155: The Red Spear
The above item was found on the Otago Peninsula. It is made of red argillite and is 15cm long. We have said many times that NZ reveals a lot of non-Polynesian artifacts and that many are more akin to Melanesian types and that in the South Island those items are only found in the Marlborough/Nelson area - http://tangatawhenua16.wixsite.com/the-first-ones-blog/single-post/2018/12/06/-Marlboroughs-Mysteries
Being found in Dunedin, this item would be said to be a Maori (Polynesian) item as it was their possession. But Kai Tahu, after being chased out of the North Island, travelled through Marlborough (which had many Melanesian style objects and weapons) and would have taken this as a prize, possibly wearing it as a pendant as they did not see it attached to a spear shaft or knife handle as it would have been many hundreds of years before Kai Tahu arrived in the south.
But argillite is only black you say. No, it can be black, green, red and even blue. Below is a black argillite quarry.
Of Argillite (pakohe), Maori say that a fierce fire was kept burning on the face of the rock until it became red with heat. Water was then thrown on it. This caused the surface to crack and split up into small, or comparatively small, pieces; but the rock underlying the shattered surface became not shattered, but merely cracked in fairly large pieces. The shattered surface was loosened and thrown away, then the underlying part was split open and suitable pieces selected to form toki. Surface rock was always deemed inferior, and was not used. Interior stone was much better for tools. The best stone of all was obtained from below the surface of the water. Of the Nelson site one has said that 'fire is of no avail unless water is applied' and observed that the pool in the quarry area appeared to be man-made. The other method involved the use of hammerstones to break up small-size boulders, although they would be of little use with rock faces not already opened up by fire and water. He described the hammerstones at the quarry as (almost without exception), water-worn granite pebbles brought from Mackay’s Bluff or from the Boulder Bank. They range in weight from a few ounces to half a hundredweight. The transport of the larger ones for many miles over streams, through bush, and across a high saddle must have presented great difficulties. Maori often took argillite boulders overland or in waka, to be worked closer to home: many locations throughout Te Tau Ihu have stone-working sites where partly-worked adzes and numerous argillite flakes can be found.
However, there are at least 16 quarries which Jim Eyles recorded on the Nelson Mineral Belt of this very hard rock. The above description of quarrying by use of fire and water at the Rushpool has long been discredited. Boulders of granodiorite from the Boulder Bank were taken to quarries as far away as D'Urville Island to break large pieces from the outcrops, and then flaked into adze shapes with smaller hammerstones. The quarries have vast quantities of waste flakes and many unsuccessful roughout adzes. Argillite drill points were used to drill holes in softer rocks such as greenstone, but no rock was able to drill argillite which is why no weapons with handle cords were made of argillite until Europeans arrived and holes could be
Most say argillite is only found in Marlborough but there are small black argillite sites in Southland and a special one near Wellington that has red argillite. And that site is only 40-50km away, by canoe, from Marlborough.
Aside from the location and rarity of this argillite the issue is the style. It is not Maori, it is not Polynesian and it is remotely Melanesian. So why was it made this way, and by whom and how long ago? The answer lies in all the many unusual artifacts in the Nelson/Marlborough region - they were made by those here before the Polynesian arrived, the same ones many Maori will tell you their koroua told stories about; the stories handed down by their Nga tapuna.
Of weapons, on this site we have shown this spear point, a Melanesian bow, a boomerang, a stone spiked club, a wooden spear, a hexagonal shafted club, mapuche style clubs, a long flat finger gripped weapon and Melanesian sling stones. All these items we found in unusual places or deep underground.
There is more to these islands than you have been taught.
