutions of immigration are another group with potentially important implications for institutional food, because they were liminal spaces where immigrants were introduced to the norms of Australian food cultures (Connor 2021, 2023). Several Australian states had networks of immigration depots in the nineteenth century to facilitate the movement of newly arrived immigrants into regional areas, to find them employment and to protect vulnerable populations on arrival. My research at the Female Immigration Depot (1848–1887) in Sydney demonstrates how a British style of cooking, eating and dining was normalised for working-class women arriving on subsidised passages. Analysis of food remains from other Australian depots, and of British emigration depots at the other end of the journey, would permit comparison of different immigration policies across Australia.

These sites also highlight how grey the line between food and medicine was in the period under review. At the North Head Quarantine Station (1832–1984), where immigrants could be quarantined on arrival in accommodation segregated by ticket class, a small collection of twentieth-century items reveals the multiple uses of alcohol in institutions: to produce a compliant population and staff, as a reward, but also to fight disease (Longhurst 2018). Tablewares from the same institution tell a similarly complex story. Longhurst argues that Wedgewood ceramics at the quarantine station have survived in part because they were understood as less likely to transmit disease, partly because of their material qualities and partly because they were associated with first- and second-class passengers arriving in the station (Longhurst 2018, 523–4). From the moment that they arrived in Australia, the food and dining arrangements for immigrants reflected and created distinctions based on class, race and health status.

​Future directions

This chapter has covered the major forms of institutional food currently being studied by archaeologists in Australia, though they are rarely thought of as a single, cohesive whole. From the examples outlined here, it is clear that defining institutional food as a distinct field facilitates different types of questions and a distinctive approach to the themes that mobilise Australian historical archaeology. It pushes us to consider the relationship between institutional regimes aimed at different groups, for example, how rationing as a technology was transferred from the navy and military to convicts, settlers and First Nations peoples. Thinking about the spread of institutional technologies in this way provides an avenue for understanding the conundrum that Casella and Fredericksen (2004) pose: why is there such a strong belief in a history of shared confinement when a relatively small proportion of colonial Australians spent time in penal institutions? By focusing on food, we can see that elements of institutionalisation spread beyond the walls of individual sites. Developing a cohesive sub-field, however, requires archaeologists to apply methods from archaeological science more systematically, expand to new types of sites, and, most importantly, to develop comparative multi-material analyses. Doing so will not only allow us to better understand the functions and material correlates of institutional food historically and in the present, but it will enable us to explain how modern Australia came into being. In a nation defined by its institutional history, it is not enough to study just the impressive standing buildings, but it is essential to understand the lived experience of institutionalisation through the remains of daily life.

​References