Wairau Bar Reveals Some of Aotearoa’s First Settlers

At the mouth of the Wairau River in Cloudy Bay, north-eastern South Island, a nineteen-hectare gravel formation known as the Wairau Bar, or Te Pokohiwi, preserves crucial evidence of the earliest human presence in New Zealand. Settled by voyagers from East Polynesia around 1300, the location was originally a low, scrub-covered island rising two to three metres above the water. Modern radiocarbon assessments, based on moa eggshell fragments discovered in graves and middens, place the principal occupation in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Some researchers have suggested that the settlement was occupied in two phases over a short span, possibly separated by a marine disruption such as a tsunami or severe storm surge.

Systematic investigation began after schoolboy Jim Eyles discovered artefacts at the site in 1939 and 1942. Early excavations directed by Roger Duff unearthed shallow burials alongside stone tools, ornaments, and moa remains. Thousands of artefacts were eventually retrieved, including fishing lures, tattoo chisels, and necklaces carved from moa bone. The orientation of the graves, with heads pointing eastward and feet toward the west, mirrored funerary customs documented across East Polynesia. A tool made by working a cutting edge on a tropical spiral gastropod shell, a type also found at sites in tropical East Polynesia, provided direct material evidence of connections with the Polynesian homeland.