Variation and process: the history, current practice and future potential of mortuary archaeology in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Mortuary archaeology in New Zealand is a tapu ‘sacred, prohibited’ subject due to the special place that kōiwi tangata ‘human skeletal remains’ hold in Māori culture. Recognition of Māori rights over ancestral remains led to a near cessation of published studies in recent decades. But kōiwi tangata are frequently uncovered accidentally by development or erosion and, in collaboration with Māori, recorded prior to reburial. The resulting pool of unpublished data presents an opportunity to advance our currently stagnant archaeological understanding of the burial practices of past Māori communities, particularly given that some sites are demonstrating a higher level of complexity of burial process than has hitherto been discussed archaeologically. Although still a highly charged subject, there exist a number of examples of Māori groups voicing support for respectful, collaborative study of burials. As time and tide continue to expose kōiwi, it is time for appraisal of the archaeological literature on this subject. This paper reviews the history and current practice of mortuary archaeology in New Zealand, highlighting how current bioarchaeological perspectives offer valuable potential. In particular, the concept of the burial rite as an ongoing process, the various stages of which can result in different forms of burial, and the application of the principles of field anthropology (anthropologie de terrain) to identify stages of mortuary activity offer new frameworks for exploring the variety evident in Māori burial and the social and conceptual insight this can offer.