Over several thousand years the Polynesian people had developed a ‘portable economy’ which they introduced to each new island they settled. This economy revolved around a set of domestic plants and animals that were mainly of Southeast Asian origin and included breadfruit, coconut, banana, taro, yam, gourd as well as industrial species such as paper mulberry. It also included domestic animals: chicken, pig, and dog. The problem is that New Zealand’s environment was not suited to most of these species and so the settlers found themselves having to develop new economic strategies as their existing systems failed. This involved the adaptation and transformation of previous practices, a re-sorting of priorities, the discovery of entirely new sources of food, and the invention of strategies and technologies for their exploitation.
Climatic conditions limited any type of horticulture based on the tropical domesticates to warmer parts of New Zealand including parts of the South Island and within that zone wet field cropping of taro would have been even more restricted - to northern New Zealand. The early settlers also had to deal with seasons, something that was largely irrelevant to horticultural life in the islands. The only crop plant brought to New Zealand by the first settlers that thrived in the cooler climes was the South American sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas or kumara in Maori). But in order to create a viable kumara production system, new technologies were required. The most important of these was the invention of the storage pit - an excavated earth chamber with a low roof. Kumara pits were used to preserve tubers over the winter months for food, and so that seed stock was available during the next planting season. Today the remains of thousands of kumara storage pits can be seen scattered across the northern landscapes. Soils for gardening were modified by the addition of material such as sand or gravel mulch, which may have extended the growing season. Along with kumara some of the other imported plants, including gourd, taro, and yam, were grown, but their importance was very localized. The most important component of the plant-food regime after the invention of kumara storage was the inclusion of an indigenous wild plant component. Although no longer eaten and something of a mystery as to how it was prepared, early explorers describe the root of the native bracken fern (Pteridium esculentum) as one of the most common plant foods in many parts of the country.
The two animal domesticates, pig and chicken, never arrived in New Zealand. They were probably placed on the colonizing canoes but either did not
Survive the journey or died out for some reason shortly after arrival. The dog (Canis familiaris) survived and became a small but important part of the Maori diet as did rat (Rattus exulans), a feral animal but one which was introduced to New Zealand, deliberately or otherwise, on the ancestral canoes.
While Polynesian horticulture was difficult and domestic animals were not successfully introduced, the first colonists found in the new environment an abundance of easily hunted meat sources beyond anything available in Polynesia. Colonies of fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) were found along the coasts of the mainland and offshore islands and these became a major seasonal resource. Other sea mammals were also exploited at a much lower intensity including sea lions, elephant seals, dolphins, and pilot whales, although the latter were probably only taken from natural strandings. On land there was a range of flightless birds available including 12 species of the now extinct ratite known collectively by the Polynesian term ‘moa’. Moa were one of the largest and most powerful birds that ever lived but having evolved in an environment that was effectively without terrestrial predators, they were particularly susceptible to human hunting. The earliest sites in New Zealand contain an abundance of moa bone, indeed the earliest period of New Zealand prehistory was once referred to as the ‘moa-hunter period’ of Maori culture. In fact, while moa hunting was dominant in some parts of the country New Zealand’s early economy appears to have been highly regionally varied. In the north, horticulture was established early, and because of the lower standing biomass of moa and sea mammals there, hunting was of lesser significance. In the south, and particularly along the southeast and south coasts of the South Island, moa and seal densities were much higher, and horticulture impossible. Here the economy was based on hunting, probably with a high seasonal component and thus New Zealand’s South Island is one of the few places in the world that was colonized by horticulturalists who then adopted a hunting and gathering economy.
A number of sites dating to this early period of prehistory have been excavated and these paint a picture of a society that had adapted very quickly to the radically different environment and climate of New Zealand, but one that still retained many aspects of the way of life of the islands. New Zealand contains a rich array of high-quality industrial stone including obsidians, metasomatized argillites, grey-wackes, nephrite (a form of jade), cherts, and basalt. These resources are widely spaced across the country, but generally occur in small highly localized sources. Practically, all of the sources were discovered and in widespread use within a generation or two of first settlement of New Zealand and the earliest known sites contain a diversity of stone types from across the country. This is indicative of a very rapid and efficient exploratory phase and suggests a high level of mobility in the immediate post-colonization generations. It is likely that early exploration and mobility was facilitated by the use of sailing canoes like those that brought the first colonists from the tropics.
The settlement pattern of New Zealand’s early period is reminiscent of the island homeland. In the Cook Islands during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries communication networks linked small nucleated villages located on the reef passages of each island and were a medium for the transfer of a range of materials especially of industrial stone and shell. In New Zealand the earliest sites also include villages many of which were located on river mouths and harbors - analogous positions to the coral reef passages of the islands. As in the islands there is evidence of high levels of mobility in the form of importation of lithic resources, and thus it is possible that communication networks similar to those of the islands linked these early communities.
Throughout Polynesia archaeologists recognize the dynamic interaction between landscape and culture. In New Zealand humans both transformed the natural world and responded to the environment through processes of cultural, social, and technological adaptation. When New Zealand was first settled most of the land was heavily forested to the shoreline. Sediment cores indicate an increase in charcoal deposition and a rise in the relative proportion of fern and grasslands relative to forest species from around the beginning of the fourteenth century. This is believed to be related to the conversion of forest land to horticulture in the north and the promotion of more productive phases of vegetation succession including bracken growth in other places.
Avian extinctions also followed human arrival of which the most significant was the disappearance of the moa, along with some 30 other bird species. Indeed by European arrival not only was the moa extinct, there was no certain reference to it in Maori oral histories and tradition and thus all we know of Maori interaction with moa is via the archaeological record. Until recently, most archaeologists believed that this interaction occurred over a period of four or five centuries with extinction occurring around the early sixteenth century. However, recent studies indicate that moa extinction may have occurred within 60 to 160 years of human arrival. New Zealand’s terrestrial fauna (entirely avian except for three small bat species) had evolved for millennia in the absence of mammalian predators. The K-selected moas with their small clutches, long lives and relatively large size, were extremely vulnerable to any new predation, let alone highly organized predation by a rapidly increasing population of human hunters.
To add to the loss of moas, sea mammals were becoming severely depleted by the end of the fifteenth century and the large breeding colonies of fur seals were by then restricted to southern New Zealand. By later prehistory seal populations had dropped to the point where they were no longer more than a supplementary dietary component, and a hunting economy based partly around the occupation of grounds adjacent to breeding colonies was no longer practiced.
World History
