Carbon Dating Shows N.Z. Had Settlers In 715A.D.

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 14

Carbon Dating Shows N.Z. Had Settlers In 715A.D.

The earliest date for human settlement in New Zealand could be put back 200 years [to 715 A.D. as a result of [radio carbon dating of post :butts recently found in the imoa-hunter caves at Redi cliffs. Dr. Roger Duff, director of the Canterbury I Museum, told members of the archeological section of the iNew Zealand Science Congress yesterday. I The butts had returned a ;mean dating of 780 A.D., 1 ranging between 715 and 845 [ A.D., which was 200 years I earlier than the previous ' dates from moa-hunter sites 'at the extreme south and north of the South Island. i Dr. Duff said the discovery i was in conflict with earlier [views expressed on the dates at which New Zealand was first settled. Von Haast had considered that the moahunters were centuries, even (millennia, before the arrival of the first wave of Maori immigration in 1350, and that their culture was neolithic. Another sphool of thought had regarded the moa-hunters as the immediate forerunners of the main wave of Maori immigration and that they had settled in New Zealand

only a short time ahead of th? Maoris. If the carbon dating was correct, it would mean that New Zealand would have been settled even earlier than the eighth century Before the. became nomadic hunters of fish and fowl, the moahunters, because of their early Polynesian ancestry, would have been an agricultural race.

Dr. Duff said that it had been stated that there was no other race in New Zealand before the arrival of the first Polynesian migration in 1350. Von Haast, on the other hand, had over-emphasised the remoteness of the moahunters from the Maoris. The moa-hunter phase of Maori culture was seen to be the first detectable manifestation of New Zealand's earliest culture, said Dr. Duff.

“Accepting primary association wifij moa remains as the criterion for the moa-hunter phase, we might postulate an occupation which commenced generally before the end of the ninth century,” he said. “Generalising on the basis of an admittedly incomplete scatter of carbon dates, we might assume its continuation in Marlborough-North Canterbury for five centuries

<B5O-1350), and tn South Can-terbury-North Otago six centuries (850-1450).” he said. Dr. Duflf contended that the South Island, particularly the Canterbury-Marlborough area, permitted the reconstruction of a two-phase succession m the evolution of Maori culture.

First was the period of the moa-hunters, covering at least a five-century period, and second, the arrival of the main Polynesian immigrations which formed the basis of the present Maori culture. The discovery of the post butts is the culmination of four years of intensive work by Dr Duff and members of the Canterbury Museum Archeological Society at the Redcliffs caves. The first excavations were carried out in the caves in 1872 when many important artifacts were discovered. It was from these discoveries that the theory was postulated by von Haast about the culture of the moa-hunters. After numerous amateur archeologists had dug in the caves the Canterbury Museum again began systematic excavations in 1957. The discovery of the post butts has been the most notable; find in recent times. j