Janet Davidson

Janet Marjorie Davidson, ONZM, is a pioneering New Zealand archaeologist who has carried out extensive field work in the Pacific Islands throughout Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.

In the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours, Davidson was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to archaeology.

In 2007, a major archaeology publication, Vastly Ingenious was published in her honour. Titled, Vastly Ingenious:The Archaeology of Pacific Material Culture - in honour of Janet M. Davidson the book presented essays of new research by leading international scholars with an introduction by Davidson's distinguished colleague Roger Curtis Green. Published by Otago University Press, the book was edited by three Pacific prehistorians Atholl Anderson, Kaye C. Green and Foss Leach.

Janet’s career combined active and often pioneering fieldwork across the Pacific with an imaginative approach to museum research and display that attracted young scholars, explains contributor Roger Green; she kept material culture in the public eye.

Davidson carried out field work in the Society Islands at Moorea (1961–1962), Samoa (1964, 1965–1966), Tonga (1964) and Nukuoro (1965) in the Federated States of Micronesia as well as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

In 1964, Davidson graduated with an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Auckland. In 1965, she was the E. Earle Vaile Archaeologist at the Auckland Institute and Museum. She was an honorary lecturer at University of Otago and later held the position of Senior Curator, Pacific at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

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