Researchers hope to get to the “backbone of the story” of their ancestors when they travel to Harvard University with taonga samples for testing.
The taonga were discovered at the Wairau Bar in Marlborough, the first known settlement of Aotearoa, and known as “New Zealand’s most significant archaeological landscape”.
Rangitāne o Wairau trustees Dr Peter Meihana and Keelan Walker will join Amber Aranui, a curator at Te Papa Tongarewa, and Dr Monica Tromp, senior laboratory analyst at Southern Pacific Archaeological Research and Otago University, on the trip to the United States.
The collagen samples tested there could help trace exactly where the taonga, found at the Wairau Bar and later stored at Canterbury Museum, originated.
The technique, Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), was a first for Aotearoa, Meihana said.
“ZooMs is a minimally invasive method, not visible to the naked eye, whereby we can take collagen samples from marine mammal bone taonga (treasures),” Meihana said.
“It’s a little dipstick which goes inside a tube and there’s like a little bud on the end of it that’s being dipped in a liquid. You rub it over the bone and it takes a sample of it.
“We then take those samples to Harvard, and they have this machine that can tell us absolutely what species those taonga are made from, so we can start to build up an understanding.”
He said the project was part of wider Ika Moana Ika Whenua research by Te Papa, which aimed to build a greater understanding of the relationship between their ancestors and marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins.
In 2009, Rangitāne reburied their ancestors at the Wairau Bar about 70 years after they were dug up. But some 2000 artefacts still remained in storage at Canterbury Museum.
The iwi wanted to build a cultural centre in the region so they could be repatriated.
Harvard’s tests were expected to reveal a lot of information to accompany the taonga to be displayed. They could confirm when and where the marine mammal was alive, which would reveal a lot about their ancestors, and could even confirm where and when their ancestors came from before arriving in New Zealand.
“One particular taonga that we’re interested in is a dolphin or porpoise tooth necklace, we’re not 100% sure what it is, that was excavated in the [19]40s and taken away to Canterbury University,” Meihana said.
“We can determine exactly what species it is, and then further on down the track ... determine whether or not the teeth came from a dolphin/porpoise here, or in the islands.
“We know that these people who have settled here were Polynesian. Māori have always known through oral histories ... and now this will give us another layer of knowledge.”
Meihana said the repatriation in 2009 had helped to rebuild relationships between the iwi and museums and universities.
“That kind of established the blueprint for further engagement, that’s done on an equal footing, not what happened in the 40s.
“The museum sector’s radically changed. So there’s much more of a partnership.”
Walker, through his company Loud Noise Media, would be filming the process so the stories could then be shared with iwi.
“Quite often as part of the bigger stories, it’s cool to capture some of the things that we never were prepared for or weren’t expecting,” Walker said.
“They are often things that aren’t directly part of the research.
“When we went to Canterbury University to do the sampling there were a number of other artefacts that were a part of the collection. There were things we hadn’t seen before.
“There was an artefact that looked like a claw. We didn’t actually know what it was, but since then it’s got us thinking in a different direction. Well, what is it?
“There’s the backbone of the story, and everything else that makes the story as we go.”
The research team would leave for Harvard on Friday. The trip would provide a wider opportunity to visit “one of North America’s best whaling museums” and meet indigenous scholars from the university’s Native American Studies department.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
