Archaeology of New Zealand

[2] However, starting slowly in the 1870s detailed research answered questions about human culture, that have international relevance and wide public interest.

[3] Archaeology has, along with oral traditions, defined New Zealand's prehistory (c. 1300 – c. 1642) and protohistory (c. 1642 – c. 1800) and has been a valuable aid in solving some later historical problems.

Large poorly documented sections of New Zealand's more recent history have also been supplemented by archaeological research, such as at old battle sites or early urban centres.

[6][7][8] When radiocarbon dating started to be used in the 1950s, it appeared to support the idea of early settlement, though the "Great Fleet" itself fell out of favour when scholars showed that there were inconsistencies in the genealogies on which Smith had based his theory.

[19] This was confirmed in 2011 by a meta-analysis of dates from throughout the Pacific, which showed a sudden pulse of migration leading to all of New Zealand (including the Chatham Islands) being settled no earlier than c. 1290 AD.

[22][23] Some researchers now conclude that the weight of all the radiocarbon and DNA evidence points to New Zealand having been settled rapidly in a mass migration sometime after the Tarawera eruption, somewhere in the decades between 1320 and 1350 CE[24] – which suggests that the "Great Fleet" theory, and the genealogical calculations on which it was based, were not totally inaccurate after all.

This number, coupled with an inferred low growth rate, has led researchers to require either a large founding population (more than 300 people) or an early settlement date (600–850 AD).

[26][27] Therefore, a date of c. 1300 AD requires a mass migration from tropical Polynesia,[28] even though mitochondrial DNA implies a medium[clarification needed] number of approximately 70 women settlers.

[34] In many sites in New Zealand the absence of a middle phase or the constraint of only two options has led to other interpretations, including a sevenfold evolution of boom and bust cycles.

[30] As the early settlers to New Zealand came in great numbers with supplies for planting numerous crop types it is believed that it was a planned migration to a known location.

[25] The early Māori did, however, maintain the technology for long sea voyages – reaching the Chatham Islands about 1500 CE, where they developed into the separate Moriori people.

The coming of the Māori "Great Fleet" to New Zealand was inferred to be in 1350 AD solely from traditional evidence (similar to modern estimates from carbon dating).

[49] In the 21st century high resolution Landsat data was being used to interpret archaeological sites,[51] although there was some doubt about the effectiveness of some modern tools.

[54][4] The types of features present in New Zealand pre European archaeology are pā, storage pits, gardens (stone rows and banks), house floors, terraces, trenches, umu (earth ovens), middens, quarries, rock art and changes to the local flora.