Pig Oven, Emmaville
Date Published
: Pig Ovens, Mining (Tin)
: Northern Tablelands (NSW)
: Emmaville
: c.1900
In fieldwork for her Honours thesis on the archaeology of Chinese suburban settlement in the north west New South Wales tin mining towns of Tingha and Emmaville, Rebecca Lin Yit found large earthen mounds with convex tops within 20 metres of both the temple site on Howell Road at Tingha and the temple site at Joss House Rd at Emmaville. Based on Lindsay Smith’s research, she concluded that they were the destroyed remains of communal ovens.
An unpublished history of Emmaville written by early settler, Septimus Suttor provides an account of Chinatown which mentions a pig oven:
"In the heyday of its greatness, Chinatown was replete with joss house and a brick oven in which to roast a pig for the annual barbecue. Nearby was a cemetery in which the faithful could be temporarily buried pending dispatch to China."
Rebecca Lin Yit, ‘The Archaeology of Chinese Suburban Settlement’, Hons thesis, Australian National University, 2005, p. 120. In Juanita Kwok, A reassessment of Chinese pig ovens in Australia, Journal of Australasian Mining History, Vol. 21, October 2023, p.103.
