Garry's Blog

NEW publication: Archaeology of the Bay of Plenty By Garry Law. 149 p. What's it about? This report summarises the state of knowledge of the archaeology of the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, and reviews research themes and priorities of the past and for the future. The Bay of Plenty is favoured as a place to live today, but this has not always been the case. Its first settlement by Maori seems to have been sparse, whereas there are numerous sites from the later pre-European occupation period. The early economy was based around the marine resources and soils, which were well suited to cultivation of kumara. The first European visitors took relatively little interest in the region as it generally lacked the gold and accessible timber resources that drove early growth elsewhere, and cobalt-deficient soils made pastoral farming unattractive in much of the area. The development of improved transport resulted in greater growth, and pastoral farming increased as the lowlands and swamps were ...

Bookhabit - Auckland, August 1908: A Stop on the Great White Fleet World Cruise By Garry Law eBook - published 2008. This booklet places the visit of the Great White Fleet to Auckland in its New Zealand context and its geopolitical context - that of great power rivalry over prestige, territorial ambitions and projection of force by battleship lead fleets. It shows the social context of Auckland 100 years ago. Illustrated with contemporary pictures, many drawn from colour printed post cards. 37 pages. The first chapter is free - there is a small charge for downloading the whole book.

Description de l'Egypte NYPL Digital Gallery

Nina Burleigh 2007 Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt. Harper Collins New York. A popular and very readable account of the 1798 adventure by Napoleon to deny Egypt to the British. Hundreds of scholars and students accompanied the expeditions and were feted but eventually abandoned by Napoleon. Denon wrote an account of travels in upper and lower Egypt which was rapidly translated into English but the main output was the massive Description of Egypt published in several parts, initially under the authority of Napoleon, but after he was deposed under that of the restored monarch - this despite many of the scholars being treated abominably under the new regime. The book was one foundation of the incorporation of ancient Egyptian design elements into Empire Style. The Taschen edition (1990) is probably the most accessible, but it is also online. Along with many of the army, a sizeable proportion of the scholars were never to leave Egypt, dying there, many of the plague. ...

Hamish Keith 2007 The Big Picture. A History of New Zealand Art from 1642. Random House, Auckland. Hamish Keith has for long been claiming to have personally caused a revolution in the perception and handling of Maori art. His latest: The two cultures might not yet have come together, but they were now at least standing on the banks of the same contemporary river. It would be another twenty years before the Te Maori exhibition would restore to Maori art the same history, value and context that pioneer art historians had given to contemporary Pakeha artists. The 1984 Te Maori exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was a powerful watershed, not in the making of Maori art, but in the public perception of it. Te Maori launched the great treasures of Maori art into the modern world in the context of one of the world's great art museums. Its organisers intentions were subversive ... to lift the shroud of the fictitious past that New Zealand's natural history museu...

Readers of Martin Edmond's Chronicle of the Unsung (2004) will have picked up his interest in archaeology and pacific prehistory. The autobiographical parts of his latest book Waimarino County and Other Excursions (Martin Edmond, Auckland University Press 2007) give us more on how he came to that. "I recall when my mother stopped her red and white Hillman Imp on a suburban street in Huntly one day and said, What's it you are going to be, a doctor or a lawyer? replying, Actualy I want to be an archaeologist." Edmond had a 1972/73 holiday job at Takatu and spent some of his spare time looking at and digging in archaeological sites. "I drew a map of the pa site and sent it to Auckland Musuem, my sole contribution to archaeology." It is easy to disagree. His writing is rich in landscape, history and their connection. This book has a startling example: an account of his accidental personal discovery of the Tongapurutu rock carvings (p81). It is a fine piece of...