Centuries-old Māori food storage pits found in South Taranaki as part as Nukumaru Station Rd extension work

Historic pits used by Māori to store food have been found along the new Nukumaru Road Extension in South Taranaki. Photo / Bevan Conley

Pieces of South Taranaki Māori history have been uncovered along the Nukumaru Station Rd extension, with archaeologists finding centuries-old storage pits.

Work officially began on the $10.14 million project in June 2021 to provide better access to the Waiinu Beach community and the Waitōtara Silver Ferns Farms food processing plant.

The area the new road goes through was already known to be historically significant, so the work on the road is being done under an archaeological authority from Pouhere Taonga Heritage New Zealand.

Archaeologist Ivan Bruce has been working alongside the project to document any findings.

Aerial photographs taken in the 1940s by local archaeologist Colin Smart showed the surrounding land pockmarked by the pits, which Bruce used to identify where along the road they expected to find them.

Workers removed the topsoil from where the road will be going, which allowed Bruce to see the pits’ outlines in the soil.

He and his team then excavated the pits by hand to be photographed and recorded for a report on the land.

They have found four different pit sites along the road.

The surrounding farmland would also have featured crops and homes and the pits would extend far into the paddocks on either side of the road, Bruce said.

The land the road goes through features volcanic ash, making it very fertile for horticultural development.

“It’s a highly productive horticultural environment - there was obviously a huge Māori population here at one stage,” Bruce said.

The pits were pre-colonial, dug before Europeans first came to New Zealand, and he estimated they were between 300 and 600 years old.

They would have been used to store their crops over the winter.

“Māori produce kūmara, they grow kūmara, taro also possibly, gourd possibly; all grown around here, and they store them in these pits over winter,” Bruce said.

A small A-frame structure would have been built over the pits, with post holes dug into the bottom, to protect the produce from the elements.

“That keeps everything dry, tidy, clean, able to be looked after,” he said.

The produce was stored underground to keep them cool at around 13C, which Bruce said stops their biological trigger to grow shoots.

All of the pits were rectangular in shape and laid out in a line across the land.

Ivan Bruce demonstrating the soil layers of the historic kūmara pits found on the Nukumaru Rd Extension. Photo / Bevan Conley

“The people who put these in were very conscious about this space and using the space as best as possible, and they were very systematic about it,” Bruce said.

There were very few remnants left behind in the pits save for the holes where the poles were placed, as Bruce said the people who lived here would have taken the frames away once they moved on.

Once Māori moved on, he said the pits were naturally covered again by soil and ferns before European farmers turned the land into farmlands.

What struck him about the find was the scale of production and the population it would have supported, evidenced by the pits and how they had been hidden for so long.

“If you come here today, there’s just no sign of it - you don’t see te ao Māori here anywhere.

“But you’re standing on it.”

He also found it ironic, considering the recent incidents surrounding the name change for the township of Pakaraka, formerly Maxwell.

“There’s all the furore about the name change of Pākaraka from Maxwell, and I just thought it’s slightly ironic that just down the road there’s clear evidence of Māori being here for a very long time.”

Ngāti Maika spokesperson Bob Brownlie has been monitoring the work on the road along with Bruce as an iwi representative.

He said while the previous aerial photographs demonstrated the existence of these pits, seeing them dug up provided confirmation of a Māori population living in the area long ago.

“To actually be on the ground here and to see this stuff, it’s quite remarkable,” he said.

South Taranaki District Council spokesperson Gerard Langford said the uncovering of the pits was all part of the process the archeological authority had been doing.

“There’ll probably be further areas of interest along that whole construction area.

“We’ve just got to make sure that we follow the process, identify anything and make sure we fully investigate it, and that’s what’s been happening,” he said.

Bruce said an archaeological surveyor also conducted a drone flight over the area.

“We’ll use photogrammetry to record every archaeological feature which will go into the report,” he said.

Once the recording is completed, the land would be given back to the road workers for them to cut away for the new road.

The final report on the archaeological findings along the road would be handed to Heritage New Zealand once the road was finished.