and continuous interaction among the different islands of the Pacific. Matisoo-Smith and others (Matisoo-Smith et al. 1998) have presented an innovative attempt to examine these questions using mitochondrial DNA from rats that were fellow travelers on these voyages. Two results of these studies and the experimental voyages are a reinvigoration of Maori traditions linking canoe stories and genealogies with those of other Pacific communities (O’Regan 1987) and a renewal of the connection between Maori traditions and archaeology that has been severed since the 1960s.

There has been a renaissance in Maori cultural life stimulated in part by the “Te Maori” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in 1985, the legal recognition given to the Treaty of Waitangi in 1986, and the granting of powers to the Waitangi Tribunal to examine Maori grievances against the Crown going back to the signing of the treaty in 1840. In the hearings of this tribunal, land, whakapapa (“genealogy”), and traditions have become central issues in the definition of Maori rights and being. Archaeologists have appeared for the plaintiffs and the Crown, and archaeological and traditional evidence has been reexamined in Maori claims for resource control, including the control of archaeological resources and their interpretation (Waitangi Tribunal 1988). Anderson, through his explorations of southern Maori ethnohistory and archaeology (Anderson 1998; Anderson, Allingham, Smith 1996), has made a significant contribution in this regard.

The Maori renaissance, the application of new archaeological techniques, a greater measure of protection for archaeological sites, plus a renewed optimism that the problems of New Zealand archaeology can be solved, either in the field or the laboratory, have led to a renewal of the discipline since 1980. If New Zealand archaeologists have bypassed rather than answered the questions posed by Cook in 1777, there has been in the meantime a great deal of testing and refinement of the terms of the questions and the exploration of diverse archaeological pathways toward their solution. Furthermore, there is now an environment where Pacific peoples, and the Maori in particular, continue a dialogue with archaeologists about the relevance of these questions in this third millennium of discovery.

Harry Allen

See also

New Zealand: Historical Archaeology

References

Anderson, A. 1973. “Archaeology and Behaviour: Prehistoric Subsistence Behaviour at Black Rocks Peninsula, Palliser Bay.” M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Otago.

———. 1981. “The Value of High Latitude Models in South Pacific Archaeology.” New Zealand Journal of Archaeology 3: 143–160.

———. 1982. “North and Central Otago.” In The First Thousand Years: Regional Perspectives in New Zealand Archaeology, 112–128. Ed. N. Prickett. Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press.

———. 1989. Prodigious Birds: Moas and Moa-hunting in Prehistoric New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1991. “The Chronology of Colonization in New Zealand.” Antiquity 65: 767–795.

———. 1998. The Welcome of Strangers: An Ethnohistory of the Southern Maori, a.d. 1650–1850. Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press.

Anderson, A., and I. Smith. 1996. “Shag River Mouth as an Early Maori Village.” In Shag River Mouth: The Archaeology of an Early Southern Maori Village, 276–291. Ed. A. Anderson, M. Allingham, and I Smith. Canberra: ANH Publications, rspas, Australian National University.

Anderson, A., B. Allingham, and I. Smith, eds. 1996. Shag River Mouth: The Archaeology of an Early Southern Maori Village. Canberra: ANH Publications, rspas, Australian National University.

Beaglehole, J. C., ed. 1962. The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771. Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in association with Angus and Robertson.

Beardsley, R. K., P. Holder, A.D. Krieger, B.J. Meggers, J.B. Rinaldo, and P. Kutsche. 1956. “Functional and Evolutionary Implications of Community Patterning.” American Antiquity 22: 133–158. Memoir 11.

Bedford, S. 1996. “Post-Contact Maori: The Ignored Component in New Zealand Archaeology.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 105: 411–439.