New Zealand Archaeology Week 2021

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Kia ora, 

New Zealand Archaeology Week 2021 (April 24 - May 2) is underway! 

New Zealand Archaeology Week, now into its fifth year, is an annual week of nation-wide public talks, exhibits, and other events aimed at increasing public awareness and appreciation of archaeology and of New Zealand's own archaeological record. These events are run by a range of amazing individuals and organizations and coordinated by the New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA). 

As I have noted on more than one occasion on this blog, the archaeological record in New Zealand is something that people in New Zealand are often either not aware of, or tend to dismiss as not important. "Real" archaeology is often perceived as something done overseas and not here in our little country in the corner of the South Pacific.

Well, needless to say, New Zealand's archaeological record is as real as the archaeological record of anywhere else in the world. Of course, one thing that the record here does certainly lack in comparison to other parts of the world is time depth. Based on the (credible!!) evidence available, people have lived here for less than 1000 years and the first people that did were of a clearly Polynesian origin (for an accessible overview of the evidence supporting these claims, see Anderson 2014). As has been the case with every other place in the world where people have lived, these people left their mark on the landscape and created an archaeological record that can inform an understanding of how the descendants of those initial Polynesian settlers developed a distinct New Zealand Māori cultural identity. The study of the archaeological record from the time of Māori-European contact onwards can inform an understanding of the initial period of contact between the two cultures and their differing world views and the subsequent emergence of contemporary New Zealand society (Smith 2019). 

Furthermore, as discussed in the video below, the lack of time depth in New Zealand's archaeological record provides an extremely rare opportunity on the global scale to study an instance of human settlement of and interaction with a landscape previously untouched by humans. 




This time last year New Zealand was in COVID-19 lockdown, and New Zealand Archaeology Week 2020 was forced to adapt and became an online-only event. That week I wrote a blog post about a couple of sites of historic interest in my local neighbourhood, the North East Valley in Dunedin, to which my wanderings were largely restricted at the time.

This year, thanks to the success of that lockdown a year ago, we are very fortunate to be able to have a wide range of in-person events being run during New Zealand Archaeology Week 2021, alongside a variety of original online content posted on social media by the NZAA and a number of content partners. 

Anyone in the world can follow the online content using the hashtag #NZArchaeologyWeek and by following the NZAA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For those in New Zealand, you can find out more about the in-person events happening this year on the Facebook page and the NZAA Eventfinda page. 

Here in Dunedin Dr. Karen Greig, co-director of Southern Pacific Archaeological Research (SPAR), a research unit and consultancy in the Archaeology Programme at the University of Otago, where I presently work, will be giving a public talk at the Otago Museum at 5.30pm on Thursday April 29. Karen will be talking about the archaeological investigations our team at SPAR have undertaken during a couple of major construction projects undertaken on the University of Otago campus in the last few years. I have referred to this work, which revealed extensive archaeological deposits dating back to the 1860s, in a previous post on this blog.   

To coincide with New Zealand Archaeology Week this year a New Zealand Archaeology podcast, Aotearoa Unearthed, is now available to download on iTunes and Spotify. A collaboration between NZAA and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, the national historic heritage agency, this podcast showcases the work of New Zealand archaeologists, covering topics ranging from Māori rock art to the ongoing effort to repatriate kōiwi (human remains) to Victorian-era children's toys.




Enjoy the content this week!


Thanks for reading,

Nick.


Correction (3.30 pm 27/04/2021 NZST): An earlier version of this post incorrectly gave the date of Dr. Karen Greig's talk at the Otago Museum as Wednesday April 28.



References:

Anderson, A. 2014. Te Ao Tawhito: The Old World. In Anderson, A., Binney, J. & Harris, A. Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History. Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books.

Smith, I. 2019. Pākehā Settlements in a Māori World: New Zealand Archaeology 1769-1860.  Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books.


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