Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa In Pursuit of Māori Warfare: New archaeological research on conflict in pre- European contact New Zealand Mark D. McCoy a, ⁎ , Thegn N. Ladefoged b,c a Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750336, Dallas, TX 75275-0336, USA b Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand c Te Pūnaha Matatini, A New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence, New Zealand ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Warfare Fortification Geospatial archaeology Māori ABSTRACT In the landmark book Māori Warfare, Vayda (1960) used oral traditions and historical documents to characterize conflict in New Zealand as a cycle of fights over prime agricultural lands driven by population pressure. We examine the archaeological evidence for when Māori warfare took on the character described by Vayda, spe- cifically when were there fortifications across the landscape leaving few opportunities for expansion to un- fortified lands to counter food-shortages. We present a critical review of research relevant to the nature and motivations of conflict and the results of excavations we conducted in the Bay of Islands region. We find that Vayda’s cycle of warfare is first evident around AD 1650, more than a century after the first fortifications were constructed in AD 1500. Explaining the origins of conflict requires a more nuanced model of environmental, cultural, and historical factors that shaped the degree and frequency of conflict. 1. Introduction Andrew Vayda’s book Māori Warfare is a foundational text in the cannon of anthropological literature on warfare (Vayda, 1960). It is a classic study of inter-group conflict among New Zealand’s indigenous Polynesian people, “in relation to other parts of Māori culture and in relation to the New Zealand environment” (Vayda, 1960:3). The study attempts to organize a large body of ethnohistoric data recounted through oral traditions and puts forward the hypothesis that conflict was a consequence of population pressure in New Zealand (Fig. 1). Vayda painted a picture of residential groups that “might have been increasing in numbers or… temporarily exhausted its existing land,” faced with two alternatives to expand their territory: clear primary forest, or “get previously used land from other groups” (Vayda, 1960:113). He further reasoned that “the labour involved in clearing the primary forest was so great, the preferred alternative probably was to get previously used land from other groups – by force if necessary” (Vayda, 1960:113). Vayda has gone on to refine his views on the re- lationship between ecology and culture (e.g., Vayda, 1976; see review in Scaglion, 2008), but, the notion of groups who had their choices of agricultural land severely limited by environmental variables and neighboring groups who became engaged in a cycle of conflict driven by food crises continues to resonate in anthropology (e.g., Younger, 2008), and especially anthropological archaeology (Arkush et al., 2005; Chacon et al., 2015; Field & Lape, 2010; Keeley, 1997). Māori warfare was not just, or even, primarily, concerned with territorial conquest. Acts of war were also motivated by utu (revenge and other actions to achieve balance in relationships between groups) and at times included raiding to kill people, desecrate land, and obtain food and slaves. At present it is not clear when Māori warfare took on the character described by Vayda (1960), specifically when there were fortifications across the landscape leaving few opportunities for expansion to un- fortified lands to counter food-shortages. Three possible scenarios fit current archaeological evidence regarding the onset and distribution of fortifications. First, fortifications (called pā) began to be built around AD 1500 (Schmidt, 1996; McFadgen et al., 1994); and it is possible that the es- sential characteristics of Māori warfare were present from the onset of fortification construction. No one region of the country has been noted as having been fortified earlier than another region (Schmidt, 1996), suggesting territories had been established and defended in all regions, and it is at this time that access to the best source of obsidian, important for the tools of daily life, in some cases ceased, or was replaced by local alternative sources of obsidian (for a recent summary see Walter et al., 2010). Second, regional studies of fortification histories suggest that Vayda’s (1960) view of warfare is more applicable after more than a century of endemic warfare. Around 1650 AD there are signs of small https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101113 Received 5 February 2019; Received in revised form 7 October 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mdmccoy@smu.edu (M.D. McCoy). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 56 (2019) 101113 0278-4165/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T