REMARKABLE CARVING

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 73, 19 December 1928, Page 12

REMARKABLE CARVING

IS IT PRE-MAORI? PROBLEM FOR ETHNOLOGISTS ’ Dominion . Special Service. Auckland, December 8. Suggesting, possibly, that when the Maoris came to New Zealand they found here a race superior in culture to their own, a remarkable wooden carving recently discovered at Doubtless Bay, near Mangontii, has been presented to the War Memorial Museum by Mr. H. E. Vaile. It is the most important individual accession to the institution since the Kaitaia carving was discovered seven years ago. Considerable interest was excited at

the meeting of the executive of the Auckland Institute and Museum, when this prized gift was announced. The carving is in the form of a most unusual canoe prow, and presents a similar problem as to its origin as did the Kaitaia carving. It will, no doubt, form the subject ’of keen discussion among ethnologists. In addition to its great importance to ethnology, it has a certain primitive artistic merit.

The object was discovered during swamp-draining operations, at a depth of five feet. As described by Mr. Gilbert Archey, curator of the museum, it is a carved wooden canoe prow, representing ,a dragon-like creature, with a bird’s beak, carrying four teeth; nostrils are clearly represented. The ears in the anthropoid style are slightly pointed, and the eyes are faithfully represented, and set in deep sockets, with a decorated rim. A curious feature is the presence of spines, or, maybe, tufts of feathers, or hair, on the head and neck, and another interesting detail is a small carved loop terminating in a subsidiary figure behind the neck of the main figure. The carving is certainly different from typical Maori art, but before it is assigned as of foreign origin, it should be noted that it is not quite unique in New Zealand, and was, moreover, found in company with a fragmentary canoe stern post, showing at least the miiin characteristic features of the Maori Te Rapa, and witli typical digging sticks. It shares its distinctive and unusual features With a long slab, discovered in the Awnnui Swamp, a year ago. This slab is incomplete, and has very low relief outlines of a couple of similar bird dragons, and to two human figures, both dragons and humans being armed with spines or tufts similar to those on the new carving. The Mangonui figure is somewhat suggestive of Manain, a cliaracteristic New 25ealaii<l art form, also known in Eastern Polynesia.