Abstract:
This thesis examines the broad issue of the assessment of pre-European contact Māori mobility in New Zealand through the technological analysis of flaked stone artefacts, those categories of lithics generally referred to as informal tools. It sets out a comparison of lithic technological attributes across time and space, from a number of archaeological contexts on Ahuahu (Great Mercury Island) and a single context from the Auckland region of the Hauraki Gulf. The assemblages provide a way of evaluating measures of mobility using lithic artefacts in a situation where technology, transport methods and land use over time by the groups that produced the artefacts in question can be controlled in ways that are not always possible elsewhere in the world. The focus is on the technological organisation that the lithic assemblages represent, the accumulation of those assemblages in the archaeological record, and the corresponding inferences that are made with respect to mobility and occupation duration at specific locations in the landscape. The research suggests there is no strong evidence arising from the analysis of the stone artefact assemblages that would suggest that the technological organisation (as it relates to lithics) of Māori living on Ahuahu or in coastal Auckland changed appreciably over the course of the pre-contact period of New Zealand's history. Spatial and technological analyses of the assemblages can however give insights into occupation duration and the taphonomic processes influencing assemblage composition. The overall picture of the technological signature presented and the level of change that appears to have occurred over this time is instead one of stability and continuity, but with some evidence for lithic recycling practices and the persistent use of particular places in landscapes. It is therefore not possible to use lithic technological organisation to support suggestions of major shifts in pre-European Māori socio-economy in the study areas.
