190
11 Challenging a Late First Settlement Date for New Zealand
have been brought together. If the population in the late 18th century was not a peak
population, but was indeed the remnant of a far higher population that had been
reached much earlier, how high was that population before it became subject to the
devastating population losses of the Little Ice Age?
11.4 Environmental Evidence and First Settlement Dates
Though in the light of the arithmetic above, the suggestion of AD 1200 as a first settlement date may be absurd, from an archaeological viewpoint it is not surprising.
The earliest archaeological evidence for “slash and burn” horticulture (the cutting
and burning of forest to provide land for crops) comes from charcoal in lake sediments dated to around AD 1200 [15]. This evidence for the earliest horticulture in
New Zealand is mistakenly taken to imply the arrival of the first migrants. While this
may be a natural confusion, it flies in the face of the long history for New Zealand
recorded in oral traditions. The introduction of the kumara to New Zealand can be
dated to about AD 1200 from a chronology we develop from oral traditions correlated with El Niño proxy data (see Chapter 17). The dating from tradition for the
medieval introduction of horticulture to New Zealand matches the evidence from
lake sediments.
Evidence for slash and burn horticulture is evidence of an archaeologically visible human impact on environment. Hunter/gatherers have a far less visible presence.
The supposed absence of evidence of the environmental impact of man in New
Zealand till about AD 1200 reflects the change at that date to a more archaeologically visible horticultural way of life. The extinction of large fauna, for example, is
linked to the slash and burn destruction of forests to create horticultural fields.
Evidence for environmental impact, for the creation of an archaeological footprint by the earliest colonists in New Zealand, has probably been destroyed. The
truism that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is particularly relevant to New Zealand which, Patrick Grant [16] points out, has a long history of
coastal, valley and hillside erosion. He presents detailed evidence for widespread
erosion during recurrent “warm wet erosion periods” and evidence for the cumulative impact of such erosion on landscapes and recurrent impacts on biota. He
argues:
The time of first settlement may never be known. It is shrouded by the inevitable destruction
of evidence. Rate of destruction varies with rainfall and landscape. The greater the rainfall,
the steeper and higher the land relief, and the more susceptible to erosion the regolith and
rock, the shorter will be the life expectancy of evidence for anything in the past. In valley
bottoms, old alluvial surfaces have largely been eroded away or covered by later alluvium.
And older hillslope soils have been eroded and replaced by younger soils on fresh surfaces.
Favoured sites for building, on river banks and at estuaries, are the same now as then. These
sites are very easily destroyed in an erosion period. This is the reason why sites relating to
early periods of settlement are difficult to find (pp. 189–90).
Writing the above in 1994, Grant was thinking back to a possible first settlement
of New Zealand in about AD 950. His argument applies still more surely to the first
11 Challenging a Late First Settlement Date for New Zealand
have been brought together. If the population in the late 18th century was not a peak
population, but was indeed the remnant of a far higher population that had been
reached much earlier, how high was that population before it became subject to the
devastating population losses of the Little Ice Age?
11.4 Environmental Evidence and First Settlement Dates
Though in the light of the arithmetic above, the suggestion of AD 1200 as a first settlement date may be absurd, from an archaeological viewpoint it is not surprising.
The earliest archaeological evidence for “slash and burn” horticulture (the cutting
and burning of forest to provide land for crops) comes from charcoal in lake sediments dated to around AD 1200 [15]. This evidence for the earliest horticulture in
New Zealand is mistakenly taken to imply the arrival of the first migrants. While this
may be a natural confusion, it flies in the face of the long history for New Zealand
recorded in oral traditions. The introduction of the kumara to New Zealand can be
dated to about AD 1200 from a chronology we develop from oral traditions correlated with El Niño proxy data (see Chapter 17). The dating from tradition for the
medieval introduction of horticulture to New Zealand matches the evidence from
lake sediments.
Evidence for slash and burn horticulture is evidence of an archaeologically visible human impact on environment. Hunter/gatherers have a far less visible presence.
The supposed absence of evidence of the environmental impact of man in New
Zealand till about AD 1200 reflects the change at that date to a more archaeologically visible horticultural way of life. The extinction of large fauna, for example, is
linked to the slash and burn destruction of forests to create horticultural fields.
Evidence for environmental impact, for the creation of an archaeological footprint by the earliest colonists in New Zealand, has probably been destroyed. The
truism that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is particularly relevant to New Zealand which, Patrick Grant [16] points out, has a long history of
coastal, valley and hillside erosion. He presents detailed evidence for widespread
erosion during recurrent “warm wet erosion periods” and evidence for the cumulative impact of such erosion on landscapes and recurrent impacts on biota. He
argues:
The time of first settlement may never be known. It is shrouded by the inevitable destruction
of evidence. Rate of destruction varies with rainfall and landscape. The greater the rainfall,
the steeper and higher the land relief, and the more susceptible to erosion the regolith and
rock, the shorter will be the life expectancy of evidence for anything in the past. In valley
bottoms, old alluvial surfaces have largely been eroded away or covered by later alluvium.
And older hillslope soils have been eroded and replaced by younger soils on fresh surfaces.
Favoured sites for building, on river banks and at estuaries, are the same now as then. These
sites are very easily destroyed in an erosion period. This is the reason why sites relating to
early periods of settlement are difficult to find (pp. 189–90).
Writing the above in 1994, Grant was thinking back to a possible first settlement
of New Zealand in about AD 950. His argument applies still more surely to the first