Blog 6: Tracing New Zealand’s Earliest Footprints: The Weka Pass Rock Art Panel
- Kerry Paul
- May 7
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 30
JOURNEY 1 - SERIES 4 - BLOG 6 - A PART OF 10 BLOGS IN SERIES 4. - Reading time: 4 Mins
This blog begins our examination of archaeological features in New Zealand that may be older than the last ~800 years. Features differ from portable artefacts: they are fixed in place (such as shelters, earthworks, or rock art) and can preserve evidence of human presence even when tools and organic materials have been lost or disturbed.
Feature: Weka Pass Ranges Rock Art
The Weka Pass Ranges include a rock-art site recorded on a sheltered rock wall approximately 20 metres long, with the painted surface sitting under a natural overhang. The panel is low enough to be viewed close-up (around 2 metres in height at the shelter), but—as with many open shelters—its preservation has been vulnerable to weathering and later human activity.
In 1876, Julius von Haast (then Director of the Canterbury Museum) undertook the first detailed published recording of the drawings. He commissioned artist T.S. Cousins to copy the main figures, and Haast’s descriptions and copies were later published as Notes on Some Ancient Rock Paintings in New Zealand in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (Vol. 8, 1879, pp. 50–65).
Later efforts to preserve and make the images easier to see produced mixed results. In 1916, the principal drawings were copied again. In 1929—at the instigation of W.R.B. Oliver, Director of the Dominion Museum—some figures were over-painted with red and black house paint to increase contrast. While well intentioned, this intervention obscured parts of the original pigments and made later interpretation more difficult.
Because Haast recorded the panel before the 1929 over‑painting, his notes remain a key historical source for how the images appeared in the nineteenth century. Haast argued that the Weka Pass figures were unlike much of the rock art he associated with Māori communities in the South Island, and he drew attention to shapes that—to his eye—resembled animals not native to New Zealand. He also speculated that some smaller marks resembled writing, comparing them with the Tamil-inscribed bronze bell collected by William Colenso.
Haast described several figures as large, with some extending across substantial portions of the wall. Below are some of his more striking interpretations:
Figure described as “No. 4” (Haast’s numbering): Haast wrote that it resembled “the representation of a large snake possessing a swollen head and a long protruding tongue. This figure is nearly 3 feet long,and shows numerous windings.
It is difficult to conceive how the natives in a country without snakes could not only have traditions about them, but actually be able to picture them, unless they had received amongst them immigrants from tropical countries who had landed on the coasts of New Zealand from some cause or another.”
Figures described as “Nos. 21 and 21A … are again cyphers or letters resembling those of the ancient Tamil inscription.” (on Tamil Bell found by Colenso)
Figure described as “Nos. 23 and 25 … represent large lizards or crocodiles;”
Figure described as “No. 27, a huge snake-like animal, 15 feet long, is probably a representation of the Tuna tuoro, a mythical monster…. It is evident that the Tuna tuoro is in the act of swallowing a man, No. 29, who tries to save himself by running away from it. Now if we admit that the characters below the figures denote an Indian origin, the deduction would not be too hazardous that the accounts of huge snakes and crocodiles were brought by the writers of these signs to New Zealand, or if only pictures or books were obtained from a wreck, the ancient inhabitants of these islands founded their legends of such monsters upon them .Thus 23 and 25 might be crocodiles; No. 27 a boa-constrictor.”
Haast concluded that the images were, in his view, “quite distinct from those of the Maoris,” and that “some of the principal objects evidently belong to the animal kingdom and represent animals which do not occur in New Zealand.”
What remains valuable is the recording history: Haast’s early documentation captures a snapshot of the site before major alteration, and it also notes that local Māori contributed figures at a later stage on the same shelter wall.
Key Takeaways
The Weka Pass Ranges rock art was recorded early (1876–1879), making Haast’s notes and commissioned copies especially important given later damage.
Over‑painting in 1929 reduced the visibility of original pigment and complicates modern interpretation.
Haast proposed that some motifs resembled non‑native animals.
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