most particularly Green (1963), advocated the use of nonartifactual evidence to establish the space and time coordinates of sites and prehistoric social entities. In quick succession, flaked stone artifacts (Shawcross 1964b), storage pits (Parker 1962; Shawcross 1964a), and shell middens (Davidson 1967) were tested and found to be poor indicators of either chronological periods or regional styles.

Additional attention was given to archaeological sites where artifacts might be better preserved, in particular swamp sites—such as Ngaroto (Shawcross 1968), Kauri Point (Shawcross (1976), Mangakaware (Bellwood 1978), and Kohika (Irwin 1975)—or artificial pa constructed out of shell in low-lying areas such as Oruarangi on the Hauraki Plains (Shawcross and Terrell 1966). The artifacts from these sites have contributed to the knowledge of artifact and carving styles, and they have proved to have an antiquity that has undercut many of Groube’s prescriptions for the classic phase. However, the specialized and rare nature of these sites has precluded the extension of these findings to other areas (Furey 1996).

Much attention has also been given to purifying the ethnographic and archaeological record of European influences in order to define a pristine classic Maori culture, an approach criticized by Stuart Bedford (1996). Artifact collections and observations made by the earliest visitors to New Zealand have been studied in detail (Salmond 1991; Shawcross 1970a), and some research has concentrated on archaeological sites known to have been occupied at the time of first contact such as Paeroa pa, which was mapped by Marion du Fresne in 1772 and destroyed by his men after du Fresne’s death. In almost every case, either the historically documented phase could not be identified or else it had been destroyed by subsequent occupation (Groube 1965).

Studies of Process: 1965–1999

Because of the short time depth of New Zealand prehistory, culture-historical archaeology in New Zealand has always included some study of the processes of change. After 1965, the lack of success in defining culture periods culminated in an explicit shift to the study of processes.

Regional and Thematic Studies

The appointment of English archaeologist Charles Higham and other archaeological staff members at Otago University in the 1960s initiated a fruitful period of regional studies. These began with Australian archaeologist Peter Coutt’s study of contact between Europeans and Maori in the Foveaux Straits region (Coutts 1969).

The Wairarapa Research Programme, initiated by Foss Leach and Helen Leach in 1969, marked a further stage in the development of a regional approach as a viable alternative to the definition of cultural periods (Leach 1976). This program, carried out at Palliser Bay in the Wairarapa, a marginal area for Maori agriculture on the northern side of Cook Strait, brought together studies of site distribution, settlement types, agriculture, house forms, shell midden content, stone artifacts, and traditional history (Leach and Leach 1979). It provided a model for similar regional studies that have been carried out for the Chatham Islands (Sutton 1982), Auckland (Davidson 1978; Irwin 1985), Northland (Sutton 1990), the Hauraki Plains (Phillips 2000), and the South Island (Anderson 1998). Such regional studies have not always escaped presenting their evidence within the culture-historical framework (see Prickett 1982), but for the most part, they have documented increases or decreases in the magnitude of human populations or changes in the complexity of regional, economic, or social organization for which the division of New Zealand prehistory into archaic or classic periods is largely irrelevant.

A number of studies, however, have continued to rely on adaptational or environmental explanations. Doug Sutton and Yvonne Marshall’s (1980) use of convergent adaptation to explain similarities between the Chatham Island Moriori, southern South Island Maori, and other southern foragers such as the Tasmanians is an example (see Anderson 1981). In a more recent study of the emergence of a northern Maori chiefdom, Sutton (1990) modified this stance by also considering sociopolitical and ideological factors. On the other hand, Atholl Anderson (1991) has returned to modeling the initial colonization of New Zealand in terms of the arrival