The frame of a clunky early version of the bicycle proves colonial Whanganui was up with the fashions of the Victorian era, postgraduate student Naomi Woods says.
The metal frame is one item in the 2500kg of artefacts recovered during a 2010 archaeological investigation of land where Whanganui's Farmers complex now stands.
The investigation was done by Archaeology North and found the remains of early colonial settlement. Miss Woods has analysed the artefacts at Otago University. She's writing up her findings, and her research on the velocipede frame was written up in the March issue of Archaeology New Zealand magazine.
The frame was recovered from a rubbish hole, along with broken crockery, buttons, a ring, a buckle and fragments of dolls.
The hole, possibly a former well, was probably filled with household rubbish around 1900. But velocipedes had a brief craze much earlier, in the late 1860s.