ANCIENT MAORI CARVING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 64, 12 September 1942, Page 4

ANCIENT MAORI CARVING

Maori carving recently unearthed at Tikoratigi, Taranaki, has been identified as original Stone Age carving, and the work of Taranaki Maoris, by Dr. H. D. Skinner, lecturer and ethnologist at Otago University, states a New Plymouth correspondent. It is probable that the carving will remain in Taranaki. Each tribe introditced into its carvings a design peculiar to itself, so that a student of Maori craftsmanship can easily decide the origin of a specimen. Thp Tikorangi carving, it is considered, adorned the base of a store house. It is similar to one discovered in the Mangati Swamp, Bell Block, and now in the Dominion Museum at Wellington. Dr. Skinner was unable to place the five beautifully polished staves uncovered at the same time, one of which was intact. It is thought that they might have been used as handles for some implement, perhaps in dragging for eels. The specimens, it is considered, came from the Otaraoa pa, situated on what is now the Waitara golf links, and headquarters of the Otaraoa hapu (a subtribe of the Ngatiawa tribe), the head chief of which, Ihaia Kirikumara. during the Maori troubles of 1860, was an ally of the Europeans.