On January 25, 1939, thirteen year old Jim Eyles made a great archaeological discovery on the Wairau boulder bank near Blenheim. Fifty years on, he talks about the find and about archaeology in New Zealand.
"It was one of these things that one never knows what is going to turn up but I was most fortunate or successful in finding a moa's egg. And when I first found it, it was far from professional archaeology because I was using a long handled shovel whereas the curio collectors used to come armed with a potato fork. And the first instance of knowing what I'd found was a small hole appearing in the side of the bank and this I thought had been a sealed up rabbit warren until I put my hand inside the hole that I'd made with the shovel and found that it was quite smooth. And on first thoughts I thought it was a gourd shell or a Māori water container which wasn't far from wrong but when it had been dug out carefully from the surrounding sand and taken inside my step-father who had been away mowing a paddock of lucerne at the time, came home and said, "It's a moa's egg". And of course everything sort of fell into place - yes, it was elliptical in shape, it didn't have a stem on it and it must have been a moa's egg. So this is what started me off in my profession of being interested in museums.
Further on from the moa's egg, next day I was digging again, not expecting to find anything so significant when low and behold, in the sand about two foot six below the surface, there was a human skeleton buried and a necklace of ivory beads about an inch long and in the centre or also associated with these beads, was a complete sperm whale's tooth. And these were taken inside and, well at the time we didn't realise the significance of them other than being relics of the Māori people or the ancient Māori people who had previously live on the Wairau, on the boulder bank.
Very few people were really interested in the find except it was publicised in the local newspaper, the Marlborough Express, and museums from elsewhere in New Zealand did contact my parents and said that you know, a moa’s egg was such a significant find and a fragile item that it would be far better in a place of safety. And my parents, acting for me, they negotiated with the museum who then, what will I say, purchased, eventually purchased the egg and necklace. There was no legislation at that time to prevent people from collecting Māori artefacts as there is now, which is a national law that anything that is found in the ground belongs to the Crown which is all to the good. But the Māori people at that time had not become aware of their previous culture and only now are they taking care of their past as it should have been in those days so lots of material that was found was never recognised or never put into places of safety but of course with this moa's egg and necklace it did go into the Dominion Museum at Wellington, the Dominion Museum is now known as the National Museum, so it did go into a place of safety.
One of the things that I must say that, an anecdote. After finding the egg and necklace it was displayed in my step-father’s brother's window – the fish shop in High Street which many old Marlborians will remember. And I should say that Andrew Perano sold more fish during that week through people coming to look at the moa’s egg and necklace in the window. At night the egg was safely packed up and secured in the vaults of the National Bank and each morning it was brought out for further display but of course this was only a temporary arrangement because after the publicity in the Marlborough Express people were keen to see what a moa's egg looked like.
There low and behold was another skeleton with fourteen stone adzes and five necklaces of porpoise teeth and whale ivory. And it was then that Dr. Rodger Duff, subsequently became doctor, of the Canterbury Museum, came on the scene and he was studying the pre-history of Māori culture in New Zealand and it was from his work on the study or research and subsequent excavations that brought us to realise how old the settlement was at Wairau Bar. I think it confirmed what a few of the people had thought for a long time that New Zealand had been occupied for a greater period of time than was thought and of course there were quite a few traditions that were handed on that New Zealand was populated from about 1350 by a fleet of Māoris that came out of the Pacific in a number of canoes. It had previously been occupied by people that ill-informed scientists called Morioris in New Zealand but from the material culture or the material artefacts that we found at Wairau Bar we were able to sort out these misconceptions that had developed over a long period of time since the time of European settlement in New Zealand - that the material that was being found at Wairau Bar was similar to artefacts that were found elsewhere in the Pacific - in the Hawaiian islands, in the Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, the Society Islands so it was really an early migration of Polynesians that had come down here sometime around about 700 or 800 AD. And carbon dating have verified as about 1050 AD as being the time when the Moa hunter peoples occupied the Wairau boulder bank.
Once I'd found, well, the gem of the collection it was just a matter of carrying on from there. And I must add also that a few years previous to my discovery and the people, the local curio collectors, coming to the Wairau, to the boulder bank, the paddock had been ploughed and lots of items turned up with the cultivation of the paddock – Māori adzes and fishing minnows and moa bones which the, my father, who was alive then, and grandfather thought were bullock bones, were mao bones and they just didn’t realise or were, had not been educated enough to know that they were moa bones and thought that they were bullock bones from the wagons that had bought the wool along the boulder bank at that time, well about seventy-five years previously.
Everybody at that time had a very haphazard attitude to collecting artefacts or well material of historical significance. As time went on we adopted the, well, European or English archaeology with paint brushes and very fine pointing trowels to reveal the material in the ground. Photography has come into being and been used greatly, carbon dating and it’s advanced greatly. And one of the things I think that most of the archaeology is now done by universities and museums under their control and so it should be because a lot of information is lost at the time of finding an artefact – how it was found, what depth it was found and it what sort of associations, so archaeology has advanced more information, scientific information rather than objects or material from the ground".
Transcript by Sound Archives/Ngā Taonga Kōrero