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South Bay pa (pre-European), Kaikoura Peninsula. Ditches and banks enclose the points formed by the cliff. Goldmining: sluiced terraces of period 1870-1890 near St Bathans, Central Otago.

'The Point', a pre-European pa, Kaikoura Peninsula. The pa is at bottom right

New Zealand has some 6,000 earthwork fortifications, the product of widespread warfare in the pre-European period from about A.D. 1500 to A.D. 1800. In addition, Maori quickly adopted and developed aspects of gun warfare in the nineteenth century: as many as 600 fortified sites were built or adapted from pre-European types. The Maori word for these fortifications is 'pa' (pronounced as in 'Ma' and 'Pa').

A typical fortification consists of an elevated section of a ridge with ditches at either end. Ditches may extend around the sides, and there may be more than one ditch. Another form is a headland or end of a ridge with a ditch or ditches across the narrowest access point. There are also many sites with storage pits, terraced housefloors and horticultural plot boundaries that show well from the air.

The aerial photographs in this compendium are oblique or low oblique (near vertical) images taken by Kevin L. Jones.

Copyright © 1997- 2004  Kevin L. Jones/Department of Conservation is asserted.

For further information, contact Kevin Jones at Department of Conservation, PO Box 10 420, Wellington, New Zealand (Email: kljones@doc.govt.nz ) or refer to:

Kevin L. Jones. Nga Tohuwhenua mai Te Rangi: A New Zealand Archaeology in Aerial Photographs. Wellington, Victoria University Press, 1994. ISBN 0 86473 268 6.

In addition, some of you may be interested in this website:

Worldwide Aerial Archaeology

For a review of New Zealand archaeological aerial photographs, see:

Kevin L. Jones. The development of aerial photography in New Zealand archaeology. Aerial Archaeology Research Group News 13 (1996): 7-13 and 14 (1997): 13-22 (in two parts).

Routes Flown (to 2001)

  air phot routes94-01.jpg (53232 bytes)  Thumbnail - click to enlarge

The Photographs

The photographs of archaeological sites are arranged by region and are accessible using the imagemap below. You must have Internet Explorer 4 or higher or Netscape 3 or higher to use this imagemap. In each section, there are thumbnail JPEGs which can be clicked on to access a larger  image. There is another imagemap for the Kaikoura Peninsula sites.

Click on the hotpoint linked names on the map:

 

 

HTML document by T. Higham, G Law

December 16, 2005

 

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