The scholarship provides about $70,000 a year to cover tuition fees and other costs, including accommodation, and also funds return air travel from New Zealand, and other support.
The scholarships were established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 with a $US210million endowment to enable outstanding graduate students from outside the United Kingdom to study at Cambridge.
Mr Gaffney (25) was born in Dunedin. He attended Logan Park High School and later Otago University where he
gained bachelor and masters of arts degrees.
He works as a research co-ordinator at Southern Pacific Archaeological Research, a research and consulting unit at the Otago University's anthropology and archaeology department.
Mr Gaffney will leave New Zealand in September to undertake a PhD study programme, focusing on early population movements in eastern Indonesia, during the Stone Age.
The Cambridge archaeology department was ``the best archaeology department in the world'', and he was looking forward to an ``interesting experience''
