Dad and son stumble upon ‘one of the most important finds of all time in Polynesia'

Miami Herald

05-03-2025

On a remote island of New Zealand, a dad and son searching for salvageable wood noticed some 'strange-looking' sticks — and found a significant historic site. Follow-up excavations uncovered hundreds of wood pieces, rope fibers and possibly sail fabric from an old canoe.
Last fall, Vincent Dix and his son Nikau passed by a creek near their home on Chatham Island, a remote archipelago off the eastern coast of New Zealand's main islands, and noticed several wood pieces sticking out of the sand, according to Wharekauri Farm Waka, a Facebook account dedicated to their finds.
'(It was) pretty much the normal day really, sort of just thought it was a bit of rubbish wood lying around,' Vincent told Te Ao with Moana, a New Zealand TV news show, in a March 3 video.
But to Nikau the wood seemed 'unusual,' 'strange-looking' and 'very well made,' he said in the video. When the pair returned to the site, they found a more elaborately carved piece and knew they'd found a waka.
'Waka is the Māori word for canoe,' according to the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. The term can refer to a wide range of boats made by 'ancestors of Māori' over the span of millennia and includes rafts, dugout canoes, double-hulled canoes and others.
New Zealand's Ministry for Culture and Heritage verified the family's finds — which already included roughly 20 canoe fragments — in mid-January and sent a team of archaeologists for follow-up excavations.
As archaeologists and volunteers began sifting through the sand, they were stunned. More and more wood fragments kept surfacing. Photos shared by cultural officials in a March 4 Facebook post show the pile of partially excavated wood.
Wood is generally considered a rare material for archaeologists to find because it easily disintegrates over time unless preserved by water.
'We can't overstate how incredible it is,' the excavation's lead archaeologist Justin Maxwell told The Guardian. 'It is by far the most important discovery in New Zealand, possibly Polynesia, and it will go down as one of the most important finds of all time in Polynesia.'
Before they began excavations, archaeologists believed 'the holy grail would have been to find some of the sail, or some of the twine that held things together, or some of the rope or the caulking,' Maxwell told Te Ao with Moana. 'We found all of that. It's completely blown our minds …. This is, by far and away, the most amazing excavation I've ever had the privilege to work on.'
So far, excavations have uncovered 'more than 450 waka (canoe) pieces and other items of interest,' cultural officials said in a March 4 news release. Photos show some of the 'incredibly rare' braided ropes and textile finds.
Much about the historic canoe remains unknown, including its age, place of origin and the original shape of the boat or boats.
Excavations at the site on Chatham Island have finished, but officials plan to continue analyzing and preserving the finds.
'To find all of these components preserved is incredible and it's going to help us learn so much more about Polynesian waka technology,' Maxwell told The Guardian.
The Chatham Islands are about 500 miles southeast of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.