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Ngā Tohuwhenua Mai Te Rangi: A New Zealand Archeology in Aerial Photographs

Horticulture

Horticulture

About 1 km up from the mouth of the Whangaehu River is an area where the oldest inland coastal dunes intersect with the high river terraces and the hill country proper. Towards the coast, the river has cut a broad meander through the lines of the dunes. The dunes are old enough to have formed a crust of ash topsoil, and over large areas, this cap of dune soil has been broken through by Māori, for two reasons. One reason was to create storage pits which lie on dune crests within the broad points formed by the river through the old dune formations. Because of the soft sands under the surface these have broken away at the edges and tend to be irregular in plan, at least in the form in which they have survived today. The second reason was to borrow sands to add to soils for gardening, much as was discussed in chapter 4. This may have been the practice on the points themselves, and it seems also to have been the case where the dunes are adjacent to the older high river terraces. 7 pā containing many storage pits have been created on points at the edge of the high terrace; a particularly fine example occurs by the Whangaehu River bridge on State Highway 3. There are other fine examples of pā and pits further up the river.

Further south from the Whangaehu River, pits are relatively infrequent. Good examples of raised-rim pits are recorded on the various river terraces of the Wairarapa plains, and also on the Manawatū River, but their low number reflects the horticultural marginality page 188
Pā and storage pits on old dunes near the State Highway 3 bridge, Whangaehu River

Pā and storage pits on old dunes near the State Highway 3 bridge, Whangaehu River

The edge of the river terrace shows at right with the pā on the hilltop right. Circled by the farm road, the pā is defended by steep natural scarps to either side (left and right), and terrace scarps on the ridge with many pits facing the camera. By the river terrace, foreground, the line of a dune provides a contrasting landform to the hill country beyond. On the surface of the dunes are many rectangular pits. The view is to the north-west, and State Highway 3 and the Whangaehu River are just to the right out of the image.

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Detail of the pā. There are no recognisable defensive ditches and banks but the sides are very steep and the repeated scarps of the terraces provide a deliberate defensive effect enhanced by carrying the scarps around to the steep face nearest the camera. The pā is about 130 m long by 30 m wide. The rectangular pits are 3 by 3 m in plan.

of the plains and small population. On the hills above Paekakariki, near Wellington, storage pits on the ridge line were probably used for storing crops grown on the sandy flats below. On slopes below the ridge are many groves of karaka trees. 8
What interest the Wellington and Wairarapa regions lack in pā and pits is balanced by fine examples of gardening sites in stony or gravelly ground. The soils used were the naturally sandy and stony deposits on river flats near the sea and at the foot of the steep coastal hill country. 9 In many coastal areas, particularly on the Wairarapa side of the region, there is a broad coastal strip, the width of which varies from 100 m to 500 m. The stones removed from the garden soils were placed in rows defining the edges of garden plots. The purpose of this removal of stones, as already discussed in chapter 4, was to define boundaries, to remove large stones into the windrows, to provide shelter, for fostering tuber shoots in spring before they were planted out, and as a place for page 190
Garden stone rows along the coastal strip near Ngāwīhi, eastern Palliser Bay

Garden stone rows along the coastal strip near Ngāwīhi, eastern Palliser Bay

A very high marine terrace shows at top left and right. Because of its height and exposure to wind, and the existence of a usable coastal strip more or less at sea level, this high terrace was not much used for settlement. The stone rows run down the slight slope in the foreground from the edge of the fan of debris from prominent gully, right, down on to an uplifted beach ridge. The rows are about 200 m long and 1 m high in their present state. The view is to the north.

page break yam or kūmara vines to grow over. 10 Sometimes mounds are also found but these are not as common as they are in Northland and Auckland. The Wairarapa stone rows are akin to those at Cape Runaway, and in localities in the South Island.

Extraordinarily well-preserved examples of stone rows survive at Okoropunga Stream, just to the south of Castle Point on the east Wairarapa coast, and were illustrated in chapter 4. 11 The fullest investigation of such stone walls and their associated gardens, using aerial photographs as a primary mapping technique (the first such instance in New Zealand), was conducted by Helen Leach on the Palliser Bay coast. 12 She concluded that the gardening systems could only have been used for the Polynesian crops brought to New Zealand, kūmara in particular. She also proved that the first use of the walls was as early as the twelfth century, although the bulk of the radiocarbon dates place the walls in about the fifteenth century. The stone row areas on the Wairarapa coast appear to have been abandoned in pre-European times, 13 for reasons which were discussed in chapter 4.