Māori Settlement System

Timeline

1. c. 1100–1170Society Islands (Raiatea) · French PolynesiaEastern Polynesian communities had developed institutional prototypes defining land rights by genealogy and arbitrating resource distribution by chiefs (ariki); fishing and hunting grounds, forests, and cultivated land were managed on a rotational basis by hapū, providing a replicable model of social organization for oceanic colonization.
2. c. 1171–1180Cook Islands (Rarotonga) · Cook IslandsIn the 1170s, long-distance voyaging preparations from western Polynesia toward New Zealand grew increasingly intensive; the settlement system further integrated collective land rights, sacral legitimacy (tapu), and seasonal resource management rules, with fleets carrying crops, dogs, and institutional memory, laying the foundation for the colonization of Aotearoa.
3. c. 1250–1400East coast of New Zealand's North Island · North IslandAfter the migrating fleets landed, they applied the Eastern Polynesian settlement system to the New Zealand environment: establishing settlements (pā) along river bays, demarcating fishing and hunting territories (rahui), and defining tribal boundaries by whakapapa, fully establishing the Māori settlement system in Aotearoa.