23. What can we learn from the archaeological excavation at Poukawa Moa Excavation, near Hastings?

Kerry Paul
Jun 5
3 min read

Updated: Nov 17

The Poukawa excavation is one of the most significant in New Zealand’s history. If not included as a major feature, this section would be incomplete. Details of the Poukawa excavation have been published in previous blogs, and for ease of reference, the blog is repeated here:

In 1930, Russell Price, a professional surveyor, surveyed Poukawa, 20 km south of Hastings, to build a canal outflow for Lake Poukawa, aiming to provide flood protection and reclaim land for pasture. While digging the drainage channel, Price discovered moa leg bones—without torsos or heads—standing upright in the soil.

Richard Price Excavation Site, Poukawa, Hawkes Bay 1965

Intrigued, Price speculated that this was evidence of moa hunters and returned to search for further evidence. He conducted exploratory digs in 1956 and a more detailed excavation in 1962, which he reported to the New Zealand Archaeological Association in 1963. Price was assisted by the University of Auckland and DSIR scientists.

During the excavation, Price uncovered broken moa bones and stone tools made from black stone and red quartz—materials not found locally. Two layers of volcanic ash provided clues to the artefacts' age: the upper layer was from the 186 AD Taupo eruption, and the lower layer was from the Waimihia eruption (an earlier eruption of Taupo) around 1400 BC. Items found beneath the volcanic ash layers indicated that they predated the eruptions, as volcanic ash typically seals everything beneath it.

In 1964, Allan Pullar, a soil scientist from DSIR, joined Price. Charcoal and pollen samples collected from beneath the ash layers led them to conclude that humans had been in New Zealand for at least 3,300 years. However, their findings were contested, and the conclusions were not widely accepted, despite the questionable grounds for the challenges.

There are several practical arguments supporting the idea of human habitation prior to 1280 AD:

The moa population in New Zealand around 1300 AD is estimated to have been between 58,000 and 2.5 million.
By 1440 AD, about 150 years later, all nine species of moa are believed to have gone extinct.
Given the relatively small number of Māori who arrived in waka in the upper North Island, it would have taken many generations to spread across the country and decimate the moa population.
New Zealand must have been inhabited by significant numbers of humans across the country well before 1300 AD to have caused the moa's extinction.

These statements raise a series of questions:

If moa numbers were of this scale in 1300 AD and there were relatively few Maori spread around the country, then why did the birds become extinct in 150 years?

Were there large numbers of inhabitants in New Zealand long before the arrival of the Maori and they were largely responsible for the moa becoming extinct? Were these New Zealand's first settlers?

A series of videos produced by Martin Doutre examines the work of Richard Price and his critics, offering a deeper exploration of the topic: