Core-Hinterland dynamics in New Zealand Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The concept of ‘hinterland’ encompasses ideas of distance, marginality and challenge and is often contrasted with ‘core’, which in turn implies centrality and resource richness. In this paper we address the applicability of both these concepts in New Zealand and examine their role in understanding long-term Maori history. We suggest that high mobility, low population density and extreme environmental and climatic diversity shaped circumstances where core-hinterland dichotomies were fluid and easily subverted. Working at different scales, we show how places transitioned across the core-hinterland continuum in response to socio-cultural, economic and environmental processes. Our case study shows that in New Zealand core-hinterland relationships were temporally dynamic and contingent rather than emerging from fixed principles of geographic resource distribution and accessibility.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24069