Samoan Forts Like Maori Pas

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30453, 29 May 1964, Page 1

Samoan Forts Like Maori Pas

(N Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, May 28. Enormous hill forts, closely resembling Maori pas in structure and layout, have been found in Western Samoa by a party of archaeologists from Auckland. “They were so much like Maori pas that we had the feeling that we were back in New Zealand,” said the leader of the expedition, Dr. R. C. Green, senior lecturer in prehistory at Auckland University today.

Features of the hill forts similar to the familiar Maori fortified villages were ditch and bank defences, pits inside the defences and terraced living areas.

“This leads us to suspect that the present accepted idea that the development of fortification in New Zealand was entirely independent may have to be revised,” Dr. Green said-. “All the excavations we have carried out in New Zealand suggest that the building of fortifications was a later development in Mrori c -Iture; but these Samoan forts are so similar to the Maori pa that we feel there must have been some sort of relationship.

“At least we have to examine the possibility that the development of the pa in New Zealand was not an independent phenomenon, but was related in some way to these Samoan forts. We must take into account what we know of fortifications in Fiji and Tonga, too.” The major effort of the expedition, which was supported by a grant from the American National Science Foundation, was to study and excavate mounds in the Vailele area, three miles east of Apia. The excavations had turned up more than 400 fragments of pottery, said Dr. Green. They were all of a simple bowl form, undecorated, with a flat rim. As well, large numbers of stone adzes, of varying types, and other stone artifacts were found associated with the pottery. These included octopus lures, drill points, anchor stones and a fishnet sinker, but no fishing hooks or bonito lures. A few flakes of obsidian—the hard, brittle volcanic glass used by many primitive peoples as cutting tools—were found in one mound, the first time it had ever been found on Samoa. Some of the adzes found in

the mounds and at excavations on hill forts and inland villages were fairly similar to some types found in the Marquesas, which in turn were related to adzes found in association with New Zealand’s earliest inhabitants, the moa hunters, at such places as Wairau bar in Blenheim. “I feel this suggests a much

closer relationship between eastern and western Polynesia at an earlier stage in the settlement of the Pacific than is apparent in the later stages,” Dr. Green said. “But nothing we discovered at Samoa contradicts the current theory, that the movement of peoples was from the west to the east,” he said.