Settlement and horticulture on high terraces near the Whenuakura River, south Taranaki

In this photograph, small-scale, nineteenth-century arable fields show against a background of earlier pre-European gardens. Sand has been taken from borrow-pits, showing as irregularly shaped holes up to 8 m across, right foreground. The sand would have been added to the heavier topsoils of the terrace to improve their physical qualities (tilth, warming), and possibly as a mulch amongst growing plants. The spreading of sand from the borrow-pits in irregular heaps shows clearly, near right. At the top of the terrace risers (about 3 m in height) are lines of eroded kūmara storage pits. Beyond them again, the well-drained and easily defended finger-shaped points of land on the edge of the terrace have been used for pre-European pit storage.

At left and centre, a number of low ridges show clearly in oblique light. They are not dissimilar to the downslope lines of pre-European garden boundaries, but these are normally seen only in stony soil. These ridges were in fact formed at the edges of ploughed fields: they are 'lands' or plough lynchets. In the middle foreground is a rectangular enclosure, probably formed by a ditch and bank fence. The view is to the south, and the stream in shade is an unnamed tributary north-west of the Whenuakura River.