Grisly find won’t stall repair of highway
Beside a boulder nicknamed Tombstone, workers clearing debris from SH1 following the Kaikoura earthquake found ancient human remains. These koiwi tangata are a discovery of great cultural significance writes Vicki Anderson.
Workers clearing boulders on a slip above State Highway 1 north of Kaikoura have found human remains – potentially one of the most important archaeological finds in decades – at a site dubbed Tombstone Rock.
The accidental discovery of koiwi tangata (human remains) near Irongate Stream will halt work at the site but will not delay the reopening of the highway.
Workers clearing boulders from a slip above the road caused by the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, discovered the koiwi tangata at two separate sites on January 30 and February 14.
Steve Mutton, quake recovery manager for North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery (NCTIR), said the finds would temporarily delay excavation work at those sites. However, he said the work was on track to have the road and rail network ‘‘fully restored by the end of this year’’.
‘‘The larger work programme . . . covering 10 major sites north of Kaikoura is flexible enough for crews to concentrate on alternate sites while any sensitive sites are properly inspected and material removed by the archaeological teams, meaning there will be no delay in the overall timeline for our work.’’
While the discovery of remains was not unusual in the area, archaeologist Nick Cable said this appeared to be a ‘‘particularly significant find’’. ‘‘Now we are in a new phase of recovery with our guys finding new history. Really it’s putting bones on the stories the iwi have.’’
Robyn Wallace, director quake-response and recovery, Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, said the Kaikoura coastal area was of huge archaeological significance to Ngai Tahu.
Tom Arnold, of Abseil Access who had found the koiwi tangata, said the discovery was exciting from a cultural perspective – the discovery was likely to be pre-European Maori – but also ‘‘unnerving’’ and ‘‘shocking’’.
‘‘We’ve done a lot of work after the Christchurch earthquakes around moa bones, artefacts and middens but finding human remains . . . it was unnerving.’’
The bones and skull were found near a rock the geotechnical team had already nicknamed ‘‘Tombstone Rock’’ weeks before the discovery due to its shape.
The loose koiwi tangata were recovered by the cliff-scaling team and taken to the Kaikoura police station for temporary storage with the permission of the runanga and Heritage New Zealand.
‘‘There remains more koiwi tangata on the cliff face beside a prominent rock located on the slip face. As this could be an intact burial site, the remains are considered to have archaeological significance and have been left in place pending removal under archaeological supervision,’’ Mutton said.
Constable Chris McCracken of Kaikoura police said once the area was cleared of debris and made safe, the koiwi tangata would be ‘‘reburied there following iwi protocols’’.
Beside a rock nicknamed Tombstone, Tom Arnold adjusted his abseiling harness and looked out to the sea below. He considered working in such a beautiful scenic spot one of the perks of his sometimes dangerous job. Occasionally, if he stopped to look over his shoulder out to sea off Kaikoura, he could spy dolphins frolicking in the waves.
Arnold and his colleagues at Abseil Access spend their work days dangling from unstable cliffs above State Highway 1, near Irongate Stream, north of Kaikoura. They are part of a wider team working to get the road open again after the 7.8M earthquake, two minutes after midnight on November 14, made the massive cliffs and forest-filled hillside shiver and tumble down.
The discovery came on Monday, January 30.
You can hear in Arnold’s voice that it was a moment he won’t forget.
He and his colleagues were abseiling their way down the scree towards a large upright rock, Tombstone, which had moved during the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake.
‘‘We were aiming to blast it off the face to reduce hazards for the road below,’’ Arnold explains.
The team had been on site for a couple of weeks. With the landscape drastically altered by the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, distinguishing landmarks were few.
Between them, abseilers, geologists and helicopter pilots regularly invented nicknames for prominent natural features, a sort of visual shorthand for identifying work sites.
‘‘There was Tombstone, named for its straight up and down shape, and there are others – the Shark’s Tooth, The Coffin, but nothing has been found near The Coffin,’’ Arnold explains.
That Monday they were slowly removing some of the large boulders around Tombstone.
The air was completely still when, wedged in a crack between a couple of the large boulders, one of Arnold’s team ‘‘hanging on a rope’’ made a spine-tingling discovery.
‘‘Three femur bones were found on the surface of the dirt,’’ he says. ‘‘We weren’t quite sure whether they were human or deer, they are actually very similar.’’
Because of its precarious location, 100m down one of the slips, an archaeologist could not examine the koiwi tangata (human remains) on site. Photographs of the bones were taken and discussions were held with the onsite geologist.
‘‘We stood there, surrounded by quake devastation, Googling it,’’ says Arnold.
‘‘We came to the conclusion that they were human and potentially of great cultural significance.’’
The abseiling team returned to the site near Tombstone to check for other remains.
‘‘We found more bones including a ribcage, arm bones and other remains which were recovered and handed to the archaeologist. We had to make sure that proper processes were observed and that they weren’t disturbed by rainfall events.’’
The area they were working in was a historic slip.
Many hundreds of years ago a landslide had occurred there. The 2016 earthquake had retriggered it and sent its native trees tumbling down, leaving behind just a rocky scree face.
‘‘We were stood down from that site until the relevant permits have been sorted out with local iwi and Heritage NZ,’’ Arnold explains. ‘‘We moved on to another slip, slightly north on the same site.’’
It was there, on Valentine’s Day, while dolphins were frolicking out at sea, when a human skull was found.
‘‘It wasn’t buried, the skull was just sitting on the surface,’’ says Arnold. ‘‘It was probably about 50m from the first discovery. It’s thought the koiwi tangata could have been part of an old battle. Archaeologists know there is a burial ground in the area, but noone knows much about this site.’’
Being involved with the discovery is exciting because of its cultural significance – the likelihood is that the discovery is of pre-European Maori – but Arnold readily admits that finding human remains was ‘‘shocking’’.
‘‘It’s not something we’ve had to deal with before. We’ve done a lot of work after the Christchurch earthquakes around moa bones, artefacts and middens but finding human remains... it was unnerving.’’
Constable Chris McCracken was on duty in Kaikoura when he got the call that ancient bones had been unearthed.
‘‘I arrived at the scene late that afternoon,’’ says McCracken, who took photographs of the discovery. ‘‘The koiwi tangata were about 10 metres up the bank, discovered among some of the rocks which had come down in the earthquake... There was a lot of debris around the remains so we needed to remove them from their resting place to ensure they weren’t damaged, but this needed to be done following the correct protocols.’’
He worked closely with North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery (NCTIR) – pronounced ‘nectar’, the Kaikoura equivalent to SCIRT – to adapt their cultural processes to the unusual situation.
‘‘I went up the hill to the scene in a helicopter and we carefully recovered the bones and returned them to the Kaikoura Police Station to protect them,’’ says McCracken. ‘‘Once the area they were found in is cleared of debris and made safe, the koiwi tangata will be reburied there following iwi protocols.’’
Legend has it that when Maui pulled up the North Island, Te Ika a Maui, using a giant hook, he braced his foot on the Kaikoura peninsula, Te Taumanu o te Waka a Maui.
For this reason the area was also referred to as Te Matau a Maui – the fishhook of Maui.
The Kaikoura coastline took its name from Tama ki te Rangi who, on his journey south, ate some crayfish over an open fire. The area became Te Ahi Kaikoura a Tama ki te Rangi – the fires where Tama ki te Rangi ate crayfish.
It was first occupied by Waitaha, Ngati Mamoe and Ngai Tahu in succession with Ngai Tahu arriving from the North Island in the 17th century.
Giants roam the sea off the Kaikoura coast. Kaikoura’s history has long been tied to the majestic whales which dwell beneath the ocean surface. Maori legend tells the tale of Paikea, the whale rider, and the strong spiritual bonds between the human and natural worlds. In Maoridom, nature is to be respected, not exploited.
In pre-European times, the Kaikoura Peninsula was highly populated, its people attracted by the bountiful food supply, fishing harbours and a sheltered, strategically located, coastline.
Kaikoura’s unique cultural landscape is richly peppered with important geographic and archaeological sites.
Many battles occurred in preEuropean Kaikoura – the most famous being about 1827 when the battle of Niho Manga, the barracouta tooth, occurred.
Ngai Tahu chief, Rerewaka, challenged Te Rauparaha to come south, claiming that he would rip open his belly with the tooth of a barracouta. At least 1000 Ngai Tahu died.
In the early 1830s, hundreds of Maori were killed along the Kaikoura coastline, at Omihi, Takahanga and what is now known as Goose Bay.
The first Europeans to visit the area in February 1770, were British naval expeditions under Captain James Cook.
By the early 1800s sealers were working along the Kaikoura peninsula with whalers landing close behind in around 1830 with Captain Robert Fyffe establishing his whaling station there in 1843.
Are the koiwi tangata from a battle involving the Ngati Mamoe?
Archaeologists are eager to add to their knowledge of the area’s rich history.
Archaeologists don’t have any answers yet, but there is excitement that this find may become one of the most important in recent decades.
Christchurch-based archaeologist Nick Cable, who is leading work on the discovery site, says the area is already rich in such history, most of it unearthed when SH1 was being built.
When the road was first being excavated, numerous koiwi tangata of pre-European descent were discovered. The same situation arose when excavating for the rail corridor at Omihi, south of Kaikoura.
‘‘Loose material has been unearthed in the recent slip,’’ says Cable. ‘‘Under the loose stuff is the intact stuff... the upshot is the burial site. The majority of recorded sites were found when SH1 and the rail both first went through. All the evidence we have of pre-European Maori was found when the road went in. Now we are in a new phase of recovery with our guys finding new history. Really it’s putting bones on the stories the iwi have.’’
Cable says the earthquake has laid bare many other archaeological sites of interest.
‘‘There are around 190 sites from pre-European Maori to whaling stations.’’
To recover the ancient bones, new technologies may be utilised.
‘‘Because of the hazardous terrain surrounding the koiwi tangata, there’s a definite danger aspect,’’ he says. ‘‘One of the most interesting things for me is that some of it will be remote archaeology... some sites will be remotely excavated. There are some interesting strategies involved. We’ll use drones and take advantage of technology deployed for the road rebuild.’’
For his part, Arnold remarks that he was ‘‘a little spooked’’ that the rock they’d nicknamed Tombstone turned out to be exactly that.
‘‘We started calling it that many weeks before the bones were found,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s ironic and a little spooky.’’
More koiwi tangata remain on the cliff face scree beside Tangaroa’s domain, where dolphins dive and whales’ tails rise.
As this could be an intact burial site, the remains are considered to have archaeological significance and have been left in place pending removal under archaeological supervision.
‘‘The Kaikoura coastal area is of huge archaeological significance to Ngai Tahu,’’ says Robyn Wallace, director of Earthquake Response and Recovery, Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu.
‘‘Pre-European occupation, one of the most well-travelled routes for Ngai Tahu passed through this area, so we were always aware that there would be a high probability of finding koiwi tangata.’’
The runanga is working with NCTIR and other agencies involved in the road rebuild to ensure that correct protocols are followed.
Protecting the site is deeply important for Te Runanga o Kaikoura.
But for now, Tombstone, the giant rock guarding the place where the bones of their revered ancestors lie, still stands tall.
‘‘We’ve done a lot of work after the Christchurch earthquakes around moa bones, artefacts and middens but finding human remains . . . it was unnerving.’’
Tom Arnold, Abseil Access