Te Ao Tawhito

Te Ao Tawhito: The Old World contemplates Māori origins in the `blue continent’, the vast Pacific Ocean across which the earliest ancestors travelled to settle these southernmost Pacific islands. Here they organised into hapū and iwi, adapting tropical ways to life in a huge but temperate land, building communities and developing cultures. Early European visitors observed Māori society and changed it too, as more and more Europeans arrived, then stayed. Drawn from the landmark publication, Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History (2014), Te Ao Tawhito tells the great origin narrative of Māori history from 3000 BC–AD 1830.

Atholl Anderson, CNZM, FRSNZ, FAHA, FSA (Ngāi Tahu), was awarded the Prime Minister’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Non-fi ction in 2016, with particular reference to Tangata Whenua. To the writing of this landmark history, he has brought the experience of many years’ archaeological research throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Working with tradition, he has made a significant contribution to tribal history in southern New Zealand, with books such as The Welcome of Strangers (1998) and Ngāi Tahu: A Migration History, edited with Te Maire Tau (2008). He is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, and associated also with the University of Canterbury and the University of Otago.

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