MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31345, 15 April 1967, Page 5

MUSEUM OF NATURE

Maoris Relied Heavily On Shellfish For Food

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum) Throughout the sand dune area for some miles north of Christchurch are hundreds of heaps of sea-shells, often well inland from the coast. Some of these have been eroded or ploughed up and can be seen only as scatterings of broken white shells on the surface, while others contain shells to a depth of two or three feet over a wide area.

These heaps mark places where many years ago Maoris camped for a short time and ate shellfish collected from toe nearby beaches. In January this year the Canterbury Museum Archaeological Society made an Intensive survey of these shell middens in one particular area near Kairaki, 70 being found in an area of about one square mile. Using scientific techniques, one 60 foot diameter midden heap, considered to be typical of those found, was excavated to provide more information about their formation, age, and toe locality at the time of occupation. Nearly all the midden sites are on higher parts of the sand dunes, not in hollows'

where we , might have expected toe occupants to camp for shelter; but we learned that at the time of occupation toe low-lying areas between Kairaki and Woodend Beach had been rather swampy. On one side of toe site investigated were a group of oven hollows where depressions had been made in the ground in which stones were heated on fires. When toe stones were hot, shellfish would have been placed in toe hollows and covered over for a short while until cooked.

Near the ovens were heaps of the empty shells, mostly cockles, pipis and mudsnails from toe nearby beaches, but also mussels, mactras, periwinkles and other species from further afield At toe base of toe largest heap were numerous rock mussel shells, brought along from Banks Peninsula or some other rocky shore by the party of Maoris who first camped here a few centuries ago. Heaped upon them were cockles and pipis which bad been collected locally /rom the beach about a mile away.

Layers of charcoal, burnt stone, and burnt shells indicated that toe ovens had been used several times, the last time to cook thousands of mudflat snails, obtained from near the mouth of the Waimakariri. When cooked bivalves such as the mussels, cockles and pipis would open allowing easy extraction of

toe fish, but the mudflat snails and other similar species would usually require a “winkle-picker”—a sharp painted piece of wood or bone —to remove toe fish from toe shell. As expected there were very few artifacts in toe site because this was principally a camp site, and not one where implements were either made or used. As moas became scarce throughout toe South Island after the fourteenth century, shellfish played an increasingly important part as a staple food of toe Maoris. Many shellfish could easily be obtained from sandy beaches and muddy estuaries, and toe women of toe tribe would be employed digging and raking through toe sand or mud and taking large open-weave flax baskets of shellfish back to toe village or camping place. Other species such as mussels, limpets and paua were collected from rocky areas, a blunt chisel-like instrument of wood or bone being employed in some areas to help remove the latter from toe rocks. Paua were then as now considered a delicacy. Shellfish not required immediately for food were preserved for future use by stringing them on flax lines and drying them to a rubbery consistency in the smoke of a fire.—M.M.T.

The photograph shows a shell midden near Kaiapoi 115 ft by 60ft, and up to 3ft thick in the centre.