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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe did you know that the ancient world's greatest monster killer, well, he was also a man who left death and destruction all around him wherever he went. From the snake filled crib at Thebes to the impossible labors that took him across the ancient Greek world. Heracles, or Hercules if you prefer the Roman version. Well, he's one of the most extraordinary figures in myth. A hero whose life was as thrilling as it was brutal. I'm Tristan Hughes and I'm thrilled to be bringing Heracles Story to Australia this August on the Ancients Live tour. I'm going to be joined by the brilliant Alistair Blanshard, professor of Classics and Ancient history, and together we're going to dig into the myths, the geography and the archaeology behind the Labors, from the Nemean lion and the Hydra to Troy and the tragic end of Greece's greatest hero. Now tickets are on sale. We are coming to Sydney on the third, Brisbane on the fourth, Perth on the sixth, and finishing in Melbourne on the ninth of August. It's going to be epic. Tickets are selling fast, so book yours now so you don't miss out@fane.com au I cannot wait to see you there. What makes a leader worth following? What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is it just about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own? What would that take? What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together? These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler. Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube. We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best, and we'll try to
- [02:19]
Dr. Richard Walter
figure this out together.
- [02:22]
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- [02:54]
Tristan Hughes
Hello. Quick shout out from me to everyone listening to this podcast from New Zealand. If you're an ancient listener from New Zealand. First off, I'm delighted that we're now finally covering your country's amazing archaeology. The story the first people to settle your country roughly 700 years or so ago. And secondly, if you're in Auckland, if you're near Auckland and you're free on Saturday 8th August, well, we're going to be there. The Ancients live tour includes one show that's happening in Auckland that night. I'm really excited for it. My first time back in New Zealand in a decade or so since I was a student and I love to see you there. I'd love to meet you in person. So, yes, I just want to do a quick shout out of that before the episode begins. There's a link in the description where you can get tickets. Now into the episode. The story of how the Polynesians colonized the Pacific over thousands of years is one of the greatest tales of maritime history. Fiji, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Rapa Nui, Hawaii. On all of these islands and many more, these expert seafarers and navigators settled, bringing their way of life with them. Then, roughly 700 years ago, they colonized the largest islands in the Polynesian triangle, what we know today as New Zealand. In this episode, we're going to delve into the story of these settlers, how they arrived and made their home in this brave new world full of wondrous creatures, like the moa, the great flightless bird that soon went extinct. We're going to explore what archaeology is telling us about these East Polynesian adventurers who would pave the way for the rise of New Zealand's iconic indigenous culture that still lies at the heart of that country, the Maori. Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the first New Zealanders with our guest, Dr. Richard Walter, professor of Archaeology at the University of Otago. Richard, Kia ora, it is wonderful to have you on the show.
- [05:24]
Dr. Richard Walter
Kia ora, Tristan. Nice to be here. Thank you very much.
- [05:27]
Tristan Hughes
This amazing topic, is it fair to say that, I mean, is it true that New Zealand is the last large landmass in the world to be settled by humans?
- [05:35]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, that's right. We sometimes would Say that it's the last place to be colonized, if you like, using colonization in the strict sense of a place where people come and make a colony, a place to live. People will say, well, what about Antarctica? But of course, there isn't a colony on Antarctica. There are visitors from time to time, but they don't breed there, they don't have children, raised families, and they're pretty much dependent on what they get on their air force planes. So, yeah, New Zealand is the last place in the world to be significant island landmass to be settled by humans.
- [06:13]
Tristan Hughes
It's a great story and we're going to delve into all the archaeology and probably some of the mythology as well. But first things first, Richard. Of course, many of us call the country New Zealand today, but we can also call it Aotearoa.
- [06:25]
Dr. Richard Walter
Aotearoa, that's correct. That's a Mori word, of course, a Mori name, and its origin is a bit obscure. It probably emerged post European times amongst Mori speakers and it's widely used. My guess is that within, probably not my lifetime, but within the next 50 years, it will probably become the accepted name for New Zealand.
- [06:49]
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Right.
- [06:49]
Tristan Hughes
And so we may well go between the two names as time goes on. But rest assured, we are talking about the same area of the world, the same country, the same islands.
- [06:59]
Dr. Richard Walter
We're talking about New Zealand.
- [07:01]
Tristan Hughes
Absolutely. So, Richard, let's get straight into it. So when do people first reach New Zealand?
- [07:07]
Dr. Richard Walter
Well, the likely time for first arrival in New Zealand would be the very last decades of the 1200s of the 13th century. And they're coming from tropical East Polynesia, around 3,000 kilometers to the northeast.
- [07:25]
Tristan Hughes
And do we have quite a narrow timeframe now, thanks to archaeology, thanks to modern science, thanks to the remains that have survived that we're going to delve into the fact that the time period we're talking about for the earliest settlement of New Zealand is in that. What is quite a small period of time, the end of the 12th century.
- [07:43]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, it's a narrow gap. I mean, we've been playing with the radiocarbon dates for about 20 years now, really trying to narrow them down. And it's a big problem in New Zealand. Radiocarbon dating is a very big problem here because we're dealing with a very short time span. So a few years makes quite a big difference for us. I mean, Australian archaeologists always tease us and say that our radiocarbon record, our entire history, falls within a single standard deviation of one of their dates. But the other problem is our history falls within a particularly Wiggly part of the radiocarbon calibration curve. So it's difficult to nail down. But we're now comfortable with our first settlement occurring in the last decades of the 1200s at the very earliest, and with canoes continuing to come out to New Zealand for probably 50, 60 years or so.
- [08:38]
Tristan Hughes
And the people who are settling New Zealand, so these are Polynesians, and you mentioned kind of East Polynesia. So which islands in particular should we be thinking about?
- [08:48]
Dr. Richard Walter
In fact, most Polynesians refer to a mythical homeland of Hawaiki. So for us in New Zealand, Hawaiki is very certain to lie somewhere within the realms of the southern Cook Islands, the Austral Islands and the Society Islands. So that's between Tahiti and Rarotonga, if you like, and there's a dozen or more islands in there. And it's likely that the canoes came out to Aotearoa, to New Zealand from more than one of those islands.
- [09:16]
Tristan Hughes
And the story of, I mean, how the Polynesians, you know, reached those islands and much earlier, the Lapita culture as well, is a fascinating one. So how, Richard, after they'd gone, you know, eastwards into the Pacific, do they then, you know, with their brilliant navigating in their canoes, do they manage then to reach New Zealand? Almost kind of go, rather than continuing east, Go, go kind of southerly. Right, A southerly direction.
- [09:41]
Dr. Richard Walter
Well, over the last 25 years or so, our thinking has changed quite a lot about that, and we're not really certain. I'll give you the update of how we're thinking at the moment. So we've got, look, Lapita people coming into West Polynesia a bit less than 3,000 years ago. Now there's a big West Polynesia. By that, I mean Fiji, Tonga, Samoa. Now there's a big gap between those islands of West Polynesia and the Eastern Polynesian islands, starting, say, with the Cook Islands. And there appears to have been a gap in time between the settlement of those two areas of thousands of years. So it's, it's looking very much as if the East Polynesia was settled probably out of West Polynesia, but not necessarily about. Probably no earlier than 1500 years ago. And personally, I think much more recently than that. I wouldn't be surprised if it's as recently as, say, 1150-1200 A.D. i don't think it's much earlier than that myself. They're giving into East Polynesia and they're moving fairly rapidly throughout East Polynesia. And so again, my thinking on this is not necessarily what all people would agree with. But I think they're coming into New Zealand from say, the Cook Islands or Tahiti area very soon after they arrive in East Polynesia as a whole. So I don't think they're waiting. I mean, New Zealand and Hawaii, Easter island, the tips of the Polynesian triangle, they're the most difficult places to get to. But I don't think there's really a very long gap, certainly with New Zealand. The closest East Polynesian island group to New Zealand is the Cook Islands, and I doubt that's where I did my PhD research actually. And I don't think New Zealand was settled much later than the Cook Islands, maybe a century or so later.
- [11:44]
Tristan Hughes
And so how do they do it? Because as you mentioned, thousands of miles between New Zealand and the Cook Islands, how do they navigate, you know, this open ocean mass, you know, between them, you know, with no land in sight. How were they able to reach Ayatu Roa?
- [12:00]
Dr. Richard Walter
We don't know as much about that as we would like. I mean, it's. What you're asking is basically a technological question. There are a number of archaeologists who have very strong ideas about the technology of canoe construction, sail construction, and the ways in which people moved their vessels from the tropics to the south. We don't know as much about it and it's highly contested, but what we do know is that it's possible. Whether they could navigate from New Zealand back to the islands is also contested. My own view is that they must have done so. We have a lot of canoes coming out to New Zealand and we know that from various lines of evidence. I don't think people would head south out of the tropics on 3000 kilometer journey unless they had some idea of where they were going. Especially if they're carrying all of their livestock and plants because they had to bring those with them because there is nothing in New Zealand that they could use as a domestic plant. So they brought all that stuff with them?
- [13:05]
Tristan Hughes
I mean, yes, I mean, Richard, what should be imagining? Because trying to get a sense before we get to, to New Zealand itself is kind the canoes that they're in and how full to the brim they must have been with people with supplies, you know, that, that voyage to reach this new land. So I mean, how large a transport canoe should we be thinking and with what items are they bringing with them?
- [13:29]
Dr. Richard Walter
Again, I don't know about that. I mean, it is often, it has been said in the past when people were thinking more about these large double hulled canoes with platform between, some sort of structure in between that perhaps we could be talking about 80 people on board. But I think nowadays the thinking is that they're probably not quite like that, they're probably smaller. We think from genetic evidence that at least 200 women arrived in New Zealand. And I say women simply because we're using the mitochondrial DNA evidence for that and not in one canoe, of course, 200 women. Most migrations involve roughly the same amount of men and women, perhaps a few more men actually. So we're probably talking about five or six hundred people, maybe a thousand coming out from the islands. So how many canoes would that take? I don't know, a lot. Fair number.
- [14:25]
Tristan Hughes
And when they reach New Zealand, I mean what type of world greeted them if it had not yet been touched by humans? This is a brave new world. This is a pristine landscape that they're emerging into.
- [14:36]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yes, it's a heavily forested landscape. It's a very diverse landscape. It's a continental landscape. I mean the people are coming, coming out here from oceanic islands. These are volcanic islands, they're on the Pacific plate, they're not on the continental plate. So they're coming out to New Zealand, which has a very ancient, long evolved biota and a very complex geology. It's heavily forested and a lot of that forest had to be cleared and was quite rapidly cleared in patches. Of course. We've got very diverse marine environments in the islands. The marine environment is fairly uniform from place to place. We have extremely diverse marine environments. We've got sandy beaches, we've got mud flats, we've got long riverine, sort of tidal areas. And so from the marine perspective there's a great deal of resources here. We don't have land animals, that is land mammals. We've got a lot of sea mammals and they were very important in the early subsistence economy along with the flightless birds, the giant flightless birds, the moa, the ratites. So it's a promising place for people turning up. It's a vast landscape too. I mean we have little islands in our harbor that are bigger than Rarotonga. In Auckland Harbour there are islands bigger than Rarotonga. So it is a place that would have looked extremely promising to people coming out here, but it would have been daunting too because I mean environment is very different. Coconuts don't grow, most of the tropical cultigens won't grow well here in New Zealand. So would have been tough in many ways.
- [16:16]
Tristan Hughes
So they kind of this brave new world, different climate as you say. But Large and diverse landscapes. And these, these first Polynesians that are reaching New Zealand on their canoes with their supplies. Whereabouts do we think they choose to settle? I mean what types of landscapes are they looking for that they decide to kind of, you know, to, to put their ships up at, to put their canoes up at, to beach them and then decide we should create a settlement here?
- [16:43]
Dr. Richard Walter
They are deliberately selected for large. The larger sites are all deliberately selected to be placed on the larger river mouths, the harbors on the edges of sandbanks and bars around lagoon edges. So the river mouths are particularly important. I mean they don't have river mouths in the same sense in tropical Polynesia because there's the fringing re and they're much smaller land masses anyway. So the river mouths are really important. They provide access to the interior that provide easy places to bring canoes ashore. Much easier than the. You see, we don't have the protective reefs. So a river mouth is a really good place. And so particularly in the south island we've got these really large first generation or colonization phase sites where perched on nearly every of our major rivers as we run right down the east coast and the northwest coast of the south island and the North Island. The very early sites are not as well known, we don't have as many examples, but there are sheltered islands within the harbors that sort of place. But they're selecting ecotones places where there's a lot of ecological zonation sort of coming together and easy to access.
- [18:08]
Tristan Hughes
But Richard, that's so interesting. So we can actually imagine them kind of given how much of the coastline you see evidence of these settlements in south island and North Island. I mean you can imagine them just scouting the coastlines, can't you? Really getting a sense of the land and then choosing the best places to settle before then settling.
- [18:25]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, and there's very, very clear archaeological evidence of this. They moved round the coastlines very, very rapidly. And we note this because all of the earliest sites in New Zealand to my knowledge have material from distant sources, imported material, not from the islands. We only have two artifacts that came out from Hawaiki, but we do all of the early sites in New Zealand are chock a block with material brought from other locations around the north and South Islands. And the really interesting thing is that within probably a few years the explorers had discovered every major industrial resource, all of the really high quality industrial resources in the country. Obsidian and adz making stone, the basalts and the argillites. And they'd found the best sources in the country, often these sources are very remote. And so presumably they're finding boulders at the river mouths and they're following them upstream. So the earliest sites in the country all contain material from all over the country. So they're moving around, they're establishing small settlements, they're quite mobile. But they are deliberately exploring up the rivers and all around the coasts, even into very remote areas where we don't even live today.
- [19:53]
Tristan Hughes
Well, we certainly delve more into that when we explore particular archaeological sites and how that's showing how these people adapt to these new environments that they're living in. But Richard, one other thing I want to mention, just kind of generally on the arrivals, first of all, is you mentioned how it seems that there are hundreds of people and then how they're quickly scouting all of these areas and learning a lot about where the, the resources are. Is this a case then, the settlement of New Zealand? Is this a case of Polynesian mass migration, lots of people arriving in a short amount of time, or very gradual arrival of people over several generations?
- [20:33]
Dr. Richard Walter
This is a contested point. I think that there's very clear evidence, I've called it a mass migration in the past. And what I mean by that is that, well, I simply mean a large number of people over a short length of time. I mean, there are two models really for the populating of New Zealand. Now. When James Cook arrived here, there's an estimate of the Mori population of around about 100,000, perhaps more. So there's two ways you can get, say, 100 to 120,000 people in New Zealand in the 1780s. Either you can have a small number of people arriving a long time ago and breeding themselves up. And that's what we used to think. We used to think that New Zealand had been settled 1000 years ago or more. In fact, that was the standard model right up until 25 years ago. New Zealand was settled 1000 or more years ago, so you only needed a small number of people. And by the time you get to Captain Cook sailing here in the endeavor, you've got 100,000 people. Easy peasy. It's like breeding chickens, right? You just get more and more and more. But the problem was that our prehistory, our history, is not that long. We just don't have time for a small number of people to get here in 1300 A.D. my own view is that 1300 might even be a little early, but the consensus of opinion is last decades of the 1200s. But you can't get here with 80 people and breed up to 100,000 in that short period of time. So we know people were not coming out here much later than the 1400, than 1400. And we know that because in East Polynesia and Hawaiki at that date, all of the voyaging networks are starting to collapse. There's not a great deal of long distance voyaging happening in east Polynesia after 1400. So for me, the window of opportunity to get people here is roughly 1300 to roughly say 1380, 1370. So given all of those sort of factors, I would say this looks like mass migration.
- [22:53]
Tristan Hughes
And can mythology at all help us with kind of these theories? I mean, I'm looking at the stories that are associated with the earliest people to arrive in, in New Zealand and Aotearoa. I've names like Coupe. Do the stories that survive potentially align with that idea of lots of people coming in a shorter period, amount of time?
- [23:15]
Dr. Richard Walter
This is a much more complex question than we might think. The short answer to your question is that I believe very strongly that oral traditions are extremely important. And in all of my work in the Pacific and New Zealand, I work with the indigenous traditions a lot. But there are problems. And the problems were pointed out from the 1960s by Mori scholars as well as European. And this is that the oral traditions we are dealing with and the ones that you just cited are largely constructed by European scholars in the late 1800s. They are pulled together as coherent narratives based sort of on the European traditions, sort of Viking saga type traditions. Whereas oral tradition in New Zealand was probably more associated with smaller group that probably wasn't in the form of these long coherent narratives that were being put out to the New Zealand public and in scholarship right through to the 1940s, 1950s. Now, these type of traditions are so prevalent and have been so influential that although they haven't been taught in schools since the early 1960s, most New Zealanders still have them in their head. But they're very problematic. All of those figures that you cited do appear in the oral traditions, and that's true. But what you need, and this is what's happening now, is that fluent speakers of the language need to go back to the original text and understand them in the same way that we understand other literature. You can't just take things at face value. You've got to understand the context in which these stories are being told and written and relayed, etc. And scholars are really only just starting to do this. So that's a long way of saying, yeah, these are really important. But no, we don't fully know how to use them yet. There's a lot of Mori scholars doing exactly this.
- [25:28]
Tristan Hughes
Still love asking that question, though, about, you know, how can mythology and oral tradition help alongside the archaeology? Because if we now turn to the archaeology, this is really exciting. So, I mean, Richard, we do have people like yourself who are working on these sites. I mean, there is some amazing archaeology that has survived from these earliest people, from these earliest settlers of New Zealand that is revealing so much.
- [25:55]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, it's very surprising. And in fact, in fact, some of the best understood sites in the country are the early ones. We have a very good record. I mean, there's undoubtedly a lot missing because we are experiencing all sorts of coastal processes that are impacting on sites. But we do have a very rich record of the 1st century of settlement here, particularly from the South Island.
- [26:22]
Tristan Hughes
And is there one site in particular? Well, there is one site in particular that we're going to focus on now, the site of Wairau Bar. And please forgive me if I get the pronunciation wrong, you can absolutely correct me, but where are we talking with Wairo Bar?
- [26:35]
Dr. Richard Walter
Wairau Ba is located on the east coast of the northeast coast of the South Island. So it's on the river mouth, the Wairau river mouth. And it's a large site. It's probably 20 hectares or so in size. We know that there's at least 11 hectares of intact deposit there at the moment. It's what was once called, or often referred to as a moa hunter site. It's a site where people were living and hunting the moa, the extinct ratite. Big birds. Big as us.
- [27:10]
Tristan Hughes
Big flightless bird.
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Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, big flightless bird. Ranging in size from Turkey size right up to bigger than emus and ostriches, is a very rich site, Vast array of artifacts, beautiful artifacts and remains, food remains. And there's also a lot of burials on the site, human burials, which aren't that common in New Zealand sites, Not as common as they are in British European sites. For example, Neolithic sites.
- [27:39]
Tristan Hughes
And for how long have we known about this site, about Wairubar?
- [27:43]
Dr. Richard Walter
Well, local people were probably fossicking the site in the very early 20th century. By the late 20s and 30s, there was excavation being carried out there by interested amateurs. But I use excavation in the very loosest sense of the term. And the material that was coming out of the site was so clearly important that the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch got involved from the 1940s and carried out a series of excavations there, including of many of the human burials on and off through to the 1960s. Now, the burials attracted particular attention because many of them were buried with extremely ornate grave goods. And these artifacts are identical to the ones that we find in East Polynesia at the same period. So they provided this wonderful link, direct link. It was already reasonably well known that there was similarity in artifact forms. But the artifacts from Waira Bar and now many of these sites, I often say to my students, if I have an adzone adz from, say, Wairaba or equivalent sites, quite site of equivalent age. If I took that to Tahiti and threw it on the beach, no one would raise an eyebrow. They're identical. These early adz forms from tropical East Polynesia and New Zealand are extremely well made. A high point of Polynesian stone working technology.
- [29:17]
Tristan Hughes
And just to kind of say so these adzes are used for kind of cutting trees, but potentially also farming equipment too.
- [29:24]
Dr. Richard Walter
They're woodworking tools mainly. And Polynesians and Maori were very skilled at stone working. And the stone tools from early New Zealand sites are amongst the finest you get for these type of tools anywhere in the world. Later periods, after 1400 or so, they become much less sophisticated. But this early phase really links tropical East Polynesia to New Zealand. Not just the adzes but also the personal ornaments, the fish hooks, the tattooing chisels, all of these things are just identical.
- [30:10]
Tristan Hughes
Amazing. We're going to explore all of that because I want to get us into those nutty details, Richard, and absolutely go wild on them. But shall we? First off, I'd like to kind of get more of a sense of what this settlement would have looked like. So you mentioned kind of 20 hectares, the dwellings. Do we have much of a footprint left of the houses that they built that these early settlers built?
- [30:31]
Dr. Richard Walter
No, we don't. The site is incredibly rich and we've excavated a couple of fireplaces and we have some sense of where wall lines of houses are. But one of the odd things about these early sites is despite the fact that they have huge quantities of artifacts and other material in them, it's proved very difficult to find evidence of the structures. And right now this is causing a number of us to really rethink what these sites are. I have always assumed that they were large permanent villages, but it may well be the case that there was more mobility involved than we currently think, and that the size of the sites might be related not to long term continuous occupation, but to the fact that people are moving around quite a lot on the landscape. This is an extremely wealthy community. The type of material I've got on the site is these are wealthy people, but the site is a single occupation and it probably wasn't occupied for a long, long time. So it's beginning to look to me and to a number of others have thought about this with me is that it's possible that these large moor hunter sites may have been occupied on and off. People may have moved between a number of these sites for various social reasons rather than sort of logistical rounds of activity, going here for fishing, here for hunting. I think for social reasons, people were actually moving between sites because another really interesting aspect of these very early sites is that a huge number of the artifacts we find are in deliberate caches, as if people are going away and then coming back, going away and then coming back. So I think the size of these sites is not a reflection necessarily of large, complex, permanent villages, but just of people moving around, coming back, going somewhere else, coming back as individuals, as what we call hap or family groups, or even as sub tribal groups. We don't know. I don't think they're large, complex villages anymore.
- [32:55]
Tristan Hughes
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls
- [32:59]
Dr. Richard Walter
podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [33:02]
Tristan Hughes
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon
- [33:08]
Dr. Richard Walter
Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before. That's right. Hey.
- [33:16]
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Hey.
- [33:16]
Tristan Hughes
So each week you'll get my unfiltered
- [33:18]
Dr. Richard Walter
raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [33:20]
Tristan Hughes
And along the way, we'll do character
- [33:22]
Dr. Richard Walter
deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will
- [33:24]
Tristan Hughes
even try to guess what's next.
- [33:25]
Dr. Richard Walter
Next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [33:27]
Tristan Hughes
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you
- [33:31]
Dr. Richard Walter
can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get
- [33:33]
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Dr. Richard Walter
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Dr. Richard Walter
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- [34:35]
Tristan Hughes
This episode is brought to you by SoFi. With SoFi, you can consolidate your student loans and refinance with a shorter term, potentially becoming debt free sooner. Getting started is easier than you think. View Your rate@sofi.com playback Sofi student loans are originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891. People, as you say, more mobile than we think, these early settlers. So maybe the idea of them, you kind of living in a. In a village, in a house all year round and, and farming the land. We. We shouldn't be thinking like that. Should we be thinking more kind of hunter gathering, that kind of idea for the earliest.
- [35:27]
Dr. Richard Walter
No, no. New Zealand is long and thin, so it goes through a lot of latitudes. Right in the far south. There's no possibility of agriculture or anything like that. So people were relying on hunting and gathering, but they were in communication with people further to the north who were agriculturalists because we have this movement of material. And Wairau Baa lies well within the horticultural zone. So the Wairoba people did have gardens. But what I think is that although they had gardens, they were still moving from time to time, and most likely for social reasons rather than for subsistence reasons. And if you look at 14th century East Polynesia, we see a similar thing. There's an awful lot of movement going on, and it's not just about moving stone from this island to that island. It's about meeting people, engaging in religious activity, social activity. It's about political events. It's about finding a new boyfriend or a new girlfriend. You can't really. I mean, the archaeological record in New Zealand is about shells and fishbone and moabone and it's about adzas and obsidian, blah, blah, blah. And we know what's happening there. But the social dimension is probably a much more important driver of activity and what people are doing than where they get their food or where they get their tools.
- [36:57]
Tristan Hughes
So that. So, right. So a place that we might kind of could be a communal area known far and wide by these people who've traveled along the coastline where people gather, as you say, for social reasons, and they stuff together from different communities. Can we imagine there almost being. I'm presuming, as you've already mentioned, it's difficult to see in the surviving archaeology, but yes, maybe not kind of houses, but maybe a big kind of communal area where they all gathered and did stuff together.
- [37:25]
Dr. Richard Walter
I'll just say at the start that there are much bigger sites in Wairau Ba, but they have less in them. Part of me thinks that Wairaba is special in some way because of these burials of people, some of whom we know from the isotopes were born in the tropics, were born in the islands. So part of me thinks that Wairaba is special and may have been a special place, but part of me also thinks it may not necessarily have been so. I think that other sites may also have been similar to Wairau Ba. But what you asked was about communal structures. No, I don't think so. I think that there probably weren't communal structures. Communal structures are a very important part of late Maori society. But I've done work recently on much smaller sites of a similar age to Wairo Ba and what we're finding there is evidence of huts, more makeshift, less permanent structures. And I think that makes sense if the houses were small and more makeshift. You can still have a complex, wealthy society with highly ranked individuals and chiefs, but not necessarily have permanent large structures and communal structures and what have you. But this is what makes New Zealand archaeology so interesting. The answer is we don't know. We have the tools to find out though.
- [38:49]
Tristan Hughes
Let's focus on another kind of area of the site though, and you mentioned that in passing, which are, Richard, these incredible burials. And how many burials should we be thinking from Wairal bar?
- [39:00]
Dr. Richard Walter
There's about 40, which isn't big by international standards, but this seems to be a communal area, a place that was set out for burial as a cemetery zone. The individuals are clearly highly ranked. Individuals are buried there because of the grave goods we find the personal ornaments. Now one of the most interesting and surprising things we found when I was excavating at Wairaba must have been 10, 12 years ago. Now we excavated this massive oven cooking area. It showed up in our geophysics survey as this big black dot on the landscape, about 4 to 5 meters across and we excavated a quarter of it. We did a 2 by 2 meter unit and excavated down there was this massive stone lined cooking area which had been infilled later with food remains. And we were able to use Some clever methods to demonstrate that the food remains had all been deposited as a single event. They hadn't accumulated through time. And so we have argued that it's a feasting event, which would be really interesting. That would be a communal sort of activity. It's vast. I mean, I think there were more than 60 species of animal in that oven. Moas and a lot of birds, a lot of fish, shellfish, et cetera, sea mammals, all sorts of bits and pieces. And so it's a very interesting feature. And we know from the geophysics that there are a number of these on the site. There are at least there's a ring of about four or five of them where we started to excavate, and there are possibly some more. Nothing like this has ever been seen in New Zealand archeology before. It's really strange.
- [40:51]
Tristan Hughes
So do you think they are connected very much. Kind of these great elaborate burials, buried with these amazing artifacts, and then these potential feasting events. I know it's all theory at the moment, but if it does align with this idea that maybe it is a special place and the people are wealthy, that if someone passed away who was important, they'd be buried at that site. And then there's a big kind of ceremony surrounding their burial with all of this, you know, all of these different animals, these new animals that they're. They're now adapting to eating, quite frankly, you know, it all comes together in the archaeological.
- [41:25]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, that's how I've been very tempted to see it. I have suggested in the past that big cooking area, which is only what I would guess about. I can't remember 40, 50 meters from the burials, from the large and most complex burials. So I have been tempted to speculate that it might be funeral event of some sort, a funeral ceremony in Mori society. At the moment, we have a ceremony, what's called the Tangi or the Tangihanga. The Tangi is the time when you have the burial and people who are related and from all over the country will go to the Tangihanga and there will be feasting over a period of day whether there'll be food cooked. And today in the large Tangis, food is cooked underground in very large quantities. So maybe related. But, you know, it's only speculation. I don't know how we could demonstrate that archaeologically.
- [42:30]
Tristan Hughes
I also kind of want to go back to that other key thing, which is you mentioned that there are moa bones there. And am I correct that, Richard, one of the fascinating types of artifacts that have been discovered is it from These burials is the fact that they have moa bone jewelry. They're not just eating these great birds, they're also then using the bones for their own personal ornaments.
- [42:49]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah. The thing to remember is that we don't have the same range of industrial, although we've got wonderful stone in New Zealand. What we don't have is one of the key industrial items from tropical Polynesia, which is pearl shell. The mother of pearl are large pearl oysters. Now in the tropics, those pearl oysters are used for a huge range of artifacts, especially for fish hooks and for ornaments and other things. Now in New Zealand, we don't have that. The item that seems to have been picked up to replace that for the manufacture of fish hooks and other items is moa bone. So moa became a very important industrial item as well as a food source. So moabon artifacts are very, very common in early archaeological sites.
- [43:47]
Tristan Hughes
And is this a great example then, Richard, of as you mentioned earlier, how these early settlers, they're coming in, they've got these traditions from their homeland in the tropics. But at the same time, because of the new resources, you can see how they're clearly adapting to this new way of life with new species like the Moa to make the same sorts of tools, the same sorts of artifacts, but with different materials than they were used to back in the tropics, back where they came from.
- [44:16]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, sometimes it's quite. Well, I find it a little bit funny too, because some of the things they were doing because one of the really characteristic items of Polynesia is the pearl shell trolling lure. It's a two piece hook. It has a section about that long made of pearl shell. And on the end they put a bone point and it's dragged through the sea to catch the surface swimming pelagic fish. So it was really important in Polynesia. And we've actually the only one of only two artifacts from Polynesia ever found in New Zealand is one of those things. So when they came to New Zealand, there was no equivalent shell they could use for that. So they used stone and they used to. I mean, it's like, it sounds insane, but it works. So for the first hundred years, they were making these beautiful lures this long out of stone, and they were choosing stone that had glitter in it, like schist and things like that. Later they even used some of the low grade green stones. But it's so unexpected. I mean, of course I would have used wood or something, but they really liked, I guess, the weight and the feel they knew what they were doing. They'd been fishing for years and they decided to try stone. And you find hundreds of these. They're beautiful, beautiful artifacts, lots of them at Wairau Ba. And they used a lot of different types of stone, but it would have been very difficult, much more difficult to manufacture. Later on they did turn to wood and they used wood. The stone fishing lures stopped around 1400, like many things. And after that they tended to use wood with an inlay of one of our abalone. In New Zealand we have an abalone which has beautiful turquoise and pink, and they used that in they. Which seems to me which would have been a much more sensible thing to do from the start. But they really experimented and very successfully with stone. And you find it in a lot of the other artifacts, but not quite so dramatically. There was an attempt to reproduce the island technology, one for one, here in New Zealand. There were other attempts to modify, and then there were whole new innovations as well.
- [46:36]
Tristan Hughes
Well, it sounds a fascinating site, Richard, you know, for those discoveries, but I guess also that idea of the contact, not just the links between that settlement and Polynesia and the tropics where they came from, Cook Islands and so on, but also from what you're mentioning earlier, evidence of resources being there that have come to Wairao Bar from elsewhere in New Zealand, from other settlements at that time, obsidian, etc, which once again gives a really interesting insight into how the. These peoples were interacting with each other. Even if, as you've highlighted, you know, kind of how just how special Y Roll Bar was and it's. Its purpose is still unclear. I mean, in your mind, Richard, how significant would you argue why Robar is for, you know, and. And in the future for trying to learn more about this earlier stage of Polynesian settlement in New Zealand?
- [47:32]
Dr. Richard Walter
Wairaba right now is still very well preserved. There's a lot of intact site there. So it does contain a great deal of archaeological information. So the answer is it's potentially a very important site. However, I think we need to do a lot of other thinking. We need to really look at what we've got now and what the evidence is and what seems to be. There's a lot of rethinking. I've had to rethink a lot of what I understood about early period, not just by looking at the Wairaba material, but by thinking about it in the wider context of other sites around the country. We've got a hell of a lot of work to do. Wairaba, there are other sites contemporary with Wairao Ba. There's a couple on the west coast I've worked on which just as amazing as Waira Baa. This is a really interesting period of Polynesian history. And yeah, these sites have a lot to say, but we really have to think broadly about ideas about settlement patterns and kinship and the nature of communities and societies. And I wouldn't like to go back to Waira Ba unless I had some really clear ideas and questions in mind. I don't want to dig for the sake of digging, saying, well, I do, but I shouldn't and I won't.
- [49:01]
Tristan Hughes
Shall we then briefly highlight, as you've highlighted there, Richard, that there are these other sites contemporary to Wairo Ba from elsewhere in the south and North Island? About a hundred. And are they quite varied in what we have archaeologically from those sites?
- [49:17]
Dr. Richard Walter
When I say about 100, we have around about 100 sites, probably more, that are contemporary with Waira BA. We have sites in the south island that are much bigger than Waira Bar. What we don't have at the moment are sites that are as well preserved and contain such a rich array of information as Wairaba. And also, as I mentioned before, with some reticence, I do think Wairaba, Wairaba might well be special. It might well have special significance. And the fact that there are people buried there who were born in Hawaiki has got to be significant. It's the only place where we have a large cemetery site. It's the only place where we have these huge communal cooking areas. So I am inclined to think it's special.
- [50:19]
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- [51:24]
Tristan Hughes
So, Richard, I know You've now done a lot of work on kind of also the next phase as well, about how these communities, these settlements seem to evolve over time. So what do we think happens over the next century or so with these early settlements as the generations go on? Do we see a clear kind of evolution or growth in them? What do we know? What do we think we know so far?
- [51:48]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah, I think I've got a pretty good handle on that or a start of one. Okay, so first of all, I think in the south, and by the south, I'm talking about the South island, after about 1400, these big river mouth sites are not being used anymore. I think people are not utilizing these large sites anymore now, partly that's because Moa are extinct now.
- [52:14]
Tristan Hughes
They've already made them extinct. Wow.
- [52:16]
Dr. Richard Walter
Oh God. You know, we used to think it took hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, but they may have driven Moa to extinction in as little as 80 to 100 years. Which, I mean, how would you do that? I have no idea. If you have an answer, tell me because we just can't. People say, oh yes, they hunted them to extinction. What does that mean? How do you hunt? So we don't really know how they went extinct, but the point is they did go extinct. So these larger sites simply seem to have broken up. They were no longer living in these large coastal settlements on river mouths. Now what we see instead in the southern parts of New Zealand, where I've done a lot of work recently, we see by the 1400s people are focusing much more simply on fishing. The middens are not nearly as diverse. They're focused on a very small number of fish species which can be caught in bulk and shellfish. And we also see a really big decline in importation, the use of these exchange networks which seem to be dominant early on. So there's a decline in long distance communication and a move towards more specialized and smaller settlements. In the north island, we're not quite as sure, but probably something of the sort went on. There also seems to have been a general movement to the north where agriculture, where horticulture is far more viable. So by the 14 1500s, by 1500 we have, the majority of the population are living in the north of New Zealand. The part where I live now was virtually abandoned from where I am now, which is Dunedin, about 2/3 of the way down the south island and further south, I think was largely abandoned. I mean, there were probably people living here from time to time and I think there was still a lot of mobility in New Zealand. People were still moving around. But this concentration of settlements down the east coast of the south island, that's gone. Population dramatically declined in the south, most of the south island and people are living largely, most populations are in the north where they're using sweet potato, we call it Kumara. Sweet potato production using large scale Sweden systems which require, you have to clear more bush. So there's a lot of bush clearance, a lot of forest clearance to open up for swidden gardening. And we see, I think the settlements are still small, fairly mobile, but we do see the start of the construction of fortifications. And these are what we call the PAR sites. And these fortifications are large fortified settlements. Know if you've ever been to New Zealand? Have you ever been to New Zealand?
- [55:22]
Tristan Hughes
Once, yeah. And I went down to Dunedin, started in Auckland. All the way down.
- [55:25]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yeah.
- [55:26]
Tristan Hughes
So, Richard, is it fair to say that by that time, can we say that the Maori culture has well and truly emerged?
- [55:34]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yes, and that's a really good point. Often I get asked, where did Mori come from? Where did the Maoris come from? And the answer of course is they came from New Zealand. This, this unique Mori society, culture, language, tradition has never existed anywhere else in the world. It didn't come here as a discrete package from somewhere else. And New Zealand is one of the only places where you have this, what you might call ethnogenesis, the emergence and development of a cultural tradition entirely in isolation from the outside world. So it's a really interesting case. Those sites I was talking about before, like Wairaba, the people who lived there, were pollen, they had a language, a tradition, a way of life that really came out from tropical Polynesia. They were like my grandparents who used to talk about Britain as the homeland. And it would have taken more than 100 years for even people to think of themselves as being really indigenous to the land. So this Polynesian culture and traditions, these were changes. And we see rapid, radical changes in the archeological record, as I outlined before, from about 1400, from 1500 and onwards, we're getting a society and culture emerging. We're getting the origins of tribalism, modern Maori tribalism. I mean, the substance of Polynesian tribal society, of chiefdom systems has always been there, but each place in Polynesia expresses it differently. And the Maori expression of Polynesian tribalism was quite unique. And it was emerging from after, by late 1400, 1500s, 1600s, we do get an indigenous Mori society developing right here in New Zealand. Having said that, I would also just add one point. A lot of Mori say we were Mori from the time we stepped off the first canoes. I would also agree with that. That's a cultural and political statement that carries a lot of importance. But from an anthropological, archaeological point of view, we do see the evolution of a very distinctive Mori society right here in Aotearo.
- [58:00]
Tristan Hughes
I find it fascinating though, Richard, all of that and the fact that as you say, it takes time for people to see themselves as something different, as Polynesian. But at the same time, from the archaeology, Richard. Yes, highlighting how those differences emerge over the centuries countries, but also if we go back to Wairo Bar, what I, I love and I know you've done a lot of work around is how quickly, at the same time you see how they're adapting their tropical culture to suit this new environment that they've made their home. The, the colder climate of, you know, the non tropical climate of south island and North Island, New Zealand. And you know, these, these new types of animals that the moa and, and landscapes that they were getting used to, which, which is wonderful.
- [58:43]
Dr. Richard Walter
Yes, that's true. But running parallel to that, one of the things that I've highlighted in my research is that with this adaptation we also get which people have ignored and not noticed is that these people were also at the same time really striving to recreate the social and cultural conditions of the homeland. And we see this expressed most clearly in the really rapid emergence of these communication and exchange network networks which were really what characterized 14th century East Polynesia in the 1300s. These islands were connected and they were moving people and things back and forth. The moment they got to New Zealand, they reproduced that they spread out around the country. There's all of these different settlements. People are clearly moving between them and they're also moving material around. So it's not like they came here and forgot their homeland. They came here and I think think one of the great drivers, I mean, we've always focused on adaptation, but I think one of the other great drivers of cultural change in New Zealand was the desire and the drive to reproduce the homelands.
- [60:00]
Tristan Hughes
I think that's a great point to leave it on. We have barely scratched the surface. I know there's more we could cover archaeologically. Haven't even talked about rock art and those other sites. Correct. Which I'm sure all the also very interesting. It seems like archaeologically, with new developments coming up with all of these sites that have been identified and no doubt more will be in the future, it feels a very exciting time for archaeologists like yourself who've been studying the earliest settlement of Aotearoa back in the 13th century and 14th century. So it seems very exciting for the future, Richard.
- [60:35]
Dr. Richard Walter
It's going to be fun.
- [60:36]
Tristan Hughes
Rich. Richard, very grateful for your time. Dialing in from Dunedin in the South Island. I know it's late over there and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time for coming on the show. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Richard Walter introducing you to this amazing archaeology left behind by New Zealand's very first settlers, these east Polynesians, some 700 years ago. I hope you enjoyed the episode just as much as I did recording it. Thank you so much for listening. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, New Zealand is very much on our mind at Ancient HQ because in just a few weeks time on Saturday 9th August at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland, well, we're going to be there. We have a live show event and we'd love to see as many of you there as possible. If you're free that night, if you're in the vicinity of Auckland, if you're an Ancients listener and you'd like to see us live, well, now is your opportunity. We're going to be talking all things Romulus and Remus. So the myths, the many myths around the origins of Rome, but also then delving into what does archaeology actually tell us. So exploring this great story where myth meets archaeology meets history. What do we actually know about very, very early Rome? Could there have been a figure called Romulus, a figure called remus, etc. Etc. It's gonna be a whole lot of fun. I can't wait to get back to New Zealand. The last time I was there was a decade ago when I was a student. So yes, I'm very excited and I'd love to see as many of you there as possible. We'll put a link where you can get tickets in the bio in the description of this episode. That that's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
- [62:34]
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Tristan Hughes
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