NZAA Conference 2016 (Part 3)

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Kia ora,

This is a continuation of my last post:

The sessions over the remaining two days of the NZ Archaeological Association conference featured a number of interesting talks covering a range of topics - heritage management, historical archaeology, buildings archaeology, landscape archaeology, and environment and ecology in archaeology.

For those that are interested the full conference programme, including the paper abstracts, is available (as a .docx file) here. 

For me, a highlight of the conference was the dedicated student paper session on Day 2. The presenters in this session were each given ten minutes to talk, in contrast to the twenty minutes allowed in the other sessions.

Baylee Smith (University of Otago) won the Best Student Paper at Conference for her presentation on her masters research employing statistical methods to model the distribution of pre-European pā sites across New Zealand.


Huriawa pā, on a promontory overlooking the mouth of the Waikouaiti River, was a stronghold of the Ngāi Tahu chief Te Wera. The site is now a historic reserve, south-east of Karitāne township, Otago. Unsurprisingly, headlands such as this with many steep cliffs were a  popular choice for locations of pā. Source image here. 



Yours truly standing in a defensive ditch feature on Huriawa pā. This photo was taken during a university fieldtrip in 2012. Permission for our group's fieldwork was given by the local tangata whenua and kaitiaki, Kāti Huirapa.



The other student presenters were:

Lucy Northwood (University of Otago) - who presented on the results of her B.A. (Hons) research - a geochemical analysis of ca. 3000 year old ceramics (pottery) from the Kowekau rockshelter site in the Sepik-Ramu region of northern New Guinea. These ceramics are particularly interesting because they add further archaeological evidence to the case for the presence of Austronesian language speakers in the region ca. 3000 years ago.

Austronesian is a family of languages spoken in many parts of South East Asia and Oceania, and includes all indigenous Polynesian languages. Proto-Austronesian developed in Island South East Asia (Taiwan is usually regarded by linguists as the Austronesian 'homeland') and Austronesian speakers later (starting c. 4000 years ago) migrated into the Pacific, bringing with them knowledge of pottery manufacture. Although the correlation of archaeology and language is often not a straightforward matter, the orthodox view in Pacific archaeology is that the people responsible for the earliest known pottery in Oceania, part of the Lapita Cultural Complex mentioned in an earlier post, were Austronesian speakers (Kirch 2000).    

Lisa McKendry (University of Auckland) - who presented on her masters work with Māori archaeological textiles. Textiles are often an overlooked aspect of the archaeological record, which is heavily biased towards non-perishable objects such as stone tools and ceramics. Māori wove a broad and complex range of textiles, including lashing cords, lines and fishing nets, bags, belts, mats and cloaks, which certainly played a more significant part in their everyday lives than stone tools (pre-European Māori did not make ceramics).

Josh Emmitt (University of Auckland) - who presented some preliminary results from his PhD research attempting to geochemically source Egyptian Neolithic ceramics.

Monica Tromp (University of Otago) - who presented an overview of her research (masters and PhD) using phytoliths and starch grains in dental calculus to understand the diet of the initial Lapita colonisers of Vanuatu and the indigenous population of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) prior to European contact. For some of Monica's already published work in the Journal of Archaeological Science: 

As indicated by some of the content of the student papers discussed, while archaeology remains at its core a humanities subject, it is increasingly incorporating scientific methodologies into its toolkit. This will increasingly require collaboration with specialists from other fields. On that note, it was great to hear papers from non-archaeologists showing a keen interest to collaborate. 

An interesting paper was given by Gillian Turner from the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington, who is currently working with archaeologists to develop the field of Archaeomagnetism in New Zealand. Archaeomagnetic dating is an established method in Europe, relying on the presence of thermoremanent magnetization and the fact that the direction (declination/inclination) and intensity of the earth's magnetic field changes over time. When ceramic artefacts (e.g. pottery, bricks) are heated during the firing process and then cooled - some of the minerals in the clay become magnetized. The direction and intensity of this thermoremanent magnetization reflects the corresponding traits of the earth's magnetic field at the time of firing. By matching the thermoremanent magnetization to known master curves of the changes in the direction and/or intensity of the geomagnetic field over time for the region (such curves reach back several thousand years in Europe and have recently been developed for NZ for the last few hundred years), the firing can be dated. A problem for the use of this technique in New Zealand is that pre-European Māori did not fire ceramics. But they did cook with earth-ovens, which involved the heating of stones. The early results appear promising - with very good correspondence found between archaeomagnetic and radiocarbon dates. 

Phil Ross, a molecular ecologist from the University of Waikato, gave a paper about a proposed multidisciplinary research programme investigating the nature of early Māori impact on the marine environment. Genetic analyses of toheroa (Paphies ventricosa), an endemic species of shellfish of cultural importance to Māori, has led to the hypothesis that the species' present day distribution is influenced by historical, human-mediated translocations. The archaeological record is obviously an important source of data for testing such a hypothesis and investigating prehistoric impacts on marine ecosystems more widely and Ross was keen to get archaeologists onboard.
Toheroa (Paphies ventricosa). Source image here.


It was also great to hear a paper by a visiting Thai archaeologist, Jitlada Innanchai, who presented a paper about a project involving structural repairs to the hospital of Prang Ku in Northeast Thailand, built in the 12th century AD under King Jayavarman VII, the most prolific builder of the Khymer rulers. International communication/collaboration in archaeology and heritage managment is important to the growth of the discipline. Indeed, New Zealand has not long ago witnessed significant damage to a number of historic masonry structures in Christchurch as a result of major earthquakes, so how other countries have approached restoration of such structures is very relevant!

Overall a great conference. Off to Thames in the North Island next year, which will also mark the sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of the discovery of the Thames goldfields.


Thanks for Reading!



Reference

Kirch, P.V. 2000. On the Road of the Winds: an Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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