Dr. Duff Disputes Otago Claim

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31042, 23 April 1966, Page 18

Dr. Duff Disputes Otago Claim

The earliest plausible date for Polynesian occupation ol New Zealand was still 78C A.D. obtained by the Canterbury Museum four years ago from radio-carbon testing of charcoal from a Maori oven east of the Redcliffs moahunter cave in Christchurch, said Dr. R. S. Duff, Director of the Canterbury Museum. He was commenting on the Otago University expedition report of an 800 A.D. carbon date for charcoal samples from a Bay of Islands taro garden and the claim that earliest previous finds came from the tenth and eleventh centuries. Dr. Duff also disagreed with the Otago assessment of kumara cultivation. Dr. Duff said the Bay of Islands finds were interesting as confirmation of human occupation of New Zealand more than 500 years before the traditionally - accepted Maori belief in a fleet of 1350. South Island sites of these pre-fleet people showed no evidence of agriculture, but the kumara would be the only form possible. “Maori traditions alleging that the kumara was not brought to New Zealand until the fleet period are perfectly plausible in terms of the South American origin of the kumara and the unlikelihood that it would be grown in the Cook Islands or Tahiti in the eighth century,” said Dr. Duff.

“The Otago interpretation if a taro swamp on Moturua .•eminds us that the taro, yam, tnd gourd could have been brought by the first eighth century settlers and established in North Auckland, but the fact remains that these plants were limited in distribution and of minor economic importance,” said Dr. Duff. “The really important crop of the Maori was the kumara, and there is, as yet, no evidence that it was introduced before the fourteenth century,” Dr. Duff said.