Open AccessThe Making of the Māori Middle Ages
Author(s) -
Atholl Anderson
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of new zealand studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.102
0eISSN - 2324-3740
pISSN - 1176-306X
DOI - 10.26686/jnzs.v0i23.3987
Subject(s) - middle ages , wonder , the renaissance , narrative , history , relation (database) , section (typography) , project commissioning , publishing , archaeology , sociology , classics , ancient history , literature , art , art history , epistemology , philosophy , computer science , database , operating system
Literary and scientific narratives are often constructed in three parts, of which the task of the middle section is to make the beginning and the end satisfactorily consistent with each other. In this lecture I discuss some ideas about how that might be accomplished in relation to a middle or transitional phase of Māori archaeology, which I will take as dating about AD 1450-1650. Some of you might wonder whether this has not been done satisfactorily already, but I assure you that it has not. In fact, just as Medieval Europe was once seen as a dark age between the Classical era and its Renaissance, so the middle phase in Māori archaeology remains a shadowland between highlights of Polynesian colonisation and classic Māori culture.