Introduction: The Archaeology of “Marvellous Melbourne”

Melbourne was a major global city in the nineteenth century. Founded by pastoralists in 1835, the settlement grew explosively following the discovery of gold in 1851, and within a decade the population had reached half a million people. New settlers and new wealth brought a boom in housing construction, manufacturing, civic institutions, and transport and communication infrastructure, as the city became the leading urban center in Australasia. The structure and fabric of the city today expresses much of its colonial development, when “Marvellous Melbourne” was among the most remarkable metropolitan centers in the Asia-Pacific region. In the last ten years, the intersection of more rigorous heritage protection and a boom in large-scale urban development means that there has been a fluorescence of historical archaeological work carried out in Melbourne, especially in the central business district. We draw upon this extensive archive of material to highlight the results of major archaeological discoveries that have occurred in recent years.