The archaeology of frustrated ambition: An Australian case-study

Questions concerning cultural adaptation are particularly important in Australian historical archaeology because of the distances involved in the European settlement of Australia, and the unfamiliar environment faced by early colonists.. One such question concerns the socioeconomic and political failure of some early colonial land-holders who ran estates based on assigned convict labor. A notable example was Major Archibald Clunes Innes, who during the 1830s and 1840s developed extensive pastoral, agricultural, and commercial interests in what is now northeastern New South Wales. At Lake Innes, near Port Macquarie, on what was then the very edge of colonial settlement, he created an estate from which he could control his various activities, while living in a style that he could never have aspired to in his native Scotland. The remains of his extensive brick-built house and stables, as well as the sites of a range of estate facilities, reflect his ambitions for the future, while the survival of this archaeological evidence largely results from the frustration of those ambitions.