This thesis represents the first effort to catalogue extant timber slab houses of 19th century Canberra and its outlying regions. From an archaeological viewpoint, it looks at slab houses as above-ground artefacts that possess ingrained information about the culture that built them and analyses them as material culture through an investigation of their: history, material, construction, function and design. It is inspired by the work of folk historian, Henry Glassie, and focuses on form and pattern, through a comparison of floor plans, in order to understand the needs, minds and behaviours of early Canberrans. The thesis also draws on the historic documentary record of a similar local group of houses, those resumed by the Commonwealth in 1912-13.