Black Snake Inn

During excavation works in August 2023 at the Black Snake Inn a collection of items were found that give a fascinating insight into its history.

Artefacts in the form of early bottles fragments, smoking pipe, square shank nails, a jacket button, a Victorian coin, ceramic and porcelain fragments, and dog bones were found.

Dog bones

These dog bone specimens are currently housed at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). The bones appear to be much larger than the average modern farm dog and could possibly have been from a historic dog breed used by early settlers for hunting.

This is the skeleton of a large dog that was found buried at the site of the historic Black Snake Inn - an 1800s hotel that sat alongside the River Derwent near Hobart, Tasmania.

Dogs like this one played an important role in early colonial Tasmania, where they were often used as hunting dogs or as guard dogs to protect property. Because of this, large breeds such as deer hounds and Irish wolfhounds were often favoured, consistent with the large skeleton found at the Black Snake Inn.

It is unclear exactly how old this skeleton is, but the site of the Black Snake Inn has been inhabited since around 1811, with the current Gothic building having been built in the 1860s.

During the earlier colonial periods, guard dogs would have provided protection and security against bush rangers, while hunting dogs were essential for hunting kangaroos and emu.

Sadly, the Tasmanian Emu was hunted so successfully that it was driven to extinction around the 1850s, with forester kangaroos surviving only in a small part of their former range.

Escaped feral dogs soon became a problem as well, causing stock loss by killing sheep that would ultimately be blamed on the thylacine, leading to the establishment of government and private bounties schemes that led to the extinction of this species as well in Tasmania.

The large size and broad muzzle indicate that this dog likely belonged to one of the larger breeds of hunting dog that were common in Tasmania during the 1800s.

The skull is from an adult animal with a large sagittal crest running along the top of the skull to which powerful jaw muscles would have been attached.

This animal also has very heavily worn teeth, which is common today in dogs that chew heavily on bones (or play with abrasive tennis balls). Having worn teeth like this may indicate that this dog spent a lot of time gnawing on bones while sitting outside – possibly guarding the inn.

Artefact gallery

Various artefacts providing history to the area were found during pre-construction monitoring around the outside of the Black Snake Inn in late 2022 and from subsurface excavation monitoring in October 2024.

Photographs by Darren Watton 2024

Click on an image to see the larger version of some of the items found: