University of Auckland researchers using TTL tools and software to understand Māori-ecosystem interactions and adaptations on the offshore islands of Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Our Te Pūnaha Matatini and Marden-funded research is investigating the complex interplay between early Māori settlers and the ecosystems of small offshore islands. Guided by foundational Polynesian principles, the settlers of Aotearoa learned to live in a fundamentally different environment and developed unique kaitiakitanga (values, principles, and guardianship practices) and tikanga (customary environmental practices).

Our transdisciplinary project studies alternative kaitiakitanga and ecodynamics models on six small offshore islands. It is a 2,700 km latitudinal transect from sub-tropical Raoul to sub-Antarctic Enderby Island. The research team includes archaeologists, palaeoecologists, geomorphologists, biogeochemists, computer modelers, and Matauranga Māori researchers.

Our research to date has been focused on Ahuahu Great Mercury Island off of the Coromandel Peninsula and Enderby Island in the deep Southern Ocean. On both islands, we have employed a range of cutting-edge technologies to gather spatial information about the materials we recover. During excavations, we use a Trimble total station to record the provenience of every artifact, feature, deposit, and palaeoecological sample, resulting in a database of several hundred thousand entries. In more remote areas of the islands, we record features, excavations, and palaeoecological vibra-cores with Trimble TDC-150 GNSS units. All data are manipulated with Trimble Business Center and other software for integration into our ArcGIS Pro GIS.

Thanks to these advanced technologies, we can integrate and analyze our multiple data streams to begin understanding the complex socio-environmental relations of early Māori settlers.