write, to translate and interpret Maori history, errors creep in, errors of commission and omission. The omissions are innumerable: through the disintegration of Maori belief and custom under the impact of the Pakeha, through the withdrawal and the resentment consequent upon land confiscation and racial conflict, through the division between Maori generations, much that was once preserved by tapu has now been lost through tapu. The breakdown and the corruption of the concept of tapu has meant that the guardians of Maori history whose two-fold task was to preserve their knowledge and to pass it on to the next generation have died with their knowledge still locked within their minds, for they had found none worthy of their learning. This has happened and is still happening, as each succeeding generation turns from the Maori past toward a New Zealand present in which esoteric Maori knowledge seems to have scant functional relevance or practical value. Archaeologists, as they potter over the landscape attempting to fill in some of the gaps in Maori history, must seem a little mad—harmlessly so to the average Pakeha, dangerously so to the average Maori who has a proper fear and abhorrence of the curio hunter, the kind of person who desecrates a wahi tapu for what he might gain. The archaeologist, too, despises this person, regards him as no more or less than a vandal, for souvenir hunters do not respect history, they destroy it. The first stage in initiating a ‘dig’ is to obtain the permission of those kaumatua most closely concerned, and the first studies of the New Zealand archaeologist are the tribal and local traditions of the area he intends to explore. The ultimate value of the work of the archaeologist is understanding. For instance, without Jim Eyles, Roger Duff and others like them, what would we know of the moa-hunter phase of Maori culture, of the way the moa-hunter lived, of the world the moa-hunter knew? The aim of our Wairarapa coastal survey was to establish the borders of a region in which the Maori made widespread use of stone-walls and mounds for both functional and ritual purposes. Although not generally evident, stone-walls are to be seen on or near the occasional pa or habitation site in the Waikato, the far North, in Taranaki and Banks Peninsula, where they are a feature of former gardens, as in the Wairarapa. Is there a cultural relationship here, with Ngaitahu providing the link? What are the origins of this practice? Do the odd mounds and the ritual use of stone as a tuahu or altar in Palliser Bay bear any close resemblance to practices on a specific Polynesian island, or was stone construction in this coastal region and in Banks Peninsula simply a reaction to environment, a result of stony ground, few trees, and kumara to be planted and nurtured in a region of marginal climate? There are other questions to be answered. Streams, slips and sea-erosion have, at different points, exposed two separate layers of organically darkened soil, implying two separate occupation-phases. Who were these people and why the apparently long interval with little, if any occupation? Pits, some with raised rims, some round, some square, ranging in size from 2 feet to 30 feet across are a feature of the area. Were the same people who utilised these pits those who built the ridgetop pas? And what were the uses of the various types of pits? Some of these questions are unanswered; some have been partly answered by others, particularly Mr Keith Cairns of Masterton and the late G. L. Adkin, who have done intensive work in this area. Wellington Teachers College students had made three week-end or holiday trips into the Wairarapa coastal region before the Maori Education Seminar made its expedition to ‘White Rock’ in August. Each of these explorations has been spent mapping, photographing and recording sites, so that now we can see a fairly clear-cut pattern, from the Whareama River, one hundred miles south and then east into Palliser Bay, a pattern of intensive gardening with stonewall shelters and possible diversion of streams (hitherto unknown in pre-European Maori agriculture) in those small areas of micro-climate where conditions of soil, slope and shelter from frost and wind made kumara cultivation feasible. The ‘White Rock’ area was found to be typical of the region, with predominantly coastal settlement, one large pa, a series of smaller ridge-top encampments further north towards ‘Tora’ with a large kainga and many smaller lowland sites in close relationship with the pa or gardens. On a river plateau near the mouth of the