The Puketoi Station Textiles and What They Can Tell Us

In this informal floor talk Dr Catherine Smith will discuss the different textiles and plants that form the Puketoi Station textiles, and what they show us about the people that made them and how they lived.

Catherine is a Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology programme, University of Otago and has research interests in material culture, in particular analysis of early Māori textiles, as well as developing innovation in provenancing, materials investigation, and textiles preservation.

Through exploring textiles, Catherine aims to illuminate the relationships between people, plants and culture in New Zealand. She is co-PI (with Dr Donna Campbell and Mrs Ranui Ngarimu) of ‘Whakaarahia anō te rā kaihau! Raise up again the billowing sail! Revitalising cultural knowledge through analysis of Te Rā, the Māori sail’ (Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund 2018-2020).

About the exhibition:
Tuia - Southern Encounters
Monday 9 September, 10 a.m. – Saturday 9 November 2019

Curated by Hocken Librarian Sharon Dell.

When James Cook sailed down the Otago coast in 1770 he observed what he thought to be a barren uninhabited land. This exhibition weaves together taonga, images, maps, and knowledge handed down from ancestors to tell the story of how fifty generations had been living in southern New Zealand when the first explorers from another world visited these shores.

The names of lakes and rivers, mountains, settlements and foodgathering sites remind us that long before Cook claimed Te Waipounamu for Great Britain, this land was the dearest possession of another people.