Archaeologist wins travel award

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32459, 20 November 1970, Page 12

Archaeologist wins travel award

Mr M. M. Trotter, archaeologist at the Canterbury Museum, has received the 1970 travel award of the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand. The award was made for the first time in 1969. Mr Trotter will visit Australia to attend the twentyeighth International Congress of Oriehtalists to be held in Canberra from January 6 to 12, 1971. He has been invited to present a paper on his research on prehistoric rock paintings in New Zealand.

Before and during the congress, he will visit archaeological sites, museums, and ■ universities in Australia. • Mr Trotter was appointed ■ to the staff of the Canterbury . Museum in 1965, this being I the first full-time appointment of an archaeologist to i a New Zealand museum. Bel fore coming to the museum, he was a North Otago farmer

with an intense, patient, and systematic amateur interest in archaeology, having trained under Dr H. D. Skinner, then director of the Otago Museum. At this time, he investigated many archaeological sites in Otago.

Since his appointment to the Canterbury Museum he has carried out research into Maori prehistory, especially that of inland areas of the South Island. In 1969 he was a member of the Royal Society of New Zealand Cook bicentenary expedition to the South Pacific and surveyed archaeological sites on Atiu, one of the Cook Islands.