Contingent scales of analysis at Omaha, northern New Zealand

The modern landscape approach is often treated as a natural extension of settlement analysis in archaeology, but in fact these methods are very different from each other. One way to begin reconciling the two maybe through an examination of heirachies of analytical scale. I propose that the relationships between scales are contingent, and that to treat them this way will allow settlement and landscape analyses to complement each other in a spatial archaeology. I present an example from Omaha Sandspit, a shell midden complex in northern New Zealand, and, in order to demonstrate this contingency, analyse Omaha's role within a wider regional framework from both a settlement and landscape perspective.