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Ngā Tohuwhenua Mai Te Rangi: A New Zealand Archeology in Aerial Photographs

Firth of Thames

Firth of Thames

The lower Waihou River drains into Tikapa Moana, the Firth of Thames; the surrounding plain is" a vast, poorly drained locality. When Cook visited in 1769, he travelled up the Waihou and described villages which, for the first time, he called 'towns'; he had seen no settlements of this size on the East Coast where the Endeavour had just been. 7 Some of these settlements, notably the pā Oruarangi and Pāterangi, were excavated in the 1920s and 1930s and their artefacts deposited in the Otago and Auckland Museums. They served an important historical role in defining in archaeological terms Classic Māori culture. 8 On the banks of a bend in the Waihou River, able to be navigated by Cook's small boats in 1769, the pā were subsequently cut off by a change in river course. 9 Today they lie in featureless dairying country and show as slight mounds by the abandoned river course, disfigured by sheds constructed to take advantage of the raised ground. The landscape impression of these sites is negligible from the ground, and only from the air does their true significance show.