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At
least since the time of the Takitimu waka, the western
Bay of Plenty has been an abundant food basket. The
evidence for this lies here at Papamoa, where a nationally
significant pa complex straddling ignimbrite (volcanic)
hill country once watched over fertile coastal dune
plains and rich coastal fisheries. If radiocarbon
dating is correct, settlement began on the plain about
the year 1400. For the next 300 years the people prospered,
harvesting their crops and fisheries, occupying and
abandoning sites in accordance with the kumara cycle
and soil fertility. Today’s
subdivisions and sprawl are oozing their gimcrack
way over an ancient palimpsest of kainga, garden soils
and swamp pa. |
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But
look to the hills. Here, as elsewhere in the North Island,
Maori fortified their settlements as competition for resources
intensified. The Bay of Plenty still has fine examples of
ancient hill forts at Maunganui, Mangatawa and Papamoa.
The Papamoa Hills offered good views in all directions at
an inevitable point of inter-tribal tension between Ngai
Te Rangi and Arawa. Archaeologists have located about 60
sites pits, terraces and, of course, pa. Pa range from a
massive 7 ha (Wharo pa) down to 0.15 ha. The oldest was
begun some time after 1460 and they were all built by 1700.
The scientists have given them number-names that make them
sound like U-boats, but the two largest pa also have proper
names. The largest, Wharo (U14/166,167), on the spine of
a ridge with three ‘limbs’ on side spurs, has
nine separate defended units. Karangaumu (U14/238), probably
the earliest and full of large storage pits, has eight defended
units. It sits atop the summit of Papamoa Hill and may have
been rebuilt at least once. At the other end of the scale,
little U14/1660 occupies a knoll on a ridge below Karangaumu. |
This sprawling
cultural landscape is more important than its individual
components. Here on the coastal plain and along the rolling
hillsides of Papamoa is the record of the lengthy evolution
from Polynesian colonists to the Maori who would encounter
European society. Late in 2000, in the face of the threat
posed by soaring land values and development pressure,
local authorities conditionally approved the creation
of a regional park in the Papamoa Hills to continue to
tell that story to future generations. The Papamoa Hills
Regional Park (Te Rae-o-Papamoa) opened officially in
2004 and two years later a conservation plan was published
to guide its future use
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