Bryan Foss Leach (born 16 February 1942) is a New Zealand archaeologist. He is a pioneer of integrated regional research programmes, conservation of archaeological materials, zooarchaeology, and broader aspects of archaeological science.
He has been a strong advocate of collaborative cross-disciplinary research. Leach has served as an officer and committee member of numerous New Zealand and international organisations concerned with archaeology and cultural heritage management, and has held honorary fellowships in various institutions.
Early life and education Bryan Foss Leach, known as Foss, was born at Waipukurau, New Zealand, on 16 February 1942, and spent his formative years in Martinborough, with his sister Josephine Michelle and their parents Bernard Joseph Leach and Thelma Adele Foss. He attended boarding school at Palmerston North Boys' High School, where he chose science subjects throughout, although he excelled more in sports ventures than in the classroom. He went on to play representative rugby for in 1961 and represented the University of Otago in boxing in 1962. Much of his life as a young adult was spent as a bushman: possum trapping, deer stalking, scrub-cutting, and working in shearing gangs. A chance attendance at an archaeological excavation being run by Les Groube at Karitane near Dunedin was the beginning of his career in archaeology.
He graduated Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1966, and Masters of Arts (Hons) in 1969. The MA thesis was published in the same year.Leach, B.F. 1969. The concept of similarity in prehistoric studies: a test case using New Zealand stone flake assemblages. Studies in Prehistoric Anthropology Volume 1.
His doctorate was awarded in 1976.
Teaching career Leach began his teaching career as an undergraduate tutor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Otago from 1967 and joined the academic staff as a junior lecturer in 1969. He gained full tenure in 1971, was promoted to senior lecturer in 1978, and associate professor in 1986.
During his 20 years at Otago he taught courses on New Zealand and Pacific prehistory, the origins of civilisation, and archaeological methods, and also ran laboratory classes and field schools.
He retired from teaching in 1988 when he moved to Wellington to work at the Museum of New Zealand.
Archaeological laboratories
Leach's strong commitment to archaeological science and archaeometry was fostered during his undergraduate years by early correspondence with, and encouragement from, Martin Aitken, of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art in Oxford. Under Aitken's instruction and guidance he built a proton magnetometerAitken, M.J. (1960). Magnetic prospecting: The proton gradiometer. Archaeometry 3: 38–40.Aitken, M.J.and Tite, M.S. 1962. A gradient magnetometer, using proton free-precession. Journal of Scientific Instruments 39 (12): 625–629. as a class project in 1965. He later spent two sabbatical years as a senior visiting fellow at the Oxford Laboratory and as a Royal Society (Great Britain) Anglo-Australasian Visiting Fellow, in 1976 and 1983. He organised the first Archaeometry Conference outside the United Kingdom in 1980 in Christchurch. His first hand experience with the scientific facilities relating to archaeology at both Oxford and Bradford Universities persuaded him that something needed to be done to take the existing archaeological facilities in New Zealand out of the Stone Age. As a result, one of Leach's most notable, and perhaps now least recognised, contribution to archaeology was his development of the archaeological laboratories at Otago University. In 1968, an old army shed served the archaeologists as a laboratory. After moving to progressively larger buildings in 1972 and 1973, the archaeologists were finally allocated adequate space in the new building that was then to be called the Hocken Building. Leach helped develop the plan for the then state-of-the-art laboratories, including proper facilities for obtaining and displaying a comparative osteological collection, an archaeological conservation facility, and finally a laboratory devoted to archaeometry.
This greatly expanded the opportunities for senior archaeology students to do MA thesis research based on more than visits to the library and minor projects of fieldwork. Provision was made in the new laboratory complex for student projects in archaeological remote sensing, transmission tube XRF analysis, radioactive source excitation XRF, and thermoluminescence analysis. Leach formed strong links with various external laboratories, which enabled students to take advantage of scientific facilities at the then Institute of Nuclear Sciences accelerator group, the Otago Department of Chemistry facility for Electron paramagnetic resonance (ESR), and the Lucas Heights Nuclear Physics Laboratory. He encouraged his students to publish their archaeometry projects, often jointly with the senior scientists whose external facilities were being used. Student projects that survived the rigours of publishing covered a wide range of topics from accelerator depth profile dating of bones and teeth,Coote, G. and Holdaway, S. 1982. Radial profiles of fluorine in archaeological bone and teeth: A review of recent developments. In Ambrose, W. and Duerden, P., Archaeometry: An Australasian perspective, pp. 251–261. Australian National University.Vickeridge, I.C., Coote, G.E. and Wood, S. 1987. Fluorine in human teeth from the Solomon Islands and in pig teeth from the Banks Islands, Vanuatu. In Ambrose, W. and Mummery, J.M.J. (eds), Archaeometry: Further Australasian studies, pp. 79–89. Australian National University. seasonal dating of shells using oxygen isotopes,Till, M. and Blattner, P. 1986. The seasonality of fishing and shellfishing in prehistoric Otago: Evidence from oxygen isotope ratios. Pacific Anthropological Records 37: 168–177. experimental archaeology,Fankhauser, B. 1982. An experimental umu-ti. New Zealand Archaeological Newsletter 25(2): 132–137.Fankhauser, B. 1986. An input/output energy analysis of ti gathering. New Zealand Archaeological Newsletter 29(4): 230–237.Fankhauser, B. 1987. A beginner's guide to umu ti. New Zealand Archaeological Newsletter 30(3): 144–157.Fankhauser, B. 1986. Preparation of high-fructose syrup from the New Zealand cabbage tree, Cordyline australis. New Zealand Journal of Technology 1: 27–31. thermoluminescence dating of oven stones,Fankhauser, B. 1991. Dating earth ovens with thermoluminescence and radiocarbon. In Gillespie, R. (ed.), Quaternary dating workshop 1990, pp. 41–44. Australian National University. physical analysis of pottery,Intoh, M. 1989. Water absorption testing of Pacific pottery. In Sutton, D.G. (ed.), Saying so doesn't make it so. Papers in honour of B. Foss Leach, pp. 132–152. New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 17. trace element analysis of obsidian sources with XRF,Seelenfreund, A. and Bollong, C. 1989. The sourcing of New Zealand archaeological obsidian artefacts using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. In Sutton, D.G. (ed.), Saying so doesn't make it so. Papers in honour of B. Foss Leach, pp. 168–189. New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 17. dating of human bone with ESR,Dennison, K.J. 1989. Dating New Zealand bone by electron paramagnetic resonance. In Sutton, D.G. (ed.), Saying so doesn't make it so. Papers in honour of B. Foss Leach pp. 277–285. New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 17. and diet reconstruction from atomic absorption spectroscopy of human bone.Horwood, M. 1989. Diet reconstruction from human bone trace element analysis. In Sutton, D.G. (ed.), Saying so doesn't make it so. Papers in honour of B. Foss Leach pp. 295–303. New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 17.
Research Archaeological fieldwork
Leach has had a strong commitment to "area excavation", in the belief that the reconstruction of prehistory is best approached by first understanding the patterns of human culture in the synchronic dimension before turning attention to diachronic studies. This commitment partly arose from a then current practice of advance-face excavation in southern New Zealand, which he regarded as unduly destructive, and also the widespread use of exploratory test pit excavations through the Pacific and elsewhere. He had great admiration for André Leroi-Gourhan's area excavations at the Magdalenian hunters' site of Pincevent. This was to be the theoretical theme of his PhD dissertation, in which he proposed that a single human community could be used as a useful archaeological construct when building prehistory from archaeological excavations.See pp. 22–24, 288–319 Leach, B.F. 1976. Prehistoric communities in Palliser Bay, New Zealand. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Anthropology, University of Otago.
His first excavation, jointly with his first wife Helen Leach, was at Oturehua in 1967. This was a stone tool quarry in Central Otago. The location of every stone flake was recorded in the 10x10m excavated area and they were later laid out in their original locations on a gridded floor in a laboratory. Cellulose glue was used to re-assemble flakes back on to their original cores to study the flaking process relating to prismatic core blade production.Leach, H.M. 1984. Jigsaw: Reconstructive lithic technology. In J.E. Ericson and B. Purdy (eds), Prehistoric quarries and lithic production, pp. 107–118. Cambridge University Press,
His was the inspiration for the three-year (1969–1972) research programme in Palliser Bay, southern Wairarapa, which he initiated and, with his wife Helen, directed. This resulted in two PhD theses (his own and Helen's), five Master's theses, four of which he supervisedAnderson, A.J. 1973. Archaeology and behaviour at Black Rocks peninsula, Palliser Bay. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Anthropology Department, University of Otago.Prickett, N.J. 1974. Houses and house life in prehistoric New Zealand. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Anthropology Department, University of Otago.Sutton, D.G. 1975. The resurrection of the prehistoric dead. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Anthropology Department, University of Otago.Prickett, K.E. 1975. The prehistoric exploitation and knowledge of geological resources in Southern Wairarapa. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Anthropology Department, University of Otago. and a monograph summarising the results, to which all the thesis students contributed.Leach, B.F. and Leach, H.M. (eds) 1979. Prehistoric Man in Palliser Bay. National Museum of New Zealand, Bulletin 21. He has always been interested in seeking to understand prehistoric communities as an operational archaeological unit, and this was reflected in his work in Palliser Bay. He then planned and launched a similar research programme in the Chatham Islands 1974–1975, which was carried on by his student Doug Sutton.Sutton, D.G. 1980. A culture history of the Chatham Islands. Journal of the Polynesian Society 89 (1): 67–94.
The fieldwork in Palliser Bay involved close consultation with the local Maori of Ngati Hinewaka, with whom Leach has continued to maintain close connections. He was involved in their Waitangi Tribunal claim as a member of their Claims Committee and author of a major report on fishing rights.Leach, B.F. 2003. Depletion and loss of the customary fishery of Ngati Hinewaka: 130 years of struggle to protect a resource guaranteed under Article Two of the Treaty of Waitangi. Report presented to the Waitangi Tribunal, Document Wai-863-#A71. He had previously been instrumental in helping them secure the return of the land and associated buildings at Cape Palliser Lighthouse.