History
The site was discovered in 1939 by then schoolboy Jim Eyles who, in 1942, found more artefacts. Early investigations with Roger Duff unearthed a burial site. Bones were scattered and close to the surface. This was originally believed to have been due to ploughing, but work by Bruce McFadgen shows that at some stage, probably between the two periods of occupation, the site was subject to either large storm surge waves or a tsunami which probably contributed to the scattering. Using the techniques of the time about 2000 artefacts and 44 human skeletons were removed and examined in detail. The record seems to show that the partial skeletons of several children were found in shallow graves but these were in such poor condition and scattered that Duff was either unable or unwilling to keep the fragments using the methods of those days. The examination showed that the people were using the same cultural methods as those in eastern Polynesia, particularly the Marquesas Islands.69 adzes were found at Wairau Bar with only 3 being made of greenstone. 80 small, one piece,triangular, stone or bone fishing lures with lashed unbarbed hook were found.
Read more about this topic: Wairau Bar
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (19121989)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (18431916)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of Gods property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)