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Ngā Tohuwhenua Mai Te Rangi: A New Zealand Archeology in Aerial Photographs

Fences

Fences

Fencing is a common aspect of intensive farming. Until the 1880s, when generally closer subdivision of landholdings was introduced, there was no compulsion on the owner of stock to fence them in. A landowner's main concern was to keep other people's stock out. 9 This reflects an attitude to frontier living that did not survive once the land had been more closely settled in the late nineteenth century. Fences, in a phrase of United States origin, had to be 'pig-tight, horse-high and bull-strong'. However, there was often a shortage of suitable wood or wire, so that what are now regarded as conventional fences were not possible. Barbed wire, the only effective form of wire for cattle and horses, was not available until the 1880s. In Central Otago, fences were sometimes made of schist slabs, but of wider interest in New Zealand archaeology are ditch and bank fences. They have an ancestry almost as old as European pastoralism and cropping, 10 4,000 years or more, and were used extensively in Māori settlements in the nineteenth century. 11 The fence was constructed by excavating a ditch and placing the fill to form a bank. Generally the bank was adjacent to areas from which stock, especially pigs, were page 251 to be excluded. The ditch and bank might enclose the yard of a house, a garden area, or the whole of a village or settlement. Where such fences do enclose gardens, the areas are quite large by contemporary standards, as much as one quarter of a hectare. This is about the minimum area needed to support a single family. 12 Sometimes evidence of settlement within the perimeter of a ditch and bank fence can be seen. Ditch and bank fences were also used to mark boundaries; examples have been constructed which are several kilometres in length. Unfortunately, they tend to be narrow and do not readily show on available aerial photographs. In my experience, these fences do not reflect modern surveyed boundary lines; they were constructed well before the widespread formalisation of titles in the 1870s.

There were occasions earlier in the nineteenth century, especially in mustering the stock, when the fencing of stock was a physical necessity. It is not uncommon to find ditch and bank fences employed near sheltered landing places, where stock would have been yarded before being driven on to scows or taken out to other coastal shipping. The sites of entire nineteenth-century Māori villages are sometimes marked by ditch and bank enclosures—not fortifications, as has sometimes been suggested, but fences. 13 The stock or pigs were kept out of the settlement, and the two purposes of the fence (keeping in or keeping out) can be readily confused. However, the distinction is now fairly well established in field studies. 14

The outstanding example of such fences that I have been able to find is at Nukutaurua, a locality on the north coast of Māhia Peninsula, mentioned in the earlier chapter on Hawke's Bay. The Māhia Peninsula has a distinctive high terrace landform, offering many opportunities for pre-European pā at its dissected edges. These are noted on the interpretative figure, 15 but are not our primary interest here which is fencing practice. There are several ditch and bank fence enclosures of points on the high terrace, and also on the low-lying coastal flats. The latter enclose areas that were perhaps at first papakainga and, later, stockyards. Within the enclosures on the coastal strip are several small rectangular banked areas (the sites of large whare and possibly an 1840s church) and kūmara storage pits on points on the adjacent stream. The date of the settlements is probably between 1830 and 1865. Some of the large ditch and bank enclosures have ploughed interiors but these enclosures are more likely to be stockyards. The concluding chapter of this book discusses this locality in more detail.

Ditch and bank fence marking a boundary in hill country near Matatā, Bay of Plenty

Ditch and bank fence marking a boundary in hill country near Matatā, Bay of Plenty