Contracters working on the property of a holiday home at Lake Tarawera have dug up human remains.
Workers were excavating Hamilton man Neil Callaghan's Spencer Rd property when they came across a human skull.
The Historic Places Trust was contacted and archaeologists have been called in. Archaeologists found two skeletons and a
skull at the end of January.
Details surrounding the gender and age of the remains of the three humans are soon to be released to local iwi.
Whakatane-based archaeologist Ken Phillips said the remains were found as well as the remnants of a coffin made out of totara. Mr Phillips said the human remains pre-dated the 1886 eruption of Mt Tarawera and were buried at different times between 1840 and 1886.
"They could have been buried 20 or 40 years apart," Mr Phillips said.
He said he was carrying out a forensic analysis of the remains to identify the gender and age of the deceased.
He said they would not be able to identify who the people were as there were no records from that period.
He said the remains were Maori.
Lake Tarawera was heavily populated by Maori at that time.
Mr Phillips said it was not particularly unusual to find burial sites and there were probably other burials sites throughout New Zealand which had not yet been discovered.
He expected to complete his report next week and give it to local iwi Tuhourangi.
Mr Callaghan, who is a member of the Rotorua Lakes Community Board, said he was at the site when a contractor found the first human skull.
He said he was surprised by the discovery but he said finding human remains was not "totally unexpected" given the history of the area.
Rotorua District Council director of kaupapa Maori and a kaumatua of Tuhourangi, Mauriora Kingi, said the human remains would either be buried at Te Mu, a settlement near the Buried Village, or if they were European, in a mausoleum at Kariri Point at Lake Tarawera.
