Waihou Journeys: The Archaeology of 400 years of Maori Settlement
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Waihou Journeys: The Archaeology of 400 years of Maori Settlement
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| ISBN-13: | 9781775582342 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 150 |
| Lexile: | 1450L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 12 MB |
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Waihou Journeys
The Archaeology of 400 Years of Maori Settlement
By Caroline Phillips
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2000 Caroline PhillipsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-234-2
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Waihou Journeys traces cultural change and development by Maori in one region of New Zealand, from their first occupation of a very difficult environment through to the new challenges posed during the initial phases of European contact.
As the Waihou River travels across the Hauraki Plains on its way to the Firth of Thames coast it passes through a very rich archaeological landscape, which was where many of the models about Maori culture history were developed (Fig 1.1 inset). These ideas now date back 40 years, they were not adequately proven at the time, and they hinder the development of new research. Therefore, a new study of the Hauraki Plains is not only timely but has the potential to shed light on the fundamental assumptions in New Zealand archaeology.
The aim of this research is to take a landscape approach based on the Waihou River environment, reflecting regional differences in Maori economic, social and political life. Raw data, derived from several different disciplines, relating to archaeological survey and excavation, environmental reconstruction, Maori oral histories and European accounts, will be presented and analysed within their own terms. In contrast, or in combination, this analysed data provides very strong material for research. An historical narrative will then be used to describe the phases of occupation, and identify the multiple causes and influences of Maori cultural change along the Waihou. Finally, this study returns to the existing culture history models and suggests new ways to view the past.
THE NEW ZEALAND SETTING
Many of the fundamental characteristics of Polynesian culture had been developed by what Roger Green terms the Ancestral Polynesian society, the precursor of Maori society by some 1,500 years (Green 1986:52). Descendants of these people gradually moved eastwards across the Pacific, and after the discovery and settlement of what is now Eastern Polynesia, there was a period of frequent movement between the central island groups of the Cook, Society, Tuamotu, Austral and Marquesas Islands (Fig 1.2). This has been called the Archaic East Polynesian culture (Kirch 1986). During this period the more distant islands were also settled, including Easter Island, Hawaii and ultimately New Zealand. Over time, long-distance two-way travel within East Polynesia became less frequent and eventually ceased (Irwin 1994:213), and different socio-political structures developed in each of the island groups. The resulting cultural variation is remarkable considering the 500 years or less of relative isolation from their common ancestry. In trying to identify some of the processes underlying these different developments, various key factors have been suggested including population increase, environmental instability, intensification of production, economic specialisation and storage, changed settlement patterns with specialised ceremonial architecture, competition within island groups and increased stratification (Kirch 1984:13–15).
In New Zealand this development began some time after first settlement (variously dated 900–1200 AD), so that by 1500 a very different, distinctly New Zealand, Maori society had emerged. Certainly by European contact more elaborate political structures were in place, as well as new styles of art and personal adornment, new developments in the concept of tapu, and greater territoriality (Davidson 1984:222). Although many excavated sites along the eastern Coromandel coast represent the early Archaic East Polynesian culture and those along the Waihou River represent both the later Maori and early post-European contact phases, development from one period to another is poorly understood, as are changes within the major time-frames.
Previous Waihou Research
Archaeology began in New Zealand in the 1840s with field investigations of early sites mainly located in the South Island (Davidson 1984:5–11). In the late nineteenth century, studies of Maori life turned to the examination of cultural histories and origins using synthetic Maori oral traditions. (The popular reinterpretations of Maori oral accounts, developed by S. Percy Smith and others during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have been found to be very inaccurate and are referred to here as synthetic oral traditions, in contrast to genuine tribal histories.) A second phase of field investigation in the 1920s and 1930s involved the collection of artefacts from a number of sites, and again attention was centred in the South Island with the notable exception of Oruarangi, an artefact-rich Maori fortification located on the Hauraki Plains (Fig 1.1 inset). Archaeological discussions during this period also employed the synthetic Maori traditions as an historical framework.
Modern scientific archaeology developed throughout the 1950s and 1960s, notably through the work of Duff, Golson, Green and Groube. Oruarangi as well as other sites in the Hauraki Plains were prominent in these discussions. Roger Duff, director of Canterbury Museum, wrote The Moa-hunter period of Maori culture in 1950, which became the first major twentieth century work of Maori culture history based on archaeology, and set the stage for later discussions about settlements in the Hauraki Plains. Jack Golson, senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of Auckland from 1955, wrote 'Culture change in prehistoric New Zealand' in 1959, in which he used Oruarangi as the 'Classic Maori' type site. In 1961 Roger Green replaced Golson as senior lecturer, and later became professor of prehistory. Green developed theories on the regional aspects of Maori development, first with Wilfred Shawcross (Green & Shawcross 1962) and then, supplemented by further research in the Hauraki Plains (Green & Green 1963), he produced A review of the prehistoric sequence in the Auckland Province (Green 1963). In 1964 Leslie Groube, graduate student in archaeology at the University of Auckland, wrote his MA thesis entitled 'Settlement patterns in prehistoric New Zealand'. In this work and subsequent articles (e.g. 1969) he criticised many of Golson and Green's views, including their interpretation of Oruarangi.
During this time there was an attempt to integrate the data and develop fundamental archaeological theories about pre-contact Maori culture. To this end many issues were hotly debated. Four of these will be considered in more detail, namely the definition and mechanisms of culture change, analysis of sites and settlements, impact of European culture and use of Maori oral histories. Lack of progress on many of these topics resulted in archaeological attention turning to more specialised economic and technological studies, including site mapping, midden analysis, dating techniques and regional settlement pattern studies. Despite this, the general framework of Maori culture change established by Duff and Golson continues to be used, and remains the basis of archaeological understanding and interpretation in New Zealand (Allen 1987:5; Davidson 1993:253).
THE KEY ISSUES
As the four key issues listed above related to the interpretation of the Hauraki sites and artefact collections, it is appropriate to revisit the earlier research landscape in order to challenge the previous findings and examine anew the assumptions which are fundamental to New Zealand archaeology.
Definition and mechanisms of culture change
Duff (1950) and Golson (1959) defined cultures largely according to the formal attributes of a set of distinctive portable Maori artefacts. They described two assemblages, the earlier being the Moa-hunter or Archaic, which exhibited close affinities to that of East Polynesia. This was typified by the Wairau Bar artefact collection, but was also present in the Archaic Coromandel sites. According to the culture history Duff and Golson developed, during the fourteenth or sixteenth century another culture or phase emerged in the North Island, whose elements were markedly different both from the preceding phase and that of East Polynesia. This later culture, the Classic Maori phase, was the one observed by the first European visitors to New Zealand and was represented by the Oruarangi collection.
Although Golson (1959:48, fn. 99) suggested that the Classic phase might 'be geographically quite restricted', he largely used the collections from Wairau Bar and Oruarangi to represent the beginning and end points of New Zealand Maori cultural development (Fig 1.3). Golson admitted that the occupation of Oruarangi was not 'simple or short'. However, he justified his use of the material by reference to 'the richness and variety of finds, their family likeness and the fact that there is no comparable site' (Golson 1959:55).
In this situation a very limited set of elements dictated the period or phase to which any site belonged, and variability in space and time became subsumed. Wilfred Shawcross criticised this polarising of evidence, referring to 'an archaeological tyranny of the many by the few' (Green & W. Shawcross 1962:212).
Attempts to moderate this problem have often incorporated a middle phase, but this has never been adequately distinguished archaeologically (Green 1970:53, Davidson 1984:223). The result is that sites in both New Zealand-wide and some regional histories are subject to Shawcross's 'tyranny' in the dating of their assemblages, and are thereby polarised as belonging to either the Archaic or Classic phase (e.g. Prickett 1982a).
Green (1963) did take up Shawcross's challenge in his culture history of the Auckland Province. Using five different elements of which portable artefacts were only one, he defined six chronological phases, the last four of which occurred in the Hauraki Plains sites (Fig 1.4). In this case, Oruarangi became representative of two Classic (Proto-Maori and Classic Maori) phases and one post-contact (Early European Maori) phase in the Hauraki Plains regional aspect. Other, more recent, detailed regional studies have followed Green's lead, being generally based on a combination of radiocarbon dates, site form and location, and environmental studies (Anderson 1983; Cassels 1972:219–20; Challis 1991; Coster 1989; B. Foss Leach 1981:25–29). Interestingly Leach, in his study of Palliser Bay, noted that 'the archaeological evidence does not easily lend itself to polarisation into the two separate systems — Archaic and Classic — which bedevil reconstructions in other parts of New Zealand' (B. F. Leach 1981:30).
Most controversy during the 1950s and 1960s, however, revolved around arguments concerning the place of origin of Classic Maori culture and the manner of its spread to other areas. The theory that some specific location in New Zealand was the source of Classic Maori culture has since been challenged. In her synthesis of the accumulated archaeological evidence, Davidson (1984:221–3) suggested that there was no single place where this assemblage originated, and in a later publication she stated more strongly that 'all elements of the Classic Maori package ... could not have developed at one time and in one place' (1993:246, emphasis mine). Instead, she suggested that major innovations probably took place at the time of initial settlement and again later, when population increases caused social upheavals and movements into new areas — one of these new areas being the Hauraki Plains (1984:222–3).
As the concept of a single birthplace of Classic Maori culture has been rejected, attempts at understanding the sources and mechanisms of culture change within New Zealand have largely waned, except on a regional basis. Detailed regional analyses, incorporating a wide range of archaeological and environmental evidence, have demonstrated major episodes of culture change and development. However, Davidson argues that these studies have 'not necessarily led to clearer thinking about ways of organising the data' (1993:242). Consequently, Golson's general observations and his terminology regarding the two assemblages are still retained. In order to discern New Zealand-wide phases the task is to identify trends that are of greater than regional significance (Davidson 1993:245). In fact, understanding when, where and why changes arose and the manner of their adoption by peoples in other regions is one of the fundamental questions in world archaeology, and is an issue that needs to be readdressed in New Zealand.
Analysis of sites and settlement systems
Golson (1959) used Oruarangi as the 'type site' to represent the Classic Maori phase. As Oruarangi was also of the 'site type' termed a swamp pa, subsequent workers investigated other settlements in a similar location in the hope of securing further artefact-rich deposits associated with intact occupation layers (Fig 1.1). Consequently, swamp pa were examined in Horowhenua, Hauraki, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty (Adkin 1948; W. Shawcross & Terrell 1966; W. Shawcross 1968; Bellwood 1978; Peters 1971; Irwin 1975; see discussion in Phillips 1994:60–71).
Although the swamp pa from these four regions were similar in age, construction, internal structures, and possibly the organisation of space (although only Mangakaware 2 was excavated in sufficient detail to determine this adequately), the Hauraki settlements could be distinguished by their size, and most importantly, the range and number of artefacts they contained (Fig 1.5). Among these, the collections from Oruarangi stand out as being particularly rich and varied — a fact which led Peter Bellwood to comment somewhat despondently after the Mangakaware excavations that 'there is so little material of a directly comparative nature that speculation cannot proceed ... much beyond the descriptive level for an assemblage of wooden artefacts' (1978:67). Thus, the idea that the Hauraki sites were typical of the Classic period is disproved, as is the assumption that sites of similar form would necessarily be the same in content.
Discussion about changing settlement patterns largely revolved around ideas of universal progressive development. Green (1963) argued for an increasing complexity in settlement over time. Thus unspecialised, locally oriented and semi-permanent coastal occupations occurred in the early phases. In his view, as Maori culture developed people became less mobile, agriculture became more systematic and intensified (especially when other resources such as moa became scarcer), and some previously semi-permanent settlements were fortified (thereby developing specialised sites). Interestingly, Green also suggested that the occupation of the Hauraki Plains was late in the pre-contact sequence, as it required 'the development of special techniques for agriculture (drainage canals), storage (raised storehouses), and settlement (artificial reclaimed islands)' (1963:78). Therefore settlement of this region was part of the trend towards the increasing complexity and specialisation in Maori culture. In the nineteenth century the impact of potatoes and whaling in the Auckland Province changed economic emphases, and gun warfare led to new types of pa, but the specialised focus remained. Golson agreed on the effects of cultivation, suggesting that 'agriculture would allow stability of settlement, village organisation etc: regardless of what was happening to other food resources' (1965:89). In contrast, Groube (1964:101) concluded that what little evidence there was went against Green's and Golson's ideas, and that settlement had become more, not less, mobile over time.
Later writers have looked at changing settlement patterns and resource use, and using locational analysis argued for economic intensification with a concentration on a restricted range of resources, population increase, increase in territoriality and warfare with a focus on pa sites (Cassels 1972; Irwin 1985; Law 1982). In her extensive review of the literature Davidson also demonstrated that there were marked variations in settlement systems in different regions and at different times (1984:163–71). Davidson (1984:166–8) suggested that at all times there were base living settlements which were always temporary because of the shifting nature of the cultivations, but that in later times the intensification of warfare introduced dramatic changes and pa became the centre of the settlement system.
Many sites are still classified according to their presumed age, use, content, topography and form. The significance of some of these categories is challenged by these findings. However, the regional nature of Maori occupation, and consequently New Zealand archaeology, may mean that the answer to a site lies within the context of its particular cultural and physical environment, in other words a 'landscape' approach (Gosden & Head 1994). Some models in the previous discussion may have a continuing validity, such as Cassels' idea that the first settlers chose the best places to live, and Green's hypothesis that increasing population pushed people to adapt and develop techniques for other less suitable inland areas, such as the Hauraki Plains. However, fundamental questions — for example, whether increasing complexity and specialisation occurred, the degree of permanence or mobility, and increasing territoriality — have not been investigated.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Waihou Journeys by Caroline Phillips. Copyright © 2000 Caroline Phillips. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,FOREWORD by Dame Professor Anne Salmond,
PREFACE,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS,
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION,
CHAPTER 2: THE PHYSICAL LANDSCAPE,
CHAPTER 3: SITE LOCATION,
CHAPTER 4: MAORI HISTORICAL RECORDS,
CHAPTER 5: EUROPEAN RECORDS,
CHAPTER 6: EXCAVATED SITES,
CHAPTER 7: HISTORICAL NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL ISSUES,
APPENDICES,
NOTES,
GLOSSARY,
REFERENCES,
INDEX,