A Fiordland Cave Burial

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31548, 9 December 1967, Page 16

A Fiordland Cave Burial

MUSEUM OF ' NATURE

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum) One fine day in April this year, Mr George Evans, of Tuatapere, was v i s i t i n g Lake Hauroko, made accessible only a short time previously by the initiative of local farmers who had bulldozed a road seven miles through the tall beech forest of this part of Western Southland to launch boats to explore the shores of this beautiful lake, which frequently lives up to its Maori name of “Sounding Wind.”

As he was coasting in a small boat along the shores of Mary Island his attention was attracted by a small cave at lake level, and he decided to scramble up the cliff face where a screen of young trees suggested a higher cave. Peering through the foliage he noticed what the Director of the Southland Museum, Mr Gordon White, aptly described as a first impression of the cave burial—“bones, sticks and dried grass.” Then the reality dawned the “bones” took shape as the seated skeleton of a Maori woman of rank, gazing at him with solemn dignity; the

“died grass” became the flaxfibre cloak in which her relatives had draped her body; the “sticks” took shape as a fan-shaped arrangement of stakes, braced against the narrow cave walls and supporting her seated body. Protected by Law

For at least three centuries before Cook’s visit in 1769 the Maori people had sought out caves in which to bury their high-ranking dead, siafe from desecration by their enemies in an age of increasingly chronic warfare. Scores of such burials have been discovered and destroyed without record during the course of European settlement. It was fortunate that this burial was discovered in a place (Fiordland National Park) where it could be protected by law, that the New Zealand Historic Places Trust was in existence to arrange for the installation of a protective steel grille, and that the Murihiku Tribal Committee of Southland was sufficiently aware of the archaeological importance of the burial to permit accredited archaelogists from Canterbury and Otago Museums to carry out the expert investigations to make the discovery more meaningful. It was not difficult to establish from the delicate skeleton that the remains were those of a woman, somewhat past middle age, of dainty and petite build, and, from the fine lines of the facial structure, of handsome appearance.

Using the technique of radio carbon analysis we were able to establish from an offcut of a manuka stake, which could be removed with safety, that the stake was cut about 1661. It was moving to realise that for over 300 years the body of the chieftainess, propped up in state, had gazed across the lake and faced the rising sun. The carbon date also indicated that she was probably a member of the Ngati Mamoe tribe, who, during the century 1650 to 1750, had been pushed into the wilderness of Fiordland by the incoming Ngai Tahu. While the finder, Mr Evans.

had reported no personal ornament with the remains, the cloak itself was a precious relic, representing, in its technique, a stage towards the evolution of the fine fibre cloak of the time of Cook. By contrast, soon after the time of Tasman (1642), there survived in this part of the South Island an earlier type, representing the first painful steps towards the dress cloaks which so impressed Cook over a century later. A description and comparison of the cloak can await a later chapter in this series. In the meantime we can take satisfaction that this first cave burial to be accurately recorded, and the oldest yet known, remains protected behind its steel grille, as a moving archaeological monument preserving both the mana of the dead chieftainess and the tapu of death —R.S.D.