Hongi

History of the AOTEA SCIENTIFIC RESERVE The Sandhills By Owen Wilkes (1)

Owen Wilkes 13 Sept 2001

The block of land known as Oioroa at Aotea North Head was gazetted a scientific reserve in 1978, with the intention of preserving the the numerous archaeological sites which had been partially investigated by  Auckland university archaeologists, and the spectacular sandhills.

This paper summarises the archaeological work which has been done so far in and around the Reserve and tries to evaluate the archaeological values still present in the Reserve which warrant future preservation.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK DONE

Most of the work done in and around Aotea Scientific reserve (ASR) was done by anthropology students in the early seventies under the overall direction of Richard Cassels who was then a lecturer in the Anthropology Department of Auckland University. The work done can be summarised under three headings: site recording, excavation, and midden analysis.

Site recording

Cassels and his co-workers carried out field recording of all detectable archaeological sites around the northern shores of Aotea harbour and up the coastline from Aotea North head to Ruapuke beach.

The recording was not of very high quality - generally only sketch maps were drawn of pah sites etc, but the site records are still valuable because many of the sites recorded then have disappeared entirely since, through natural erosion, farming activities etc. About 50 sites were recorded. Manuaitu pah was accurately mapped using a plane table and autoreduction alidade.

A particularly significant aspect of the field archaeology of the Aotea peninsula (north of ASR) is the widespread evidence of former horticultural activity, in the form of modified kumara soils, borrow pits (which supplied coarse sand for mulching kumara), ditch-and-bank fences, and garden terracing.

One of Cassels students wrote a paper about the modified soils. He was able to show that there are about 100 ha of old kumara gardens on the peninsula. These were supplied with sand from 380 borrow pits, each averaging 260 cu m, giving an astounding total of 102 000 cu m excavated and spread onto gardens - in pre-wheelbarrow times!

Excavation

Cassels and co-workers carried out excavations on several small sites on land just outside the northwest corner of ASR. The sites each consisted one or two house terraces with associated kumara storage pits and shell middens The results were published by Aileen Fox and Cassels as "Excavations at Aotea, Waikato, 1972-75" in the Records of the Auckland Institute & Museum.

Cassels had earlier investigated prehistoric settlement patterns in the inland Waikato, and the work at Aotea was intended to discover any differences there might be between the patterns of inland and coastal settlement.

It appeared that at each of the Aotea sites was occupied more or less permanently by a quite small group of people, probably a single family, who were engaged in a variety of activities including gardening, fishing, shellfish gathering, woodworking and stone tool making. The people were living there from about 1450 to 1550 AD.

The results of the excavation are quite valuable because so little archaeological excavation has been done on the Waikato-King Country coastline, and because it was done in conjunction with the midden analysis described next.

Overall the work gives us quite a good picture of everyday life of ordinary people in peaceful times - the sort of information which tends to be lacking from traditional history which is more concerned with important people and warfare.

The sites excavated by Cassels have since been destroyed by farm cultivation.

Midden analysis

Cassels and his students sampled about 150 of the shell midden heaps that were then exposed in ASR. About a bucketful was taken from each midden, and it was sorted out into shellfish species and weighed. All this involved an enormous amount of unpaid involuntary student labour.

At the same time the biomass of living shellfish in the harbour was also studied, and the "standing crop" calculated. Experimental harvesting of shellfish was carried out in the harbour.

Cassels never published his results, but he did give a conference paper about them in Christchurch in 1973. His data is filed in the NZ Archaeological Association site records and I have recently been re­analyzing some of it.

Overall the percentages of different shellfish were

cockle = 53%....  pipi = 37% ....   tuatua = 7%....   mussel = 3%

Cassels was able to show that tuatua were the "most preferred" shellfish, but they were also the species in shortest supply. Pipi was the mainstay, and cockle was avoided when possible, but eaten when others were not available,and therfore ended up being the most eaten.

Times to collect a meal for a family were calculated for the various species:

cockle 1.5 hours
pipi 1
tuatua 4
mussel 0.5

The food value was calculated:

cockle = 106 cal/kg....   pipi = 133...   tuatua = 133...   mussel = 153

This shows why mussel was so popular - there was more meat on it relative to the weight of shell, and it was far more easily harvested. Tuatua was

presumably preferred for its taste. For cockle and tuatua the energy consumed in gathering and transporting was probably comparable to the energy obtained from the food (Cassels calculated that a 60 kg woman carrying a 25 kg load of shellfish burned up 3.6 cal/minute on the flat, 9.5 cal/min on a sandhill, etc etc. All very scientific but perhaps not very realistic!)

Standing crop was the crunch. Assuming there were 300 people living around the harbour and that 65% of their calories came from shellfish, then the standing crop was:

cockle 399 days per year
pipi 93
tuatua 1
mussel 30

In other words there was more cockle in the harbour than anyone wanted to eat. Pipis could provide all the calories the hypothetical human population needed for about one quarter of the year. Tuatua were in very short supply and no doubt some sort of rahui was in force. 

By looking at the distribution of shellfish species in the various middens Cassels was able to show that people were mostly eating the shellfish that were nearest - which probably means that they journeyed to and camped at the various places so as to harvest the shellfish there rather than carry the shellfish to their permanent homes. Distance to resources was important in those days, when everything had to be carried on a human back.

Within any particular shell heap or layer there was generally more pipi at the bottom and more cockle at the top. This would seem to indicate that in any particular shellfish "season" people cleaned out the local pipi first, and then started on the cockle.

All these results could have important bearing on the re-establishment of shellfish stock in the harbour today and for their future management. It is a pity that Cassels did not do more of this kind of work...more on Aotea Scientific Reserve