Kohika by Geoffrey Irwin
Te Kohika is an important book studying the archaeology of a Maori village dating from about AD 1700, which has been unusually well preserved because of its wetland location. Abandoned because of flooding, Te Kohika remained untouched for 270 years and its excavation and analysis has been a 30-year task by a large number of scholars from different disciplines, making this perhaps the major archaeological project of recent times. The work revealed extensive information about the social and domestic activities of a Maori village community well before the advent of Pakeha. The village also includes the oldest-known carved house which has also yielded a great deal of information. In chapters by 12 different experts on, for example, diet, wooden artefacts, fibrework, obsidian, houses, animal remains, Te Kohika offers convincing conclusions on the trade, hunting, leisure, and social hierarchy of these early New Zealanders. It is well illustrated with diagrams and photographs.
Geoffrey Irwin is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has carried out fieldwork in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Indonesia and New Zealand. In the Pacific he has studied early migration and navigation, and the emergence of seaborne trading systems. In the course of fieldwork he has sailed in traditional canoes of southeastern Papua New Guinea and on one occasion, sailed his own yacht through Island Melanesia, retracing the path of the Lapita archaeological culture that was ancestral to Polynesian and Maori. This voyage resulted in The prehistoric exploration and colonisation of the Pacific, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1992. His local work has concentrated on the origins of Classic Maori settlement, focusing on the emergence of defended social landscapes dominated by pa. Two projects have been in the North Kaipara described in Land, pa and polity: a study based on the Maori fortifications of Pouto (Monograph 15, NZ Archaeological Association, 1985), and a current project located in the inner islands of the Hauraki Gulf. He has had a long interest in wetland archaeology and during the work on the Kohika lake village, visited several wet sites in Europe and America. Further wetlands research is continuing at the Kohika site, in partnership with the local Ngati Awa tribe, and supported by a grant from the Marsden Fund, adminstered by the Royal Society.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781869403157 |
| ISBN 10 | 1869403150 |
| Title | Kohika |
| Author | Geoffrey Irwin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Auckland University Press |
| Year published | 2004-12-31 |
| Number of pages | 356 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |