MAORI RELICS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 December 1924, Page 8

MAORI RELICS.

A TREASURE LAi\D. ihe sand dunes at the Waihi beach and at Bowentown. luive proved a veritabie treasure-iami of Mouri relics. Mr. Goffe, i\ative Land Purchase Olijcer, Auckland, has been investigating the kitchen middens and old Maori workshop, m the Waihi beach. He ®tathat the old workshops whicb had been discovered, mainly due to the shifting sands, were remarkable, and he had not met .with the like betore. One workshop in particular had rurmsned important evidence of the craft of the old-time Maori. There were to be seen the remains of the workings or the expert craftsman in the making ot weapons, implements, and domestic lensils, such as adzes fashioned from hard stone, drill points and hammers made of jasper, gouges, obsidian knives or cutters, slush lamps (made of pumice), sinkers for line fishing, and fish-hooks of bone. This workshop, said Mr. GofFe, contained the richest store of stone and obsidian flakes and jasper points yet found in IVew Zealand Mr Goffe suggests that the flakes or chipping® should he gathered and deposited m the museum at the Waihi School of Mines. Following a bi" westerly storm in 1914 a portion of tiie larger workshop was- exroo-sed and discover»d by Messrs. H. M. Hovell and It. of ’ °»tn ai hi. states the Auckland Star The bte Mr T. F. CWseman, vr Museum, visited the V aihi beach later, and secured a. verv hue selertion of stone imnlements and worked bone, principally fish-hooks and sneor u-inK. These are now in the Auckland Museum.