"A Bookmakers book"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliography (p. 126) and index.

Introduction: digging up the past: the Fyffe site, [on the Kaikoura Peninsular], and modern archaeology -- Origin of the Maoris: The Polynesians -- Islands of origin -- Navigation -- The first immigrants: from moa hunters to classic Maori : A new land -- Early settlement and shelter -- Early stone tool technology -- Early wood carving -- Rock art -- Personal ornaments of the early period -- Man, moa and forest: prehistoric overkill -- Kuri and kiore -- Horticulture and plant foods -- Hunting and fishing -- Food preparation -- Canoes and watercraft -- Clothing and textiles -- Village and pa -- Weapons and warfare -- Classic arts: [carving, personal ornaments, hairstyles, ] greenstone, musical instruments -- The people: physiology and health -- Disposal of the dead -- The European period -- The first Europeans -- Sealers and whalers -- Traders and missionaries -- The first gaol: archaeology in the central business district of Auckland -- Shipwrecks : the problems of marine archaeology -- Fortifications of the New Zealand wars -- The first industries -- Chinese miners on the Central Otago goldfields -- The kauri driving dams.

"In the last 25 years archaeological research in New Zealand has undergone something of a revolution. Using new techniques and drawing on a wide range of disciplines, archaeologists are now piecing together a new and far more complex picture of the human occupation of this country over the last 1000 years. Until then it was popularly beieved that New Zealand had in the past been settled by two waves of non-European colonisers. It was commonly thought that the "Maoris", the Polynesians who inhabited the country at the time of Cook, had been preceded by a darker, possibly Melanesian and more primitive race called "Morioris". They had been supplanted by the Maoris who had arrived in a "Great Fleet" from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki some time in the fourteenth century. Today we know this version of events to be wrong -- a myth promulgated by Pakeha researchers at the beginning of the century. Instead, we now realise that this courntyr was probably first settled by Polynesians about 1000 years ago. From this founding population of possibly only a handful of settlers emerged the Maoris -- first as moa hunters, essentially itinerant hunters and gatherers whose impact on the new land was to have far reaching effects. By 500 years ago the changed environment had forced changes upon their economy and lifestyle in favour of more permanent settlements base around a largely agricultural economy. Gradually the classic and familiar Maori culture emerged to be altered and submerged in its turn by the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago. "Unearthing New Zealand" tells the fascinating story of this country's prehistory, reconstructing from archaeological evidence a sometimes extraordinarily complete picture of how these people lived and died. Its emphasis on social aspects -- food and clothing, work practices, burial customs, disease and death -- represents a new dimension in archaeological thinking ..." -- Inside front cover.

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