Atholl John Anderson CNZM (born 1943) is a New Zealand archaeologist who has worked extensively in New Zealand and the Pacific. His work is notable for its syntheses of history, biology, ethnography and archaeological evidence. He made a major contribution to the evidence given by the iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tahu to the Waitangi Tribunal.
Anderson was born in 1943 in Taranaki and is descended from Ngāi Tahu on Rakiura (Stewart Island). [1] [2] [3] He grew up in Dunedin and Nelson. [2] From 1958 to 1961, Anderson was educated at Nelson College, and he played in the school's 1st XI hockey team in 1960 and 1961. [4]
Anderson conducted a survey of archaeological sites in Tasman Bay for his Masters degree in geography from the University of Canterbury which he received in 1966. This masters thesis title was Maori occupation sites in back beach deposits around Tasman Bay. [5] He then completed a Diploma in Teaching and in 1968 became assistant principal of a school in Karamea on the West Coast of the South Island. [1] In 1970 he began an MA in Anthropology at the University of Otago which he completed in 1973 with First Class Honours. [1] His thesis was on the subsistence behaviour at Black Rocks peninsula in Palliser Bay, where he participated in a University of Otago archaeology research project from 1969 to 1972. [1] [6] He received a Commonwealth Scholarship which enabled him to go to Cambridge University where he undertook fieldwork in northern Sweden and completed his PhD thesis, Prehistoric Competition and Economic Change in Northern Sweden, in 1976. [1] [7]
Anderson took up his first academic position in 1977 at the University of Auckland. The following year he was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the Anthropology Department at the University of Otago, progressing to a personal chair in the department. He left Otago in 1993 to take up the Establishment Chair of Prehistory at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. [1]
On his return to Otago in 1978 Anderson commenced a major programme of fieldwork, the Southern Hunters Project, at 20 sites in the south of New Zealand. Important sites were excavated at Pūrākaunui, Lee Island in Lake Te Anau and the Shag River mouth. The focus of many of the excavations was on prehistoric economics, the use of the marine environment and moa hunting. As a result, Anderson examined the chronology of colonisation and re-dated moa hunting sites throughout New Zealand such as at Wairau Bar and Houhora. [1]
After moving to Canberra in 1993 Anderson undertook fieldwork throughout the Pacific as part of two projects, the Indo-Pacific Colonisation Project and the Asian Fore-Arc Project. Themes of his work were the sequence of settlement of the islands of the Pacific, migration, dispersal and voyaging, and sustainability. His other interests in birds, fauna and extinction resulted in an extinct Fijian crocodile, Volia athollandersoni, being named after him. [1]
Anderson followed up his earlier work in southern New Zealand with the Southern Margins Project which commenced in 1998. It showed that Polynesian voyaging into the sub-polar regions (Chatham Islands, Rakiura and Auckland Islands) occurred about 700 years ago. [1]
While he is primarily an archaeologist Anderson has used archaeology, history and ethnography extensively in his work. In an interview about his 1998 book The Welcome of Strangers: an Ethnohistory of Southern Maori AD 1650–1850 [8] he described it as a book that "draws together the disparate sources of information about later southern Māori in an attempt to describe, in some detail, the origins and migrations of the historical peoples, their social and economic organisation, their distribution in the landscape and their responses to the arrival of European culture." [9] In 2015 he collaborated with historians Judith Binney and Aroha Harris to publish Tangata Whenua: a history which won an Ockham New Zealand Book Award in 2016. [10] The authors used environmental science, geology, linguistics, archaeology and history to investigate the migration and settlement of New Zealand. [11]
In addition to his academic work Anderson has served on the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (now Heritage New Zealand) and as an advisor to Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu. He researched Ngāi Tahu's Treaty of Waitangi claim to the Waitangi Tribunal. [1]
Anderson retired in 2008 to live in the Wairau Valley, Marlborough. [1]
The South Island, also named Te Waipounamu in Māori, is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, and to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean. The South Island covers 150,437 square kilometres (58,084 sq mi), making it the world's 12th-largest island, constituting 56% of New Zealand's land area. At low altitude, it has an oceanic climate.
Lake Wānaka is New Zealand's fourth-largest lake and the seat of the town of Wānaka in the Otago region. The lake is 278 meters above sea level, covers 192 km2 (74 sq mi), and is more than 300 m (980 ft) deep.
The Otago Peninsula is a long, hilly indented finger of land that forms the easternmost part of Dunedin, New Zealand. Volcanic in origin, it forms one wall of the eroded valley that now forms Otago Harbour. The peninsula lies south-east of Otago Harbour and runs parallel to the mainland for 20 km, with a maximum width of 9 km. It is joined to the mainland at the south-west end by a narrow isthmus about 1.5 km wide.
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi (tribe) of the South Island. Its takiwā is the largest in New Zealand, and extends from the White Bluffs / Te Parinui o Whiti, Mount Mahanga and Kahurangi Point in the north to Stewart Island / Rakiura in the south. The takiwā comprises 18 rūnanga corresponding to traditional settlements. According to the 2018 census an estimated 74,082 people affiliated with the Kāi Tahu iwi.
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The city has a rich Māori, Scottish, and Chinese heritage.
The Polynesian Triangle is a region of the Pacific Ocean with three island groups at its corners: The US state of Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand (Aotearoa). This is often used as a simple way to define Polynesia.
Otakou is a settlement within the boundaries of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. It is located 25 kilometres from the city centre at the eastern end of Otago Peninsula, close to the entrance of Otago Harbour. Though a small fishing village, Otakou is important in the history of Otago for several reasons. The settlement is the modern centre and traditional home of the Ōtākou rūnanga (assembly) of Ngāi Tahu. In 1946 Otakou Fisheries was founded in the township; this was later to become a major part of the Otago fishing industry.
Lake Hāwea is New Zealand's ninth largest lake.
The town of Palmerston, in New Zealand's South Island, lies 50 kilometres to the north of the city of Dunedin. It is the largest town in the Waihemo Ward of the Waitaki District, with a population of 890 residents. Palmerston grew at a major road junction: State Highway 1 links Dunedin and Waikouaiti to the south with Oamaru and Christchurch to the north, while State Highway 85 heads inland to become the principal highway of the Maniototo. The Main South Line railway passes through the town and the Seasider tourist train travels from Dunedin to Palmerston and back once or twice a week. From 1880 until 1989, the town acted as the junction between the main line and a branch line that ran inland, the Dunback and Makareao Branches.
Long Beach, known in Māori as Wharauwerawera or Wharewerawera is a small coastal settlement in Otago, New Zealand comprising approximately 100 homes. Many of the sections were initially auctioned in October 1922 for a pound deposit. It is located within the city limits of Dunedin, and lies 15 kilometres northeast of the city centre, between Blueskin Bay and the mouth of the Otago Harbour. The small settlement of Pūrākaunui is located nearby.
The Otago region of New Zealand is one of the more isolated places of the inhabited earth. Its high latitude, elevation and distance from larger foreign and domestic population centres have defined Otago at each stage of its history.
Uruaokapuarangi was one of the great ocean-going, voyaging canoes that was used in the migrations that settled the South Island according to Māori tradition.
Since the early 1900s the fact that Polynesians were the first ethnic group to settle in New Zealand has been accepted by archaeologists and anthropologists. Before that time and until the 1920s, however, a small group of prominent anthropologists proposed that the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands represented a pre-Māori group of people from Melanesia, who once lived across all of New Zealand and were replaced by the Māori. While this claim was soon disproven by academics, it was widely and controversially incorporated into school textbooks during the 20th century, most notably in the School Journal. This theory subsequently spawned modern claims of a pre-Māori settlement of New Zealand by various ethnic groups, many conspiratorial in nature. Today, such theories are considered to be pseudohistorical and negationist by scholars and historians, and racist by many observers, with the Moriori myth having been used to justify settler colonalism.
Whare Marama Leonard-Higgins (1928–2012) was an elder in the Ngāi Tahu iwi of the South Island of New Zealand.
Ulva Lynn Belsham was a telegraphist and volunteer radio operator for the Marine Radio Service in the southern part of the South Island of New Zealand.
Sarah Mary Catherine Stirling, known as Hera Stirling and, after her marriage, as Hera Munro, was a New Zealand Māori activist, suffragist, and missionary of Ngāi Tahu descent.
Whareakeake is a beach 25 kilometres (16 mi) northeast of Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand, as well as the valley above and behind the beach. Located to the west of Aramoana and included as a section of the Otago Heads, Whareakeake was a place of habitation for Māori people from early times until the Sealers' War skirmish of 1817 from which it derived its colonial name. It is now a surfing beach renowned for its right-hand point break.
Aroha Gaylene Harris is a Māori academic. As of 2020, Harris is an associate professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in Māori histories of policy and community development. She is also a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Janet Mary Wilmshurst is a New Zealand palaeoecologist who works on reconstructing the ecological past. Wilmshurst has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2015. She was president of the New Zealand Ecological Society, and currently works as principal scientist in long-term ecology at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research focusing on recent fossil records to reconstruct and trace past ecosystem changes in response to natural disturbance.
Louise Mary Potiki Bryant is a New Zealand choreographer, dancer and video artist. She has choreographed a number of award-winning performances, and is a founding member of Atamira Dance Company. She designs, produces and edits videos of performances for music videos, dance films and video art installations. She was made an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate in 2019.
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