Victorian Era European exploitation of Pounamu in Dunedin, New Zealand

Abstract

European greenstone lapidaries in Dunedin, New Zealand enjoyed a short boom as raw material became available from the gold mining industry and Europeans developed a taste for both traditional Māori and Victorian designs. In the process of recent earthworks two discrete assemblages of pounamu were recovered from a central Dunedin site. The manufacturing techniques employed by the European lapidaries and the markets they were servicing are investigated here. The assemblages were most likely cached and may have been a part of a grey market of ‘fake’ Māori artefacts.