Abstract :
The paper describes an episode in New Zealand science commonly referred to as the
moa-hunter debate. In the 1870s the geologist and curator of the Canterbury Museum Julius
Haast put forward a proposal that a race distinct from the indigenous Maori hunted the giant
flightless birds known as moa to extinction. James Hector, director of the New Zealand
Geological Survey and manager of the New Zealand Institute, rejected this proposal and
challenged Haast in what would become a bitter fight. Because moa remains in the form of
semi-fossilized bones, eggshells and occasionally preserved feathers and skin were important
in the debate, the paper will use the analytical method of actor-network theory (ANT) to
reopen it. The paper thus provides an opportunity to study the strengths and weaknesses of
ANT as a form of analysis. This analysis emphasizes a number of interesting points about
the moa-hunter debate, including the ability of human actors to manipulate the meaning
of common terms in order to create new theories, in this case Haast’s theory of an earlier
indigenous race in New Zealand. Though dismissed at the time, this was a belief that has
lasted in alternative forms to the present.
