Shifting Grounds: History, Memory and Materiality in Auckland Landscapes c.1350–2018

Abstract

‘Shifting Grounds’ looks closely at three iconic Auckland landscapes — the Auckland Domain (Pukekawa), Maungakiekie (which encompasses two adjacent parks, Cornwall Park and One Tree Hill Domain) and the Ōtuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve. Approaching each site as an archive and examining the experiences embedded in each place, the thesis examines how history, memory and materiality have evolved in these three places. While New Zealand historians have explored relationships between people and their material worlds in wilderness and rural areas, relatively little work has been done on urban environments. ‘Shifting Grounds’ enters the landscapes of the country’s largest city, builds on existing scholarship on cultural and environmental history and extends the discussion into areas that have received relatively little attention. In the course of creating a fine-grained analysis of each site, it forges new historical connections across Auckland as well as nationally and internationally that are hard to see and understand in more generalised accounts of the city. Spanning the length of human occupation in Auckland, the thesis focuses on particular moments in each landscape across time, and considers how they have evolved and continue to interact with understandings of place, time and identity in the city today. ‘Shifting Grounds’ shows ways that the city has been profoundly shaped by its natural environment and by its long Māori tribal histories and dynamics. The study also brings into focus diverse communities and networks that have operated alongside mainstream British settler processes in Auckland. These landscapes reveal multi-faceted and forgotten histories that need to be understood alongside the more familiar, prominent stories of Auckland’s past. ‘Shifting Grounds’ also explores the intersections of history with other disciplines that have examined cultural and material dimensions of social life. Māori narratives, archaeology, material culture, geography, visual culture and written sources allow for an expansive view of the past in which the tangible and ephemeral connections between people and places can be connected with broader questions relating to cultural processes, power relations, the role of locality in history, materiality and multiple agency.