Escarpments

Apart from the scarps of fosses and of ramparts and superimposed walls, or parapets; we have to deal with escarped faces of hills. This is a very common and widespread form of earthwork defence, and indeed the only one seen in some of the old fortified places, as we shall see anon. This form of defence is found in different types of the pa maori. We see it in conjunction with fosses, ramparts, parapets and stockades, and also with stockades only. In some few cases we find a fosse at the base of a scarped hill face, as at Te Koru. Again, page 55we occasionally find a parapet on the brow of the scarped face, as at Tapa-huarau No. 1 pa. All such scarped faces had a stockade along the brow. Such escarpments were of many heights, thirty feet is not an uncommon height in the case of big terraced hill forts. The batter of such defences like those of fosses, depended upon the nature of the soil worked. They were steep pitched and in some stiff soils almost vertical. Then again, the Maori knew, as well as do our road-makers, that some exceedingly light and friable materials, such as pumice sand, stand weathering better on a steep batter than on a more sloping one. In the case of a built up rampart or parapet of course the whakapuru or binding material enabled the constructors thereof to carry up a steep batter however loose the soil might be. As a rule the Maori formed his scarps and batters less steep than ours.

The terraces of a terraced hill fort are called tuku by the Tuhoe and some adjacent tribes. Tarakawa, of the Arawa district, applied the name rengarenga to them, while paehua, parehua, upane and paeroa are names used in other districts. In the case of a terraced or scarped mound or small hill, the elevated platform was erected on the summit area, as seen at the model pa at Rua-tahuna.

In breaking up a stiff clay soil the form of ko used was one with a narrow but strong blade of almost triangular section, made from such hardwoods as ake-rautangi and maire (Dodonoea viscosa and Olea), according to an East Coast native. It was about 8 ft. in length; its upper end might be adorned with a carved design, such as the ahowai pattern, a scroll like form. The prominent longitudinal edges of the triangular sectioned lower part would be termed riaka or io.