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Historical records contain thousands of references to pā, kāinga, marae, awa, maunga, ara, land blocks and other places. The useful GIS job is not simply to put dots on a map. It is to keep each spatial interpretation connected to the document, page, wording and evidence that led to it.

A complete research pattern​

Conceptual flow

Use the spatial research log to keep source, search and evidence fields connected. The Historical ingoa wāhi worked example shows the complete structure in context.

Useful sources​

Depending on the kaupapa, useful collections include:

  • Waitangi Tribunal reports and research reports
  • Māori Land Court minutes, orders and block records
  • historical survey plans
  • New Zealand Gazette notices
  • Papers Past
  • National Library and DigitalNZ collections
  • Archives New Zealand material
  • historic topographic maps
  • Retrolens aerial photographs
  • local archives and published histories
  • existing iwi, hapū or whānau research collections

Different sources answer different questions. Use Authoritative for what? to keep that distinction visible.

1. Build a source register​

Before extracting places, record enough to find the source again:

  • source type
  • document or plan title
  • author or agency where relevant
  • date
  • archive or report reference
  • URL or file reference
  • page or sheet

Create the register in the project spreadsheet, database or GeoPackage. Use Provenance and source checking for the wider method rather than relying on a generic downloadable CSV.

2. Find candidate place references​

For a few documents, manual reading may be simplest. For hundreds or thousands of pages, Local AI can help retrieve passages and candidate ingoa wāhi while files remain on the local computer.

Ask for the wording and page, not an invented coordinate. The Practical AI applications page gives reusable patterns for extraction, table recovery and comparison.

3. Preserve the wording before normalising it​

Keep the spelling exactly as it appears in the source in one field. Put a possible modern or standardised name in another field.

This matters because historical spelling, transliteration, handwriting, OCR and typesetting can all change a name. A modern label should not erase the evidence you started with.

See Place names and ingoa wāhi.

4. Check geography with more than one clue​

Useful clues can include:

  • the Gazetteer
  • named rivers or maunga in the same passage
  • Māori land block names
  • historical survey plans
  • road and settlement names
  • terrain
  • distances or directions in the text
  • historical maps
  • repeated references across documents

A name missing from the Gazetteer can remain a valid research candidate. Record what evidence supports the location rather than forcing a binary found/not-found decision.

5. Georeference plans when they add evidence​

A scanned map or plan may provide the strongest geographic clue. Use Georeferencing historical maps to align the source in QGIS while retaining the original image and control points.

For aerial photographs use the Retrolens historical imagery workflow.

6. Create geometry only when useful​

A research record does not need a point just because the final tool is GIS.

Possible outputs include:

  • a checked point
  • an approximate locality
  • a line or route
  • a historical polygon
  • a source-linked table with no geometry yet
  • several candidate locations

Use a confidence or evidence field to distinguish these states.

Useful GIS fields can include:

record_id
source_title
source_reference
page
source_wording
candidate_name
feature_type
geographic_evidence
confidence
checked_status

The map then becomes an index back into the evidence rather than a detached set of coordinates.

8. Build outputs around the research question​

The same checked data can support:

  • a map of place references
  • a chronological map
  • a Google Earth journey
  • a StoryMap
  • a source index for further research
  • a comparison of historical and current names
  • a route or travel reconstruction

Use Cartography and map communication and Publishing maps for the output stage.

Worked example​

The Historical ingoa wāhi worked example follows this sequence from documents to a GIS research layer.

Last reviewed: 3 September 2026

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