Internet Archaeol. 16. Phillips. Broadening the scope

3.3 Broadening the scope

In this paper the Māori ethnographic data relating to one region of Aotearoa has been considered. This process identified a series of assumptions implicit in many of the spatial analyses commonly used in archaeology. There are two important points here. Firstly, this highlights the cultural nature of spatial analyses as mentioned in the Harris and Lock quote (see also Gaffney 1995; Church et al. 2000). Secondly, it might be inferred that Māori are unique, which at one level obviously they are, but swidden cultivation and bilineal descent are not unique to Māori and may mean that other societies have had similar patterns of land use in the past. In fact, Coles' review (1999) of Neolithic structures in Britain and Europe that have been dated by dendrochronology demonstrates that a normal occupation lasted no more than 10-15 years, sometimes followed by a period of abandonment lasting 10-40 years, with a subsequent short-lived reoccupation. Very pertinent here is Coles' question: 'when and how and why did Europeans develop a culture of permanence' (2001, 5). Evidence such as this should be sought to test the interpretations achieved by spatial analyses.