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have resided in the vicinity. A detailed plan of the relationships between
the scatters analysed and stumps, barrel hoops and other site features is
demonstrated by Map 25.
Removed from these scatters, at quadrat 054s011w, was the remains of a
watering-can rose. This is probably not associated with the Chinese
occupation period, but with that which is suspected to have overlapped it ­
that period when the well was dedicated for the town water supply. This
assumption is made on the basis that King (1911:74) states that on Honam
Island, near Canton, crops were fed by means of a long-handled dipper,
with each plant being given a measured quantity. Although Ritchie reports
the finding of a watering can rose on a Chinese site in New Zealand, given
the scarcity of water at Milparinka I would not expect any less attention to
conservation of the resource than in China.
Despite mention above of unidentified ferrous material, a noticeable gap in
the artefact assemblage is created by a relative absence of tin cans.
Whole cans might be carried away by f100dwaters or otherwise have failed
to survive either because the soil is more corrosive at the Chinese sites, or
because the cans had at some stage been burned, destroying the tin plate
and facilitating their disintegration. Either possibility would explain the low
representation and generally poor condition of ferrous items in the
assemblage. Sanford's (1975) discussion of relative survival suggests that
in an alkaline environment such as at Milparinka galvanic corrosion of iron
in items comprised or tin plating and iron would result in their quite rapid
decomposition. The process would leave intact only those components,
such as solder, which are comprised of the more noble of the metals
involved.. That hole-in-the-top cans were present is demonstrated by item
31 (photograph 26), which is the ring of solder from the covered hole of
such a can. The assemblage from Chinaman's Garden Well also includes
numbers of seam fragments which may come from rectangular, as
opposed to round, cans. These are too small to be of particular use for
further diagnosis. If from rectangular food cans, they represent a contrast
to Pine Creek, rectangular cans generally being associated with tinned
meat. Work at Pine Creek (McCarthy, 1986:45) and in New Zealand
(Ritchie,1986:335) suggest tin cans should be a significant feature of the
artefact assemblage at Chinese sites. Ritchie found tin cans comprised 20
percent of containers found on selected Central Otago, New Zealand sites.
At Pine Creek tin food cans were from 'assorted canned fish (sardines,
herring, etc.), cocoa, and presumably vegetables...'(McCarthy, 1986:45)
and it was concluded that the Chinese either abstained (from meat)
altogether or butchered captive and wild sources. At Milparinka the latter is
the more likely, although only one fragment of bone was found in the
surface collection of artefacts. McCarthy also commented upon the
absence of bone in the surface collection from Pine Creek, and concluded
this was due to environmental conditions, including the presence of
scavenging dingoes. Elsewhere in arid parts of Australia, especially where
bone is exposed on the ground surface to salt, occasional wetting, and
extremes of heat and cold, there is a tendancy for long bones to fragment
into a myriad of slivers (personal observation). Given sufficient time such a