Archaeologists have been actively working in the Hauraki region since the mid-1950s, carrying out excavations and recording the surface evidence of Maori occupation on the landscape. The information has been incorporated into the site recording scheme of the NZ Archaeological Association (NZAA), the national database on archaeological sites. The NZAA files are the basis of the lists of sites, called the County Inventories and published by the Historic Places Trust, to inform territorial local authorities, development and planning agencies, and the public of the presence of sites.
Site recording began in the late 1950s, using students and interested amateurs to identify the locations of past Maori and European occupation where there was physical surface evidence remaining. After the implementation of the Historic Places Amendment Act 1975, which provided statutory protection for all archaeological sites, the Historic Places Trust began sponsoring site surveys. The number of records incorporated into the site files increased steeply for about eight years until the NZ Historic Places Trust withdrew funding. By the early 1980s the Hauraki area was one of the better surveyed regions in New Zealand. Little systematic survey has been carried out since that time, and new records being added into the file are from small area surveys usually carried out because of a specific development threat.
The overall distribution of sites, shown in Fig. 3, indicates intensive use of the landscape. Not all of the sites, represented by dots on the map, were occupied at the same time but reflect the pattern of settlement over some 500–600 years. A small number of sites on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula were clearly occupied within the first hundred years of Maori settlement of New Zealand. The full range of site types occupied at any one time by any one group of people is unknown but hints are provided from Land Court records and by using European observations of settlements in the pre-1840 period.
While site surveys provide information on where people lived on the landscape and patterns emerge from the distribution of occupation evidence, interpretation of the past is largely derived from excavations. The ability to use some of this information is however limited by poorly reported work or by the lack of substantial information about an excavation, by the small area of the site excavated, and by a focus on one particular aspect of information.
