POLYNESIAN RESEARCH

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29742, 8 February 1962, Page 15

POLYNESIAN RESEARCH

Big Grant From U.S.

The Canterbury Museum will be one of the three participants in a grant of 77,200 dollars (about £27,470) which has been made by the United States National Science Foundation to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu to finance a co-ordinated programme of Polynesian archeology. The three-year project is expected to give further information on hew and when man entered the Pacific and from where he came. Mr R. C. Green, senior lecturer in pre-history at Auckland University, Dr. R. S. Duff, director of the Canterbury Museum, and Mr P. W. Gathercole, keeper in anthropology at the Otago Museum, will collaborate with Dr. K. P. Emory, of the Bishop Museum, in an extensive research programme It is the outcome of a recommendation on Pacific Island archeology adopted by the Pacific Science Congress in Honolulu last year. In the first year it is expected that the Canterbury Museum will send a group to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, that Auckland University will send a team to Western Samoa, and that the Otago Museum party will make a study of Pitcairn Island. The Bishop Museum will make investigations in the Society Islands and Samoa.

Each expedition will make extensive surveys and excavations and try to arrange for the preservation of important sites which might otherwise be damaged or destroyed. While the research in Polynesia is being carried out, plans will be laid for coordinated investigations of Melanesia and Micronesia Throughout all these programmes, standardised methods and records will be used and the latest scientific equipment will be used.