144). Sir Julius von Haast (1824–87) researched several sites in Canterbury,
and identiWed an earlier period in which human remains were found
in association with an extinguished large bird, the Moa, and a later Maori
period. Debates focused on whether or not these two populations were linked.
The founding of the Polynesian Society in 1892 was mainly connected with
the study of the latter and it was only in 1919 that teaching and systematic
archaeologicalWeldwork started in the country with the appointment of
Henry D. Skinner as lecturer in ethnology at Otago University 3 (Davidson
1988: 6).
In Australia there were about a dozen museums by the 1870s and the
stimulus provided by the learned local societies led to a similar number
opening between then and 1900—this, despite the acute economic depression
of the early 1890s, which had serious consequences for museums such as the
Queensland Museum at Brisbane and the museum with natural science
collections in Sydney (Pyenson & Sheets-Pyenson 1999: 144–5). However,
many learned individuals became largely uninterested in forming archaeo-
logical collections, for it was thought that contemporary objects represented
history suYciently well. Despite this, a few stone tools found their way into
museums, especially in theWrst half of the twentieth century, mainly after the
period this book deals with. These had been amassed by amateur collectors
who earned their living as engineers, metallurgists, geologists, farmers, doc-
tors, and educationalists. TheseWnds were all the result of surface collections.
Excavation was not deemed necessary as it was believed that the arrival of
Aborigines in Australia was relatively recent (GriYths 1996: 67, 78). The
diVerences between Tasmania and Australia were associated typologically
with the European Palaeolithic and the Palaeolithic/Neolithic respectively.
Some more ‘advanced’ technology was considered anomalous and its
presence explained through diVusion (McNiven & Russell 2005: 147) Failure
toWnd archaeological remains in stratigraphic contexts further diminished
the role of archaeology in the colonial understanding of Australia (GriYths
1996; White & O’Connell 1982: 22–8). This meant that the discussion on
evolutionism after Charles Darwin’s publication ofThe Origin of Species
(1859) barely touched upon archaeological local issues, but encompassed
the previously existing belief in the racial inferiority of natives, who were
doomed to extinction (Butcher 1999; McNiven & Russell 2005: 99–100)
(for New Zealand see Stenhouse 1999).
3 From 1937 he would be the Curator of Anthropology at the Otago Museum.296 Colonial Archaeology