The Coming of the Maori

Record summary

The Coming of the Maori was published after the requested period, but its arguments grew from Peter Buck’s pre-1946 research and provide a recognizable endpoint for early twentieth-century Māori migration scholarship. It synthesized traditions, archaeology, material culture, and comparative ethnology into a narrative of Polynesian settlement. The work matters because it shows how earlier diffusionist ideas were moderated by growing archaeological evidence. Researchers using it for a 1900–1946 project should trace each claim back to Buck’s earlier articles, fieldwork, and museum research rather than counting the 1947 publication as an in-period source.