POUKAWA REVISITED … The History Changing, Archaeological Work of Treaton Russell Price (1901 – 1986)

'In the course of normal science, it may happen that anomalies begin to accumulate. Some of these may be set aside for future research. Some may be dismissed as irrelevant. But if a sufficient number of anomalies accumulates, anomalies which resist solution by the paradigm or incorporation into it, a crisis develops. As the crisis intensifies, scientists begin to offer and promote new paradigms capable of accommodating the anomalies. If one of these paradigms attracts the attention of a sufficient number of members of the research community, a scientific revolution takes place. The research community learns to see things in a different way. It develops a new set of methods and concerns.
Kuhn points out that unless there is a recognizable crisis, provoked by an accumulation of crucial anomalies, there will be no movement to a new paradigm. The first step toward movement to a new paradigm is thus recognition of anomalies, of counter instances to the current paradigm'. (See Forbidden Archaeology by Michael Cremo).

One of the unsung heroes of New Zealand was a surveyor / farmer / amateur-archaeologist, T Russell Price, who devoted some 25-years, off & on, to very substantial archaeological digs at Poukawa, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.

Treaton Russell Price down in one of his excavations shows his trowells pointing to an obviously cut piece of wood lying in situ below the Taupo tephra (pumice or volcanic ash) from the 186 AD volcanic explosion of Taupo. The dotted line indicates the Taupo tephra layer. Price and his team, over decades of careful archaeolgical digging, found undeniable proof of ancient human occupation spanning 7000-years. This was subsequently verified by C14 carbon dating testing by the DSIR lab, as well as comprehensive scientific involvement by leading New Zealand archaeolgists, geologists and pedologists.

Russell first became involved at Poukawa as a surveyor in the year 1930, responsible for building a canal trench for the outflow drainage of Lake Poukawa. A giant dragline excavator was brought in to make the channel cut along the surveying line that Price had marked through the sodden raupo swampland. Prior to this successful endeavour there had been frequent flooding of surrounding farmland following torrential rains. The new canal drain at the northern end of the lake was completed in 1931 and enlarged 30-years later in 1961. The partial drainage of the lake brought 3500-acres of former lakebed land into pasture.

A typical vintage dragline of the (circa) 1920s – 30s creating a drainage channel through wetlands of the Kaikokopu Stream, Waihi, Tauranga District, New Zealand. The "steam grab" dredging machine used on the Poukawa canal was a Priestman brand machine, chunky metal parts of which still languish on Bill Buddo's farm where parts thereof were abandonned at the end of the job.

The Priestman dredge amidst the tall raupo-papyrus plant of Lake Poukawa's soggy shoreline. The barge upon which the dredge sits is fully obscured by the high raupo and a bucket-load of lake bottom mud hangs from the derrick boom. At the termination of the 1931 canal excavations, the long boom became the under- structure of a bridge on the farm presently owned by David Buddo.

In January 1927 the Department of Lands and Survey were asking for feasibility studies to be carried out, leading to partial drainage of Lake Poukawa. Work got underway in 1930.

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19300401.2.163?query=Poukawa%20canal&snippet=true

The canal dug in 1930-31 was to assist the outflow of water from Lake Poukawa and with 6-feet of freeboard could quickly expel surplus water build up after torrential rains. Interestingly, in February 1931 there was a massive earthquake in Napier, the epicentre of which was 50 kilometres (31-miles) to the NNE, but the Poukawa Valley was, by-and-large unaffected, with only minor damage to the developing drainage system. Some brick chimneys on houses, at the northern reaches of the lake, tumbled and some farm fences further towards Napier got a few inches out of line, bur the immediate vicinity of Poukawa Lake saw no serious collateral damage, although there were some slips on the banks of the newly dug canal and, in the swamp portion of the excavation, the bottom rose several feet. This relatively minor damage was to be rectified the following summer.

‘No horizontal movement was recorded on the northeast trending rupture northeast of Poukawa, but at Bridge Pa, a 0.2 m left-lateral displacement of a fence was recorded near the southwestern end of a northeast-trending pressure ridge that was upthrown to the southeast (Henderson 1933, p. 59). A fence crossing the surface rupture 1km north was, however, undisplaced. Henderson (1933, p. 56) described a locality southeast of Poukawa Railway Station:-"a series of short echeloned tears in the turf displaces a fence 8 inches [0.2 m] horizontally; there is no apparent vertical movement.’ (See: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288306.1990.10425689?needAccess=true  ) 

As the new canal system excavations proceeded to the base of a hill ENE of the lake a very strange anomaly was revealed. With the dragline cutting its way through the stand of raupo swamp plant, a section of the mud was found to contain many sets of long leg bones and feet of the now extinct giant Moa bird. Surveyor Russell Price found this to be quite mysterious, as he could see no evidence of the other skeletal parts of the stuck-in-the-mud birds. This triggered surveyor, Russell Price’s curiosity, followed by a long period of bewilderment, which lingered with him for years thereafter.

Left: The skeleton of a giant Moa, some species of which stood 12-feet (3.7 metres) high. Right: A femur leg bone, one of the hundreds of Moa bone remains located on the Buddo Farm, Poukawa, New Zealand where Russel Price commenced archaeological digs in 1956.

Farmer Bill Buddo, worked extensively with Russell Price on archaeological digs around the Buddo farm when in his formative years and teens, as did his cousins, along with a dedicated team of adult volunteers and credentialed scientists.

Bill stands in front of the canal trench where Russell Price first became aware of multiple leg bones embedded vertically, in the mud and, in the background are distant hills and valleys where the faint depressions of a well-worn Moa trackways can be seen to this very day.

Russell later recounted to Bill how, in 1930, he leaned on the self-same fence and tried to work out why there were only leg bones, but no signs of the torso, neck vertebrae and skull of the birds. After much contemplation he concluded that the culprit behind this anomaly was humans … Moa hunters!

Over 50 or 60-years ago the well-worn Moa tracks, at various points around the valley, were very prominent and easily seen, especially in mid-summer when the tracks showed up greener than the browner grass to the sides. In this photo the Moa track depression can still be seen, albeit faintly. Whereas cattle tend to make almost horizontal-diagonally circumnavigating tracks down and around steep hillsides, the obviously sure-footed Moa birds would walk paths on more inclined angles right down the face.

Russell price was a very practical, logical man who, as a professional surveyor, did his work and drew his charts with meticulous, careful detail. As a farmer for many years beyond 1930 - 31 (after he had participated in the Poukawa canal construction scheme) he was a keen observer of animals and noted the way they would move across flat terrain, negotiate hillsides or circumnavigate obstacles like wetlands. Drawing upon all this combined experience he returned frequently, over the years, to look closely at the spot where the solitary Moa leg bones had been found. He studied the harder ground contours adjacent and, from this, was able to see the natural pathways the giant Moa birds would have followed to the base of the hill. He could readily see where the Moa hunters would have secreted themselves in order to, at the precise moment, burst forth, bellowing to scare the hapless, giant birds sideways and down into the soft mud, thus rendering them stuck immobile and helpless.

The hunters would then chop through the legs of the stranded birds and drag the torso up onto the hard ground for plucking, cooking and eating. It was evident that a section of raised land nearby, but sufficiently distant to be inconspicuous to the view of birds on the trackway, was a Moa hunter campsite, complete with cooking pits (found in later excavations).

THE EXTENSIVE EXCAVATIONS BEGIN

As Russell approached retirement, he wanted to devote far more time to trying to answer outstanding questions related to New Zealand’s history of human occupation. Maori oral traditions and much other physical evidence would suggest that the country had been inhabited for a very long period before the coming of the Polynesian-Melanesian Maori in circa 1300 AD. Many scholarly works by early historians and anthropologists lent credence to this conclusion and multiple books were available on the library shelves containing oral histories of the learned Maori tohunga (priests) and elders on this subject matter. Seemingly, every iwi (Maori tribe) across New Zealand had names, physical descriptions and histories of their encounters with the earlier inhabitants and Maori had harboured no reluctance to withhold these oral traditions, recounting them openly, often in graphic detail, to genuine enquirers.

Like all New Zealanders of his time, Russell Price had access to such works as the 1830s observations of individuals like Joel Samuel Polack (Manners & Customs of the New Zealanders … Vols. 1 & 2) or John MacMillan Brown’s 1920s (Maori And Polynesian: Their Origin, History And Culture). Added to Brown’s scholarly works was Problems And Peoples Of The Pacific, also in 2 volumes. By 1952 Thor Heyerdahl’s massive tome, American Indians in the Pacific had become available, showing layer upon layer of compelling proof linking the Pacific region’s cultural, artefact, flora and some fauna directly to ancient South America (and stemming from a remote-antiquity, pre-Polynesian epoch).

As Russell commenced his digs at Poukawa in 1956, archaeological investigations in New Zealand were at their zenith and it was an exciting, golden age of discovery. This persisted through to the early 1970s, after which time openness gave way to cultural-Marxist dabbling, disruption, censorship and growing interference.

None of these problems of 25-years hence raised their ugly head as Russell Price, with expectation, optimism and enthusiasm, commenced his comprehensive assessment of the Poukawa landscape. In the course of the 1930 - 31 building of the canal he’d noted how the newly cut drainage trench, where it traversed sections of higher ground, showed two stratifications of undisturbed tephra ash fallouts from massive volcanic explosions in antiquity. These explosions gave very significant and convenient time signatures, as the eruption dates, leading to fallout of both tephra ash bands, were known, one in circa 186 AD (Taupo ash fall … 1764-years prior to 1950 and Waimihia ash fall … circa 3440-years prior to 1950).

Even without the expensive undertaking of carbon dating of organic materials found beneath the ash band stratifications, one could still calculate the approximate date they came to rest there. If any of the organic matter or artefacts beneath the layers showed signs of human activity in their placement, then that would prove human occupation long before the circa 1300 AD Polynesian-Melanesian epoch.  

In his 1963 report for the New Zealand Archaeological Association, Russell Price drew this plan of sites 1 & 2 of his exploratory digs. In the upper central region of the plan he shows a raised hump that shallow, outflowing lake water once meandered around, almost forming an island. Russell referred to this spot as a Moa hunter campsite and, during excavations, found a fireplace or cooking oven on the hump (Site I). This site was far enough away from the Moa migratory track that it could not be seen by the passing birds. From this hump, the bones left over from cooked & eaten Moa were thrown into the adjacent lake immediately in front of the fire pit, forming a midden. Beyond the humped-up campsite was a wide depression in the ground at the toe of the hill. A little further away on higher ground the hunters could secrete themselves, ready to spring forth and frighten the passing birds into the muddy bog.

Farmer Bill Buddo and the author stand atop the Moa hunter campsite hump (Site 1) where birds were cooked and eaten. The farm truck sits in the depression adjacent to the base of the hill where the Moa hunters lay in wait for the birds passing along the track. The lighter or sunnier high ground in the middle section of the picture shows where birds crossed the valley floor from the range of hills on the skyline.

This is the approximate vantage point, on elevated ground, where Price concluded the Moa hunters would have secreted themselves for scaring passing birds on the track down into the bog. The Moa tracks, still visible in the 1950s -60s would have followed substantially firm ground and cross-over points of the lake outflow, whereas this bog location served the repetitive purpose of trapping the startled and panicked birds very effectively, as evidenced by the number of huge leg bones in situ.

On Russell Price’s drawn map, he shows yet another fire pit at site II, not far removed from site I, where birds were cooked and eaten.

A picture of the Poukawa Lake drainage canal, with the lake shown in the background. Arrows point to the significant spots along the ancient Moa track where the giant birds were captured, killed, cooked and eaten. Although no Moa bones or those of other birds were to be found in the firepits, such fragments were found as cast away debris in front of the firepits, which were undoubtedly given a good cleanout before frequent reuse. The coordinates for dig site 1 are:

39° 46’ 18.09” S 176° 43’ 46.70” E   The coordinates for dig site 2 are: 39° 46’ 16.60” S 176° 43’ 43.53” E 

The lozenge shaped hillfort shown orientates onto the 4 primary points of the compass, with corners pointing to north, south, east and west. The due north point orientates onto purpose-placed limestone boulders situated on a high ridgeline 12320-feet away (2  miles or 3Sites 1 & 2 shown above had fire pits for cooking. When Price commenced his first digs on Site I he was probably unaware of the fact that he would one day have access to the carbon dating technologies of the DSIR laboratory, Lower Hutt. In lieu of such advanced scientific technologies being placed at his disposal he had the tephra ash bands from volcanic explosions bracketing artefacts found into decipherable time capsules. He quickly conceived of a modus operandi that focused on the ancient ash showers that had occurred over a millennium or several millenniums before Maori found these shores.

Before commencing his formal digs, Price had a talk with the local Maori elder and laid out his strategy or approach to archaeological investigations. He would excavate down to the top of the 186 AD ash band layer (volcanic pumice) and carefully clear it of all humus and debris. Anything previously found in the humus, or peat and ash mix, of the layers above the 186 AD pumice would be considered to contain potential residues from the Maori epoch of habitation. Price would then carefully inspect the ash band layer surface from the 186 AD fallout to ascertain that it was undisturbed, with no fissures or evidence of foreign content. It had to be purely airborne ash, composed of the grittier or heavier particles at the bottom of the band, reducing to talcum-powder-like material at the upper surface. Once the sealed integrity of the ash band was known and approved, he could excavate down through it with the firm conviction that any cooked and broken up Moa bones found, bearing the cut marks of obsidian knives etc., as well as any other manmade or utilised artefacts, had been deposited there and lain in situ from before the volcanic explosion of Taupo in circa 186 AD.

As Doctor Richard Holdaway stated in 1996, after falling foul with his peers for his heresy in finding kiore rat bones beneath Taupo tephra ash:

'… most archaeologists have never actually excavated through two feet of ash. It seals everything underneath it. You can see every last wormhole in it and you can see where there is damage to it. So, if something is underneath you know it was there before the ash fell...' (See: 'Listener' article: ‘Rat Revisionists', 7.12.96).

Holdaway’s discovery that the kiore rat had been in New Zealand for at least 1100-years before Maori arrived in 1300 AD was a most unwelcome find, as the little critter is a real landlubber that hates water and could only have arrived with humans.  

Price wrote the following in his 1963 report for the New Zealand Archaeological Association:

SITE 1:

Digging Operations:    

            Operations commenced on 6 October 1962 at the foot of the spur with the fireplace at its crest. A total area of 52ft X 24ft was dug, this area including the stream bed and low bank which slopes gently up to the base of the spur.

            The surface layer is composed of friable, reddish-tinted peat free from timber, followed by a thin layer of coarse pumice; smaller bird remains, extinct swan and nortornis were found in this layer. Below this is a further layer of friable peat. The main pumice band is then encountered, this comprising fine white pumice considerably compacted in places. The majority of moa remains were encountered just under, or near this band. Layer 5 is a mixture of peat, hyridella and matai seeds, the hyridella shells being large but decayed owing to the fact that they had been heated. Hyridella shells found in the 1931 bed of the outfall are in good condition and antedate the decayed shells by a considerable period of time. The deposit is convex in shape, lies parallel to the stream bed, and is some fifty feet in length and from six to eight feet across. Proving trenches have been dug to east, west and south of the site, and illustrate quite clearly that both this deposit and the bone deposit are localised in front of the fireplace. Carbonised wood and blackened peaty soil are also found embedded in this layer.

            The next layer encountered is composed of hard peat though which numerous cracks run giving one the impression of water-borne which has settled over a considerable period. This in turn rests on a deposit of fine fresh water in which are embedded numerous pieces of small wood and twigs; moa remains were also found here. Ground water prevented further digging.

            A typical profile reading is:

            Layer 1 Peat, 6ins, broken moa bones

            Layer 2 Coarse Pumice, 1/4in., nortornis and swan

            Layer 3 Peat, 4ins, odd moa bones

            Layer 4 Fine white pumice, 4ins. No findings

            Layer 5 Hyridella, matai seeds, etc,. 2ins, immature moa bones

            Layer 6 Compacted peat, 8ins, moa bones resting on, or embedded in

            Layer 7 Fine shells, 2ins, a few moa and swan bones

Results:

            Twenty six major moa bones, 42 claw and toe bones, 52 various vertebrae, 3 craniums, 166 ribs or portions, fragments of pelvis and sternum, 31 immature unbroken bones, and 50 broken; 108 unbroken bones of other extinct birds, 235 broken, 6 craniums, 2 nortornis beaks, greywacke gizzard stones, and a number of black stone and red quartz gizzard stones – all foreign stone to the district.

            Items directly related to man found below the pumice band: one split slab of matai, cut neatly in half by a sharp instrument. The slab is 8ins across, and 2 ins thick and was embedded in layer 7. Directly under the slab were found the remains of a fully-grown giant swan, whose bones are in the finest condition. The discovery was made by B. Cummings on 1 Dec. Two pieces of totara which had been sharpened by man were also found; one piece had been partly bored. Also, in layer 7 were six sandstone and greywacke stones used by man. In layer 4 was a Dinornis skull cleft by an oblique blow by a sharp instrument.

In consideration of the above, let’s explore the significance of these layers and the positions of manmade or human utilised objects above, within or below them:

This is but one of many cross section, scaled drawings completed by Treaton Russell Price during the 25-years or so that he devoted to multiple, careful digs at the Poukawa sites. As investigations continued it was found that many cooked Moa bones, often broken into short lengths, presumably for the purpose of sucking out the marrow, lay beneath the undisturbed ash band of 186 AD.  It was further ascertained that many of these cooked, broken-up bones, had cutting tool, score marks on them  and lay beneath the undisturbed Waimihia ash band of circa 1340 BC. The same held true for human made or modified artefacts in wood, bone, stone or shell. Despite clear evidence of ancient, pre-Maori occupation, Price remained reticent in not expounding his views too openly, pending a greater accumulation or data.

Note how Price has numbered the layers in this scaled cross section. So, to recap the meaning of the numbers:

Price wrote:

            It was noted on profiles exposed by drainage that two pumice bands were present, the shallowest being course pumice and pellets, some of considerable size. The deeper band was composed of a fine white pumice and, in extreme cases was 10ins thick. This latter band, it is considered, reached the lake in a pumice flood some ten years after the Taupo eruption 1760 years ago.

            Layer 1 is peat topsoil

            Layer 2 is the gritty remains and larger lumps of volcanic pumice that rained down some ten years after the 186 AD eruption of Taupo.

            Layer 3 is peat soil

            Layer 4 is the pure, white, airborne pumice from the 186 AD explosion of Taupo.

            Layer 5 is hard peat soil.

            Layer 6 contains hyridella shells (freshwater mussels) in abundance and in excellent condition.

Layer 7 is cracked silty peat.

Layer 8 contains shells and twigs.

Left: In the 1950s and 1960s Alan Pullar (left) and Colin Vucetich worked for the DSIR Soil Bureau, mapping soils in the North Island. Vucetich worked around Rotorua, and Pullar in Gisborne and Whakatāne. They recognised that the soils were formed on volcanic ash layers, which were often visible in road cuttings. The men started tracing out distinctive ash layers across the region. Work on ash layers (later called tephrostratigraphy) was outside official Soil Bureau policy and was banned. Much of their work was therefore done in weekends and holidays on what they called ‘secret correlation missions’. Between 1963 and 1975 Vucetich and Pullar published a series of papers on the sequence and characteristics of the main volcanic eruptions in the Taupō and Rotorua region. This work has been the foundation for later volcanological studies as well as the understanding of soil properties. In the above picture Collin Vucetich has labelled the various ash layers by date and has the Taupo explosion listed as occurring 1800 -years prior, with the Waimihia explosion listed as 3440-years prior (1440 BC).

Right: Russell Price (upper left) and a colleague at the most major dig site which sat adjacent to Lake Poukawa (Site 4). Price had become aware of Pullar’s and Vucetich’s pioneering research into tephrostratigraphy and the very significant role it could play in his archaeological investigations at Poukawa.

Tephrostratigraphy, considered by the Soil Bureau as something of a pioneering science in the 1950s & 60s, quickly graduated to full respectability and acceptance. Within New Zealand, which has been very actively volcanic in certain areas and ages, the science now constitutes a major tool for dating geological strata or events.

Again, a photo from one of the Poukawa archaeological excavations, showing the distribution of ash band layers. Any cooked and broken Moa bones or other manmade artefacts found beneath the Taupo ash band predated the Polynesian Maori epoch by 1100-years, or beneath the Waimihia explosion, by over 2100-years.

This map of New Zealand’s North Island shows the volcanic belt (A section of the worldwide “ring of fire”) extending through the central region. These volcanoes, several of which are dormant and others active, periodically erupt and, sometimes in the past, with extreme violence. The red dot marks the position of Poukawa in relation to the Central Volcanic Plateau. The Waimihia volcanic explosion came from a vent or vents within present-day Lake Taupo, preceding the later, violent Taupo eruption by about 1526-years.

Having found conclusive evidence of human occupation at Poukawa, going back to well before the 186 AD explosion of Taupo, Price moved his investigations 300’ WNW to another likely spot on the elevated spur and found yet another fire pit there as well. Russel Price writes:

SITE 2:

Digging Operations:

            As we turned the first sods on 23 February 1963 on this site, we were full of hope, but felt we could scarcely do better than Site 1. By no stretch of our imagination could we envisage the vast wealth of evidence we were to find here. Work commenced at the foot of a low spur, and, as before, included the stream bed and the low slope to the foot of the rise. The total area dug to date is 52ft x 28ft south of our datum line, and 88ft north of this line.

            The layers are much the same as found on Site 1, with the exception of the hyridella layer which is slightly concave and extends well up the low slope and is some 60ft x 40ft in extent. There are quantities of fine shells but no carbonaceous material. It is separated from the lower pumice band by hard peat, clearly defined, and is therefore older than Site 1.

            Profile reading at maximum depth:

                        Layer 1 Peat, 1ft 2ins, with slight traces of first pumice band

                        Layer 2 Pumice, 2ins, some peat, matai seeds, hyridella

                        Layer 3 Pumice 3ins, with traces of peat

                        Layer 4 Pure white pumice, 3ins

                        Layer 5 Hard peat, 4ins              

                        Layer 6 Hyridella with fine shells, 1in

                         Layer 7 Cracked, silty peat, 8ins

                        Layer 8 Fine shells and twigs, 4ins

            Moa remains were found in Layers 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Some very fine giant swan bones were recovered from layer 3. Recent work has disclosed that the hyridella layer on the stream bank is heavily carbonised, and rests on limestone grit and pug. Moa, kiwi and nortornis remains have been found embedded in this layer, with matai seeds overlying it.

Results from Site 2, south of datum line, 88ft x 28ft:

            203 major, unbroken moa bones; plentiful immature; 182 broken moa bones; 82 unbroken bones of other extinct birds; 54 broken bones of other extinct birds; large gizzard stones.

Results from Site 2, north of the datum line, 88ft x 8ft:

            10 major moa bones; 201 broken and unbroken moa bones and fragments; 466 unbroken bones of other extinct birds; 797 broken bones of other extinct birds; 2,037 small gizzard stones (greywacke and quartz).

            All these bones found on both sites lay horizontally with the exception of D. giganteus in Site 1; that is, only one bird was bogged. The articles that can be related to man are one soap stone foreign to the area, from Layer 7 at the foot of the slope, and one pumice disc worked by man, from Layer 3. Anything in the way of artefacts are likely to be found in and around the fireplace sites, and there is a lot of digging to be done before we arrive there.

So, in summary of these two digs, Price now had undeniable proof of human habitation in New Zealand antecedent to 186 AD, or 1100-years before the arrival of the Polynesian Maori. He recorded the following in his field book:

A handwritten record by Price concerning the Site 1 & 2 digs and the involvement of the DSIR in dating the results. He mentions: ‘As we have recovered broken up moa remains with one femur carrying deep saw cuts (undoubtedly the work of man) 8 clear inches below the level of the dated moa remains, these latter broken bones, were embedded in subsoil not far from the giant bones. It will be seen how necessary it is to obtain expert assistance from the D.S.I.R.’

SITE 3.

Treaton Russell Price, never doing anything by halves, had excavated two sites to show that both were locations for cooking, eating then discarding meal residues into the waters in front of the Moa hunter fire pits. However, he’d initially found a site where the method employed for capturing the giant birds was to panic and stampede them off the walking track and down into a bog, where they became stuck fast and had no chance of escape. Could it possibly be that there were other bog areas of the local terrain where the same hunt and capture method was being employed? Russell searched the farm and, by looking carefully at the contours of land fed by streams, finally decided upon a second likely area where there may be disembodied, sawn-off leg bones standing vertically in the subsurface mud.

Treaton Russell Price decided that this location, at the base of a farm hill and near a stream bed, had the essential attributes for ancient hunters to herd Moa birds down into a bog from which there was no escape. The position where Russell undertook his dig to ascertain this fact approximates where sheep are clustered together near a fence line in the above picture.

Russell Price and his colleagues, including young William Buddo, were very successful in finding many more solitary, vertically standing Moa legs at this location and simply left them in situ where they remain to this day.

The coordinates of Site 3 are: 39° 46’ 02.01” S 176° 43’ 16.42” E

Russel Price wrote the following:

SITE 3:

Digging Operations:

            Some work has been carried out on this site since 26 January 1962, to establish beyond doubt that the bones found, which had been partially cut through, had come from below the lower pumice level. All material from below this band is heavily mineralised indicating great age. The giant moa skeleton from which one of the partly cut through bones came, lay on the base of the stream bed in blue pug. The area dug was 20ft x 15ft.

            Profile reading. (Note, no hyridella layer):

                        Layer 1 Black peat, no timber, 8ins

                        Layer 2 Brown peat, slight traces coarse pumice, 8ins

                        Layer 3 Coarse pumice, matai seeds, twigs and timber, 4ins

                        Layer 4 Fine white pumice, compacted in places, 6ins

                        Layer 5 Mud, branches, twigs and large charcoal blocks, 12ins

                        Layer 6 Sandy blue pug

            Small moa remains were found in Layer 3, not mineralised, It was down this gently sloping area occupied by the meander, whose width is out of all proportion to the catchment area, that I consider a good proportion of the pumice flood entered the lake.

CONCLUSIONS:

            It is all very well to be wise after positive proof has been obtained. It is now quite clear that a people living on a confined spur in an area teeming with bird life, as the avalanche of material indicates, would have to do something about the disposal of bones, not to mention hyridella. A warm spell of weather would hasten decay which would very quickly make the site untenable. They could bury the refuse or burn it, both tedious operations. All they had to do was gather it up, and throw it into the fairly deep, slow-running stream at their front door.

Here's what Russell Price handwrote in one small section of his 3 exercise books used in the field, in this case relative to excavations at Site 3:

Complete Record of All

This is but a small sample copied from Price’s record of bird bones from (mostly) long extinct species that were recovered from Site 3. The list goes on almost interminably and demonstrates an obsessive-compulsive need to record every find and the clues that find might hold relative to human activity, from remote antiquity.

Again, a sample of a two-page spread within one of the exercise books. Similar books listed the artefacts made from bone, wood or stone as tools or ornaments, including some worked greenstone. It is quite certain that many cooked, obsidian knife-scratched bones, or other human-fashioned objects came from beneath the Taupo or Waimihia ash bands, thus dating the items to between 1100-years to 2200-years before the Polynesian Maori found New Zealand shores.

Although Russell Price probably didn’t anticipate that he’d eventually have access to Thomas Athol Rafter’s carbon dating laboratory at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, outstanding finds at Poukawa gained the attention of DSIR scientists and C14 analysis was undertaken by them in the middle to late 1960s and early 70s. In the above results, moa bones that had been sawn into by man returned C14 dates of 2330-years  60-years before 1950. Other cooked and broken up Moa bones returned dates of 3120 -years  40-years before 1950. Human handled bones or artefacts found beneath the Waimihia ash band returned dates of 3440-years before 1950 and had mineralised due to their great age.

SITE 4.

After several years of conducting digs at smaller, more confined sites, Russell Price moved to a raised peninsula-like strip of land that jutted partially into Lake Poukawa itself. Here he would undertake a very comprehensive set of digs over the next few years, into the 1970s, and make many remarkable finds. As usual, a datum line was established and strings were set out crossing pegs at 90° intersections, thus grid referencing squares into measured, numbered plots. The intention was to dig each 2^nd square, while leaving an adjacent baulk wall undisturbed for future archaeologists to verify the results arrived at by Russell and his team.

A map showing two digs in the general vicinity for Site 4 (141/11 & 141/12). The grid shown at the bottom left is where the very substantial, final dig took place. However, other work was undertaken adjacent to farmer, David Buddo’s hay shed drawn at the top of the map.

A successful dig was completed at this site and the depression where the large circle excavation took place is still evident on the summit of the low hillock.

A brief description of the “Fireplace” site adjacent to David Buddo’s hay shed. Some shallow surface ploughing on the hillock had been done 18 months prior to cultivate grass, and 2½ pounds of broken Moa bones, as well as oven stones had been churned up and exposed in the process. However, these lay beyond the circular, 35’ wide confines of the much deeper archaeological excavation. 

As a professional surveyor, Russell could lay out a site with meticulous precision, but was forever cognisant of the fact that he was regarded as an amateur archaeologist. He therefore had to conduct his digs “by-the-book”, so to speak, to avoid any future criticism of his methodology or approach. At the same time, he constantly consulted or involved credentialed professionals of several disciplines; archaeologists, geologists, tephrostratigraphy-volcanologist experts or the DSIR carbon-dating laboratory. His work and results were under constant scrutiny by seasoned professionals who took a keen interest in the unfolding, startling revelations it produced. Leading New Zealand scientist W. A. Pullar wrote:

NOTE ON ASH BEDS AT POUKAWA, HAWKES BAY

                                                                                       W. A. Pullar

Ash beds at Lake Poukawa (Price, 1963) were briefly examined on 30^th December 1964 in the company of Mr. P. J. Grant, Havelock North. At the diggings, probing in peat revealed two ash bands near the surface and this arrangement was confirmed along the side of a drainage canal ½ mile west where the following profile was obtained;

            9 in. dark brown peat

1 in. pale yellowish white coarse ash and lapilli (up to ¾ in. long, jagged, and highly vesicular)

15 in. dark brown peat

2 in. white fine ash (upper 1 in, very fine and lower inch fine); firm. On peat

I consider the upper ash layer to be airfall Taupo pumice (erupted 1819 plus 17 years before 1950) and the lower, airfall Waimihia Lapilli (erupted 3270 plus 200 years before 1950). An account of the chronology of these ashes is given in Healy, Vucetich and Pullar (1964: pp 33 and 42).

If the lower layer is indeed Waimihia Lapilli, then the discovery by Price (p. 171) of …..” items related to man found below the pumice band …..” raises implications almost too daring to be true.   

Pullar remained guarded in his commentary, possibly sensing the firestorm that might ensue. He, along with other scientists, was later a signatory to a STATEMENT OF BELIEF in support of Price’s conclusions. This document was not for public release, although important snippets of it have been released into the public arena by those who hold copies.

Site 4 is where the most major archaeological digs took place, spanning several years of endeavour. It is a raised-ground peninsular hump jutting into the eastern floodplain shallows of the lake and was an ideal living or camping location for ancient hunters of Moa, or the teeming species of waterfowl, hyridella freshwater shellfish, eels, fish and crayfish-shrimp. As archaeological investigations began by Price and his team, this site was officially registered as N141/12 by the New Zealand Archaeological Association.

The heavily rutted and rumpled surface of Site 4, dotted with holes and lengthy depressions after half a century of abandonment. Price and his colleagues filled in the excavations at the termination of work in order to preserve features, but multiple scars remain these 50-years on. The centre-hump coordinates of this site are: 39° 46’ 33.63” S 176° 42’ 54.90” E  It is on the farm of Mr. David Buddo.

Photo taken from immediately above Site 4, showing its proximity to the lake waters and central island.

Concerning this strip of raised land at the northern end of the lake, Price wrote:

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the original drainage in 1931 the main body of water from Poukawa Lake had reached the outfall via two natural channels which passed through very extensive areas of dense high raupo. These waterways were wide and shallow with reasonably good footing and afforded excellent feeding grounds for many types of birds. The outfall its tributaries and the lake itself provided ideal conditions for the development of the Hyridella and other smaller types of freshwater shellfish, also freshwater fish and crayfish common to the North Island of New Zealand. The sites, N141/1 and N141/2, which are being investigated at present are situated at the north end of the old Poukawa Lakebed just inside the outfall, a short distance to the west of the present drainage channel. (Price 1963: 169) In view of the possible archaeological associations of the site, all excavating has been controlled and proper records kept from the first.

SUMMARY OF ALL WORK CARRIED OUT AT N141/1 from October 6^th, 1962, to December 26^th, 1964.

The site has been divided into three parts for convenience in working:

1.     The Stream Bed:  This is the dry bed of an old stream meander; the stream having been drained into the present drainage channel.

2.     The Stream Bank: This is a strip of land, 2 – 3 ft. higher than the bed, which lies at the base of the headland. It is a gentle rising slope from 12 ft. to 30 ft. across and about 335 ft. in length.

3.     The Headland:  This is a low flat grass covered area some 10 ft. higher than the stream bed. A small shallow depression which proved to be an oven (or fireplace) was the only surface indication of occupation.

The three parts have been investigated separately and the work of the immediate future is to correlate the findings of each part.

THE STREAM BED:

Section of a 9 x 9 ft., 7 ft. 10 in. deep test square …..

Layer (1)  6ins. Brown peat. No timber.

   “      (2)  2 ins. Course pumice mixed with peat. No timber.

  “       (3)  4ins dark peat. No timber.  

  “       (4)  2 ins. fine white pumice. No timber.

  “       (5)  25 ins. dark reddish cracked peat (sedimentary) No timber. Moa vertebra.

  “       (6)  6 ins, almost pure deposit of hyridella, a few twigs.

  “       (7)  8ins. yellow brown decayed matter with hyridella.

Layer (8)  fine shells and small branch wood. Whole hyridella scattered.

  “       (9)  12 ins. peat with fine shells and hyridella.

  “       (10) 4 ins. pure deposit fine shells some hyridella.  No timber.

  “       (11) 18 ins. silty peat, small wood and hyridella. 5 giant swan bones.

  “       (12) Base – blue pug.

A distance of 65 ft. of the stream bed has been excavated, a total of 804 square feet to date. The following were found: -

Only 4 broken moa bones were found in layer (2), a few in layer (6) and the majority imbedded in or resting on layer (5). The split slab of wood was imbedded in layer (6) immediately under the edge of the stream bank.

THE STREAM BANK:

 Section of test square:

Layer (1)  6 ins. peaty soil

  “       (2)  3 ins. coarse pumice, peat, pumice stones.

  “       (3)  2 ins. peat. No timber.

  “       (4)  1 ins. fine white pumice.

  “       (5)  5 ins. peat, wood, matai seeds.

  “       (6)  6 ins. brown stained soil with wood.

  “       (7)  6 ins. stained pug.

  “       (8)  Base pug.

The following were excavated from 1,760 square ft. of bank squares:-

 The great majority of the moa bones were found along the edge of two middens; most of the bones found in the stream bed were spill over from the midden which came right to the edge of the bank. 95% of the bones came from below the two pumice bands. At the foot of the headland some fire blackened broken stones together with a sandstone file and finely grooved sandstone were found in the midden. A further midden at the north extremity of the excavation contained several types of moa some of the bones of which were possibly worked, together with badly smashed pelican bones, oven stones and an obsidian cutter. When the squares at the foot of the south-west face of the headland were excavated, a well-marked layer of redeposited subsoil appeared. This had clearly come from the higher part of the headland, but its nature and extent had not been elucidated.

THE HEADLAND

The headland has been divided into three faces for convenience, the south-west, the south and the south-east.

The south-west face:

880 square feet have been excavated and four fire pits found, two containing fragments of moa bone, several pieces of totara wood were found 2 inches below the surface. A total of 547 pieces of stone were found. (The nearest local source of stone is a limestone outcrop a mile or so from the site). There were 241 fire stones of local origin, 160 broken hard non-local stones, 81 stone flakes (heat fractured), 25 flint flakes, 27 jasperoid stones, 7 sandstones, 2 unbroken hard stones 4 obsidian flakes and 262 broken pieces of moa bone.

The south face:

756 square feet in extent, has not yet been excavated.

The south-east face:

1,788 square feet, of which 352 sq., ft. have been excavated. A large hyridella midden was found below the crest of the face, resting on a previously occupied area. Moa bones were found on the base in association with shallow scoops and post holes, both these lying above the top pumice band. Pieces of worked totara wood some two inches below the surface, scattered over a wide area, associated with a few stones and one obsidian flake. From the midden and below were found: 820 fire stones of local origin, 702 broken stones (non-local), 34 broken soft white stones (flint core casings), 15 pieces of worked totara wood, 1 flint stone, 1 obsidian flake, 10 pieces broken moa bone and 6 broken extinct bird bones.

SUMMARY RESULTS FROM N141/1:

Signs of human habitation have been found on the headland, and there appears to have been at least three periods of occupation. The link between these occupations and the extensive middens on the stream bank and in the stream bed has not yet been clarified, but it seems clear that the first, and possibly the second, occupations were associated with extinct bird hunting and with extensive middens at the base of the headland. There are indications that the two early occupations were separated from the later one by pumice bands. The stone artefacts recovered are sparsely scattered throughout the site and number about thirty: these are primitive flakes of flint, complete with sandstone files and rubbers.

A total of 2,373 broken and unbroken bones of extinct birds were found, 95% below the fine pumice layer (4). 458 broken and unbroken moa bones were also recovered – all but 4 below layer (4).

The extinct birds comprise a wide range, some very rare. No bones of the swamp hen common in the district today have been found at either site. The remains of the extinct giant swan and extinct ducks dominate the collection. The moa bones represent a wide range from Dinornis giganteas, D. hercules, D. gazella, two D. immatures and several types of smaller mature and immature moas.

The chief objective of the early hunters appears to have been the giant swan and smaller birds and whatever moas were handy together with hyridella shellfish. No moa eggshell was found. Parts of two tuataras were recovered from the base of the excavation.

Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand holds 21,714 bird bone and fossil vertebrate artefacts from the archaeological digs of Treaton Russell Price and his team at Poukawa.

On the 23^rd of January 1967 Russell Price wrote in the above report:

‘The site has been set out in 10 ft squares with a foot-wide baulk left in between each square. Each square has been trowelled and great care has been taken to see that all material recovered has been recorded in all the various layers for each square. Three books for records are in constant use together with a grid plan and location plan. Photos and slides are available and a carefully drawn cross-section illustrating all the various layers encountered in the excavation will be sent with the artefacts when site is finished.’

Here's a sample of a two-page spread from the bone book. Other large field books listed artefacts found.

One part of a cross-section profile drawing Russell Price did at NZAA site No. N141/1. The site is divided by vertical lines into 3 sections: Left: The Stream Bank. Middle: Section declining towards the stream bed. Right: Stream Bed.

To the left of the picture, Price labels the layers as (starting from the top) Friable topsoil; Fine peat, some pumice; Taupo pumice; peat mixed; fine white pumice; Peat, matai seeds, wood; cracked peat, below which is the water table

At the bottom of the picture, Price writes a series of captions, with arrows. From left: 10 broken, 6 unbroken ext. [extinct] bird bones. Bag 39.

Further towards the middle the arrowed caption reads: 10 broken, 8 unbroken ext. bird bones, Bag 40. He also depicts hyridella shells just below the fine white pumice layer.

The next arrowed caption to the right reads: Near bones 25.B, ? broken moa bones. Bag 41.

Price lists his vertical scale as 1/8^th inch = 1 inch. His horizonal scale is: 1 inch = 1 foot.      

Many artefacts, fabricated or used for a wide range of human endeavours, hunting, sewing, scraping, pounding, sharpening, cutting, grinding, drilling or simply as ornamentation were located at the several dig sites across the Poukawa Valley. With a large number of these artefacts or objects, associated directly to humans, having been found beneath the Taupo and Waimihia ash bands, there was conclusive proof of a human presence at Poukawa spanning over 7100-years.

Similar ancient serrated-edge barbs, needles and boring tools from the South Island of New Zealand, home to many of the pre-Maori Moa-hunter tribes that had flourished in New Zealand since remote antiquity. The above items are in a private collection.  

 THOMAS ATHOL RAFTER & THE DSIR CARBON DATING LABORATORY.

Among the seasoned professionals who played a major role in accurately fixing the dates of occupation for the Poukawa Valley was Thomas Athol Rafter, Nuclear Chemist, BSc (1935), MSc (1938), OBE, (1958).

One of the old school of true N. Z. scientists who religiously adhered to the, now extinct, “scientific approach” … unlike their more modern replacements who are obliged to deliver up only highly sanitised, politically-correct, cultural-Marxist, tampered-with results if they are to remain in their jobs. Scientific, archaeological or historical truths are now very rare commodities in New Zealand and about as available as the rare earth metal unobtainium.

‘In August 1948, as a result of a cabinet decision to establish a group of scientists in the DSIR to undertake nuclear research, Rafter was sent to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University, New York, and to visit nuclear establishments in the US, Canada and England. After returning he began to develop the new technique of radiocarbon dating, which relies on detecting the residue of a radioactively unstable form (isotope) of carbon (carbon-14) in organic materials. He initially used it to measure the ages of volcanic ash showers. The original paper on radiocarbon dating, published by Willard Libby in 1949, gave very little detail and used a method based on counting solid carbon-14. However, the process was so tedious and difficult that Rafter, DSIR physicist Gordon Fergusson and their assistants decided to investigate gas-counting techniques. After several months of frustrating work, they developed a technique using carbon dioxide gas, which provided radiocarbon age measurements to better than plus or minus 50 years – a major achievement for that time. He and his staff collaborated closely with New Zealand archaeologists in the dating of samples.’ (See: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, by John R Hulston, 2000).

Here (below) are links to the C14 results that “he and his staff” concluded after very careful work in the DSIR Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Radiocarbon Laboratory.

To see some of these indisputable results of very ancient human occupation in the Poukawa Valley of New Zealand, go to the 3 links below and magnify the C14 sample figures for clear reading.

Poukawa Carbon Dating Results 1

Poukawa Carbon Dating Results 2

Poukawa Carbon Dating Results 3

These results have never been scientifically refuted, although present-day trolls-at-the-gate within the nouveau Radiocarbon dating laboratory use a series of tactics to dissuade the very rare individuals who, by happen-chance, have stumbled onto some of the true results, from scrutinising or believing them. Amongst other ploys, lab management cite the newly imposed “current reporting conventions” criteria and infer that the 50-year old results are somehow wrong. They have also tried to impose an exorbitant financial penalty (up to $1500) on a person who wished to see the additional results mentioned by Rafter in his letter to Price, dated 6^th of May 1970. After 3 futile attempts to get the 50-year old on-file information the enquirer had to resort to an Official Information Request.

With Thomas Athol Rafter at the helm of The Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Russell Price could rest assured that his 25-years of hard-won research results at Poukawa were well-supported by science, both in terms of tephra ash band stratification evidence and C14 results. However, in the turbulent political era of the mid-1970s and beyond, that was about to change and his indisputable, scientifically obtained results graduated to becoming a most unwelcome find.

The crucifixion of Russell Price began in earnest in 1978 via the release of an article under the name of a virtually unknown individual in archaeological circles named Bruce McFadgen. From what we can gather, a small group, including McFadgen, visited Poukawa 5-years previously and ingratiated themselves with Russell Price, who being ever-gracious to interested parties, was ever-willing to show people his dig sites and results. The visit is supposed to have taken place in August 1973 but neither farmers, Bill Buddo or David Buddo recall seeing people arriving at about that time and certainly never met Bruce McFadgen. They generally took no personal interest themselves in transient comings & goings, leaving the guided tours to Russell. However, this was supposed to have been a formal archaeological dig on David Buddo's farm, but permission to do so was neither asked for nor given.

In retrospect, David Buddo feels the whole affair surrounding McFadgen's dig activities was "sneaky" and discourteous. He should have been formally consulted!

In his October 1978 article McFadgen, who was qualified as a surveyor, with an MA in anthropology (environmental as opposed to physical, often referred to as social-anthropology and frequently criticised for its cultural-Marxist rhetoric) in 1973, released his report under the auspices of the Geology Department, Victoria University, where he was studying for a degree in geology by 1978. His report also represented him as being an employee of the N.Z. Historic Places Trust at the time of writing.

As it turns out, there is nothing to indicate that The Victoria Geology Department had any involvement, as McFadgen's alleged entourage was made up or Victoria University Geological Society and Wellington Archaeological Society as opposed to the actual "Department". So who were these day-trippers?

The Victoria University Geological Society is a social entity for staff and students interested in geology. Their mission statement says: Past events have included guest speakers, quiz nights, sports events, movie nights, field trips (including a trip this year to White Island), pub-crawls and student symposiums at GNS. So it’s looking more-&-more like we have a casual bunch of student and staff day-trippers out on a field trip to see Russell Price’s dig at Site N141/12.

 The Wellington Archaeological Society is likewise a social entity, ‘with a membership spanning professionals, amateurs, students, organisations, businesses and institutions involved or interested in New Zealand archaeology and heritage’. Again, more day-trippers off on an adventure to check out Price’s dig and have a fun & informative tiki-tour of his site.

 The Victoria University Internal Research Committee provided the funding for this caper. This ‘Joint Research Committee deliberates on matters relevant to the research portfolios of the Faculty of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the New Zealand School of Music.’ In 1973 when McFadgen et al went to Poukawa, the Victoria University Internal Research Committee was allocated government funds for particular research projects and the Committee obviously saw this outing as important, sufficient to provide the funding. So, how much was spent to cover the costs of how many participants?

As it turns out, by 1970, the leading-lights of Victoria University Geology Department had visited Russell Price's sites and were unanimous that Price was correct. These individuals were H, Wellman, B.Kohn and C. Vucetich, also supported by pedologist A. Pullar.

It seems significant that the report was released after Dr. Thomas Athol Rafter retired in March 1978 from his long-held position as head of The Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, later to be named in his honour as the Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory.  Dr. Athol Rafter had been an avid supporter of Russell Price’ work and had completed numerous C14 tests of Price’s bone, shell and associated organic finds, many of which lay beneath undisturbed ash bands of the Taupo and Waimihia volcanic explosions and showed clear signs of a human presence associated with them. 

Although the largest percentage of Price’s carefully considered and chosen dig positions, at various far-flung sites across the farms, returned very good or outstanding results, there were at least two problematic areas that returned very confusing results when C14-age tested by Rafter at the lab.

Rafter had written to Price on the 20^th of October identifying anomalous readings for samples earlier submitted for testing. Price then went on to explain in detail what was wrong with this dig position:

Dig site 2476/6 had formerly been situated on or straddling a flood plain that had been permanently under shallow water until 1931, at which time the new drainage canal lowered and stabilised the water level significantly. Thereafter a large section of newly drained land could come into pasture, thus increasing the availability of productive land considerably. However, the formerly sodden band of peat soil beneath had about 42-years to dry out and crack by the time Price dug a test excavation at square 2476/6. For those unable to decipher Russell Price’s handwriting in this letter, here’s the full text:

The Director

The Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Private Bag, Lower Hutt.

Dear Athol,

                   I was very pleased to receive your kind and encouraging letter of the 20^th October about the new dates. With Regard to 2476/6

Why is this charcoal young and yet below the Taupo Ash? The reason is as follows: -

Since drainage of the lake in 1931 the peaty soil of the lakebed has been rapidly shrinking and the Taupo ash is very close to the present surface and is found from 5 to 6 inches below the surface, not parallel to the ground level but wavy      as illustrated.

Mr. Buddo had set his multi-furrowed plough at 4 inches which had cut through an extra high point in the Taupo ash, and the charcoal of the Maori occupation forced downward through the break in the ash band. Shrinkage cracks have also developed down which the charcoal and ash could have fallen.

We trowel horizontally but some months ago abandoned this for this very reason.

We now remove turf from a square, then work downwards at the lower end of a square in a strip 18 inches wide and 9 ft long until we are about ½- inch above the Waimihia ash.

We then insert ourselves in this trench and work the square on a face, troweling downwards all the time and removing the worked over material with a fireplace shovel.

We have the Taupo ash under constant observation all the time and any cracks, stake holes or post holes can be detected at once. Those latter features can be photographed clearly in half section mantles by the Taupo ash and the peaty soil above it.

When this operation has been completed right up to the baulk line, we then go back to the lower end and repeat the process, then the Waimihia ash is under constant observation and we work right down into the subsoil, and I am happy to say we have secured good photographs of stake and post holes below the Waimihia ash.

In both operations major moa bones are left in situ, we work around them, these are photographed thus. I spoke to the manager of Camera House who readily agreed to do the enlarging himself instead of sending them to the lab. They should be ready by Friday night. I am not rushing anything with those negatives.

It is a great comfort to feel that the resources of the institute are behind us in our search for Poukawa Man.

Our thoughts will be with you over this operation and feel sure it will be a great help to you to regain the use of your leg.

Doug Pick and Michael King had to go and give our efforts a boost in the press. I told them they were only wasting their time, people just can’t grasp what we’re on to.

I will report fully as soon as the enlargements are ready and will forward the sawn into bones next week, and will outline my plans for the future.

Kindest regards and best wishes from us all

Yours sincerely,

Russell.

Price explains, both in a drawing and by writing, all of the factors that made this limited section of a site, or similar, low lying positions nearby, unsuitable for any extraction of valid results. Everything on the former lake bottom was topsy-turvy due to peat shrinkage and cracking, collapsing bits of the upper ash bands or charcoal and bones, etc., and cascading this foreign, upper matter down into the gaping peat fissures below.  The former lake bottom site, drained of water in 1931,was an obvious non-event region for valid archaeological results and was abandoned accordingly.

However, anyone knowing that, here & there in the lowlands of Poukawa such sites existed, the opportunity could avail itself to, in sinister fashion, exploit their occurrence for gaining negative, contrary results. Such results could be, by innuendo and false association, used to unfairly reflect upon and misrepresent the totality of Price’s 25-years of careful archaeological work. Price certainly had naysayer enemies within the archaeological establishment ever willing to torpedo his amazing work and discredit his finds.

This appears to be what happened:  By the time McFadgen et al commenced their digs at Poukawa in 1973, Price’s above letter exchange with Rafter had sat within government department records for 4-years and could well have been seen or shared by many government employees. It seems quite uncanny or suspicious that McFadgen, in his 1978 report, which appeared fully 9-years after Price explained the abysmal situation of site 2476/6 to Rafter, would include all of the same elements. 

Both Price’s early account and McFadgen’s latter one 9-years later speak of the effects of the 1931 drain, the peat drying out and cracking below ground, cracks coming through the Taupo ash band layer … allowing surface charcoal or sundry objects to tumble down into and through the fissured peat, the effects of Mr. Buddo’s multi-furrowed plough cutting through the top surface and into the Taupo ash layer, thus spreading some to the sides, etc. Whereas Price saw no merit in continuing with such a site and abandoned it, McFadgen chose such a site for his archaeological probe that had exactly these negative attributes.

McFadgen’s results were solely his own and had no association with Price’s sites or the scientifically arrived at conclusions derived from them.

It begs the question, if McFadgen’s dig was done under some kind of supervision or involvement of Victoria University’s Geology Department, then why was such a stupid site chosen to undertake the work? Surely any geologist worth their salt would have quickly realised the site was palpably unworthy of investigation when it came to artifact age analysis.

Price and his colleagues sought out only locations where the friable topsoil section, the Taupo sub-surface ash band, the peat soil band, the Waimihia ash band or further peat and blue pug layers at lower levels lay undisturbed. As a precursor when commencing a dig, they meticulously inspected the Taupo tephra band surface to ensure no cracks were visible, before descending down further through subsequent layers. The exact positions of items of interest (Moa bones, artefact's, etc.) at every level were recorded in the on-site logbooks.

Photo taken from McFadgen’s, The Antiquidity [sic] of Man at Lake Poukawa, New Zealand, October 1978.  Note the dried out and cracked peat-soil very near to the grassy top surface. On the background trench wall can be seen the whitened traces of waterborne pumice from the 186 AD ash fall of Taupo, which band sits very near to the grass surface. This location was most certainly under lake water until the 1931 canal was cut and the lake level lowered.

Note how carefully excavated this surface is, with no tool scrapes evident over the otherwise irregular surface of the fissured peat. Note also how the fissures have been carefully swept clean to expose and accentuate the cracks for the camera. The whole purpose of the exercise appears to have been to show CRACKS, CRACKS, CRACKS and, by false representation, infer that all of Price's excavations on humped-up dry land and through concrete-like, air-laid tephra ash, were similarly CRACKED, CRACKED, CRACKED.

Deceitfully, McFadgen omits to mention that a drove of eminent geologists and pedologists inspected Price's excavations and confirmed that cooked & broken up Moa bones, manmade artifacts, postholes and human bones were located beneath concrete-like, unfissured, volcanic-ash bands that sealed over everything that lay beneath. By their careful observations, no human occupation materials had ever migrated downwards through the ash bands to lower levels of strata.

Some of the leading scientists who inspected Price's excavations and are on record to have concluded the above are: Sir Charles Flemming (world renown Geologist - Paleontologist - Ornithologist -Zoologist), Dr Thomas Athol Rafter (head of the DSIR Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory, Dr Alan Pullar (Geologist - Pedologist of Soil Bureau, Whakatane), Dr Colin Vucetich (Geologist - Pedologist of Victoria University), B P Kohn (Geologist - Pedologist of Victoria University), Dr. Harold Wellman (Geologist - Pedologist of Victoria University), Dr Harry S Gibbs (DSIR soil scientist), Dr Ronald J Scarlet Osteologist), Dr J C Yaldwyn (Carcinologist - Osteologist - Marine Biologist - Zoologist of Dominion Museum) and many others including T L Grant Taylor & Eileen Tiller of NZ Geological Survey ( DSIR Soil Bureau), etc., etc.

Newspaper article from the 8th of April 1969, documenting visits by two of the many leading scientists who, over several years, are on record for having inspected Price's excavations.

McFadgen's 1973 dig position was a grotesquely stupid site to choose if one was desirous to test the integrity of Russell Price’s evidence and conclusions …  and whoever did choose it (for whatever purpose) wasn’t so much as a pimple on a genuine geologist’s or archaeologist’s arse.

SO, WHERE IS THE SPOT WHERE McFADGEN ET AL DID THEIR DIG?

These almost 50-years after the event we have little or no definitive evidence from the McFadgen camp as to the exact spot in the Poukawa Valley where his dig took place. He only says that it was at Site N141/12, which is an umbrella number for Russell Price’s main grid of exploratory trenches on David Buddo’s farm. All we have to go on are tiny, poorly drawn maps in McFadgen’s report, with the larger of the two having scale-bar measurements that are highly inaccurate. So, let’s see what we can do with them.

The small map (b) at the top right indicates a box in the Poukawa Valley where the dig took place and the larger map at the bottom (c) is the actual site map, showing McFadgen’s digs as boxes F1, F2, 1, 2, & 3. The scale bar is meaningless, so all one can do is guess positions based upon contour lines or the approximate positions of fence lines.

Based upon McFadgen’s small locating map box his dig was completed within the confines of the red rectangle shown. However, in a ground closeup within Google Earth, no such configuration of 5 surrounding fence lines, as found on McFadgen’s map (c), can be seen.

An old 1980 topographical map of Poukawa Lake and surrounding terrain shows the 5-sided enclosing fence set up in the late 1960s to protect Russell Price’s extensive archaeological digs from livestock damage on Site N141/12. He had also undertaken a dig at Site N141/11 in 1967 on a humped-up rise adjacent to farmer, David Buddo’s hay barn. From McFadgen’s map plan (c) we can see that he excavated beyond the NE extremities of Russell Price’s diggings of N141/12. (Image courtesy of Retro Lens.)

The McFadgen map plan was made into a transparency in Photoshop, scaled to fit the 1980 topographical photo’s fence line configuration, then the two layers accurately superimposed into Google Earth imagery. McFadgen’s plots (numbered white boxes) are seen to sit near the fence line that divides David Buddo’s farm from Bill Buddo’s farm. Terrain to the left of the vertical red line rises steadily to a much-elevated hump and it was over this eternally stable, undisturbed, raised ground area that Price conducted his digs. McFadgen’s dig sites (1 & 2) would have been under water till 1931 and his other marked boxes lay in similarly low terrain also. They therefore produced predictably dismal results … which seems to have been the whole purpose of, what can only be construed as, a nefarious, underhanded exercise to destroy Price by false association and innuendo.

The length of the top white line of the 5-sided fence containing archaeological site N141/12 is 260-feet or just over 79-metres.

Whereas the very extensive excavation of Russell Price were done across a long raised hump of permanently above water ground, McFadgen’s tiny digs were beyond Price’s and down in the former floodplain.

Killjoy was here! The author standing at or very near to the spot, down near the fence line, where McFadgen did his floodplain excavation. To the author’s right is the rising hump that still bears the multiple scars of Price’s meticulously organised, grid-line digs. The area in front of the author is the declining end of the humped ground, short of which Price’s archaeological excavations tailed off to nothing. McFadgen’s dig was external to Price’s zone and had nothing in common with Price’s work.  

As can be seen from McFadgen’s map, his main archaeological probe (1&2) was undertaken on low ground near the fence line, whereas the comprehensive digs of Price were on permanently high ground, descending downwards to lower ground via long trenches. By this means Price achieved full cross section results overall, including at least 2 low ground, former wetlands, fissured peat results, similar to what McFadgen found in his very limited probe.

Russell Price saw this humped-up spur jutting into the lake as a likely spot for ancient trapping large wetlands birds (swans, etc.) including some Moa. His decision to dig here was based upon several decades of studying the Poukawa Valley topography and expert knowledge gained at 4 other digs he’d conducted around the valley.

As can be seen from this August 2019 picture, lake waters can still lap the fence line. Before 1931, when the large drainage canal was completed, lake waters extended well beyond the fence and field and the shoreline was further up the sides of the raised ground peninsula jutting into the lake. When the canal was completed in 1931 the lake dimensions were reduced from 635 acres down to 280 acres. Lake Poukawa’s water level was dropped 6-feet in height, bringing into cultivation 3500 extra acres.

The reason McFadgen found cracked peat near the surface of his shallow excavations was because it had dropped its water, dried-out, shrunk and cracked in the 42-years between 1931 and 1973 when he conducted his all-so-sparse dig into the former lake bottom.

The much-rumpled terrain in the foreground was a site of years of hard work by Russell Price, a host of fellow workers and knowledgeable scientists of high-calibre. The arrow points to the approximate location of a small area where McFadgen and his associates did a shallow dig. Thereafter, poorly arrived at conclusions (reading like a jack-up) from that meagre, unscientific little probe were, by innuendo, fraudulently used to encapsulate or represent the totality of Price’s patently-more comprehensive work of many years duration, … work that had been verified and backed by leading New Zealand scientists.

False attribution can refer to:

• Misattribution in general, when a quotation or work is accidentally, traditionally, or based on bad information attributed to the wrong person or group.
• A specific fallacy where an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased, or fabricated source in support of an argument.^[1]

The above pictures demonstrate just how farcical and preposterous McFadgen’s poison-pen, misattribution-slander of Price’s work and conclusions were, leading to its marginalisation and dismissal. Farmers, Bill and David Buddo, their parents, leading scientists, authors, friends and close associates saw how crestfallen and broken Price was in the last 5-years of his life following this unwarranted defamation of his careful work.  

Ivan Cash, who met and worked with Russell Price wrote the following testimonial:

'When I joined the staff of Karamu High School in 1966 Don GOODALL on our staff encouraged me to come with him to meet Russell Price and both of us worked with him most week ends for almost a year. At this stage he had been working at the site for several years

We were intrigued by the sincerity and honesty of this man. He described himself as a retired farmer. He said that he just found things and let the experts tell him what he had found. However, it was clear during the time that we knew Russell Price that he was very astute and knowledgeable and observant and careful. We had tremendous respect for his careful methods of excavation and bagging material.

He had had the site surveyed and during inch by inch excavation using small sized plasterers trowels he left in foot-wide baulks to ensure that all his work could be checked at a later date., While working there I found a tuatara skull and pale apple-green moa egg shell fragments. Russell Price showed us the moa bone with three toes that bore deep cuts in its surface. He told us that he had excavated it from the blue pug clay below the intact Waimihia Ash shower. He said that material above and below it had been dated by the DSIR at 5280 years ago plus or minus sixty'.

Note how extensive and labour-intensive these digs were. This is but one ”over the hump” dig, with many more adjacent. The cross-running baulk walls were undisturbed ground, left for future archaeologists to make their own careful assessments. Although the deep holes were in-filled to protect the sites, the baulk walls remain to this day, offering the opportunity for professionals in the fields of archaeology, geology and tephrostratigraphy, etc., to return to the site to draw their own conclusions.

Whereas McFadgen’s dig, along with his conclusions, was shallow, superficial and scientifically scandalous, Price’s many digs were deep, comprehensive and the information derived scientifically profound.

Farmer, David Buddo (right), his son Robert (middle) and family relatives amidst the demarcation stakes and section locating pegs of Russell Price’s massive dig. To their credit, the Buddo families, on adjacent farms, spent years supporting Price’s exhaustive efforts, only to see it all thwarted by McFadgen’s truth-challenged, dismissive article of 1978. Thereafter, those who had worked closely with Price “smelled a rat”, in realising just how entrenched, determined and vicious the academic adversaries, opposing Price’s findings, truly were.  

Whereas a cursory look at McFadgen’s dig indicates he found cracked peat at about 1-foot (300 millimetres) below ground level at the lake-bed base of the hump , the Price team at site N141/12 did deep, long excavations across the higher, permanently-above-water ground and found solid peat. Had McFadgen wanted to do a proper, intelligent dig across the higher terrain or even carefully check Price’s trenches and baulk walls traversing an entire cross-section, the inescapable conclusion could only have been that Price was correct … but it doesn’t seem McFadgen, unqualified, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be there in a credentialed archaeologist's role (1973), wanted to arrive at that scientific consensus of opinion.

To add insult to injury, on the 3^rd of May 1983 the Hawkes Bay newspaper announced the upcoming conference of the New Zealand Archaeological Association, to be held at Napier’s Century Theatre. Amongst the line-up of speakers, the newspaper stated that: ‘Dr. Bruce McFadgen, Historic Places Trust, Wellington, will discuss research on the Poukawa swamp material excavated over a long period by Russell Price.’ … which, for this writer, recalled to mind the gutless, psychotic murder of musician, John Lennon in 1980 by Mark Chapman, who shot him in the back multiple times. Attention-seeking Chapman, craving Lennon’s fame, was convinced that if he could kill Lennon then he could become Lennon, assuming his entire identity and persona.

Ten years after McFadgen visited Poukawa, qualified at the time only as a surveyor, and five years after releasing his sparse report, he’d now achieved a doctorate degree (1979) and all of the kudos befitting a lettered scholar who had championed the cause of destroying Price’s credibility in the eyes of his naysayer peers. We can only surmise that he became the darling of the social-engineers, having slain the ominous dragon.

How very ironic and obnoxious it is that the very person who, with no real archaeological evidence, stabbed Russell Price in the back then got invited to fill Russell’s shoes at the NZAA conference podium and pontificate, as the leading authority in all things “Poukawa”, while the hometown boy didn’t get a look-in. McFadgen was, vicariously, elevated to becoming the new Russell Price.

It’s amazing how McFadgen’s career soared within a few short years after he torpedoed Price and the aligned scientists. Now he seems to be in charge of everything … strange that! … some stars are in ascension while others are in decline.

Alan Pullar, scientist of the top order from the DSIR Soil Bureau fully verified that Price had found both human material and human related material beneath the ash bands. In this conclusion he was supported by Collin Vucetich (DSIR), Dr. Athol Rafter, head of the DSIR Radiocarbon Laboratory, Dr. C. A. Fleming, New Zealand’s leading geologist, Professor H. W. Wellman, geologist/surveyor, Michael King, NZ Archaeological Association & historian and many other leading experts in their fields, three notable ones of which were affiliated with Victoria University’s Geological Department.

Alan Pullar wrote a scientific paper about the amazing discoveries at Poukawa titled : Pumice Ash Beds and Peaty Deposits of Archaeological Significance Near Lake Poukawa, Hawkes Bay By W. A. Pullar, Soil Bureau, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Whakatane, Appendix 2 by P. L. Searle, Soil Bureau, Lower Hutt, Appendix 3 by Bruce Marshall, Whakatane, New Zealand, 20 July 1970. (Tragically, when one enters this title into Internet-Search, no link takes one to a digital copy, but instead delivers up McFadgen’s scientifically defunct, Antiquidity [sic] of Man at Lake Poukawa hatchet-job as an alternative).

After the sparse and ridiculous McFadgen article was used, by the gaggle of this-must-not-be-so naysayers, to destroy the conclusions of New Zealand’s most illustrious scientists supporting Price’s work, W. A. Pullar became totally disillusioned with the abysmal, unscientific state of NZ archaeology.

As it turns out, NZ archaeology has never recovered from the hijacking, coup d’état of the cultural-Marxist element, who have further clamped down on what the public can or cannot see or know. Nowadays all findings must reflect the agendas and goals of the political organs and expound only the view that Maori, arriving from Eastern Polynesia in circa 1300 AD (700-years ago), are the solitary people ever to occupy the country pre-colonial. This unsupportable nonsense flies in the face or what the learned Maori elders told us for over 150-years, as well as a vast accumulation of archaeological evidence researched since the dawn of the colonial era.    

THE STATEMENT OF BELIEF

'What almost nobody realised in the late 1960s is that a hard core of top scientists who had visited the Poukawa site were totally behind Price and Pullar. They could see the obvious. However, to openly stand beside these two would have cost them too much so they did the next best thing. A number allowed their names to be associated with a secret 'Statement of Belief', marked across the top 'RESTRICTED - NOT FOR PUBLICATION'. And because it vindicates Price and Pullar, and because the conclusions drawn go way beyond what these two could ever have envisaged, parts of it will be quoted now in such a manner as to leave the writers unidentifiable - with two exceptions. In order to demonstrate the high-level nature of the Statement it should be known that both Drs Fleming and Rafter had a hand in its composition...'

'The data Mr Price has slowly accumulated...has demonstrated that the results have to be taken seriously', the Statement began.'

'W A Pullar of Soil Bureau, Whakatane, visited the site earlier this year, examined ash layers contained within peat and collected radiocarbon samples from above and below the ash layers. The dates from these confirm his identification of the Taupo and Waimihia pumice ashes'

'The controversy over 'water-laid and air-laid ash was settled in a few sentences...'

'Within the peat are two pumice layers; the lower about 1½ inches thick, has a sand-size lower half and a fine silt-size upper. In the exposure we saw it was entirely air laid. About a foot above the rhyolite ash horizon is a second layer of course grit-sized rhyolite pumice lapilli; this is only about ¼ inch thick in the higher parts of the wedge but is irregularly thickened lower down. In these lower parts the bulk of the lapilli are rounded, and the thickening is clearly due to transport of lapilli by water, perhaps lake water. In the higher parts the lapilli are angular and occur with sand and dust grade particles and is clearly air-laid although continuous with the water-laid part'.

'A series of Post holes at all levels also spoke eloquently to the scientists. Speaking of one such hole the Statement says that...'

'The post was ca 4" in diameter, had rotted off and the hole then in-filled before the Taupo ash-fall...Similar post holes are reported below the Waimihia ash with the ash continuous across the top...The post hole we saw has every appearance of being undisturbed, and convincingly demonstrates human occupation of the site prior to the Taupo shower...The discoveries of artefact's and ovens...below one or other of the ash showers give a similar demonstration'.

'After discussing a likely geological history of the area, the Statement gets straight into conclusions...'

'Occupation of this site has continued over a long period. The older occupation appears to have commenced prior to the commencement of the peat formation and hence also before the water level of ancient Lake Poukawa had reached its highest level. If the rate of peat formation has been substantially uniform peats commenced forming at about 'post'-glacial sea level maximum, say 4,500 years ago. The stratigraphically lowest discoveries lie below this peat and may conceivably pre-date ca 4,500 years ago'. 'The site demonstrates human occupation of this area of much greater antiquity than anything previously anticipated'.

'It does not yet, however, demonstrate anything about the ethnological relationships of the earlier inhabitants and the later Maoris. Although the stratigraphically lowest material is all of a flaked nature, artefact's of this type are cosmopolitan and persisted in the Neolithic cultures, so do not necessarily indicate a Palaeolithic culture...'

'This is a most interesting document, its chief significance being that four pre-eminent scientists of the day saw fit to formalise their concurred view of the implications of Price's work at Poukawa. There are criticisms of course. And even charges of forgery against the paper. But these charges are baseless and cannot be sustained'.

'According to Price's biographer, Bevan Greenslade...the papers key is 'slowly accumulated'. It indicates patience and care, and a reserve difficult to falsify. Pullar's fortuitous involvement is also commented upon. This ground-breaking geologist was experienced and independent, and it was good to have a reliable bald statement asserting positive, unconditional dated identification of Waimihia and Taupo ash tephra. On the subject of post-holes, scientists of this calibre saying words such as '...convincingly demonstrates human occupation of the site prior to the Taupo shower' is pretty staunch collateral support for Price's own ideas. Such words lifted Price out of the 'misguided or speculative amateur enthusiast' category'.

Enter Dr. Bruce McFadgen and his team [Note: McFadgen was only qualified as a surveyor in 1973 when he did his dig at Poukawa], made up of members of the Victoria University Geological Society and the Wellington Archaeological Society.

'The team dug in an area already dealt with by Price and in his report in the 'Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand', (Vol. 9, No. 3, 1979, pp 375- 382) McFadgen proceeded to demolish all Price's claims and to make it difficult for anyone else to stand alongside the beleaguered farmer and still retain his or her credibility'.

'Thus, all Price's post holes became 'root channels of old trees'. Disking of the area in the past mixed introduced snails and pig bones with extinct heron and notornis remains, fooling everyone in the process. Tree roots made the 'file marks' noted on some old bones. After the land was raised by the 1931 earthquake and the peat began to dry out, it cracked, and allowed surface material to fall down to sub-ash levels - in every case. The shrinking ground was also responsible for all broken bird bones as well. It was all too pat'.

'McFadgen's conclusion was that 'because the peat is cracked, and things have fallen down the cracks, and because the site has been bulldozed and disked, and artefact's have been disturbed, the Poukawa site does not provide evidence for the antiquity of man in New Zealand, and is extremely misleading'.

He further stated that the site 'was probably occupied between 150 and 300 years ago' and 'there is no evidence for human occupation before the Taupo pumice eruption'.

'Tutored ones who previously wavered, now largely embraced the 'new light' provided by the team, while the public at large - or at least the members of the public interested in such things - jumped the opposite way, taking the view that McFadgen's simplistic dismissal of claims made for Poukawa were a 'jack-up', that he had approached the task of 'dealing with' Poukawa with his mind already made up, and that his conclusions ran counter to all previous indications from the site'. (See: Chain of Evidence, by John Tasker, pgs.138 - 155).

DR ATHOL RAFTER'S COPY OF "THE STATEMENT OF BELIEF" TEXT, ACQUIRED UNDER AN OIA REQUEST FROM THE RAFTER RADIO CARBONDATING LABORATORY.

Whereas the copy held by author John Tasker has the title: Statement of Belief written across the top and is signed by 4 eminent scientists, Rafter's copy contains only the text.

TO UNDERSTAND THE RADICAL POLITICAL CHANGES THAT LED TO RUSSELL PRICE'S WORK BEING DISCREDITED, CLICK HERE

DOCUMENT TRAIL

A SMALL SAMPLE OF THE LETTER EXCHANGES, C14 RESULTS, ETC., BETWEEN RUSSELL PRICE, ATHOL RAFTER & OTHERS IN, MAINLY, 1969 – 70.

Specimens dated to 31^st Oct. 1965.

 Specimens dated to 29^th Dec 1966.

Sample dated 23^rd March 1968,

Sample dated 11^th May 1968 and the heavily edited document below is directly derived from the document above but stripped of all the pertinent information the public is not allowed to know or see (censored/sterilised).

Whereas the C14 results found on the New Zealand Radiocarbon Database have been severely Mcfudged and tampered with to hide the much more comprehensive information that was found on the original source document, this one slipped under the radar and shows that humans have been in New Zealand since at least 2285-years before 1950. The abbreviation C. R. A. means “Conventional Radiocarbon Age”.

And guess who’s in charge of the University of Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Unit and the New Zealand Radiocarbon Database? … Yup! ... Bruce McFudgen.

 Specimens dated 26^th Oct. 1968.

Sample dated 2^nd November 1968.

Sample dated 18^th January 1969.

Sample dated 25^th Jan. 1969.

Sample dated 23^rd March 1970. One broken femur, sawn into by man, was dated to 7170-years plus or minus 60-years before 1950 in age.

Sample collected 23^rd October 1965, given its final C14 test on 13^th February 1970 and producing a finalised reading of 7170  60-years before 1950. This Moa bone was positively identified to have been sawn into by humans.

One of the letters in the DSIR file that speaks about the specimen from which the 7170  60-years date was derived (written here as  70-years) before 1950.

‘The text shown reads: Poukawa H.B. 2^nd Sept. R2476

Dear Phil, I do apologise for taking so long to answer your letter – it’s been the reference to the c. 5000-year carbon date from Poukawa which has caused the problem. And the problem is still not solved; I can’t track down the reference.

I think it was in a report put out [by] the Nuclear Lab of the DSIR. Anyway, details of the date I can tell you. The date of 5180  70-years (before 1950) was obtained from giant Moa bone (D. giganteas or hercules) from Poukawa Site III.

The bone was dated because one of the pelvic pubes was found to have a deep cut across it. We have also obtained an older date for Moa bone from Site I, that being 7170   70-years (b. 1950). A deep diagonal cut across the femur of this bird suggested …’

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter dated 7^th May 1969.

Athol Rafter’s letter to Russell Price, dated 13^th June 1969.

Athol Rafter’s letter to Russell Price dated 16^th June 1969.

Athol Rafter’s letter to Russell Price dated 17^th June 1969.

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter, 19^th June 1969

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter, 3^rd September 1969.

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter dated 10^th October 1969.

Price’s Letter to Athol Rafter dated 21^st September 1969.

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter, dated 28^th October 1969.

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter dated 3^rd November 1969.

Letter from Athol Rafter to Russell Price, dated 29^th October 1969.

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter dated 26^th March 1970.

Price’s letter to Athol Rafter dated 2^nd April 1970.

Athol Rafter’s letter to Russell Price dated 7^th May 1970.

IN QUEST OF POUKAWA MAN

One detail that has bordered on “Top Secret” is the fact that human skeletons or sundry human bones were encountered deep down under the ancient ash layers at Poukawa, along with the cooked and broken up Moa bones, cast aside after the Moa hunter feasts. In letters exchanged between Price and Rafter, especially, the term “Poukawa Man” is raised several times and other insiders were privy to the information. This included local Maori, who authorised skeletal remains to be sent to the DSIR radiocarbon lab for age-testing. Maori of the 1960s genre were obviously as inquisitive as everyone else as to who these old skeletons belonged. One advantage they had over non-Maori New Zealanders was that their old elders, recounting oral history, spoke openly about the “strangers” who had previously occupied lands that came into Maori possession. Historian/anthropologist Edward Tregear wrote:

“The Maoris used to pay great respect to the bones of their dead, yet here and there may be found among sandhills, etc., human remains uncovered by the wind, and of these no tradition remains, as there would certainly be if the relics were those of ancestors. The natives say, “These are the bones of strangers.” So also, mortuary-caves are found concerning the contents of which the Maoris make the same remark, and regard them with indifference” (See: The Maori Race, pp. 562-563).  

On May 7^th, 1969 Price wrote the following to Athol Rafter:

Many thanks for your helpful and encouraging letter of 24^th April. I have just finished packing the skeleton from Roy Natusch property. He has obtained the full approval of the 3 tribal committees concerned, and a permit from the Police, so all is well. We have retained the lower jaw (quite good order considering) and what remains of the skull. When this lower jaw is compared with ours from Poukawa it is at once observable that you are looking at two distinct types of man. Roy is obtaining medical evidence on this point. Unfortunately, right in the middle of this his wife fell and broke her arm, so [I] volunteered to pack the skeleton which he will pick up in a day or two and forward by road transport direct to you. I am going to recommend to him that he let you examine the jaw width which I consider very important.

At the end of his May 7^th, 1969 letter Price wrote cryptically about human skeletal finds:

‘We were very pleased to hear your remarks re northern interests but thought it advisable to let you know just what these people had in mind. They are a crowd I have little interest in. I had a nice letter from Prof. Charles Highman [&] he will visit us if possible but, like ourselves time is the vital factor. I was delighted to hear of this success re early dates. They are on the right track, feel sure they will recover more.

P.S. With regards to Roy Natusch second skeleton he has decided not to push his luck too far with the Maoris at present, and the same applies to our own. They are easily upset and in both cases the skeletons can be used for comparative purposes. What I want is more human material in the way of a skeleton or scattered bone clearly below the ash showers.

On June 19^th, 1969 Price wrote the following to Athol Rafter:

‘I have talked with Roy Natusch and Ken Ramsey and we are unanimous in the decision for you to take whatever steps you consider necessary in this vital matter of Roy’s remarkable discovery. So, you can move quickly and correctly to get recognition for all the work that has been done by us all.

I have gone over very carefully all the material Roy has sent you, and there can be no doubt in my mind that he has found an entirely different type of man hitherto not found in New Zealand. When he first brought me the evidence which you are now dating apart from its evident age, once I examined that primitive and massive jaw (lower) I at once told him he really had something. As you say, the counter will tell the story’

Roy Natusch had found a giant skeleton, or parts thereof, which displayed a very large jaw. During the colonial era of New Zealand, many of these tall stature skeletons have been seen, especially on the West Coast, ranging from Port Waikato to Mitimiti (a distance of 160-miles or 255 kilometres up the coastline). Anomalous skeletons like this, when found today, are given to local Maori tribes who destroy them. No scientific analysis is allowed.

Athol Rafter wrote back on the 17^th of June 1969:

‘We will start on the skeleton tomorrow and as soon as we have this date an assessment can be made of the whole area. If the collagen human date is what you expect then a considerable amount of work will be warranted on your Poukawa site. We opened up the two skulls you kindly sent down. Poukawa Man as you say is of relatively modern vintage, but the other skull could easily be of a man living thousands of years ago in New Zealand. However, we cannot speculate, but leave off now until the C14 age put away all doubts. David Natusch has taken the skulls down to our photographer for record purposes. We will send you copies.’

Athol Rafter wrote again to Russell Price on the 17^th of June 1969:

Your letter of May 7 got lost for a time beneath my correspondence and I have enclosed the papers you need. I am pleased you are going to write up a scientific paper with Mr Pullar. If the collagen age for this skeleton is in the order of 1000 years, then I think you and Mr Natusch should write a short account for Nature straight away. This should be no trouble. Another way of getting good publicity for your work is for reference to be made at the Anthropology Section Meeting at A. N, A. A. A. S. in Adelaide next August. I think I told you I am Chairman of a Symposium at that meeting and would be happy to refer to your excellent work. If the collagen age is right I will, with your permission, let Dr Macintosh, the Professor of Anatomy, Sydney University, know and send him photos of the two skulls. I’m sure he will be on the next plane to Poukawa. These are just ideas in anticipation of the right result, but we need to move quickly and correctly to get you the scientific credit you deserve.’

On November 3^rd, 1969 Russell Price wrote a lengthy, 3-page update on recent activities and concluded with:

David Buddo (farmer) has given me authority to expel any undesirable persons from our sites and was delighted to hear that the Institute of Nuclear Sciences will do all it can to assist in the research for Poukawa man. We all feel that Dr Duff is a decidedly prejudiced person and as a self-appointed judge is a bit of a flop. We shall continue with our work at Poukawa for a long time to come.

There were a number of archaeologists who seemed to, quite openly, resent Price’s extraordinary finds and Price had to try and sidestep their academic-snobbery and rank-pulling condescension. One of these self-appointed primo-uomos was Dr. Roger Duff and when the plug was finally pulled by jealous or politically aligned adversaries, and Price’s work and reputation went down the gurgler, he felt that a major architect in his demise was Dr Roger Duff.

About these down-in-the-mouth dissenters, Bernadette Noble or the Hawkes Bay newspaper wrote on May 1^st, 1969:

‘I went to Hastings to meet Mr. Price and to see for myself the small 120 by 120 feet square that is causing such gnashing of teeth in high scientific places.’

With authority given to Price by farmer David Buddo to expel undesirables, it’s a pity he didn’t give Bruce McFadgen the “bum’s-rush” in 1973.

Human bones found under the Taupo ash layer.

This is an example of highly significant information “HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT”, as the dearth of relevant facts that should have been included, make the unsuspecting public simply gloss over the data without realising what was found. Here is an actual letter from Rafter with results related to one of the several human skeleton finds, where the remains were lying on the Waimihia ash band.

On the 16^th of June 1969, Dr. Athol Rafter, in doing C14 analysis on samples submitted by Price, paraphrases what Price wrote in reference to the samples. Note that dates of 3120-years and 3210-years before 1950 were returned in the sample ages.   

 So close and yet so far … just when it looked like we were going to get full disclosure of our long-term history, the clobbering machine went into full swing and dashed our hopes. It was a resounding NO! from the control-freak faction … and we were not permitted to have this forbidden knowledge. Thereafter New Zealand archaeological research in this category was locked-down, and such has been the case now for nigh on 50-years.

Many New Zealanders would question why a government would wish to censor history in this way. By all appearances, it’s a scourge that afflicts many western countries, pushed by the internationalists, who use “indigenous-rights” legislation as a main weapon of leverage in breaking the solidarity and sovereignty of, especially, western nations. The United Nations foisted UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples) onto New Zealand, thus dividing the country into at least two major inter-bickering factions …  and a central theme that must be religiously advocated is that Maori are the only people to have ever occupied pre-colonial New Zealand. Thus, one group in society is empowered, while another is disenfranchised, allowing big corporations to gain access to rich resources that would not usually be so readily available in a country where sovereignty is fully intact and impregnable.

SO, WHO WAS POUKAWA MAN?

Back in the days when there were still vestiges of true archaeological research being undertaken in New Zealand, Lady Aileen Fox, renown British archaeologist, came to New Zealand in retirement to study so-called Maori hillforts. She was considered to be a leading world authority on Iron Age hillforts of Britain and Continental Europe. In 1972 she retired as Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter, England and took up a position at Auckland University, New Zealand to teach Romano-British and Celtic archaeology.

Lady Fox was inspired to come to New Zealand by observations of anthropologist, Sir Raymond Firth who provided for the first volume of the English archaeological journal, Antiquity, a 1927 article on Maori hillforts. Other early writers she mentioned were Captain James Cook, Joseph Banks, Sydney Parkinson, Surville, Marion de Fresne, Crozet, le Roux, Dumont d’Urville, Louis de Saison, Samuel Marsden, William Yate, Henry Williams, etc., … to which we could add F.E. Manning and many more early writers who were mesmerised by the sheer magnitude of the hilltop excavations or number of these structures that dot the North Island landscape in their thousands. Manning wrote:

‘The old hillforts are many of them so large that an amount of labour must have been expended in trenching, terracing and fencing them, and all without iron tools, which increased the difficulty a hundred fold, which must have required a vastly greater population to accomplish than can now be found in the surrounding districts. These forts were also of such an extent that, taking into consideration the system of attack and defence used necessarily in those times, they would have been utterly untenable unless held by at least ten times the number of men the whole surrounding district, for two or three days’ journey, can produce; …’

Now, from the top of one of these pointed, trenched and terraced hills I have counted twenty others, all of equally large dimensions, and all within a distance, in every direction, of fifteen to twenty miles; and native tradition affirms that each of these hills was the stronghold of a separate hapu or clan, bearing its distinctive name. There is also the most unmistakable evidence of vast tracts of country, which have lain wild time out of mind, were once fully cultivated. …’

 Many collections of these provision stores [pits for sweet potato storage] have outlived Maori tradition, and the natives can only conjecture who they belong to. Out of the centre of one of them which I have seen there is now growing a kauri tree one hundred and twenty feet high, and out of another a large totara.’ (See: Old New Zealand, by F.E. Manning, pp. 200 – 202 …based upon observations made in the 1830s).

Typical of the impression these massive hillforts had on new arrivees to New Zealand is a statement by Surveyor General, Felton Mathew of the 1840 NZ colonial government of William Hobson, who wrote:

 “There are several very singular hills rising boldly from the surrounding land [Auckland], in shape and form closely resembling the Roman encampments on the Tumuli that abound in many parts of England & having like them three or four distinct fops or ditches encircling them towards the summit - This singular too that these have been formed for defence by the natives - the top of every hill is marked in this way with distinct lines of circumvallation. An antiquary might from this circumstance deduce a connection between the New Zealanders and the ancient Romans!!' (see Felton Mathew's unpublished letters to his wife, Special Collections, Auckland Public Library.

Another early explorer noted:

'Arriving at the foot of the mountain [Mt. Eden] we assayed its ascent in the course of which my friend evinced a deep interest in traces of Maori fortifications of a past age, which were everywhere in evidence, the escarpments, trenches and what had once been covered ways and store pits though fallen in or overgrown, were yet in a wonderful state of recognition.
Several of the stone walls of these fortifications could still be traced with considerable accuracy, although the oldest living Maori could not tell when, or by whom, they were erected.
The Maori race show a wonderful aptitude for field engineering in warfare, and these traces of ancient fortifications, in particular, have often called forth the highest commendation from those most capable of judging such matters.
It must have taken a much larger population than was then to be found to man these fortifications effectively, so extensive were they, the whole mountain appearing to be girt by them, line after line, from bottom to top (see Sketches of Early Colonisation in New Zealand -and its Phases of Contact With the Maori Race, (circa late 1840's), by "Te Manuwiri", pg. 123, Whitcomb & Tombs).

In the foreword of Lady Aileen Fox’s book, Prehistoric Maori Fortifications in the North Island of New Zealand, Dr. R.C. Green writes:

‘Native New Zealanders, known collectively today as Maori, had eastern Polynesians as ancestors. By the last half of the eighteenth-century AD they had developed in the course of a 1000 year* residence in New Zealand a variety of settlements, one of which, the fortified pa, attracted the attention and admiration of early European visitors and inhabitants. This is not surprising. Many of these newcomers were of British origin. Often, they had Celts as one or more of their ancestors, and in the last half of the first millennium B.C. Celts too constructed hillforts very similar to some Maori pa and participated in a society which had a number of features in common with the Maori. Both indigenous groups, moreover, used their fortifications in facing up to invasion by newcomers backed by a technologically more advanced civilisation, Romans on the one hand, the British military on the other. Thus, despite an absence of any historical connection with the Celts, Maori fortifications have long been a fruitful source for commentary, comparison and speculation.’

The comparisons extend well beyond the same or similar styles of fort construction. See:  http://www.celticnz.co.nz/CelticMaoriDeathMyths/CelticMaoriDeathMyths.html

In the North Island of New Zealand there are an estimated 5000 of these fort structures that sit to the north of Lake Taupo alone, whereas in Britain there are less than half that number in the whole country. Many of the so-called for structures had no defensive capability and were simply the sites of small or large villages where extensive earthworks have been excavated solely for domestic convenience.

An area of interest for Lady Aileen Fox was the Hawkes Bay district where she and her teams undertook archaeological digs at Tirimoana pa, Te Awanga, only 17-miles (27 kilometres) NE from Russel Price’s main dig site in the Poukawa Valley. Let’s touch upon one of the many such ancient structures that are found in the Poukawa Valley or up on the high ranges circumnavigating the valley:

In preliminary discussions with farmer, Bill Buddo, we asked if there were any pre-colonial (or more ancient) hill-top structures in the valley that could have functioned as solar observatories. From experience in studying ancient community sites across New Zealand that pre-dated the era of Maori occupation, invariably there will be solar observatories for taking time fixes on an equinox or solstice rise or set. Being as Russell Price was finding evidence of very ancient occupation within the valley, it seemed obligatory that there had to be a solar observatory somewhere nearby. As it turns out, there was one only half a kilometre NE of Russell Price's dig Site 1.

THE LOZENGE SHAPED, HILL-TOP SOLAR OBSERVATORY IN THE POUKAWA VALLEY.

Adjacent to the original outflow stream of Lake Poukawa and very near to where Russell Price commenced his first archaeological investigations at Sites 1 & 2, is a small hill with a lozenge shaped earthwork sitting on its crown. The position affords wonderful panoramic views throughout 360° of the skyline and is conveniently situated between long hill ranges to the east and west. Because the ranges stretch on a line that runs north-south, they offer the opportunity to get precise solar fixes onto the winter solstice rise and set, the equinox rise and set, as well as those of the summer solstice from the centre of the lozenge.

The now dilapidated lozenge shaped earthworks structure that rises in tiers or steps from the outer periphery to the centre platform. There appear to have been 4 ever decreasing in size but rising in height tier steps from the outside to the centre, a design concept that duplicates stylistically a famous English artifact from the Neolithic Age called the Bush Barrow Lozenge.

An AutoCAD scaled replica of the Bush Barrow Lozenge which was found very near to Stonehenge in the tumulus mound grave and lying on the chest of a man of obvious importance. The lozenge was fabricated in thinly beaten gold sheet and grave goods associated with the deceased suggested he was a priest forerunner to the later Druids. One item in the grave was a plane-table, anciently used in conjunction with an alidade sighting rule for accurate surveying of the landscape.  

Professor John North comments concerning particular, surveying-related grave goods found at Bush Barrow tumulus mound:  'Fragments of wood that the excavators had thought were the remains of a shield were now described as the remains of an alidade (a sighting rule) and wooden drawing board or plane table.' (See: Stonehenge, Neolithic Man and the Cosmos, page 508).

So, by associating the ancient British lozenge design with surveying, are there any attributes of the Poukawa earthworks lozenge which show a surveying-related function?

As it turns out, one point of the Poukawa, multi-tiered, earth-mound lozenge orientates onto true north, with the other points orientating onto due east, due west and due south.  

The original configuration of this site appears to have been quite similar in concept to a Bush Barrow Lozenge shape, with concentric, rising tiers as one moved further in towards the centre platform. It would seem that at latter eras pits were dug across the surface for roofed dwellings, where people could live below the wind line, however the evidence shows that the original builders had a surveying and solar observatory function in mind. The lozenge shape, superimposed over a Google Earth image, has its corners on the primary points of the compass.

From the centre of the hill-top lozenge embankment a line is seen to run for 2.33 miles to a set of purpose-placed, obelisk boulders that mark due north. They sit in a row near the skyline of a high ridge and can be seen from the lozenge structure in reasonable weather. Ancient surveyors would have been able to fix their alidade sighting rule/plane table onto the true north marker, set a 360-degree disk to the zero point, then read precise angles to any other target around the horizon.

The line-up of purpose placed obelisks, the largest of which to the left marks due north. The others seem to have been placed to make the main marker more visually conspicuous and represent alternate shifts in the degree angle of .05 of a degree. There is no grouping of boulders like this in the immediate vicinity and these have obviously been placed in that precise position by human intervention.

The line of anciently placed obelisks near the ridge top, with the biggest one in the foreground marking true north. It now lies recumbent and cattle are obviously clambering around it. What would have once been chock boulders to form a stabilising cradle under the standing stone now lie about nearby in the mud.

The ancient limestone obelisk, tumbled from its former position, but still indicating the position of due north from the centre of the lozenge structure in the valley.

An aerial view of the now disheveled and pitted, stepped lozenge structure. The faint outlines of the rising concentric tiers can still be detected, but the ancient structure has been considerably dug over by the last Maori occupants who used it as a sentinel and defensive position during inter-tribal fighting.

Another aerial shot. The corner at the top of the picture points to due north.

From the lozenge structure the obelisk line marking due north would be up on the range, as indicated by the arrow.

Yet another stepped, truncated pyramid in the Poukawa area and situated in the valley over the range westwards of where the due north markers are set out at the top of the ridge. The farmer has fenced it to ensure that no cattle can disturb the 4 rising tiers. In a first assessment it looks like it would work very well for a winter solstice sunrise fix, but the nearby ranges to the east and west should provide excellent fixes on the other major solar events throughout the year as well. for both rises and sets of the sun.

The vernal equinox sunrise 2019 from the centre of the lozenge earth mound. The long hill ranges to the east and west have distinctive troughs and humps, such that ancient astronomers, who knew their terrain intimately, could see when the sun arose perfectly on the outer-marker, geological feature that represented a “fix” for the equinox day.  The long ranges provide the ability to get perfect fixes onto summer solstice, equinox and winter solstice rises and sets of the sun, such that calendar counts throughout the year would be accurate.

The equinox sunset on the western range. By knowing elevation above sea level where the sun emerged or alighted on the ranges, as well as the diagonal angle of the rising or setting sun at the equinox, calculations were possible for determining “true north”.

AMPHITHEATRES

Amongst the many descriptions that have been passed down to us via Maori oral traditions, we have the following:

'Besides gods, the natives believed in the existence of other beings, who lived in communities, built pas, and were occupied with similar pursuits to those of men. These were called Patu-paearehe. Their chief residences were on the tops of lofty hills, and they are said to have been the spiritual occupants of the country prior to the arrival of the Maori, and to retire as they advance. The Wanganui natives state, that when they first came to reside on the banks of the river, almost all the chief heights were occupied by the Patu-pae-arehe, who gradually abandoned the river, and that even until a few generations ago, they had their favorite haunts there. These may be accounts of an aboriginal race mixed with fable; there are several things to warrant the idea that the Maori were not the first inhabitants of the land.

The Patu-paearehe were only seen early in the morning, and are represented as being white, and clothed in white garments of the same form and texture as their own; in fact, they may be called the children of the mist. They are supposed to be of large size, and may be regarded as giants, although in some respects they resemble our fairies. They are seldom seen alone, but generally in large numbers; they are loud speakers, and delight in playing on the putorino (flute); they are said to nurse their children in their arms, the same as Europeans, and not to carry them in the Maori style, on the back or hip. Their faces are papatea, not tattooed, and in this respect also, they resemble Europeans. They hold long councils, and sing very loud; they often go and sit in cultivations, which are completely filled with them, so as to be frequently mistaken for a war party; but they never injure the ground;

The belief in the Patu-paearehe is very general; many have affirmed to me, that they have repeatedly met with them. Albinos are said to be their offspring, and they are accused of frequently surprising women in the bush.'

See: Te Ika a Maui, by Reverend Richard Taylor, pp 46-47. http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-TayTeik-t1-body-d1-d3.html#n67

Another kind of structure that one would expect to find where ancient communities were large in number is the bowl-type amphitheatre. It seems to have been a common practice amongst the ancient inhabitants of New Zealand to modify natural bowl-like land features into semi-terraced or smooth-ground amphitheatres where the acoustics were much improved and people could gather together for story telling oratory, music and dance displays, general entertainment, councils, etc.

These large, symmetrical, amphitheatre-like features are found in many locations across New Zealand where sizable ancient communities are known to have resided and, sometimes, there will be side-by-side amphitheatres where the communities were particularly large. This is the case in the Poukawa Valley.

These symmetrical, hillside bowl depressions in the Poukawa landscape would once have sat at the lake edge, with the lapping shoreline water sufficiently low to provide solid-ground, trackway access to the natural or semi-natural amphitheatres. These two probable amphitheatres and a much smaller third one to the west would have been ideal for community social gatherings, oratory and entertainment. Some of these amphitheatres around New Zealand had centrally built, elongated mounds, strategically-placed for line-dancing displays or oratory, where the speakers or musicians could project very effectively and audibly to the encircling audience.

A view of the largest Poukawa amphitheatre, looking south to the lake centre from the rear of the bowl rim. Note the small, pinched together entrance, effectively sheltering the gathered-in occupants from the prevailing wind. Speakers or performers could stand near the entryway or more centrally to face and interact with their audience.

Another large amphitheatre bowl at Tapapakanga Park, Orere Point, towards Thames NZ where there was once a large community of Patu-paiarehe (umbrella tern used by Maori to relate to the people they found in New Zealand when they arrived in 1300 AD). Maori oral traditions speak of these people being vanquished and forced to flee to the nearby Coromandel Ranges. There are two such amphitheatres at Tapapakanga Park. This one has a raised central mound that would have worked well for orators or musician/singers to stand upon when performing their arts before the encircling audience.

A large bowl enclosure at highly carved and terraced, One Tree Hill, Auckland, NZ. Again it would have been very effective for performances before a large seated audience.

Another view of the One Tree Hill amphitheatre from behind the giant plinth/obelisk. Note the carved terracing that could have accommodated a large audience.

EPILOGUE

McFadgen’s “Antiquidity (sic) of Man at Lake Poukawa, New Zealand, October 1978 begins with an “Abstract”, containing 3 statements of interest:

 Archaeological excavation of a Maori occupation site at Lake Poukawa shows the site was probably occupied between 150 and 300 years ago and has been badly disturbed by European farming. There is no evidence for human occupation before the Taupo Pumice eruption.

 Response:

           According to our so-called leading experts, all known species of Moa birds were wiped out by the year 1400 AD (circa 600-years ago). Here are some quotes:

  ‘…Moa were plentiful in New Zealand upon Polynesian arrival but were extinct within a century as a result of hunting and habitat loss (Anderson 1989 a,b; Holdaway et al. 2014, Perry et al. 2014). Also we have this statement: ‘Several decades later there is still no convincing direct evidence of humans on the New Zealand landscape any earlier than 1300 AD…’ (See: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/globalmigration/files/2018/09/Walter-et-al-2017.pdf ).

 However, at least 21,700 bones of now long-extinct birds, including many moa of most types, were found at Poukawa by Russell Price and his team. About 85% of these were found to have been cooked, broken into smaller sections, cut with obsidian knives to remove flesh, gouged or sawn and thrown together into middens with hyridella shells, etc. Also, crop stones of Moa and other birds were found in piles, well away from any bones of birds that would have ingested them. In addition, most of these cooked and broken bones, bearing man made or inflicted marks, were located below any Maori occupation-era of strata. Most were under the ash band of the Taupo volcanic explosion of 186 AD.

 Because of the above factors, McFadgen’s statement that human occupation was only 150 to 300 years ago is ridiculous. If one is to postulate such a hypothesis, then it has to have some element of workability, but McFadgen’s estimate of human occupation is too far removed from the very last of any Moa hunting activity at Poukawa by a span of 300 to 450-years.

Added to the above is the indisputable evidence of C14 results issued by the DSIR Radiocarbon Dating Lab Lower Hutt, under the direction of scientist, Dr Athol Rafter. Human bones, cooked Moa bones or those of other bird species, hyridella shells, carved artefact's, etc., returned very ancient C14 dates, the oldest of which for Poukawa was 7170-years + or - 60-years before 1950.  

 His statement that European farming has badly disturbed ground at Poukawa is also untrue. The formerly underwater, but now drained farm flats in the valley, lie on peat soil, where surface weeds like fescue need to be removed by tracked crawlers that have a large footprint, as opposed to wheel tractors that don’t. Because the peat has lost its water, cracked and shrunk, it can easily be crushed downwards by heavy weight, thus compressing it towards the water table and increasing the risk of flooded fields. Bladeless excavators, pulling lightweight surface disks, distribute the weight of the machine to such an extent that no damage occurs.

At the same time the valley floor has many higher ground areas that have never been underwater, as evidenced by thousands of years of undisturbed, stratified soil layers. The region is conducive to, or best suited for, grazing cattle and sheep and only minor surface maintenance is required by machinery.

 McFadgen’s statement that there is no evidence for human occupation before the Taupo Pumice eruption is completely untrue, as cooked Moa bones and those of other species, clearly eaten, scratched and broken by humans, were found deep below the Taupo ash band and even below the Waimihia ash band. These were C14 tested by the DSIR Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory and verified by Dr. Athol Rafter and his lab technicians to have been up to 7000-years old.   

 McFadgen’s Introduction.

 In his Introduction McFadgen makes the statements: "reported in New Zealand Archaeology Association newsletter, Price 1963/1965" … "that Maori occupation remains” .... "Had been found below the Taupo pumice", conflicts to a "generally accepted date of 1000 BP."

 McFadgen seems to infer that if something conflicts to a generally accepted date with, what he sees as, the peer consensus, then it must be wrong. As it turns out, McFadgen(quoting Wellman 1962*) was out-of-step with the large number of leading New Zealand scientists who had tested Price’s findings and found them to be scientifically proven by the most up-to-date methods available. At the time, the 1000 BP date of human occupation was under severe review, based upon new, compelling evidence coming to light.

* Footnote: In this Introduction, McFadgen quotes and early article by Wellman (1962) to support his contention of no occupation found below the Taupo ash. However, he fails to mention that in 1969 Wellman, along with the other credentialed, senior geologists of the Victoria University Geology Department, namely Kohn and Vucetich, concurred, in agreement with leading pedologist Allan Pullar, that there was indisputable evidence of human occupation situated below the Taupo and Waimahia ash bands. They tested this themselves on-site at Poukawa.
Also conflicting with the generally accepted date of 1000 BP was an artifact uncovered by archaeologist, Lady Aileen Fox in 1973 at Tirimoana PA, Hawkes Bay, a mere 19-miles from Russell Price’s 4 main dig sites. Carbon 14 age testing by the DSIR Radiocarbon Dating Lab of a well-preserved door portal found by Fox and her team returned a date of 1600 BC.

 McFadgen says that in August 1973, with the permission of Mr Price, site N141/12 was studied by Victoria University Wellington Geology Department.

This is, at best, an exaggeration or, at worst, an outright lie!

 Farmer David Buddo has no recollection of Bruce McFadgen or any group representing themselves as Victoria University Wellington Geology Department coming onto his farm, nor does Bill Buddo, who now owns the farm next door and often worked on digs with Price.

Certainly, these interlopers did not introduce themselves to David Buddo nor ask permission to conduct a formal archaeological dig, which should have been done as a basic courtesy and policy requirement under the university rules. David Buddo considers that this group of nameless, faceless people were “sneaky” in the way they came and went unannounced.

The David Buddo farming family, from left: Ros, David and Cathy, who worked in with Russell Price and had tremendous respect for the man and his genuine accomplishments. Like so many others they were devastated when Price’s 25-years of hard work were so unfairly nullified and marginalised in the eyes of the public. They had seen the accumulating evidence for themselves, over several years, and knew Price was correct in his conclusions. None of them remember Bruce McFadgen or his associates being on the farm property and were never consulted about Victoria University undertaking a formal dig on the farm. From the family’s point of view, McFadgen’s comings and goings seem sneaky and, in retrospect, reek of something unsavoury and suspicious going down. McFadgen and Victoria University owe them an explanation and apology.     

 But McFadgen says elsewhere in his acknowledgments that those who came to the site (who gave in the field assistance) were” Members of the Victoria University Geological Society and the Wellington Archaeological Society, with the Victoria University Internal Research Committee funding the work.

 So who were these “Societies” and what’s an “Internal Research Committee” ?

They are certainly not The Victoria University Geology Department!

 What are the names of all the people involved?

 How long were they on site?

 Where did they all stay in the region and for how long?

 By the known evidence on-site or recorded as a drawing within McFadgen’s site map, we know their dig was very small and superficial, so how did they arrive at such far-reaching conclusions?

 How comprehensive do they consider their dig to have been, when their own photos show cracked peat near the surface of what was underwater lake bottom only 42-years previously ?

 Where is the proof that they scientifically scrutinised the actual permanent-dry-ground excavations of Russell Price which had already been scrutinised and tested by leading, aligned scientists and declared to be intact, unbroken and sealing everything beneath them?

 Who are we dealing with here and what were their qualifications to draw such influential conclusions?

 Certainly, McFadgen himself was only qualified as a surveyor at that time and held a minor degree in a category of social anthropology. He was not a qualified archaeologist, geologist, nor did he have any credentialed qualification in tephrostratigraphy. Under such circumstances who authorised him to spearhead such an investigation?

 The Victoria University Geological Society is a social entity for staff and students interested in geology. Their mission statement says: Past events have included guest speakers, quiz nights, sports events, movie nights, field trips (including a trip this year to White Island), pub-crawls and student symposiums at GNS. So it’s looking more-&-more like we have a casual bunch of student and staff day-trippers out on a field trip to see Russell Price’s dig at Site N141/12.

 The Wellington Archaeological Society is likewise a social entity, ‘with a membership spanning professionals, amateurs, students, organisations, businesses and institutions involved or interested in New Zealand archaeology and heritage’. Again, more day-trippers off on an adventure to check out Price’s dig and have a fun & informative tiki-tour of his site.

 The Victoria University Internal Research Committee provided the funding for this caper. This ‘Joint Research Committee deliberates on matters relevant to the research portfolios of the Faculty of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the New Zealand School of Music.’ In 1973 when McFadgen et al went to Poukawa, the Victoria University Internal Research Committee was allocated government funds for particular research projects and the Committee obviously saw this outing as important, sufficient to provide the funding. So, how much was spent to cover the costs of how many participants?

 The other strange aspect of this discourteous, sneak in – sneak out pseudo-clandestine operation is that McFadgen’s devastating report didn’t appear for 5-years, until 1978. Why is that?

He’d been studying for a degree in geology at Victoria University during that time, so had he thought that publishing too early could mean that his scientifically-bereft report wouldn’t get any traction due to his lack of any suitable credentials and content?

 It is the general opinion of Bill and David Buddo, as well as a large group of other Price supporters of the time, that McFadgen’s sole purpose was to do a hatchet job on Price’s credibility. Already, the actual Victoria University Geology Department had backed Price’s work and conclusions, so who were these society and internal research committee people, masquerading as qualified geologists and where is their formal, comprehensive geological report covering the totality of Site N141/12?

So, it seems that more minor staff, functionaries or students within Victoria University were undermining the work of the senior staff of the Geology Department, namely Drs. Wellman, Kohn & Vucetich, who were fully in agreement with Price’s findings.

(Excerpt taken from the Dominion Newspaper, 6^th of May 1969).

 McFadgen’s title, The Poukawa site.

 McFadgen states in this section: "Lying very close to a recently active fault".

 There was an earthquake in early 1931 which devastated the nearby city of Napier. The epicentre of the shockwave was 50-kilometres to the NNW of Poukawa Lake. In the Poukawa Valley there was no perceivable surface damage of serious consequence. Brick chimneys of some houses were shaken down and the newly made canal suffered some slips on its embankments. In the swamp section of the canal the soft lake bottom rose a few feet. These problems were rectified in 1931 or later.

 What McFadgen seemingly tries to portray here is that the widely separated sites, 1-2-3-4, where Price dug were all seriously affected, causing the ground to crack and move everywhere within.

 By McFadgen’s inference, this seismic shock was so intense that everything went topsy-turvy, cascading bones or artefact's in higher strata down into the depths, where intact bones were subsequently crushed, tumbled and broken by the pulsating ground, thus positioning them somewhere other than at their original strata level.

Such an Armageddon-type catastrophe clearly did not happen and the observations of the foremost New Zealand tephrostratigraphy scientists, Alan Pullar and Collin Vucetich confirm this. They found unbroken, cement-like ash bands with no fissures running through them. Bones and artefact's located by Price were clearly in original situ, where they had lain for centuries or millennial undisturbed.

 McFadgen states elsewhere: "The mound is thought to have been raised by an earthquake before human settlement"

We have to conclude that the “mound” to which McFadgen is referring is the expansive, humped-up terrain where Price conducted his digs at site N141/12. It’s significant that McFadgen’s sparse dig of 1973 was not actually on or near to this mound’s summit, but well off to the NE side, down in the former lakebed flat. It’s unknown why McFadgen felt he needed to make this statement about the mound hump being the result of an ancient earthquake, unless perhaps it was to bolster his argument that earthquakes occur and sometimes raise land in the process?

Regardless, the air-laid ash bands of the mound above the lake water line were sealed over and unbroken throughout the entire period of human occupation, spanning thousands of years:

 Price’s letter description states: Results of this effort are as follows:  1) we now have an almost perfect line up of stake and post holes all sealed over by the Taupo Ash for a distance of 50ft indicating that these early people were in occupation for a considerable period of time, our chances of recovering Human remains of this period have now increased by 1000%. (See: T.R. Price to T.A. Rafter, 16^th October 1969).

 In another such occurrence, supposed post holes turned out to be what Rafter described as “occupation material”. Dr. Athol Rafter writes:

 ‘The latest results seem to indicate that what we are seeing are not post-holes, but occupation material.  The results which will be reported to you separately are for the top of the "post" 2530+/-40, and for the bottom 3200+/-45.’ These dates, of course, refer to years before 1950. (See T.A. Rafter to T.R. Price, 6^th May 1970).

Here are Price's “post holes”, extending in a line for 50-feet (15 metres), but sitting below the undisturbed ash band from the Taupo explosion of 186 AD. The trowel has been pushed into the thick ash band layer (white coloured).

 McFadgen states: "The supposed pre-Taupo remains including two alleged fireplaces are in peat on the north side of the mound”.

In McFadgen’s sketch plan 3 he marks 2 small spots as F1 & F2, then calls them “alleged fireplaces investigated in 1973”. Both tiny spots sit at what would have been the shore edge of the lapping lake water and were excavations he undertook or oversaw himself. Such surface or near surface positions, if ever actually used as “fireplaces” probably stem from the more recent era of Maori occupation. They are certainly not within a range of any of Price’s known dig spots, so what is McFadgen hoping to prove here? One could possibly surmise that a water’s edge fireplace for cooking would work well, as the underlying wet peat wouldn’t catch on fire, as so often happens in dry peat beds.

At least at the end of this section McFadgen admits that none of the spots where he dug were on ground where Price had dug.

 McFadgen states: "Figure 2", shows lake sediment rising into a mound.

Mc Fadgen’s Results of investigation.

 He states: "A cross-section of northern side of the mound is shown in figure 2".

 "Figure 2", indicates the length of the trench to make this cross-section drawing as 12m long and 3m deep. But McFadgen, based upon observations from this author’s on-site investigations or by McFadgen’s sketch plan (C) never dug any such trench himself. The line marked “a” to “b” on his Fig. 2 drawing seems to have been produced from a pollen core sampling line undertaken by soil scientists working in with Price. 

Again, Fig. 2 appears to be a: “Generalised” cross section schematic by soil scientists, to which McFadgen seems to have added his own blocks indicating “peat, orange-black burnt peat, cracks in peat, mottled lake sediment, tephra and wood” (possibly from a cross section plan used earlier by Ichthyologist Peter Horn?).

The area marked as Lake Sediment lies below the actual peat lakebed sediment and, seemingly, should just be considered a subsoil of no particular designation. The sub terrain and strata of all of Price’s dig sites varied quite considerably, as evidenced by his detailed cross-sections. The same generalised schematic, devoid of McFadgen’s categorised index, was used by Ornithologist-Ichthyologist, Peter Horn who worked on this site with Price during 1973 to 1975.

It seems very strange that McFadgen chose to dig at a very low spot on the northern side of the humped-up, permanently dry terrain where, by McFadgen's own results, showed that the area provided useless data, At the same time Russell Price was getting very successful results and useful material up & over the hump to the south of where McFadgen chose to dig. McFadgen’s dig did not overlap onto Price’s dig site but was well beyond the northeast corner of it in the dried-out lakebed.

 This is very suspicious and sounds like a case of simply trying to prove Price wrong, using a known worthless spot to somehow represent Price’s totally separate work and findings. They were never one and the same dig spots, but widely separate areas altogether.

 Price would have shook his head in bewilderment, knowing McFadgen’s chosen spot would achieve nothing but a look down into cracked peat … but you’ve got to let the kiddies have a play … who knows, it might lead on to some of them becoming seasoned archaeologists one day!

 McFadgen states: "The presence of an old lakeshore would suggest that the bird bones are from stranded carcasses."

This is clearly wrong:

From Price’s earliest excavations at sites 1 & 2 in the early to mid-1960s he found cooking pits or ovens atop the “Moa hunter campsite mounds”. He wrote how the charcoal blackened cooking pits were found to be clean of debris (bird bones), but that large quantities of the cooked, discarded bones were found in heaps down in, what anciently had been, the lake water directly in front of the cooking pits. Likewise, crop stones of the birds were found in sizable heaps, beside the cooking pits rather than in a solitary small batch that one could attribute to a single “stranded” bird. It’s very obvious, as well as practical, that the pits were frequently cleaned out and readied to receive the next batch of moa meat for the ongoing cook-ups.

Russell Price found that, up on dry land, but under the unbroken Taupo ash layer, there were stone tools and thousands of cooked bones, broken up during moa hunter feasts, and many of the bones bore cut, saw or gouge marks made by humans. Price insisted much later, after his scientifically-gained conclusions were assailed, that there were clear signs of human activity, unless ‘ancient moa spent their time breaking themselves up and cooking each other’.

 McFadgen states: "The peat is extensively cracked figure 3".

Note how carefully McFadgen has cleared the top debris off the fissured peat in Fig.3, leaving its top surface unscarred by tools, Thereafter the cracks have been carefully swept clean to accentuate their appearance for the camera shoot. Showing cracks, cracks, cracks was the whole purpose of the exercise.

 These cracks will only occur where, previously, there was waterlogged peat that has been subsequently drained of its water content. These are areas that were substantially or permanently deep in water for a long duration, whereas the people lived up on the dry ground, which was not waterlogged and it would be unusual if the deeper subsurface peats ever cracked. The upper permanently-dry strata is where the broken-scratched-sawn bones, excavated by Price, were found, most of them burnt in cooking pits during ancient Moa hunter feasts.

 The area of lakebed that was underwater in ancient times is not what was yielding the information which Russell Price was seeking.

 McFadgen states: "A short distance below the surface of the peat is very fine-grained burnt, orange coloured layer".

 According to farmer, Bill Buddo, this is the material you get when there is underground fire in the peat and would have happened after the lakebed was drained and sufficiently dried out. Bill Buddo states, ‘wherever there was a peat fire, Mr McFadgen would not have found satisfactory layers with which to understand the prehistory of the site’.

 McFadgen states: "Features similar to post holes with grey coloured loamy fill were found below the Taupo pumice in lake sediment near the top of the mound".
On his Fig. 2 drawing he calls these “Root Holes”.

 Bill Buddo’s comment when reading this in McFadgen’s report was, ‘He fails to say whether the Taupo pumice was an unbroken layer or not. He thereby fails to identify if it was ancient or new. Old root channels and peg or post holes will not look the same. Peg holes will be quite defined whereas old root channels will have more continuity to them over a longer distance.

 McFadgen states: "Two sets of disc marks were preserved in the orange coloured layer in trenches one and two."

Again, in shallow, tiny trench 3, dug by McFadgen at the level of the former, below water lakebed, the base has been carefully manicured and swept, solely to accentuate the shallow disk marks. This is what the top of the fissured peat beneath would have looked like (Fig. 3) before he carefully excavated a small distance further down to clear and sweep out the cracks. He dearly needed to show cracks and disk marks in order to dupe the unsuspecting public that there was some substance to his very faulted hypothesis of similar cracking having occurred at all levels of terrain.

 To which Bill Buddo’s astonished reply was, ‘What on earth was McFadgen doing in a mess of disk marks and orange coloured layers which represent burning? These are not the circumstances Russell price was digging in further to the south where he was able to show an unbroken Taupo ash layer as well as an unbroken Waimihia layer and could thereby be confident in what he was doing.

Bill Buddo adds: From the time the lake was drained, various plants took advantage of the changing circumstances. Fescue took over, and being a crowned plant, grew in big humps and clumps above ground. Cattle cannot be used to graze fescue, so every other tool which was available to the farmers was used. Disking, harrowing, fire and everything else, and it appears to be they tried pushing the fescue (an above ground plant) off the ground so it could be planted in better grasses.’

One could reiterate here that lightweight machines were used in the low areas to avoid any crushing of the fissured peat below the top humus layer. Some nearby farmers made the mistake of using wheeled tractors for harrowing and now formerly productive fields are crushed down and under water.

 McFadgen pitches in with the comment "The disks disturbed material down to a depth of 15 to 20 cm".

 Bill Buddo retorts with, ‘Mr McFadgen is still on the same spot which was guaranteed not to yield any satisfactory information. If he's going to write an archaeology paper on the basis that he was digging in a stupid place to prove some erroneous notion, then I only see that his work will be disproved in time, to come to be a waste of everybody else's time too. Russell price had already established from a similar, former lakebed spot adjacent the same useless results, so it beggar’s belief that Mr McFadgen would go there to try and prove anything other than something leading to the unfair destruction of Russell Price's work’.

McFadgen states: "In the plough layer a piece of bone was found on top of the mound".

To which Bill Buddo replies: This was probably just a sheep bone which makes it quite modern, and anybody working in the plough layer will not be an archaeologist, as there is absolutely nothing to learn there.

McFadgen comments: "Of the two fireplaces examined".

To which Bill Buddo replies: Mr McFadgen was looking for stones normally associated with Maori fireplaces. Somewhere along the line Mr McFadgen has not appreciated that we are dealing with different timescales, Maori during the last 1000 years B P, and ancient dwellers on the same site. All such fire stones in Poukawa, or other hard stones having special qualities have to be brought in from distant parts. So, they are significant in themselves. One would hardly go to the Ruahini's to bring in stones to make a lovely decoration around the fireplace. The ancient walking trails were pretty bad in those days and stones are quite heavy, so they’d have to be considered very precious to carry long distances. The local stone is limestone.

It's worthy to note that The Daily Telegraph newspaper on 12/6/1969, interviewed Price and reported the following: 'Three Types' ... Mr Price said that to date, by careful exploration, evidence has been unearthed at the site of three clear and distinct types of people. This had been gauged by the oven-stones they used - "these are all-important". On one part of the diggings, the oven stones were about four to five inches in diameter and were water rolled, clearly having come from a creek. Further along the site, the oven stones were all of sandstone collected from the area, and at the south end of the site, it was all standard greywacke river stone type. "All of these have an important significance," Mr Price said.

 But the fireplaces that Mr McFadgen was dealing with also had peat fires through them as he mentions "the burnt orange coloured layer".

 Bill Buddo adds: My experience over many years of Mr Price and his work, was that he would make sure he had an undisturbed layer of Taupo pumice, before excavating further down to scientifically consider what lay underneath. Mr McFadgen is very much at conflict with what I saw how Mr Price went about his archaeology work.

 McFadgen mentions: "An examination of sections left by Mr Price through Maori midden". (See sketch plan C).

 To which farmer Bill Buddo replies: Mr Price was not interested in Maori middens and I'm not sure how Bruce McFadgen got this muddled up.

 McFadgen, in what must be the ultimate porky states:  "Nowhere was cultural material found below undisturbed pumice".

 Bill Buddo in justifiable irritation states: This is a complete fallacy, obviously Mr McFadgen did not sufficiently study the materials located by Price and his colleagues and the circumstances in which they were found or the ash bands they lay under.

 McFadgen mentions: "Holes cut through pumice and filled with midden".

 Here McFadgen is seemingly referring to his tiny dug holes F1 & F2, the low ground area that, 42-years previously to his 1973 whirlwind visit to Poukawa, was lake bottom. This area, years after the 1931 drainage scheme, was harrowed/ disked to remove encroaching surface fescue grass that has a very detrimental effect to cattle health.

The disking, undertaken by crawler tracked machines, was shallow, but sufficiently deep to reach the undulating, water-laid tephra ash contaminated with peat, and the fissured peat itself. The underlying fissures had caused some upper strata and objects to cascade downwards out of original situ, and this little gem of opportunistic knowledge became the foundation point of contention to suggest that everything Price had excavated, at higher levels and in permanently dry strata, was nothing less than mixed-up, topsy-turvy, unreliable material … an absolute misattribution and falsehood! 

 Bill Buddo states: ‘McFadgen’s mixed material is readily identifiable and can be immediately excluded from the results, and surely Mr McFadgen should have known that and acted accordingly if he had any actual archaeological or geological expertise.

 Bill Buddo adds: ‘Russell Price was well aware of the Matai dominated forest, as there were large volumes of Matai seeds found in the peatlands of earlier times. The comments that McFadgen has to make about the beginning of forest clearance, as reported by McGlone, indicates that there was slash and burn agriculture going on in Hawkes Bay about 1000-years BP’.

As stated, McFadgen concludes that Maori didn’t even inhabit the Poukawa region until 150 – 300 years ago, and according to his illustrious colleagues, all Moa were extinct by the year 1400 AD … which is at least 300 - 450 years before there were supposed to be any people at Poukawa … so how does that work?

 McFadgen’s Conclusion.
 ‘Because the peat is cracked and things have fallen down the cracks, and because the site has been bulldozed and disked, and bones and artefact's have been disturbed, the Poukawa site does not provide evidence for the antiquity of man in New Zealand, and is extremely misleading."

None of Price’s archaeological dig sites were ever bulldozed!

 Bruce McFadgen displays ignorance of farming practices that must be stringently adhered to in the Poukawa Valley if the land is to remain in production. The former lakebed, transformed by drainage when the canal was finished in 1931, became valuable pasture land for dry stock, but remained delicate due to its surface proximity to the water table. One does not, willy-nilly, go onto this, largely, low lying land with heavy machinery, especially wheel tractors, due to the shrunken and fissured peat underneath, which can be easily compressed downwards. Farmers, David and Bill Buddo have religiously adhered to non-destructive practices, use only large-footprint crawlers over certain terrain, but can take utes or wheeled tractors, seasonally, onto the higher, humped-up or hillock ground of the Lake Poukawa basin.

Large sections of the foreground wetlands, not on either Bill Buddo’s or David Buddo’s farms, were once productive pasture, until the owners concerned allowed heavy machinery to work the land and thereby crush it downwards, thus returning it to lakebed status for much of the year. Likewise a local lady known to Bill Buddo allowed part of her farm to be leased and it too was subjected to cropping, where heavy machinery ruined it permanently, rendering it a swamp. Poukawa Valley is a little like Holland, requiring carefully monitored sluice gate maintenance of the terrain.

On 1/4/1982 the Hawkes Bay newspaper commented on a core drilling project being undertaken in the Poukawa Valley, which reiterated a well-known fact, and practice adhered to by responsible farmers like David and Bill Buddo ... On the low pastures only use appropriate machines that spread the load over a wide footprint and do no damage ... or kiss your pasture goodbye!

Bill Buddo disputes McFadgen’s false contention that any of the archaeological sites where Price dug were ever “bulldozed”.

Here’s Bill Buddo’s little vintage, English Bristol crawler, undergoing a track and sprocket restoration, as time and opportunity avail themselves between multiple other chores. This machine has a blade, but only for such lightweight chores as driveway grading maintenance or scraping off surface fescue grasses at the height of summer in the delicate pastures of the farm. Fescue, when eaten by cattle, causes heart problems and must be eliminated from the pastures. Being that it is a shallow rooting grass it is easily removed by shallow disking or surface scaping with a big footprint, low impact machine like the little Bristol crawler.

There had never been any reason to do “bulldozing” on the farms, anywhere in the proximity of where Price’s several archaeological investigations took place.

 McFadgen’s false contention that, ‘bones and artefact's have been disturbed’, by all this alleged “bulldozing” is also vehemently disputed by farmer Bill Buddo, as Price only conducted digs on permanently above water (for millenniums), solid and undisturbed ground. His area of interest was from the top of the solid cement-like cake of Taupo tephra downwards. The upper humus layer he considered to potentially contain Maori occupation material, so allocated a generously wide margin for consideration of Maori occupation, spanning many additional centuries, back to 186 AD. That this methodology was maintained is confirmed by Drs., A. Pullar (pedologist) or geologists H. Wellman, B Kohn and C Vucetich of Victoria University’s Geology Department.  

Of McFadgen’s Acknowledgments. , where he mentions those who funded and lent support to his project, Bill Buddo says:

 I'm very sorry to see that financial assistance was provided by the Victoria University Internal Research Committee, ‘Shame on you for having spent your public money on a hatchet job that had no scientific validity’.

It’s worthy to note that David Buddo, upon whose farm Price’s  22000+ bird bones and artefact's were stored for years, along with all the site records, saw with his own eyes the sawn, surface-cut-marked, cooked and burnt moa and other extinct bird bones that had lain under the undisturbed Taupo and Waimihia ash bands. Bill Buddo and a drove of others, including New Zealand’s leading scientists in the pertinent disciplines, saw the same proof and concurred that Price was correct in his hard-won conclusions about long-term human habitation of New Zealand.

Yes, shame on you Victoria University for having foisted this unqualified bunch of inept no-hopers onto us in 1973, with the obvious agenda of aborting the reasonable processes of scientific investigation … and thereby marching us backwards into the archaeological “Dark Ages”. Your unfortunate incentive has done a terrible disservice to the people of New Zealand and, If you had any integrity in 1973 or thereafter, you would have, instead, sent a team of unbiased archaeologists and geologists to work with Russell Price honestly and openly. … but of course that was never going to happen, as you knew full-well what you would find and it didn’t suit your political agenda … moral cowards and social engineers the lot of you!

Martin Doutré 29/9/19 ©.

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Martin Doutré, Auckland, New Zealand © 29th September 2019