Like love in a cold climate, there may be more of it around than you might think. My initial search of the Heritage New Zealand database admitted some vagaries - it counted all references to the Katikati-Te Puna Purchase and included some reports concerning the Te Puna Mission Station in Northland. My own count of the ‘matches’ it presented found 31 reports of archaeological investigations in the rohe between the (southern) Wairoa River, along the Minden ridge and down to the Te Puna stream. All but one of them, (Motuhoa Island, 1983) were dated after the turn of this century.
 |
| Harper’s Farm, Munro Road East, Te Puna |
Even before it became fashionable – or necessary – to establish evidence of prior settlement, I have long known we had archaeological sites at our front door. As a child I thought that two hillocks on two neighbouring properties on Munro Road were “made” – their shapes were too regular, their tops too flat, to be entirely natural. Celtic myths of the faery hunt in hollow hills, mixed with tales of waka being hauled into caves[1], fed my fantasies. I had to wait some decades to have the facts, revealed – as is often the case – by plans to subdivide and develop house plots on what had been open paddocks (and, within living memory, the site of a 1940’s cowshed).
 |
| Harper’s Farm map (Real Estate advert) |
The realtor’s 2016 advertisement disclosed this hill to be a kainga site. It shows as the slightly irregular pink-shaded circle on the right-hand side of the following image. (The other pink areas were described as middens and possible storage pits.) In a map[2] surveyed after the Te Puna Quarry Reserve was gazetted in 1911, the same area is labelled, tantalisingly, as a “Village Res.”, indicating at least some memory of previous settlement. I suppose (I am not an archaeologist) that this flat-topped knob would be called a ‘platform’. Around 2020 a modern house was built at the bottom of the slope, its back garden shaving off a small flank of hillside. The rest of the hill has yet to attract the attentions of anyone with a trowel, brush and measuring stick, so material evidence of pre-European habitation remains in the ground. But the patterns of landform and geography – an undefended, nevertheless dominating, site adjacent to a watercourse and hillside forest – make it easy to imagine a way of life from 500 years ago.
This is but one example of the outburst of energies and archaeological attention stimulated by the growth of horticultural and “lifestyle block” development all over the western Bay of Plenty[3]. Even more locally, the creation of the “Minden Lifestyle Zone”[4] had the effect of intensifying modern settlement across an area that was, as the result of efforts by the Historic Places Trust and, in particular, post-grad students from the Anthropology Departments of Auckland and Otago Universities, much better understood as a landscape richly endowed with evidence of past existence.
When Mary O’Keeffe published her thesis in 1991, she could refer to the (then) Tauranga County as “archaeologically unknown”, until it became the subject of “recent field work [that] has shown there to be a very large number and a wide variety of sites…”[5]. Her work was founded on an appreciation of the qualities that have continued to recommend themselves to subsequent populations: the benign environment and congenial climate of the countryside between the coast and the Kaimai range. Less appreciated, perhaps, is her other salient observation that “many features present do not show on the surface.[6]”
Maybe it is a feature of settler society to be unappreciative of anything much below the surface. Writing in 2002[7], Garry Law reported to the Department of Conservation (in respect of a much larger area, DoC’s Bay of Plenty Conservancy) that although Māori archaeological sites were better known and recorded (albeit in somewhat erratic fashion) than “historical” – that is, post-European – archaeology: “the forestry, mining and transport history readily seen on the ground”. To this we could add farming infrastructure. The aforementioned cowshed’s materials were all (except for the concrete milking floor) repurposed. Its floor survived until new foundations were laid for another 21st-century house.
Even a cursory analysis of the Heritage New Zealand database shows that, in the tiny area of Te Puna, there are two main drivers for archaeology: roading and housing. The advent of the Takitimu Northern Link has generated a significant number of reports across a broad swathe of landforms, from the Wairoa River floodplain to the rolling uplands of the Minden Ridge. Because of its scale – at the time of writing it is the largest archaeological site in New Zealand – it has revealed patterns of settlement and itinerant activities (including the unfortunate effects of careless development) from the present day backwards to about 1350. Already it is altering Te Puna’s history, as it (we trust) stands the test of time and becomes, itself, “historical”.
As to housing: many of the addresses in the database search results were familiar. Building consents, even on ostensibly bare land in Te Puna, now very frequently require an archaeological report. So I got in touch with Murray Lloyd, who has lived all his life at 350 Wairoa Road[8]. In fact, the fourth generation of Lloyds now live there too. Murray’s family, starting from his grandfather, have been on the property since 1909. “Getting the report done was really pretty special,” Murray told me. “We always knew it had been lived on before, being right on the river – the main ‘road’, so to say – and my dad had a good relationship with Ngati Pango, especially the Apaapa whānau… we thought it was important to know where it would be ok to put our houses. It was a bit of inconvenience, but it wasn’t a surprise, what we found out.”
 |
| Basalt adze found on Lloyd’s Farm, Wairoa Road Image courtesy of Matthew Campbell, CFG Heritage Ltd |
No-one should be surprised by the discussion in this essay. Our locality has been lived in, worked over, and modified for centuries[9]. The powerfully haunting outline of the Papamoa pa system on our eastern horizon is a constant reminder. My friend Kiritoha Tangitu said once: “Whenever I look at them, I think: the work! The work!”
So I approach with humility and admiration the whenua kua ngaro at the corner of my road. It too took labour to create. I also hope the whānau whose home it once was had times of peace and plenty before they had to abandon this small toehold at the foot of Rangituanehu. I’m glad they left its shape behind them.
References
[1] Park, Ruth, The Hole in the Hill, first published 1 January 1961
[2] Survey plan SO13702, South Auckland survey district
[3] https://heritage.nzdl.org/greenstone3/library/sites/hnz/collect/pdf-reports/index/assoc/OKeeffe9.dir/OKeeffe9.pdf
[4] https://www.westernbay.govt.nz/repository/libraries/id:25p4fe6mo17q9stw0v5w/hierarchy/property-rates-building/district-plan/plan-review-2009/minden-structure-plan/documents/PR%202.pdf
[5] O’Keefe (1991) p. 4. Later, however, she states Tauranga County to be one of the most intensively investigated regions in New Zealand… some 4723 recorded sites within County boundaries.”
[6] O’Keefe (1991) p. 20
[7] https://heritage.nzdl.org/greenstone3/library/sites/hnz/collect/pdf-reports/index/assoc/Law1.dir/Law1.pdf
