A gathered history of occupation

Otago Daily Times

a day ago

In this extract from a new edition of archaeologist Atholl Anderson's book The Welcome of Strangers, A History of Southern Māori, he details the vast extent of māhika kai, food production areas in the South.
Except in the northern part of the Ngāi Tahu takiwā (territory), where gardening was to some extent possible, hunting, fishing and gathering were the exclusive means of pre-European food production. Information on the range and relative significance of foods and other resources comes partly from archaeological analysis of discarded remains in middens, partly from direct historical observation, and largely from later recollections.
Most of the thousands of archaeological sites dispersed through the Ngāi Tahu takiwā are remains of wāhi mahinga kai (places where food was made; usually shortened to ''mahinga kai'' or ''mahika kai''). Many were quite specialised: shellfishing places, fishing camps, fowling camps, ovens for cooking kāuru, places where argillite, porcellanite, silcrete, flint or other types of rock were quarried and made into tools. But these are only the activities represented by durable remains of shell, bone, and stone or of cooking and fireplaces.
To appreciate that these places were also where families lived, generally seasonally, and carried out a wide range of domestic activities, it is worth describing just one mahinga kai where, unusually, much of the
otherwise perishable material that was deposited has been preserved.
The site is in a dry rock shelter at Lake Te Ana-au and dates to the late seventeenth century.
Excavation of several areas in the shelter shows that it had been a summer fowling camp focused upon parrots (kākā, kākāpō, kākāriki, kea) and pigeon (kererū), with minor catches of tūī, weka, mottled petrel and ducks. There were also bones of dogs, eels and the giant kōkopu (native ''trout''), along with freshwater mussel shells.
The pattern of discarded bone indicates that parrot and pigeon carcasses were preserved for later consumption and that their feathers were also valued; 324 kākāpō tail feathers were tied in bundles and many kākā tail feathers had about 40mm of the feather tip sliced off, probably for use in decorating woven items.
In fact, a new kākahu (cloak) may have been made at the site: there were signs that an old kiwi-feather kākahu had been burnt in a fire there, with the dogskin neckband and an adjacent, heavily-worn part of the kākahu remaining.
Amongst other artefacts was a large fish drying rack (part of it still standing), a section of netting, areas of bracken bedding, five fireplaces, two firesticks (a two-piece implement consisting of a stick which was rubbed briskly in a groove on a wooden plate to produce fire), bird spear points, adzes and chisels of various types and material (including pounamu), a hammerstone and grinder for adze-making, many pieces of adzed wood and chips, part of a tōtara plank (possibly from a waka), a large tōtara-bark container and numerous pieces of knotted cordage.
Most wāhi mahinga kai would probably have been similarly busy places where making food for future consumption was an important objective alongside all the other necessary tasks of family life.
Amongst the other kinds of evidence about mahinga kai the most important were recollections compiled in 1879–80 for a royal commission of inquiry into Ngāi Tahu land claims, known commonly as the Smith–Nairn Commission. Kaumātua from around the takiwā entered on a map of the South Island the places where they had lived in seasonal settlements (kāinga nohoanga) and gathered resources during the earlier 19th century.
The map, compiled by H. K. Taiaroa, MP for Southern Maori, was confined very largely to the area of Kemp's Purchase (North Otago and Canterbury), and it was accompanied by two notebooks containing information about the food-gathering activities that took place at each location.
These wahi mahinga kai, of which nearly 1400 were recorded, belonged to particular whānau and hapū, and they formed the foundation of the subsistence economy.
ANALYSIS OF THE 1880 MAHINGA KAI LISTS
Analysis of the mahinga kai lists shows that 62 resources were named, 57 of them foods. Mahinga kai for eels, fernroot and tī kōuka are most frequently listed, but there is also a strong emphasis upon a group of small riverine or estuarine fish (waharoa, pipiki, patete, paraki, panako, grayling, smelt, whitebait and minnows), together with native ''trout'' (kōkopu and koukoupara, species of Galaxiidae).
Kāuru (sugary porridge, syrup or toffee according to how it was cooked) was produced from tī kōuka, or tī (Cordyline australis). Tutu juice, raupō root and flax honey were other important plant foods, and the weka, tūī and rat were also prominent resources.
The most common wahi mahinga kai recorded in the lists was a stretch of flax-bordered stream where eels and other fish were procured, ducks caught, and fernroot or tī kōuka obtained. Next most frequent were sea-fishing localities, and then fowling camps, notably for weka and tītī.
There are significant geographical differences across the lists. In the coastal Otago list, fernroot, eels and tūī are prominent, but in South Canterbury the emphasis is on eels, estuarine and riverine fish, tī kōuka and fernroot. The inland list dealing with the upper Waimakariri shows a strong emphasis on birds, notably weka, and the native rat.
The variation might reflect several influences, including vagaries in the data sampling, but one that can be surmised as cultural is the local availability of gardening.
If kumara cultivation in North Canterbury allowed mahinga kai there to focus upon protein sources, then an absence of kūmara gardening in South Canterbury and Otago might have meant that people turned to alternative carbohydrate sources, such as fernroot and kāuru.
These data demonstrate that there was a greater variety of exploited resources than is apparent in the journals of early European observers and reveal the density of mahinga kai in the landscape.
Leaving aside the possibility that the lists include abandoned mahinga kai of earlier times, the density distribution of mahinga kai in the list recorded by Rāwiri Te Maire is about three places per kilometre of coastline, excluding the shoreline of lagoons.
The first South Canterbury list covers an area of about 2500sq km, giving a mahinga kai density of one per 15sq km. In the second list the density is about one per 9sq km. In the Waimakariri list the area is about 900sq km, giving a density of one per 24sq km.
These figures cannot be precise, but they do indicate the approximate frequency of mahinga kai in the landscape. Based on these figures, it can be estimated broadly that for the approximately 50,000sqkm of the eastern South Island lying below 1000m in altitude and inside Ngāi Tahu territory, a full list at 1880 could have contained 2000–3000 places of mahinga kai.
Other research projects have amplified the evidence recorded in 1879–80. During the 1920s, Elsdon Best collected descriptions of traditional food gathering activities from Ngāi Tahu, amongst other tribal