MAORI RELICS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27570, 12 December 1950, Page 6

MAORI RELICS

Small Pa May Once Have Guarded Brighton Was the little island on the southern end of Brighton Beach once a small Maori pa? Stone relics found by Mr B C. Adams over the past few weeks indicate that this the case. The relics are net sinkers, hammers and partly-formed adzes of blue basalt, and the quantity found in the shallow soil seemed to suggest that some Maori had been operating the equivalent of a stonemason’s yard on the island about 200 years ago. . Sharing with his wife an interest in searching for such old relics. Mr Adams first noticed the sun shining on the polished surface of an adze. Digging in the shallow soil of the island—which is divided from the Brighton Domain when the tide is in—they found a densely packed assortment of partly chipped rock. Mr and Mrs Adams have searched along much of the Otago coastline in recent years and have found traces of Maori habitation at most of the obvious camping The suggestion that the bay at Brighton may have been protected by a small pa on the island was given support by the director of the Otago Museum, Dr H. D. Skinner, who stated that it was an unusually good site covering a useful canoe landing. He thought that it may have been a small pa, somewhat similar to the one on Goat Island, at Purakanui, and that it was probable that it had been inhabited spasmodically over the years, Although the waterworn rock used by the Maori workmen had apparently been brought to the island—possibly from up the Brighton River—there did not appear to have been any final polishing of the stone implements done at the site which had been investigated. It was possible, however, that more finished relics would be found elsewhere on the island.