The advent of next generation sequencing technology is opening
up important opportunities for aDNA analyses in the Pacific, where
DNA degradation has proven to be a major obstacle for standard
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods. These technological
developments coincided in New Zealand with a request by a Maori
tribe for repatriation and reburial of human remains recovered
from the archaeological site of Wairau Bar, located at the northern
tip of the South Island of NewZealand. The site is a large village site,
and is securely dated to 1285e1300 AD, making it one of the oldest
sites in the country and one of the few with numerous burials
(Higham et al., 1999; Brooks et al., 2009). The presence of large
numbers of moa (Aves: Dinornithiformes) bones and eggshells
indicate that the site was most likely occupied within a generation
or two of initial human colonization of New Zealand, as the large,
flightless birds were driven to extinction within 100 years of the arrival of Polynesians (Holdaway and Jacomb, 2000). The rich
archaeological assemblage of distinctive archaic East Polynesian
artifacts, many of which were found with the burials, may indeed
suggest that the site represents a founding settlement from an East
Polynesian homeland (Davidson et al., 2011).