Final Report of the Ahuahu Archaeological Project, 2012-2022

Abstract

The Ahuahu Archaeological Project was initiated in 2012 to provide information on settlement of Ahuahu (Great Mercury Island) including information on the context for these settlements that might give insights into the mobility, resource exploitation, chronology, and socio-political organisation during occupation of the island. The project also placed an emphasis on obtaining data useful for understanding past environments and the ways in which people modified these environments through time. The project focussed on two areas of Ahuahu, the tombolo and surrounding slopes, including the Oneroa and Coralie Bay beaches, the Waitetoke mire and associated dunes, and the large cultivation complex and mire drainage system near Tamewhera Pā. However, rather than concentrate on one major site in each of these areas, the project instead sought data from numerous locations, both archaeological sites as conventionally identified, and locations with deposits that might not normally be considered archaeological sites; mire deposits and sediments surrounding the archaeological deposits that might help illustrate the history of deposition. Studying these locations in addition to archaeological sites would, it was hoped, provide data useful for understanding human influence and indeed modification of past environments.

Authority 2017-748, 2013-277, 2012-493 NZSRS: T10/327, T10/344, T10/356, T10/357, 7T10/358, T10/360, T10/361, T10/944, T10/1114 Ahuahu Great Mercury Island, 10 Pacific Ocean