Storage pits and garden stone rows in Seventeen Valley Stream, southern Wairau Plains

Three groups of kūmara storage pits lie on the edge of a high river terrace. The individual pits are up to 6 m in their greatest dimension. On the river flat below the pits there are a number of stone rows, marking the edge of garden plots. The river is actively cutting away the bank just by the southernmost group of pits. An area of gardens may have been eroded away here. The high terrace on which the pits lie appears not have been gardened, to judge from the lack of stone rows. However, it may be that the natural soils here were silty rather than stony. An area of ploughing shows clearly at the foot of the eastern hills but does not extend over all of the high terrace at the time of this photograph (May 1947).