Museum dig reveals historic left-overs
09 Apr 2010
Moa bones and a Māori adze head discovered on an historic building site in Auckland are being heralded as highly significant archaeological finds for New Zealand.
The discovery was made at Torpedo Bay, Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore where a new navy museum is being developed.
The find is thought to be more than 500 years old, and archaeologists claim that on a scale of one to 10 it rates as a 10 for historic value.
Moa and Māori
Mica Plowman, an archaeologist with Opus International Consultants, the principal design consultants for the museum project said the adze head and bones were found in a large fire pit.
The bones were part of a moa bird that was killed, cooked and eaten by Māori, Ms Plowman said.
The find was hugely significant because "first-settlement sites" were very rare and few had been excavated in Auckland.
Cooking pit
Where the bones were found in the cooking pit indicated they had been discarded, as if those who had eaten the bird had not been worried about running out of moa bones which were highly useful for carving and working into items for everyday life.
Moa grew to about 4m tall and were believed to have become extinct in New Zealand about 500 years ago.
Ms Plowman said the historic site was about 50m back from the harbour but would have been on the water’s edge when used by Māori so long ago.
It was a rare, exciting and very significant find, she said.
Beach front sites
Early settlement sites were rare because they were often beach front sites which did not survive.
"Moa bones were a very valuable commodity in early Māori society. It was a robust large bone which enabled them to make large fish hooks and things out of it."
Historians say Torpedo Bay had many layers of history from the early days of Māori settlement in Auckland.
Kupe, the great Māori navigator, was thought to have landed his canoe in the bay about 900AD and named it Te Hau Kapua or 'cloud bank carried along by the wind'.
Later one of the great 'seven canoe' fleet commanded by chief Hoturoa landed the Tainui people there. They were thought to have named a local spring 'Takapuna', which later came to refer to a neighbouring suburb.
Torpedo Bay
Torpedo Bay was used in the late 1800s as a submarine mining station to defend Auckland against a possible invasion from the Imperial Russian Fleet.
The mines spanned the harbour entrance and could be detonated from the shore if an enemy ship came up the harbour to attack.
It was also the base for the spar torpedo boats, which were fitted with a long spar with an attached warhead and used to ram enemy ships.
The boats were never used in conflict in New Zealand. They were highly unstable and considered to be more dangerous for the crew than for enemy ships.
German Captain von Luckner
In 1917, during WWI, German Captain Felix Graf von Luckner was held prisoner at Torpedo Bay before being transferred to the island prison on Motuihe, in the Hauraki Gulf.
The cell in the cliff where von Luckner was held still exists, and will be part of the new navy museum's outside exhibits.
The museum is due to open in August 2010.
More information:
New Zealand museums and art galleries
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