- IJ
102: Burial Styles of the Maori
Burial styles differ in Aotearoa. If you go to Australia the Aborigines have one style because they were isolated and of just one stock over 60,000 years. But if you go to America there are many styles depending on the tribe involved. These tribes were not descended from each other except in the ancient past but the burial styles were vastly different ranging from trussed cave burial, prone mound burial, and decay burial where the bones were scraped and then buried. This month, in one location, we discovered sand burials of a child (surrounded by rocks and sand, except the sand had blown away!), another that was falling out of a dune as erosion and wind revealed them, and three more where the wind had pushed and scattered their remains down a dune over a wide area. Two of these were post-European burials, evidenced by some very old cloth and some very old iron pieces nearby. The decay of the bones to the open air was very apparent and I'm sure if they were touched they would fragment. We are amazed they are just left there to decay in the elements. Only 400 meters away I found a farm dog chewing on a old sheep bone it had dug up near the river bank.
In New Zealand the 'traditional' Maori burial was scraping the bones and depositing them in a tree trunk or a cave, or even throwing them down a crack or crevice such as at the hidden place at Muruwai Beach, or in the underground cave at Cornwall Park in Auckland.
Other styles are trussing and burial in sand...(there is one in a sand mound in the Dunedin area), another trussed and in a cave...(such as Mary Island, Fiordland), a prone burial face down in sand (such as Otago Peninsula), a burial on it's side and facing east (such as Wairau bar, Marlborough) and prone burial on a rock ledge (such as Middlemarch, Central Otago). But these early South Island burials were of the Waitaha origin, not Kāi Tahu who brought their Polynesian style burials south with them. Waitaha are an ancient people of various mixed cultures and these prone burials belong to them - a people more ancient than the Polynesians who arrived in 1280 and afterward.
Carbon dating proves otherwise some will say...yes, well we suspect but can't prove that any data that was earlier than the supposed arrival dates, would be deleted or changed. After all, in our cave the find shocked those who saw them that they covered it back up in a manner than could be dugout again but would require so much effort anyone trying in secret would give up (except they did not bargain on our determination).
We expect to see prone burials, on a cut shelf, on their backs and in a row, not unlike this...
But who knows what we will really see? Certainly the Raglan Cave held many prone skeletons in rows...78 in total so the story goes. All stories can be embellished over time. However, all stories have an element of truth in them. The element of truth in this case is that the ones in our cave are not of Polynesian (Maori) origin. A quick look by those who first saw them, at the lack of usual Polynesian indicators revealed they are not what they expected to see - and that scared the heck out of the Kamatua who viewed them. The two who found the cave were made to never reveal what they saw, and the archaeologists involved received something to keep them quiet, (not the first to receive discrete payment, and not the last), for revealing what they found would change history - and you can guess what else!
But only proof - physical proof, digital proof, visual proof, video proof, scientific proof, analytical proof, anthropological proof and confirmed dating will bring out things from the past that will no longer able to be hidden. Who knows what that will bring to the surface...for we may have only scratched the surface of what has been found over the years and hidden to all but a few?
After all, we know of three sites already - what else don't we know about? How many hidden caches of tall skeletons might there be in NZ, hidden, covered over or destroyed but documented?
This year or next, could be one for the history books.
