Atholl Anderson

Atholl Anderson is a New Zealander, born in Hawera, brought up in Dunedin and Nelson, who has iwi affiliations to Ngai Tahu Whanui through descent from Rakiura Maori.

Educated at Canterbury, Otago and Cambridge universities, he was for 17 years on the staff of Otago University, eventually as Professor and Head of the Anthropology Department.

During that time he directed numerous archaeological excavations and published a major work on moa-hunting – Prodigious Birds: Moas and Moa-hunting in Prehistoric New Zealand (Cambridge University Press 1989), and some other books on the archaeology and early history of southern New Zealand (When All the Moa Ovens Grew Cold, 1983; Te Puoho's Last Raid, 1986, both Otago Heritage Press). He edited Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori by James Herries Beattie, published in 1994 by the Otago University Press. For his research in New Zealand's prehistory he was awarded the Percy Smith Medal and the Elsdon Best Medal. The Welcome of Strangers: An ethnohistory of southern Maori A.D 1650–1850, published in 1998, is a milestone in scholarly literature.

Since 1993, Atholl Anderson has been Professor of Prehistory in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, where he is currently researching the prehistoric colonisation of the Pacific islands. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and currently James Cook Research Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Together with Kaye Green and Foss Leach Anderson is editor of Vastly Ingenious: The Archaeology of Pacific Material Culture (OUP 2007)