Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Reading the past in rat bones

A team of scientists (Janet Wilmshurst, Atholl Anderson, Thomas Higham, Trevor Worthy) have recently published a paper dating Polynesian settlement of New Zealand at around 1280 AD. They radiocarbon dated 30 Pacific rat bones and over 100 rat-gnawed woody seed cases to reach their conclusion, which agrees with other evidence that New Zealand was first settled around 1250–1300 AD. This new research also confirms the conclusions that we came to in our entry ‘When was New Zealand first settled?‘, published more than three years ago.

However, their findings contradict some 1996 research carried out by Richard Holdaway. He radiocarbon dated rat bones, which, in some cases, gave dates over 1000 years earlier. If these dates were correct, then Pacific rats (and so humans as the rats can only have arrived on canoes), first arrived as early as 200 BC. In this scenario, the humans must have either died or sailed away. Given the latest evidence, this much earlier arrival scenario does not hold much weight anymore, although Holdaway is sticking by the accuracy of his dates. There have been questions about the reliability of rat bones in this research, and it seems probable that there are other reasons for the carbon dates not giving the true age of the bones.

Science relies on empirical methods and repeatable observations to arrive at the truth, and no other researchers have replicated Holdaway’s findings. Given the weight of evidence, the current consensus is that Polynesians first arrived in both the North and South islands of New Zealand, around 1280 AD.

Matariki (the Pleiades)

Happy New Year!

The pre-dawn rise of Matariki, also known as the Seven Sisters or Pleiades, traditionally signals the Māori New Year under the maramataka, or lunar calendar.

In general, celebration of Matariki starts when the first new moon can be seen following the pre-dawn rise of Matariki. The new moon can be seen on 5 June this year, and celebrations kick off from 6 June. Traditionally, Matariki was both a time to commemorate those who had passed on, and celebrate a time of plenty when stores were abundant from horticulture, hunting and fishing.

For some iwi, Puanga (Rigel), rather than Matariki, was the signal for the new year. For instance, Whanganui iwi are having a Puanga festival. In the South Island it is Puaka (which is Puanga in Ngāi Tahu dialect) that heralds the new year.

Whether you’re celebrating Matariki or Puanga, here’s an easy guide to try to find the stars.

How to find Matariki

Matariki is found low on the horizon in the north east of the sky. Try looking here between 5.30 a.m. and 6.30 a.m.

The pot

1. First find the pot (the bottom three stars of the pot are also called Tautoru, or Orion’s Belt). To find Puanga (Rigel) look above the pot until you see the bright star. To find Matariki, keep going.

2. To the left of the pot, find the bright orange star, Tuamata-kuku (Alderbaran).

3. Follow an imaginary line from Tautoru (the bottom three stars of the pot), across to Tuamata-kuku and keep going until you hit a cluster of stars.

4. That cluster is Matariki. If you have good eyes you should be able to pick out individual stars. If it looks fuzzy, look just above or just below and the stars will be clearer.

Matariki in the night sky

This picture, from AstronomyNZ, shows the relative position of Matariki (Pleiades) to Taumatau-kuku (Alderbaran), Tautoru (Orion’s belt), Puanga (Rigel) and Takurua (Sirius).

Let me know if you find it.

Memorial to the battle of Tūtūrau

This post is for the two wonderful women I met at the Otautau Museum last Thursday afternoon.

It was bitterly cold. I was trying to find the local sheep yards to take a photo. As I drove around the sleepy mid Southland town, I noticed the door of the local museum - once the court house - was ajar. I went in to ask where the yards were. Two women were just taking down an exhibition with some powerful photos of Otautau men going off to the Great War (the First World War). They were putting up an exhibition of lace and women’s work. They told me, to my embarrassment, that the yards had closed in the 1960s and there was not a trace to be seen. And one of the women, with a North American accent, who had been in Otautau for five years, said she knew about Te Ara - even read our blog. That made my day.

So this is a tribute to those Otautau women, and others like them, who have done such a great job in preserving history in Southland.

Everywhere I went I found that stories I had read in Te Ara were also being told in heritage trail plaques, murals, or stone monuments. They include, for example:

• Memorials to the battles between Māori. The last great battle between Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu in the early 18th century is marked by a big stone boulder in the Five Rivers area. To recall the defeat of invaders from the north by Ngāi Tahu in 1836 there is a huge obelisk at Tūtūrau that records, as if it were an interisland football match, that this was ‘the last fight between North and South Island Maoris in which the Southerners were victorious’!
• Memorials to whalers, especially at Riverton where John Howell gets pride of place beside the Aparima River.
• A wonderful tribute to the large number of Scots settlers of Southland at Glencoe where a memorial recalls the Massacre of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands in 1692.
• A sad memorial in a deserted field to the 131 people who drowned in the wreck of the Tararua on Waipapa Point in 1881.
• A tribute to coal-mining history at Ōhai, where Solid Energy have set up a display of mining equipment beside the main road.
• And, of course, the province is thick with war memorials – some slightly heroic, like the handsome Boer War trooper on the main corner of Invercargill; others with long lines of the dead from the Great War such as the hugely impressive memorial at Otautau itself, which is surrounded by captured Turkish and German field guns. Unusually, many of the war memorials in Southland also record those who served as well as those who died.

Southlanders, it seemed, have long memories and are intent on ensuring that we shall not forget. We are in your debt.