Walking the foreshore at low tide in the upper reaches of Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour, in northern Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa NZ), various objects (or, artefacts) can be found lying in the tidal landscape. These objects—encompassing items as diverse as a modern plastic water gun, a 1950s coin, a Victorian-era clay inkwell, a glass bottle and fragments of blue and white dinnerware (all found on a recent walk)—speak to past social activities, livelihoods, accumulations, and discard (Figure 1). They speak to the foreshore simultaneously documenting a rubbish dump, accidental loss during children’s play, and possibly deliberate castaways. But more so, this action of mudlarking, the practice of searching urban waterways and coastal foreshores for historical objects, offers a novel entry point into questions of material cultures, environmental legacy, public engagement, and the contested values that shape understandings of the nature of heritage in Aotearoa NZ.
Collected in one morning along a short stretch of waterfront, objects range temporally and materially from a Victorian-era ink bottle, a 1950s coin, to a modern plastic water gun. Source: author’s own.
In this paper, the concept of “liminality” provides a useful lens to examine both the practice of mudlarking and found objects. Exploring the liminal dimensions of mudlarking—namely, the relationships between land and water, past and present, and formal and informal knowledge—invites critical engagement with the concept of professional authority. It enables traditional expert-driven models of archaeology to be contrasted with more participatory and place-based approaches to knowledge-making. By unpacking the social and ecological tensions embedded in everyday encounters with the past, this research highlights the need for inclusive, adaptive, and reflective forms of historical knowledge production. Aotearoa NZ, a settler-colonial society with a relatively short settlement history of around 800 years and only 200 years of significant European influence on material culture, provides the context to consider how practices like mudlarking here are shaped by a “time-compressed” historical landscape—one with a temporally “shallow” stratigraphic record, and the natural world as neutral and without agency.Footnote 1 Further, the types, ages, and histories of found objects in Aotearoa NZ can differ markedly from those uncovered in the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere, where materially rich and chronologically deep urban histories are more readily encountered. In this paper, the first author is the “mudlark in the field”—the one who, in the main, identifies, researches, and interprets these finds. They are a co-constructing interlocutor, simultaneously establishing a sense of place and critically examining their own positionality and belonging within these unfolding histories.
1. Mudlarking as a practice
The impulse to collect and interpret found objects connects mudlarking to fundamental aspects of human behaviour. Camic discusses how humans’ gathering of items have not only been practiced for survival (i.e. of food, tools, and materials) but also practiced out of curiosity and appreciation of the aesthetic, decorative, or non-functional qualities of something.Footnote 2 This related to the evolution of the term “mudlark.” The term emerged colloquially in the 18th century to describe impoverished Londoners who searched the Thames Riverbed at low tide for sellable items. These individuals, often children or the elderly, sought to survive by selling found objects like coal, scrap metal, or even goods pilfered from passing ships.Footnote 3 Over time, the practice of mudlarking has evolved into a hobby. Modern-day mudlarks are often driven by curiosity rather than economic necessity. For many, it stems from a deep love of history and the thrill of discovery—whether the uncovered artefact holds monetary value or simply personal resonance.Footnote 4 A fragment of glass, an embossed bottle, or a rusted key may be treasured not for what it is, but for what it evokes: beauty, difference, or a personal connection to place and time. As Maiklem observes, mudlarking reveals that “everything has a story to tell.”Footnote 5 It is as much about storytelling as it is about finding. The ever-shifting shoreline invites the mudlark to forge connections between the fragments they find and the broader histories they represent.Footnote 6 For mudlarks, artefacts operate as narrative anchors, offering glimpses into the everyday lives of people who lived and worked along the foreshore, while also providing material entry points into major historical moments. In London, such objects may speak to the Roman conquest of Britain or the strategic use of the Thames during the Second World War; found objects speak to the wider processes of European colonisation and significant events such as the 19th century New Zealand Wars or 20th century World Wars. Personal acts of discovery through mudlarking are thus situated and situating within longer and often contested historical trajectories. In contrast to related hobbyist practices such as metal detecting or bottle digging, which often involve active burrowing resulting in alteration of the landscape, mudlarking entails non-invasive, surface-based recovery of artefacts that have been lost, discarded, or naturally revealed through tidal movement and erosion along riverbeds and foreshores.Footnote 7
Mudlarks retrieve a vast range of material artefacts that span human history and culture depending on geographic context. In the United Kingdom and Europe, for example, these finds can include anything from Palaeolithic artefacts and Roman pottery to fragments of Victorian glass and modern detritus, revealing long histories of habitation and consumption through the items that may have been lost, discarded, or deliberately placed in the river as a sacred space to be later found along the tidal edges of historic cities and trading routes.Footnote 8 In Aotearoa NZ, the scope of mudlarking is shaped by a much shorter colonial history and a legislative framework protecting cultural heritage. While pre-colonial Māori artefacts may occasionally be found, they are taonga tūturu (loosely defined as “protected treasures”) and are subject to regulatory processes overseen by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (HNZPT) Act, and must not be disturbed or removed.Footnote 9 As such, mudlarking here generally focuses on objects from the past two centuries: bottles, ceramics, and other fragments of everyday life. Even these can be subject to heritage protection if they date before 1900, reflecting the complex ethical and legal landscape of engaging with material objects in Aotearoa NZ.
2. Liminality, in theory and practice
As a practice that takes place on the edge of land and water, “liminality” provides a useful lens to examine mudlarking and its connection to traditional archaeology, especially within the context of Aotearoa NZ. Liminality is understood to be an in-between or transitional state where familiar or structuralised states of time, place, and being diminish. Usefully, social science theories have been used to understand liminality as a way to make sense of social and cultural phenomena.Footnote 10 Arnold van Gennep’s foundational theory of rites de passage describes social transitions as consisting of three key phases: separation, liminality, and reaggregation.Footnote 11 In his work, the liminal stage is described as a suspended interval, between one state and another, where the subject is removed from their previous status but not yet incorporated into the next. This theory is supported and further developed by Turner, who explores liminality as a distinct social and symbolic condition marked by ambiguity, transformation, and potentiality.Footnote 12 He suggests that subjects exist betwixt and between recognised positions, stripped of markers of identity and value.
From this emerges communitas, a temporary but profound sense of sameness that stands in contrast to the structured, hierarchical order of everyday social life. Where van Gennep outlined liminality as a transitional moment within ritual process, Turner reframed it as a generative space in which power structures are diminished and new meanings, identities, and relationships can take shape.Footnote 13 In mudlarking, this is reflected in its accessible and participatory nature, enabling diverse perspectives and narratives to shape the interpretation of the past and expand the meanings attributed to material culture.
Turner’s understandings of liminality discuss “renewal” as providing the conditions for experimentation.Footnote 14 Similarly, anthropological understandings of liminality explain it as a state of transition and potential transformation. For example, culture is also continually produced within liminal spaces.Footnote 15 Liminality usefully describes the moments when perception itself is reoriented and ways of seeing, interpreting, or valuing the world shift. These blurred, dynamic conditions generate the potential for reimagining both self and society and reveal transformation not as a single event but as an ongoing movement through uncertainty towards new meaning.Footnote 16
The material culture recovered through mudlarking can be situated within these ideas. The objects become separated from their original usages/meanings, interred within a transitional (liminal) space and, on being found, meaning is remade. Similarly, the practice of mudlarking can be seen to involve suspended intervals of time consisting of finding, researching, and groundtruthing to know its age, material, and narrative history. There is only ever a partial—or suspended—knowing. Liminality can be understood in different ways; this article draws upon three framings to consider the contribution of mudlarking and found material culture in shaping understandings of the nature of heritage in Aotearoa NZ. Firstly, as a cultural process, liminality reveals how meaning, identity, and value are dynamic, continually produced through social interaction and interpretation. Turner draws attention to the ways cultures evolve in moments of transition where rigid structures relax, and new possibilities emerge.Footnote 17 These intermediate states are where people negotiate belonging, create new meaning, and reconfigure the relationships between self, society, and environment. Liminality, therefore, is not an interruption of culture but an active and generative driver for understanding.Footnote 18
Secondly, liminality can be understood as a continuum; liminality stretches beyond discrete moments of change to describe the ongoing nature of transformation itself. Thomassen describes how, rather than existing as a single threshold, liminality encompasses a range of in-between states where boundaries blur and meanings overlap.Footnote 19 This continuum challenges the tendency to divide the world into binaries such as historic and modern, constructed and natural. Instead, liminality allows for the fluid, relational nature of cultural experience to be recognised. By filling the spaces between categories, it prevents gaps in understanding, legality, or classification and highlights the complexity of processes that are always in motion.
The third framing considers liminality as an acceptance of uncertainty and calls for a recognition that indeterminacy is an inherent part of cultural life. The boundaries that organise social, material, and environmental worlds are rarely stable or absolute, and attempts to rigidly define them can overlook the value of ambiguity. Turner discusses how the acceptance of uncertainty allows for openness, creativity, and reflection that invite alternative ways of knowing and relating that accommodate multiplicity rather than certainty.Footnote 20 In this sense, liminality becomes not a problem to resolve but a radical encounter that enables the continual reimagining of meaning within cultural and material worlds.
The concept of liminality, therefore, provides a useful framework for understanding how cultural meaning and value emerge through movement, transition, and reinterpretation. Where liminality exposes the instability of boundaries and the fluidity of meaning, mudlarking, as a form of participatory archaeology and material culture studies, reveals similar processes at work in the ways people engage with objects, places, and the past, found in the transitional zone between land and water.
3. Material culture
The objects found while mudlarking are material remnants of past and current socio-cultural activities; however, the context in which they occur and the mode of recovery may influence how they are perceived as material culture.
Material culture is broadly understood as the study of objects and their social lives, encompassing the physical artefacts that humans create and use, and the meanings, practices, and relations that coalesce around them.Footnote 21 Instead of approaches that privilege texts or ideas, material culture scholarship centres the fundamental role of “things” in shaping human experience, memory, and identity.
Philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Ferdinand de Saussure have each contributed influential definitions of material culture, offering distinct ways of understanding how objects hold meaning in human life. In On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense, Nietzsche contends that what are known as concepts, truths, and fixed meanings are merely metaphorical constructs rather than accurate representations of any intrinsic or objective reality.Footnote 22 He challenged the stability of meaning itself, arguing that objects do not possess inherent significance but rather derive their value from shifting cultural and historical contexts.Footnote 23 Therefore, as per his conceptualisation, meaning changes over time depending on who is doing the interpretation and which values dominate a particular culture. For instance, in Aotearoa NZ, a Māori carving might be seen as art by one person, an expression of whakapapa (genealogy/belonging) by another, or as heretical and paganistic by yet another. Each interpretation is shaped by time, place, and social perspective. Similarly, a bottle lost or discarded as trash takes on new meaning and value when unearthed by a mudlark and interpreted through their lens of time, preference, and curiosity. The bottle’s value might depend on whether it is complete, embossed, or a particular colour, shape, or type, therefore, revealing how meaning is shaped by what the mudlark chooses to see in it.
Psychoanalysis provides a lens through which objects can be viewed as vessels of desire, repression, and unconscious symbolism, intimately tied to personal and collective identity.Footnote 24 People are not always immediately aware why they are drawn to certain things; an antique collector might choose pieces based on aesthetic reasons, or as a way of connecting to childhood nostalgia, or a lost sense of self. From a linguistic standpoint, meaning arises not from objects themselves but from their relationships to other objects, in the same way that words derive meaning through difference within a language system.Footnote 25 In other words, there is no inherent reason why a tree is called a “tree”; it is simply a matter of collective agreement. A tree is understood to be a tree because it stands in contrast to a bush or shrub. Anderson and Tolia-Kelly similarly discuss how material objects in social and cultural geography acquire meaning through their entanglement with social practices, spatial contexts, and cultural narratives, rather than through any intrinsic property of the material itself.Footnote 26 They argue that both language and objects gain significance through systems of relation rather than intrinsic essence.
3.1. Material culture as socially constructed
Following the theories of Nietzsche, Freud, and Saussure, material culture does not possess inherent meaning; rather, it is socially constructed through the interpretive frameworks, institutions, and cultural values that surround it.
Objects found through “traditional” archaeological methods may become part of museum displays. As international showcases of material culture, museums epitomise how societies assign significance to objects as their central functions. They collect, preserve, and display artefacts deemed historically or culturally important, which are all acts of cultural selection and interpretation. Through curatorial narratives, museums construct particular understandings of identity, knowledge, and heritage, often positioning themselves as spaces of education, memory, and cultural diplomacy.Footnote 27 These institutions enable the exchange of ideas and artefacts across nations, promoting narratives of shared human experience. In recognising the historical context of museum development and how narratives are shaped by power, recent trends to decolonise museums, including through the repatriation of objects, draw attention and awareness to the incomplete nature of the record. Nevertheless, the tendency for narratives to be defined by who gets to do archaeology persists, which influences how evidence is interpreted and whose voice is ultimately heard.Footnote 28 This is especially important with Indigenous heritage. The authority to define and interpret culture has been grounded in Western epistemologies, which privilege certain voices while marginalising others.
The claim to universalism, with museums as custodians of “world heritage,” sits in tension with local and Indigenous assertions of ownership, interpretation, and the right to repatriation.Footnote 29 Furthermore, the process of removing artefacts from their original contexts produces decontextualisation, where cultural objects lose dimensions of ritual, spiritual, or social meaning when displayed in isolation from their communities of origin. Within museum settings, objects are often recontextualised through systems of classification, description, and display, shifting their role from being actively used and embedded in lived practices to being interpreted as static representations of culture. In this transition, the meanings of objects are mediated through curatorial frameworks, which can obscure or transform the ways they were originally understood and engaged with.
These issues are addressed differently across global contexts. In Aotearoa NZ, for example, many modern museums now operate within bicultural frameworks informed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi 1840 (commonly considered the founding document of Aotearoa NZ), from which fundamental principles of partnership, protection, and participation underpin Crown/Māori relationships. This has fostered new models of co-curation that recognise Māori rights of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and tino rangatiratanga (cultural authority) in the representation of taonga (things of value).Footnote 30 Similarly, the classification of heritage in Aotearoa NZ reflects socially constructed boundaries around time and value. The HNZPT Act designates pre-1900 artefacts and sites as legally protected heritage, a temporal threshold that both acknowledges and constrains what counts as “historical.”Footnote 31 Such divisions reveal the arbitrary nature of heritage classifications, as artefacts from the same site or period may carry very different statuses depending on context, ownership, or institutional recognition. The in situ fragmented remains of a blue and white dish found in an archaeological site acquire significance through their temporal and spatial relationships to other objects, established by careful/methodical recording, and for their insights into people and place by careful post-excavation interpretation. The same object fragments recovered on the foreshore by a mudlark still convey meaning through careful interpretation but may be disconnected from a secure stratigraphic context. The action of recovery affects relationships, significance, and perceived heritage value. In the United Kingdom, comparable distinctions are mediated through frameworks such as the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Treasure Act, while in Australia, federal, state, and territory heritage laws similarly regulate the recovery and curation of colonial and Indigenous material culture.Footnote 32
Across the contexts of both Britain and Aotearoa NZ, there is evidence that material culture is understood not as a neutral record of the past but as a cultural and political construction where meaning is continually shaped by institutional authority, legal frameworks, and social values. What counts as heritage, and whose heritage it is, reflects ongoing negotiations between preservation and access. In Aotearoa NZ, this extends to negotiations between universalist ideals and Indigenous sovereignty and between the aesthetic, historical, and emotional meanings that objects hold for different individuals and communities.
4. Public value and meaning
Archaeology extends far beyond the recovery of artefacts to encompass broader social, cultural, and emotional dimensions that provide a tangible connection to the past. As practice process, and collection of “outputs,” it enables individuals and communities to situate themselves within shared histories and cultural narratives, though these meanings are far from just present-day meanings. Material culture has meaning that was understood by the people who made the objects and used them, as well as throughout the entire biography of an object that has been found.
In the United Kingdom, a long tradition of development-led archaeology has embedded archaeological practice within the processes of urban growth and renewal. Work funded by developers on sites of potential archaeological significance ensures that the uncovering of the past becomes an integrated part of the future-making process.Footnote 33 Beyond its regulatory and academic value, this approach highlights how archaeology contributes to local identity and public understanding of place. Conversely, in the United States and Canada, archaeology has played an ongoing role in uncovering Black, Brown, and Indigenous histories that were long excluded from dominant narratives, thereby providing tools for dialogue and social justice.Footnote 34 These practices demonstrate how archaeology can move beyond preservation to become a means for cultural understanding and renewal. In Aotearoa NZ, archaeology is mainly practised by consultants and is largely developer-led outside the University system. It increasingly intersects with Māori knowledge systems and community-led initiatives that prioritise the principles of te ao Māori (the Māori worldview) and centre archaeology not as a neutral science but as a relational practice with ethical and cultural responsibilities. The ways in which archaeology contributes to public meaning in Aotearoa NZ are, therefore, deeply tied to questions of ownership, voice, and cultural sovereignty.Footnote 35
Popular culture has also played a significant role in shaping public perceptions of archaeology. While fictional figures such as Indiana Jones and Lara Croft have romanticised the discipline as one of adventure and discovery, more recent television docuseries such as Time Team and Digging for Britain have grounded it in the everyday, demonstrating how local digs and community projects contribute to collective understanding. Similarly, the series Mud Men followed London mudlarks as they traced the histories of objects found along the Thames, extending this fascination further into the public domain. These internationally broadcast series are readily accessible in Aotearoa NZ, reinforcing the global interest in archaeology. However, they may also reinforce the notion that archaeology is a discipline that happens outside of local contexts or that archaeology in areas with comparatively short settlement histories is somehow “lesser” than in old World contexts.
The growing pop culture engagement with archaeology has also been institutionalised through initiatives like London Museum’s Secrets of the Thames exhibition, the first major display dedicated to mudlarking, which celebrates the intersection of public participation, material culture, and historical imagination. Together, these examples illustrate that the public value of archaeology lies not only in the preservation of artefacts but in its capacity to connect people across generations, cultures, and disciplines to the ongoing processes of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making that define human history.
4.1. Enhancing public participation and understanding
Citizen science in the form of participatory archaeology has gained momentum as a powerful means to deepen public engagement and understanding of material cultures. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Thames Discovery Programme (TDP) is a long-running community archaeology initiative dedicated to monitoring, recording, researching, and sharing the archaeology of the Thames foreshore.Footnote 36 Through volunteer monitoring groups who “adopt” and regularly visit stretches of the Thames foreshore, alongside inclusive public and youth programmes, TDP builds deep, situated knowledge of the river’s material heritage and foregrounds archaeology as an ongoing, collaborative process of discovery, care, and storytelling. Similarly, the Community Archaeology Program at Binghamton University, USA, empowers citizen scientists to assist in archaeological data collection, fostering a collaborative approach to cultural resource management.Footnote 37 In Europe, the “Heritage Quest” project leverages crowdsourcing and co-creation tools to involve communities in the exploration and preservation of cultural heritage, demonstrating the potential of digital platforms to engage the public in meaningful ways.Footnote 38 In Aotearoa NZ, the discovery of a historic waka tuitui (traditional sea-voyaging canoe) on Rēkohu-Wharekauri (Chatham Island) has ignited a collaborative effort to recover, preserve, and understand this significant artefact.Footnote 39 This initiative exemplifies the principles of participatory archaeology, where local communities, Māori iwi (tribe), and heritage professionals worked together to safeguard and interpret cultural heritage.
Such collaborative projects enhance public understanding of material cultures while fostering deeper connections between communities, place, and ancestral histories. They also foreground the value of place-based knowledge and the stewardship of fragile environments, thereby legitimising multiple ways of knowing and diverse interpretive voices within heritage practice. By actively involving individuals in the processes of discovery and interpretation, these initiatives enrich encounters with the archaeological record and cultivate a shared sense of ownership and responsibility towards cultural heritage. However, these examples illustrate institutionally structured forms of participatory archaeology, shaped by defined research objectives and methodologies.Footnote 40 In contrast, mudlarking is, by nature, a decentralised, serendipitous, and experiential pursuit that operates at the margins of formal heritage practice, where place is central to both personal and community identity and where conventional hierarchies of expertise and authority are more openly negotiated and, at times, unsettled.
5. Mudlarking: Participatory archaeology as a liminal, radical encounter
5.1. Liminality in place, periodicity, policy, and participation
Applying liminality as a lens enables consideration of multiple formal and informal practices of “object finding” that blur the boundaries between professional archaeology and public engagement. This perspective allows for an exploration of how mudlarking and related practices challenge and reconfigure established frameworks of meaning across four interrelated dimensions: place, periodicity, policy, and participation. In each of these, liminality exposes moments of ambiguity and transition, where definitions of value, authority, and belonging are unsettled, revealing how such thresholds can generate new ways of understanding and engaging with the material past.
5.1.1. Liminality in place
The intertidal zone, where mudlarking takes place, epitomises the liminality of place, wherein it is a threshold that is neither completely land nor water, but alternates between both depending on the tidal rhythms. The movements of the tide constantly blur boundaries by “concealing and revealing, aggregating and dispersing,” and in doing so, echo van Gennep’s claims that liminality transects identities or states of being (see also Godin).Footnote 41 Simply put, within the intertidal zone, relationships between land, water, and the materials caught in between are continually being reshaped.
Despite the inherent liminal nature of these intertidal zones, humans continue to use classification systems to understand and manage these changing spaces. Literal and figurative lines are drawn in the sand to make boundaries and to categorise “land,” “foreshore,” “beach,” and “water.” Each of these categories has unique legal definitions, regulatory frameworks, and social norms that determine how they are used, managed, and owned. However, these distinctions are based on a constantly shifting environment, redefined by tides, seasonal variations, storms, and sediment movements.
In the context of climate change, these boundaries are becoming even more unstable and are challenging the notions of permanence upon which legal and cultural classifications are based. A significant portion of Aotearoa NZ’s coastal archaeological sites are at risk from the combined effects of sea-level rise and coastal erosion. Specifically, Jones indicates that around 22 percent of these sites are situated on landforms already sensitive to erosion driven by sea-level changes.Footnote 42 Furthermore, sea-level rise and changing wave patterns are predicted to increase both the frequency and intensity of coastal flooding across Aotearoa NZ.Footnote 43 In addition to sea level rise, the frequency and intensity of significant weather events have already started to increase as a consequence of global climate change. In January 2023, a stalled tropical atmospheric river caused severe flooding across the Auckland region, followed closely by Severe Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle, which underscored the multifaceted nature of coastal vulnerability and demonstrated that these regions are threatened not only by encroaching seas but also by increasingly extreme precipitation events. There is already evidence of marked physical changes to Aotearoa NZ’s intertidal landscapes, particularly in and around shallow harbours, river mouths, and estuarine environments, and these are only set to become more pronounced.
The coastal regions of Aotearoa NZ have historically been key locations of human settlement and activity, with many towns and cities centred around harbours, estuaries, and river mouths. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, when maritime transport underpinned national and international trade and transport, these areas supported significant industrial activity, including brick works, shipbuilding, mills, and tanneries, many of which have since been abandoned or closed. While some of these locations meet the criteria for archaeological sites as defined under the HNZPT Act, others lie outside the formal legal framework yet remain of considerable heritage interest.Footnote 44 Collectively, these sites and material remnants are increasingly exposed to, and threatened by, the accelerating impacts of sea-level rise and coastal erosion (Figure 2).
The grassy area in this photo is the site of a former brick and tile factory in Auckland and a protected heritage site. However, with the combination of runoff from the slopes above and changing tidal movements, the site and the artefacts within are being increasingly eroded away into the river. Source: author’s own.
In Aotearoa NZ, an archaeological site is legally defined under the HNZPT Act, section 6, as “any place in New Zealand … that was associated with human activity that occurred before 1900 … and provides or may provide, through investigation by archaeological methods, evidence relating to the history of New Zealand.”Footnote 45 It is neither financially nor logistically feasible to physically secure all coastal archaeological sites and doing so could significantly alter the surrounding environment. Therefore, as coastal erosion and sea level rise accelerate, many artefacts are being exposed and lost before archaeologists can document them. In such cases, there is potential for the practice of mudlarking to recover and preserve material culture that might otherwise be destroyed.
5.1.2. Liminality in periodicity
Because of the liminality of the place that defines the intertidal zone, and the placement of the objects, there also becomes a liminality of time. As the movements of the land and water change and redistribute the objects held within, they also blur the socially constructed lines between past and present. This temporal liminality complicates heritage protection frameworks like the HNZPT Act, which classifies heritage sites and artefacts based on a fixed temporal threshold.Footnote 46 Within the intertidal zone, such temporal demarcations are difficult to apply as the ever-changing environment means that artefacts from different eras are continually mixed, exposed, and reburied. Archaeology relies on stratigraphy to situate artefacts spatially and temporally to each other, and from that their temporal position and social meaning within the broader narrative of a site. By contrast, artefacts recovered through mudlarking in Aotearoa NZ often resurface through landslides or slips and are therefore displaced from their original contexts, resulting in limited stratigraphic information. Therefore, mudlarking and mudlarked objects challenge the clear definitions of time and place that both archaeological and legal protection rely upon.
The mingling of objects illustrates how linear temporal and spatial boundaries are blurred through the movement of water, land, and human interpretation. In the intertidal context, as shown in the image of the mudlarked objects (Figure 1), objects from the Victorian period can coexist with those of the mid-20th century and the present day, forming a stratigraphic ambiguity that challenges stratigraphic ideals of temporal order. However, as in other archaeological contexts where deposits are cut, reshaped, and overlaid, such apparent surface-level uniformity does not preclude stratigraphic meaning; assemblages on the foreshore may have accumulated at different times, with some objects necessarily later than others despite their co-presence. While such assemblages can reveal patterns of activity and use over time, thus contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the foreshore as a dynamic, historically layered landscape, the reaggregation of temporally unrelated objects exemplifies Nietzsche’s argument that meaning is fluid rather than fixed, where artefact values are reinterpreted and revalued through shifting sociocultural lenses.
5.1.3. Liminality in policy
In Aotearoa NZ, if artefacts cannot be reliably located within an intact stratigraphic sequence, the legal and administrative categories that grant “heritage” status become difficult to apply in practice. An object recovered from the foreshore may have been displaced from its original deposit by tidal action, storm events, or human disturbance and therefore may not meet the evidentiary standards that underpin heritage designation in situ. This exposes the mutual inconsistencies between the fluid material realities of intertidal environments and the relatively fixed thresholds embedded in many heritage policies.
The practical consequences of this disconnectedness are evident in national approaches to finds-management. In Aotearoa NZ, legislative protections such as those enacted under the HNZPT Act treat pre-1900 artefacts and registered sites as protected, requiring adherence to formal procedures for discovery, reporting, and custody.Footnote 47 As discussed earlier, the application of a pre-1900 cutoff becomes ambiguous where objects are liberated and redeposited by tidal processes.
Similar issues have been identified in England and Wales, where the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) was established in 1997 to ease tensions between heritage legislation and public engagement through activities such as mudlarking and metal detecting. The PAS provides a framework for non-professionals, particularly metal detectorists and mudlarks, to voluntarily record artefacts with professional archaeologists, contributing to national heritage databases.Footnote 48 Unlike heritage legislation in Aotearoa NZ, which operates with a fixed statutory date threshold (1900), the PAS does not impose a strict chronological boundary. Though many recorded finds predate 1650, artefacts of later historical interest, including those from the 19th and 20th centuries, may also be documented when deemed historically significant.Footnote 49 This approach seeks to reconcile public enthusiasm for discovery with the need for accurate documentation and preservation, creating a more inclusive model of heritage management that acknowledges the blurred boundaries between amateur and professional practice.
This is not to diminish the role of formal archaeology and of culturally appropriate stewardship—professional archaeological practice provides methodological rigour that is essential for constructing robust historical narratives. In settler-colonial contexts, such as Aotearoa NZ, particular care must be taken with the treatment of Indigenous material heritage. Domingo Puertollano emphasises the legal obligations that Māori artefacts carry for repatriation, consultation, and, where appropriate, return to place.Footnote 50 These obligations are not only legal but ethical, reflecting histories of colonial dispossession and the obligations to mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga (Māori self-determination and self-governance, respectively).
5.1.4. Liminality in participation
Taken together, these issues invite a critical examination of how different actors across the archaeology–mudlarking continuum attribute cultural or historical value. Professional archaeologists, heritage managers, local communities, recreational finders, and Indigenous custodians bring distinct knowledges, priorities, and criteria to questions of significance. The ascription of “heritage” or “historical” status is, therefore, not a neutral technical judgment but a cultural-material construction produced through institutional practices, legal instruments, and interpretive frames.
Mudlarking challenges the boundaries between formal archaeology and public participation. It invites non-specialists to engage directly with the material past, potentially fostering a deeper sense of connection to local histories, especially in areas where formal archaeological investigations are limited by resources. Mudlarking translates the technical practice of traditional archaeology into lived experience and often contributes to wider understandings of heritage and environment through found objects and observations.
In England and Wales, the relationship between public engagement and professional oversight is formalised through structures such as the PAS and the more geographically defined Thames Foreshore Permit Scheme, administered by the Port of London Authority.Footnote 51 The Thames permit system applies only within Greater London, between Teddington Lock and the Thames Barrier, where the Port of London Authority manages access on behalf of multiple landowners. Mudlarks must obtain licences of varying levels to search within this stretch of the Thames, with different permissions granted for surface collection or digging, reflecting a hierarchy of access and authority. While reporting is mandatory for Thames permit holders and for objects that qualify as Treasure under the Treasure Act, across the rest of England and Wales the PAS generally functions as a voluntary recording scheme.Footnote 52
These systems serve important protective functions by safeguarding the fragile heritage of the Thames and ensuring that artefacts are responsibly and accurately recorded. However, they also reinforce existing power dynamics around knowledge and expertise by defining who can “search,” “find,” and “know” within the heritage landscape. While anyone might visit the Thames foreshore, the deliberate act of searching requires formal permission, suggesting that curiosity itself is subject to governance in this stretch of the river.Footnote 53
In Aotearoa NZ, legislation such as the HNZPT Act establishes legal frameworks for the protection of heritage sites, while in England, foreshore access is based on property rights.Footnote 54 With consideration of the Thames, for example, as a busy, working river, the Foreshore Permit Scheme reflects both heritage concerns and the need to manage safety, navigation, national security, and the protection of fragile riverine environments. In this context, regulation does not simply restrict public engagement but structures it, ensuring that activities such as mudlarking can take place responsibly while safeguarding people, places, and the diverse values associated with the foreshore.
6. Rethinking Heritage Through Mudlarking
Mudlarking can be understood as a radical encounter precisely because it unsettles the conventional boundaries that define how place, time, policy, and participation are understood. It is radical not in a rejection of archaeology but in its reimagining of how the past can be engaged with beyond institutional and disciplinary confines. Rather than opposing archaeological practice, mudlarking represents one of many ways through which people explore and encounter the material traces of the past.
Mudlarking exposes the fluidity and ambiguity of the intertidal zone that resists fixed categorisation and provides a reminder of how heritage does not always reside in neatly bounded sites or static displays but is also scattered within everyday environments. The material effect is an expanded sense of where history can be found and who it belongs to, which invites a more relational and participatory understanding of time and place. Meanings continue to evolve as objects are rediscovered, reinterpreted, and revalued.
By challenging the framing of place and periodicity, mudlarking also exposes the tensions between protection and participation within heritage management. Licensing schemes and legal definitions, such as those in the Thames Foreshore Permit or the HNZPT Act, aim to safeguard archaeological resources but also structure how people interact with them.Footnote 55 Mudlarking illustrates how grassroots engagement can both support and question formal systems of preservation and invites critique of how policy might accommodate more inclusive, community-driven forms of heritage care.
Finally, through the framing of participation, mudlarking redefines who has the right or ability to interpret the past. It erodes the distinction between professional and amateur, expert and enthusiast. Thus, mudlarking foregrounds expertise that values personal connection and engagement alongside traditional archaeological methods. Rather than transforming heritage disciplines outright, the practice demonstrates the value of recognising and incorporating contributions from outside formal institutions. Acknowledging these contributions expands the range of perspectives through which archaeological materials are interpreted and understood. In this sense, mudlarking contributes to the democratisation of exploring the past, showing that there is space for multiple approaches to discovering and interpreting heritage.
The desire to find, keep, and make meaning from things has shaped human evolution and creativity. Mudlarking, then, can be seen as a contemporary expression of an enduring instinct to seek, touch, and reimagine the material traces of the past, transforming what was once discarded into something meaningful once again. These encounters with material culture also play a role in shaping personal and collective identities, as interpretations of the past can influence how communities understand belonging, heritage, and the histories that underpin claims to place and land. The practice, the found objects, and mudlarks themselves occupy spaces between formal and informal heritage practices, bridging past and present, science and narrative, individual and community.
Author contribution
Conceptualization: D.L., E.S., G.B., K.F.; Data curation: D.L.; Formal analysis: D.L.; Investigation: D.L.; Writing - original draft: D.L., E.S.; Writing - review & editing: D.L., E.S., G.B., K.F.; Supervision: E.S., G.B., K.F.
Conflicts of interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
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