Archaeology In New Zealand

"In the past 25 years New Zealand archaeology has undergone a revolution... The focus is no longer on the origins of the Māori, but on the nature and variety of the Maori adaptation to our temperate island world. ... [Today] archaeologists have a major interest in subsistence economics, aimed at filling out a picture of the seasonal round of activity and food supply. Likewise the study of artefacts has moved to embrace not just typological and historical questions, but those of geology, technology and problems of trade and exchange as well. Questions of settlement pattern, the accurate dating of archaeological remains, the geological sourcing of stone tools and waste, and the identitifcation of midden remains and their relation to diet are all subjects of a considerable literature. ... While the entire population from North Cape to Stewrat Island shared in the most characteristic and expensive aspects of being Māori, many of the basic aspects of living varied greatly from region to region according to the wealth and variety of natural resources. Something of the variety of ways the Māori lived and of the archaeological remains this activity has left us are presented in this important work."--Back cover.

The relative youth of the profession has meant that most of the consulting professionals carrying out CRM work in New Zealand have learnt the requirements of the job while working and with little available formal training. Furthermore, the statutory and legal requirements relating to archaeological sites around the country have changed significantly during the past 25 years. This has escalated in recent years with rapid land development across the country and resulted in an increasing number of archaeologists working as consultants. The legal demands of the work have also increased, resulting in a need for improvements in the quality of the assessments and new methodologies for evaluating archaeological sites and undertaking investigations. The archaeologists have responded to these demands in a variety of ways, but there has been little opportunity to look at how to be a professional archaeologist in this new environment. "This document is designed to be a guide to the complex inner workings of CRM archaeology in New Zealand. I have not attempted to duplicate all the specifics of most of the relevant material such as the legislation, planning documents, legal, contractual or academic papers that form part of the corpus of recommended reading for practitioners. That material is easily available and referenced throughout. Much of the information should be obvious to professional archaeologists in current practice and hopefully common sense to most readers. However, the purpose of this book is to establish a baseline for improvements in method, safety, and professional development tor CRM archaeologists working in New Zealand." The material presented here is not meant to serve as a template for specific projects. Cultural heritage has become a resource - created, ignored, destroyed, managed, enhanced, and understood. It is hoped that the document provides a baseline for understanding the role of archaeology in 21st century New Zealand, and how archaeologists can and should function within statutory frameworks designed to manage our heritage as an "environmental resource.'"The Author"Simon Bickler is an archaeological consultant in Auckland, New Zealand. He earned a BSc in Mathematics, an MPhil (Hons) from the University of Auckland, and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. He has done archaeological surveying and excavation in Italy, Turkey, the USA and the Pacific. Simon has been directing and working on a wide variety of New Zealand CRM projects since 2002 and has previously served as President of the New Zealand Archaeological Association. He publishes on a range of topics including the archaeology of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, radiocarbon dating, computer simulation, machine learning and other data analytic approaches to archaeological issues."

"In the last 25 years archaeological research in New Zealand has undergone something of a revolution. Using new techniques and drawing on a wide range of disciplines, archaeologists are now piecing together a new and far more complex picture of the human occupation of this country over the last 1000 years. Until then it was popularly beieved that New Zealand had in the past been settled by two waves of non-European colonisers. It was commonly thought that the "Maoris", the Polynesians who inhabited the country at the time of Cook, had been preceded by a darker, possibly Melanesian and more primitive race called "Morioris". They had been supplanted by the Maoris who had arrived in a "Great Fleet" from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki some time in the fourteenth century. Today we know this version of events to be wrong -- a myth promulgated by Pakeha researchers at the beginning of the century. Instead, we now realise that this courntyr was probably first settled by Polynesians about 1000 years ago. From this founding population of possibly only a handful of settlers emerged the Maoris -- first as moa hunters, essentially itinerant hunters and gatherers whose impact on the new land was to have far reaching effects. By 500 years ago the changed environment had forced changes upon their economy and lifestyle in favour of more permanent settlements base around a largely agricultural economy. Gradually the classic and familiar Maori culture emerged to be altered and submerged in its turn by the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago. "Unearthing New Zealand" tells the fascinating story of this country's prehistory, reconstructing from archaeological evidence a sometimes extraordinarily complete picture of how these people lived and died. Its emphasis on social aspects -- food and clothing, work practices, burial customs, disease and death -- represents a new dimension in archaeological thinking ..."--Inside front cover.