NZAA Conference 2016 (Part 2)
Kia ora,
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've just got back from the New Zealand Archaeological Association's 2016 Conference in Blenheim. Overall, it seemed a successful conference, albeit a lot smaller than other conferences that I've been to overseas with, by my own estimate, somewhere in the zone of 100 delegates, including representatives of Rangitāne O Wairau, the local tangata whenua.
My own impressions were that the overall standard of papers presented at this year's conference was higher than what I'd seen at the last two NZAA conferences that I had attended.
Following the mihi whakatau (welcome) and lunch, the first paper session focused on archaeology in the wider South Pacific region. And guess who was up first!
My paper presented some of the results of my recent M.A. research - a stylistic and geochemical analysis of 1st millennium A.D. ceramics from Papua New Guinea (I intend to come back to this work in a future blog post!)
The next paper in the session, presented by Dylan Gaffney of the University of Otago, was a discussion of higher-order theory in archaeology, inspired by a paper that appeared in the journal World Archaeology last year written by Chris Gosden and Lambros Malafouris entitled Process archaeology (P-Arch). This is a theoretical perspective that emphasises processes of 'becoming' rather than states of 'being' of archaeological material culture (artefacts etc.), and the interplay between people as producers and the things they produce. Gaffney was interested in how the theoretical postulates of Process archaeology could be related to material culture studies in the Pacific.
Lisa Matisoo-Smith of the University of Otago then presented a paper on our current state of understanding of the peopling of the world based on archaeo-genetic (ancient DNA) studies as well as some of the results from the Africa to Aotearoa project - a genetic ancestry study of New Zealanders. The genetics confirm that NZ is a very diverse country, with all the world's major haplogroups represented in our population. Interestingly though, this diversity is not particularly apparent in the sub-population of NZ archaeologists (whose DNA was sampled at the 2014 NZAA conference), who are overwhelmingly white New Zealanders of European descent (or pākehā)! Lack of diversity in the field of archaeology is certainly not an issue that is restricted to New Zealand either.
Finally in the Pacific Archaeology session - Geoff Irwin from the University of Auckland talked about the use of some experimental archaeology approaches - using wind tunnels and scale models - to test ideas about the performance of Polynesian canoes predating the earliest contact with Europeans. Our knowledge of what these vessels would have looked like has been advanced considerably by a couple of recent and remarkable archaeological discoveries of parts of early waka (canoes) in New Zealand:
Near the Anaweka estuary in the NW South Island in 2012:
And at Papanui Inlet, on the Otago Peninsula in 2014:
Irwin's conclusions were that early East Polynesian canoes could probably negotiate adverse winds as well as fair ones, and were capable of travelling in a generally upwind direction, making return voyaging between New Zealand and Central East Polynesia (i.e. against the prevailing winds) feasible. This is one side of what is an ongoing debate about how the islands of Polynesia were initially colonised. Others disagree that Polynesian canoes had an upwind capability at the time of initial colonisation, and argue that the Polynesian migration was assisted by favourable climatic anomalies.
The second and last session of Day 1 focused on research on the local Wairau Bar archaeological site - as noted in yesterday's post, this is the earliest known archaeological site in New Zealand, thought to have been occupied for a generation or so around 1300 AD. Based on archaeology, genetics and the chemical analysis of tooth enamel, a case can certainly be made that this was the first generation to make this country their home.
In the first paper of the session Catherine Collins, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, talked about a detailed archaeo-genetic study of the people of Wairau Bar underway - a collaboration between researchers at Otago, the University of Auckland and Griffith University in Australia. As part of the memorandum of understanding between Rangitāne O Wairau, the Canterbury Museum and the University of Otago, which saw the return of the human remains (kōiwi) from Wairau Bar that were held by the Canterbury Museum, small samples of teeth and bone remained at the University of Otago for potential future analysis.
The new study will attempt to extract and study nuclear DNA (which you inherit from both parents) rather than the mitochondrial DNA (inherited only from your mother) that was used in previous studies of the Wairau Bar individuals, potentially providing a more detailed picture of the ancestry of the first New Zealanders. More details can be found here.
The next paper in the session was given by Louise Furey, from the Auckland Museum, who has recently been re-looking at the vast array of material culture (artefacts) found during the earliest excavations at Wairau Bar around the middle of the 20th century. While the diversity of the material culture from the site, in addition to the large number of burials found, had led the earliest excavators to the unavoidable conclusion that Wairau Bar was a very special site, it has only really been with the application of modern methods of dating, genetic and chemical (isotopic) analysis that its true significance is now being hinted at. Furey has concluded that the material culture and in particular how it related to the burials at the site was far more nuanced than the earlier studies suggested.
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| A necklace of moa bone recovered from one of the Wairau Bar burials, carved to imitate whale teeth. Source image here. |
For more photos of the material culture that has come from Wairau Bar:
This was followed by a paper given by Hallie Buckley of the University of Otago, focusing on the story of one particular individual buried at Wairau Bar, based on an intensive study of the skeletal remains (an "osteobiography"). The individual was a male aged 35-49 at the time of his death. He appeared to have suffered from osteo-arthritis and had at some point sustained fractures to his hand and a rib, which had subsequently healed. There was also evidence he had gout and possibly tuberculosis - but a different strain to the one that was introduced by Europeans and decimated the Māori population. Buckley referred to some recent archaeogenetic evidence from South America of a strain of TB in sea-lions/seals being transmitted to humans, and suggested that this finding might indicate a similar case of cross-species transmission - seals, along with moa, were certainly big "meat packages" killed and eaten by the earliest Māori. This however, is a preliminary hypothesis that requires further investigation.
The final paper of the day, given by Bruce McFadgen of Victoria University of Wellington, considered the geomorphological history of the Wairau Bar and the possible future impacts of tectonic activity and global warming on the site.
Overall, it was a very interesting first day of papers.
To be continued ...
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