Dangerous Girls and Gentle Ladies Archaeology and Nineteenth Century Australian Female Convicts

This inquiry explores material expressions of gendered power relations through excavation and analysis of the Ross Female Factory, the last remaining prison site to retain archaeological deposits related to the nineteenth century female convicts. It first examines the construction and maintenance of social hierarchies and institutional domination within the cultural landscape of the Ross Factory. Through the elaboration of physical boundaries, intensification of surveillance, increasing specialization of spaces, and meticulous temporal and spatial regulation of inhabitants' movements, it interprets markers of social hierarchy and disciplinary control. This dissertation then considers the reciprocal dynamics of transgression and insubordination through the frequency and distribution of "illicit objects" within wards of the Ross prison.