October 29, 2013
Landscapes reveal human history
An Auckland University PhD student wants to use the Auckland landscape to unlock an alternate history of the city and its inhabitants.
Lucy Mackintosh had been working in the United States as a public historian and researching early Maori and Pacific artefacts at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
She has returned to Aoteaora to pursue her doctorate, and has been helped with a $10,000 grant from the Auckland museum.
She says her thesis will look at the tangible and intangible traces left on the land, including earthworks, pathways, monuments, place-names and stories, as well as visual and textual representations of the land.
That means she can move beyond the written and spoken archives that history traditionally engages with.
Ms Mackintosh completed her MA in the 1990s in history, writing a dissertation on the effects of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill on the Tarawera River.
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