The Gothic Revival

Though not homogenous, Victorian society was founded on faith in the sanity of the family and the home. In seeking to express this “individuality” there was a tendency to look on architecture as a means of communicating ideas, and architectural forms and details were used for symbolic rather than functional reasons. The house became a symbol of social standing and “Gothic Revival” marks the start of a new era. The genuine medieval tradition of function and structure was forgotten; the “Gothic” veneer was a sentimental decoration that reminded the expatriates of “Home”, and in time became the accepted style for all buildings–domestic or public. This trend towards “picturesque romanticism” was carried to the extent of building an ornate false facade in “Carpenters' Gothic” on to a simple cottage in the functional tradition (Morrinsville)–the start of Main Street, New Zealand. The basic house plan is still “Model T” with rooms either side of a narrow passage and with bathroom and kitchen (servants' quarters) relegated to the sunless south. The asymmetrical “Regency” style is developed by projecting the front sitting room and “featuring” the steep gable and wall, with bay window, fretted barge boards, and finial post. Standard (mass produced) joinery was available and doors, windows, and glazed verandah panels were decorated with small squares and rectangles of highly coloured glass arranged around clear centre panes. Ornate furniture and fittings became symbols of opulence and hence social position. The conservatory, furniture, and decoration were symbols of “taste and elegance” and, like the separate “tradesman's entrance”, were used to “keep up appearances”. The incongruities and “Battle of the Styles” which mark this phase were the result of the grafting of “Gothic Revivalism” on to the older tradition, which gradually disappeared. Hence the indiscriminate mixing of architectural details derived from any historical period. Some of the finest buildings of this early period still remaining are: the oldest church in New Zealand, Christ Church, Russell (1836); Waimate North (1839–71); St. Mary's Church, New Plymouth, Rev. F. Thatcher (1843); the unique Maori Church at Rangiatea, Otaki (1849), blending Maori meeting house, timber functional, and “Gothic Revival” styles; the Selwyn churches and houses around Auckland, many designed by the clerical architects Dr A. G. Purchas and Rev. F. Thatcher, from St. John's College, Tamaki (1847), to Ayr Street House, Parnell (1855); St. Mark's Church, Remuera (1857); St. Paul's, Wellington (1865–73); St. Mary's, Parnell, Auckland, architect, B. W. Montfort (1888); Robert Rhodes's homestead, Parau, Lyttelton (1853); Dalcroy House, Lyttelton (1859); the “row houses” in Cumberland Street, Dunedin; First Church, Dunedin, architect R. A. Lawson (1874); and the “Selwynesque” house, Victoria Avenue, Wanganui (1860s).

Picturesque Eclecticism

From the sixties to the nineties land was needed for the new settlers, and a rapidly changing pattern of life is apparent in the houses of this period. In the military settlements of the Auckland Province “Fencible” cottages, officers' residences, blockhouses, and barracks, which were built in the earlier functional and elegant traditions, bear witness to a North Island harrassed by the Maori Wars of the sixties. In the South Island, where the gold discoveries had brought about a rapid increase of population, the buildings in the seventies and, in the north, in the eighties, reflect the command over building materials and techniques and changing styles–the trend is from simplicity to complexity, from low to high relief, and from restraint to grandiloquence. In 1868 J. E. FitzGerald was declaiming against false fronts of “large dead walls of scantling and boards” built “to make the house look bigger than it is, to gratify a false and ignoble vanity”. Regretfully he recalled “those small unpretending tenements which were built by the early colonists; some of them not ungraceful in their proportions; all of them possessing the beauty of simplicity and truth, devoid of vulgar pretension, tawdry vanity and inappropriate ornament”. Outwardly the buildings of the seventies and eighties differed from one another only in the degree wherein each expressed the “personal taste” of the builder, but beneath the diversity and visual anarchy is a basic unity of style, founded on consistent principles, that we can recognise as a cultural expression of High Victorian life. The “picturesque eclecticism” of the buildings of this period set the atmosphere of most New Zealand cities and towns and, behind the facade of “modernisation”, the underlying taste and aesthetic attitudes of wealthy Victorians persisted through superficial changes of style and ornament to find expression in the suburban homes of the twentieth century.

The general development of “styles” at this time is based on the following influences superimposed on our earlier pioneering tradition. In the small house the fashionable “clichés” were as integral as the feathers on a woman's hat–the builders' vernacular limped into the twentieth century, tenacious but battered by the cultivated tradition. In larger architect-designed buildings “Italianate” was favoured initially; later came the heavy eaves, cornices, brackets, and window dressings, coupled round-headed or double-hung “Chicago” windows, which seeped down the social scale to common usage. Similarly, the Great Exhibition of 1851 influenced furniture design and decoration. Prince Albert's “model home for four families” could be seen scaled down for two families in Cleveland Street, Parnell, Auckland. Finally, in the seventies, came “French ‘Neo-grec’ romanticism”, with its high Slate roofs, cast-iron fringe, and wrought-iron finials.

Just as the popular New Zealand artists Barraud and Gully sought the “picturesque and beautiful” with painstaking craftsmanship and “meticulous piling on of detail”, the Victorian builders created their “picturesque eclecticism” by the use of such building materials as mouldings, joinery, and turnery; cast and wrought iron; pattern-stamped metal ceilings and eaves; wood imitating stone; corrugated iron, slate, tiles, and terra cotta; and frieze tiles and “streaky bacon” brickwork.

The Victorian builders' mastery of local materials and their eclectic handling of architectural styles can be seen in any fashionable suburb of the period, or more permanently displayed in the architect-designed public buildings, though the latter tend to represent the “Battle of the Styles” of the upper school of design. An early building showing the influence of English romanticism is the “stick style” Auckland Hospital (1847) with “emphasis given to the structural and visual manipulation of the timber framing sticks”, and its steep Gothic shingle roofs and massive brick chimneys. Of similar interest are the Palladian “Italianate” second Government House at Auckland, architect William Mason (1855); “Elizabethan” Provincial Building, Nelson, architect Maxwell Burg (1861); “Alberton”, the Kerr Taylor home, Mount Albert, Auckland (1862); Ferndale Park, Mount Albert, Auckland (1864); “Gothic” Anglican Cathedral, Christchurch, architect G. Gilbert Scott (1861–64); Supreme Court, Auckland, architect Ed. Ramsey (1867); and Bank of New Zealand, Queen Street, Auckland, architect L. Larry (1869). By 1877 local builders had erected what is commonly regarded as being “the largest permanent wooden building in the world”, the Government Buildings, Wellington. The Government Architect, W. H. Clayton, also designed the monumental second Government House, Wellington (1871). Also of this period are Firth's Castle, Mount Eden, Auckland (1874); Larnach's Castle, Dunedin (1876); “Pah Farm” (now Monte Cecilia), Mount Roskill, Auckland, (1879) architect Wm. Mahony; Sir John Logan Campbell's “Kilbryde”, Parnell, Auckland (1881); and French Public Library and Art Gallery, Auckland, architects Grainger and D'Ebro (1887). The “Balmoral baronial” Admiralty House, Auckland (1902), which was demolished in 1916, Allan McLean's 40-room mansion, Hollylea, Christchurch (1903), and P. E. Theomin's “Jacobean” mansion, Dunedin, by the London architects Ernest George and Yeates (1905), mark the end of the period. The ebullience and vitality have gone and there are now signs of the “Shingle Style” and the growing American influence.

The Late Victorian Problem: 1890–1918

With prosperity came the demand for large expensive houses and the materialisation of a typically Victorian concept, an organised architectural profession. As early as 1872 Canterbury had an Association of Architects, followed by similar bodies in other centres. The New Zealand Institute of Architects (N.Z.I.A.) was founded in 1905 and, by 1913, had 73 members. Publications, such as Modern Homes of New Zealand (1917) and Commonsense Homes for New Zealanders (c. 1921), suggested that the Late Victorian style had lost favour with the architects, if not their clients. The former preferred “one style revival”, the public, the popular “Queen Anne”, which featured broken “picturesque” roofs, strident “marseilles” tiles, slates, fussy terracotta ridges and finial decorations, elaborate false gables, with curved ribbed metal eaves, and course brackets over bulbous bay windows. Expressive of the Art Nouveau was the fretted wood ornament on verandahs, halls, and furniture, matched by leaded casement fanlights and doors. The typical house had projected “feature” rooms front and side, with narrow timber verandah between. With its irregular outline, aimless contrasts, incomprehensive ornament, without order, proportion, harmony, or unity, “Queen Anne” was perhaps the lowest standard in architectural style.

The Fruits of Materialism: 1918–46

This was an era of regimentation, mass entertainment, totalitarian systems, and standardisation. Technology, propaganda, and high-pressure advertising assaulted the senses and the individual was submerged in the mass. Unable to control the insecure and changeable world, caught in expanding cities and towns, the suburban dweller sought to create an oasis where every brick and tree could be accounted for, and the unpredictable excluded from everyday life. In 1894 the Government of New Zealand had passed an Act that enabled homebuilders to borrow from the State at favourable rates of interest; later it was extended to provide for the erection of private dwellings by State, local authorities, and other groups of persons. The census definition of a private dwelling is “the residence of a family”, even though it be only a room or rooms in a house. In 1921 the size of the average family house was 4·28 persons; in 1926–4·17; in 1936–3·90, a decrease of some significance on the design of houses. The isolation of New Zealand was breaking down under the impact of revolutionary ideas and rapid communications. A post-war boom was curtailed by the disastrous world slump, which caused widespread unrest, distress, and unemployment. The 7,000 permits issued for new dwellings in 1927 fell to 1,500 in 1933. In 1935 the tide turned and the newly elected Labour Party began to apply their policy of Socialism; the Housing Survey Act of 1935 sought information on such topics as type, construction, condition of dwelling, services, number of occupants, bedrooms, degree of overcrowding, storage of food, provision of light and ventilation, and yard and air space. In 1936 the Department of Housing Construction was formed to plan houses and housing schemes. These were not to be mass-provided “workers” dwellings, but were to be State owned and of a higher standard than those occupied by the ordinary citizen. Housing had become a public utility. But the shadow of war spread once more over the world. While London was bombed we celebrated our Centennial (1940) with ponderous gaiety and published surveys of national development that became landmarks of our culture. The dark days of 1942 and the American invasion receded, and revealed that the main features of New Zealand life had survived the crisis by a narrow margin.

“Makeshift” Adaptation to the New Environment

The primitive shelters of the first European immigrants to New Zealand express the embryonic growth of all living things and the root of all architecture—the separation of “human” from “natural” environment. Architecture involves the idea of man moulding Nature to suit his own needs. The early settlers met Nature on different terms from the Maoris, for they had the power to conquer and control and thereby to shape their traditional Western culture to the new environment. At the beginning, with limited time, tools, and makeshift materials, occasionally with help of friendly natives, the pioneers built “temporary” basic shelters; a universal stage of architectural development. They improvised “primeval” shelters of raupo, toitoi, flax, fern, and totara bark; tents from poles, saplings, canvas, and planks or split slabs; tree-fern huts or more permanent dwellings from clay, sods, “wattle and daub”, or stone. Isolated from the outside world by the vast ocean and from each other by virgin bush, mountains, and rivers, they had to adapt themselves to conditions of great hardship in lonely settlements.

A Characteristic “Makeshift” House

A typical pioneer home of this period was the tworoom, “but and ben” cottage (“but”–kitchen, “ben”–parlour) with low walls, possibly with ladder access to the attic roof space, with roof thatched or of wood shingles; a solid cube with minimum openings, two small oiled-canvas or calico-covered windows and a door between; a massive chimney in the centre of the house or on the gable end wall. It was essentially a “crofter's cabin”, that universal primitive house type from which all domestic architecture is descended–a plan and shape that has tenaciously persisted for a thousand years or more in the British Isles.

Folk Architecture–the Functional Tradition

The second architectural phase of the pioneering era was expressed in the development of the weatherboard on light-frame cottages, built with timber bearing the marks of Iron Age tools. They expressed the vernacular of the people–a “popular” taste that was common throughout the country and, indeed, throughout the British colonies. These pioneer tradesmen used simple forms appropriate to the function, and often the fine proportions reflect the principle that beauty lies in fixed proportions, not in fixed forms. Uncomplicated artisans adapted the splendid functional tradition of the British Isles to available materials and evolved methods of construction and usage to suit local climate. As they adjusted to the warmer climate and stronger light, the verandah was used as a simple, low-pitch, leanto structure at the front, where one could wash and change boots and clothes or leave supplies under cover; later the wider verandah on two or three sides was widely used, not as an addition, but conceived as a transition space, an integral part of the house. As the family grew, portions of the verandah were enclosed as extra rooms. This flexible, timber vernacular, modest and restrained, bearing the marks of anonymous craftsmen and with a strong emphasis on simple living, was widely used until the late sixties and runs as a thin thread in isolated buildings until the present day. The functional tradition can be seen in remote farmhouses and outbuildings and in those few buildings that have survived from this early period, such as the first and second timber buildings, the Butler/Kemp house, Kerikeri (1822); George Clarke's Mission House, Waimate North (1832); Lavaud's house, Akaroa (c. 1840); John Logan Campbell's “Acacia” Cottage, Cornwall Park, Auckland (1841); F. E. Maning's house, Onoke, Hokianga (1840s); Ford cottage (stone) Panmure, Auckland (1848); Bedggood and Pugh's Watermill, Waimate North (1850); old cob house, Molesworth Station, Marlborough (c. 1850); Wm. Bray's cottage (cob), Avonhead, Canterbury (early 1850s); Rangikura farmhouse, Otaki (1859); military blockhouses around Auckland, Onehunga (c. 1856); Blockhouse Bay and Otahuhu (1867); or Wallaceville, Wellington (1861); “Allendale”, Mount Albert, Auckland (1860); miners' cottages, Arrowtown, and other homesteads in Central Otago (1860s); and the Morven Hills woolshed (stone) Lindis, Otago (early 1880s).

Heart kauri, matai, and totara were used for framing and weatherboards, and kauri and rimu for joinery and furniture. The nails were hand forged. In Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago, where timber was scarce, boxed cob, slab, cob and ricker, and rammed earth or stone were commonly used. The chimneys were built of hand-made sun-dried bricks or slabs covered with clay and galvanised iron. Glass was in small panes, and oiled canvas or calico often served instead.

Characteristic House in Functional Tradition

The main elements of the house of this period are the rectangular or “L”-shaped plan, two, three, or four rooms off a central corridor on the ground floor; a medium or steeply pitched roof (covered with thatch, shingles, galvanised iron, or, later, slates) changing to a lower pitched verandah roof at the eave line, simply supported by light timber posts. The centrally placed front door was balanced by symmetrically placed small-paned, casement or double-hung windows. When extra accommodation was needed, a leanto kitchen addition was made at the back, or else the front and rear walls were carried up to attic window sills. The higher springing of the roof allowed greater headroom in the attic bedrooms, which were entered by “companionway” stairs from passage, but the small dormers over the verandah or gable-end windows barely lit this attic sleeping space. The New England colonial “salt box” shape was common in larger houses which required more than roof or attic space. Here a medium double-pitched roof was carried over the additional rooms at the back and the front verandah. Often the original “makeshift” cottage was economically adapted as a wing of a new building, intersecting it at right angles. Timber buildings offered the “flexibility” required by the family–an organic unit, growing, not standing still. The early buildings governed by such functional considerations and obeying empirical laws, had an “organic” quality quite devoid of “featurism”. They were simple in shape and detail–the simplicity of “commonsense” building; they obeyed the timeless rule of craftsmanship–honesty of intent and abhorrence of misrepresentation, and materials and structure were logically and directly expressed in unpretentious dwellings that realistically reflected the way of life of unselfconscious builders.

Pioneering–Elegance 1820–60

The cultural tradition inherited by the empire builders was founded on a belief in the inherent orderliness of Nature, confidence in reason, faith in the ancients of Greece and Rome, and, deriving from these, an acceptance of rulers of taste. Man in complete control of his environment was the essence of this tradition. This control over nature, materials, and surroundings is architecturally expressed in the English houses of the Georgian/Regency period (1714–1830) where each individual has his privacy but shares in the calm dignity of the whole community life. The cultivated upper class set a high standard of living and design, which is reflected in the architecture of the period throughout the Commonwealth and North America; but the tyranny of their classical taste and set rules was not so binding on the rising middle class who pursued commerce and comfort and expressed their own way of life in the succeeding Victorian Age.

Social Background in New Zealand

Many settlements throughout New Zealand were based on the ideas of one of the most remarkable of Britain's colonial reformers, E. G. Wakefield and his New Zealand Company. Their aim was to replace haphazard separate settlements with an organised group scheme. Wakefield considered that such colonisation would “help remove the fear of political disturbance” and induce the common people to “bear their lot with patience”. Profitable employment would thus be found. They would reproduce the civilisation of England, and to a point they succeeded, especially in the Canterbury settlement where the Wakefield theories made perhaps the strongest impact.

“Georgian and Regency Style” Expressed in Houses

The immigrants brought with them an English taste for privacy based on the Elizabethan principle that each family should have its own home with a separate room for each person. New Zealand houses of this period reflect the interaction of two conflicting traditions–the new superimposed on the old. The clients, landowners and the “official” class, showed their admiration of the Classical inheritance and the ideal of “squire and country-house”; the builders, conservative artisan and craftsmen, and the servant class, had their roots in the functional tradition and simple living. This conflict was expressed not so much in the evolution of new forms as in the particular way that characteristic features from both traditions were combined–ranging in expression from simple crudity to an elegant “preciousness”. When, however, the Classical forms and details expressed an intuitive understanding of the spirit of the tradition in which they were working, Georgian architecture became the vernacular of the people. It was a universal language and the forms expressed ideas that were widely understood. Even as late as 1878, when Greenway added the verandahs and leanto addition to Pompallier House at Russell, there were isolated examples of this tradition, but they were no longer fashionable, for “Gothic Revival” and the “Battle of the Styles” were well under way. The best remaining examples of this elegant period are the Stone Store, Kerikeri (1833); Treaty House, Waitangi, designed by one of the most polished Australian architects, John Verge (1833); Bishop Pompallier's house, Russell (1843); the singleroom library (1841) and Mission House, Tauranga, built by the Rev. A. N. Brown (1847); and the Langlais Eteveneaux House, Akaroa (c. 1840).

From the English Regency period (1800–30) emerged a style based on the “back to nature” movement of painters, poets, and writers. This “picturesque romanticism” was a revolt against the set rules of Georgian architecture, which was expressed architecturally in a new relationship between house and garden. To get as close as possible to Nature was the consistent aim of Regency architecture, and this integration of house and garden, of design and living produced some of the most elegant houses in our short history. Vestiges of this tradition are seen in such Auckland houses as the old Nathan house, St. Kevens, Karangahape Road; the former Crippled Children's House, Mount Street; old St. Paul's Vicarage, Eden Crescent; Hulme Court, Parnell (c. 1843); Glenmore Lodge, Mount Albert (1844); Motions Mill House, Western Springs (c. 1865); and Sir George Grey's Mansion House, Kawau Island (1871). Also in this category are the Gould's house, Russell (1850); Lord Rutherford's home, Foxhill, Nelson, and the Greer homestead, Patearoa, and Mount Smart farmhouse of Central Otago.

For centuries after their arrival in New Zealand the Maoris lived in isolation and gradually adapted themselves to the new environment. But, as Aotearoa was much colder than their former Polynesian homes, of necessity their material arts changed and developed. Warm clothing and houses were needed; new techniques were evolved for weaving flax fibres into garments and for erecting large plank-built houses. The materials and construction of their houses varied with the locality and type of dwelling. It is not possible to classify houses according to function, except that, in general, the functions of meeting, sleeping, cooking, and food storage were expressed separately in variations of three basic shapes–the rectangular, circular, and the oval. The whare runanga, the assembly or meeting house, always conformed to a rectangular, simple, thatched, gable-roofed form, with deep front verandah that provided shelter from the wind and rain. Facing the marae or open meeting space, this whare was the embodiment of the tribal community. As in all primitive architecture, sculpture formed an integral part of the building; the structural form and the decoration, applied pattern or carved legend, were expressed as a rhythmic, unified whole. Magnificently carved wall panels and tall posts supported the painted roof structure–wall plates, continuous ridge beam, and bold rafters. In the main the materials available were skilfully and imaginatively used with great craftsmanship; the plan and structure of the building were physically functional, even psychologically and spiritually functional in an intrinsically architectural way that our present day buildings seldom are. The whare and the pa were genuine cultural expressions of the community life of the Maori people. They had little influence on European immigrants, but there is now a revaluation of the Maori heritage by younger present-day architects in search of roots based on a national building tradition. This has aroused an awareness of similar “tent and cave” architectural ideas.

Architecture, considered as a cultural expression, is the outward and visible sign of the changing patterns of thought, life, and society. As Gowans has pointed out (Architecture in Canada, 1958), the following patterns, operating simultaneously and often superimposed on one another, are apparent in the development of any styles of housing.

1. Man's successive stages of dominance over nature and his environment expressed architecturally by his command over materials and by the relationship of his buildings to the space or nature around them.

2. National tradition expressed in architecture as the development of certain consistent preferences, particular kinds and ways of decoration, proportions, organizations and materials.

3. Changing beliefs about what constitutes “architecture” as distinct from “mere building”. This involves both aesthetic and philosophical ideals.

4. Successive historical styles which result from the interaction of these broader patterns, and particularly from the sharp conflict between the cultivated tradition of academic architecture and the vernacular tradition of unselfconscious common people.

None of the arts in New Zealand, “useful” or fine, has ever existed in isolation. For the first hundred years our architectural history has continued to reflect the provincial dependence of remote, “genteel” traditionalists, belatedly adopting overseas fashions but with a steadily diminishing time lag between the distant cultural centre and the isolated provinces. Remoteness fostered the snobbery of the overseas product which persists to the present day. Though the heart remained in the “home country”, the home lay in the New World of the Pacific, and the building forms, materials, and techniques have more in common with those colonial brothers–Australia and West Coast America–than with the mother of all, Victorian England.

The history of domestic architecture measures the progress in standards of comfort and convenience and the development of mechanical equipment. The basic task of the builder–sheltering man, his work, and his possessions in structures that give spiritual as well as material gratifications–remains constant.

(1890– ).

Former Director, Auckland Institute, Museum.

A new biography of Archey, Gilbert Edward appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Gilbert Edward Archey was born at York, England, on 9 August 1890. Coming to New Zealand at an early age, he graduated from Canterbury University College, Christchurch, with the degrees of M.A. and D.Sc. From 1914 to 1923 he was Assistant Curator of the Canterbury Museum, then he was appointed to the Auckland Institute and Museum in 1924. In the First World War he served in the New Zealand Field Artillery, rising to a captaincy, and in the Second World War he was attached to the British Military Administration in Malaya with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was on the New Zealand University Grants Committee, 1948–51, 1954–60, and on the Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, being president from 1941 to 1942. He is a member of the Maori Purposes Fund Board, the Waitangi National Trust Board, and the Auckland branch of the Royal Society, and the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council. He retired from the Auckland Museum early in 1964. He was awarded an O.B.E. in 1919 and knighted in 1963. His publications, apart from contributions to learned journals, include South Sea Folk (1937 and 1949); Sculpture and Design, an Outline of Maori Art (1955); and The Moa, a Study of the Dinornithiformes (1941).

New Zealand is the only country which has twice won the International Seefab Cup Competition in the men's and women's classes. The men's cup has been won twice outright by W. J. Burton. In 1953 Miss M. Wright—a former New Zealand Ladies' Champion—won the Empire Games postal shoot and became British Empire Champion.

Although archery is one of man's oldest pastimes, it was not introduced into New Zealand until the 1870s when a group of archers formed a club at One Tree Hill, Auckland. Shortly afterwards, similar clubs were formed at Dunedin and at Wellington where the first Association of Archery Clubs was formed. It was not until 1942, however, that any moves towards forming a New Zealand Archery Association were made. This came into being on 1 January 1943 when the Dunedin, Brooklyn, Mangere, Palmerston North, Gisborne, Griffens, Ngaio, Gaiety, Wellington, and Timaru clubs were affiliated. By 1964 there were 39 clubs affiliated. Six sub-associations–Auckland, Bay of Plenty, East Coast, Taranaki, Wellington, and South Island–control the sport in their respective districts. These are affiliates of the national body which, in turn, is affiliated to the International Federation in England.

The objects of the New Zealand Archery Association are to encourage and promote the growth of the sport in all its forms, and to conduct national championships in archery. In 1944 the first national championships were held. At first these took the form of a postal shoot, but since 1948 they have been held as a tournament. The winners of the New Zealand Men's and Women's Open Championships are at end of this article.

In flight archery, where the object is to attain the longest possible distance with the lightest bow in the given class, the New Zealand record for the open class is 579 yards. This was established in 1957 at Levin by J. W. Hinchco who is also the only holder of the coveted Master Bowman, New Zealand, title.

With so much activity in New Zealand archaeology, it is impossible to single out and describe a few examples. Most of the research is described in the publications listed below, to which the interested reader is referred.

by Lawrence James Paul, B.SC., Fisheries Division, Marine Department, Wellington.

• The Moa Hunter Period of Maori Culture, Duff, R. (1956)
• Anthropology in the South Seas, Freeman, J. D., and Geddes, W. R. (1959)
• A Handbook to Field Recording in New Zealand, Golson, J., and Green, R. C. (1958)
• Journal of the Polynesian Society (Quarterly) (1892–)
• N.Z. Archaeological Association Newsletter (Quarterly) (1958–).

Radiocarbon analysis of charcoal, wood, shell, and bone is becoming increasingly valuable in dating New Zealand's pre-history. The method is still being perfected, but important results have already been obtained, notably the discovery that the country was settled by the Maori prior to the legendary Great Fleet of 1350, and that there was a large population between A.D. 1000 and 1200 in several areas. Dates ranging between approx. A.D. 1140 and 1640 have been obtained from Pounawea, South Otago, indicating that the site was occupied either continuously or periodically for 500 years. Other southern sites show a similar range of occupation, e.g., Papatowai, 1185–1640; Hawkesburn, 1350–1540. A date of approximately A.D. 1100 has been obtained from the Wairau Bar site. Motutapu Island (Auckland Harbour) has yielded dates of A.D. 1208 and 1768, showing that it was occupied during the important but little-understood “Intermediate” phase of culture.

Recording: Information about a site can be gained from local residents, particularly those with an interest in Maori history, from examination of aerial photographs, or from actual field work (often all three methods are used, in this order). In the field a detailed survey is made of the surface features of the site, using a map, tape measure, theodolite, camera, compass, and so on. The locality of the site, its type (hilltop pa, headland pa, island pa, etc.), main dimensions, proximity and relationship to other sites, the state of preservation and possibility of further damage, are all noted. If possible, the Maori name of the area and any historical references to it are obtained, together with a record of any artefact collections made from there.

Field recording is being done by small groups throughout the country. All the information collected is kept in regional files, with a duplicate set in a central file in Wellington.

Excavations are carried out on relatively few sites, due to the limited time, labour, and money available to the New Zealand archaeologist. The usual practice is to excavate 10-ft squares of ground, leaving a baulk of earth between each to act as a record of the stratigraphy (i.e., the positions and relationships) of the layers removed from the squares. Material inside the square is removed very carefully layer by layer, often a fraction of an inch at a time. The characteristics and contents of each layer are recorded in a field notebook, sketch plans are constantly drawn, and samples of important materials (bone, shell, charcoal, stone, pumice, etc.) are kept for further, and more careful identification and analysis.

“Emergency” excavations are sometimes necessary. Most sites are slowly being destroyed; banks, walls, ditches, pits, and canals are being levelled through natural processes of erosion, and earth structures and soil layers are being disturbed by tree-root penetration. Man, however, is the most destructive agent of all. In many places in New Zealand he has used shell middens for surfacing roads; in the Auckland area he has quarried into fortified volcanic cones, and in the South Island the hydro-electric development of the upper Waitaki River has flooded caves containing rock paintings. Road construction and house-building activities uncover and destroy countless sites throughout the country. The farmer discs and ploughs burial grounds, pa, working floors, etc., obliterating all stratification. When, however, such a threatened site is heard about in time, a salvage excavation is usually made to obtain as much information as possible before the site is finally lost. In Auckland, in particular, there is some concern over the amount of destruction occurring; a 1962 survey showed that of 267 recorded sites in the area, 204 were so badly destroyed that further investigations would not be worth while.