From issue: Autumn 2003
Coastal Treasures Under Siege
by Paul Titus
With the increased pressure on valuable coastal properties comes
a threat to archaeological treasures. Paul Titus explores concerns that
the rush to seaside development threatens to destroy a priceless record
of national heritage.
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| Guarding
our coastline; Katikatiaka Pa on the north Taranaki coast. Severe
erosion has removed a significant amount of this site. Picture:
Nigel Prickett |
The New Zealand coastline is in the midst of a sea change. As property
prices skyrocket, farms are subdivided and holiday homes (call some of
them mansions) and high-rises replace baches and motor camps, coastal
landscapes are being transformed.
Think sun and sand within cooee of a city and that will lead to a list
of regions where the pressure is most intense - Northland, the Hibiscus
Coast, the Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay, northern Taranaki, Kapiti,
Tasman Bay. But places as far-lung as Mahia Peninsula and the Wairarapa
Coast are feeling the hot breath of development as well.
The seaside property bonanza raises curly questions about the balance
between public and private interests. What should the scale of development
be? Can a landscape be a public asset that embodies New Zealander's cultural
values? Is affordable access to the sea a kiwi birthright, a part of the
national heritage?
Answers to these questions will emerge over time. Of immediate concern
to heritage advocates is that the rush to the coast is trampling a precious
resource: archaeological sites. Life for early Maori and Pakeha focused
on the sea - more so than in the modern day - and the remnants of their
lives lie buried in innumerable spots along the coast.
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Above
and below: shell middens on sand dunes at Aupouri, inland of Ninety
Mile Beach, Northland.
Picture: John Coster |
Out of the public eye, archaeological sites are out of the public mind.
Even if visible - a shell midden or garden site for example, - they are
likely to be dismissed as insignificant, especially when weighed against
the money that development promises. For archaeologists such sites harbour
invaluable links with the past, and they want to find ways to work with
developers to minimize the destruction.
The curator of archaeology at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, Dr Nigel
Prickett says the fundamental issue is one of changing land use. Intensive
dairy farming can have an impact on archaeological sites, as can large
-scale projects such as golf courses. But the most serious concern is
the spread of lifestyle subdivisions.
"A lot of archaeological sites have been protected because they
are under pastoral farmland, for 150 years in some districts. It is a
very different matter if a historic earthworks ends up in someone's garden
rather than the middle of a sheep paddock. And what happens in the future
when 10-acre lifestyle blocks are further subdivided into five-acre, two-acre
or half-acre blocks?"
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Shell
midden, Aupouri
Picture: John Coster |
Every new subdivision brings houses, roads, driveways, septic tanks or
a sewerage scheme, decks, clotheslines and the like. Same when someone
replaces an old do-it-yourself bach with a more substantial building.
Most archaeological sites in New Zealand are shallow, and construction
of this type can easily damage them.
The issue is especially acute in relation to Maori settlement sites.
Not surprisingly, coastal areas prized today were also of value to Maori.
"The places inhabited by the first settlers from East Polynesia
were, of course, on the coast. The very beaches that were significant
to them are the locations of today's most popular subdivisions. We have
already lost a high proportion of sites, sometimes without any knowledge
of them at all," Prickett says.
The issue cannot be simplified into a scenario of callous Pakeha developers
setting out to bulldoze Maori heritage sites. While many do ignore cultural
and archaeological history when they push their developments forward,
others work closely with affected parties to avoid the destruction of
heritage sites. And, in some cases, it is Maori landowners who want to
develop costal lands that hold archaeological deposits.
Ngai Tahu aims to build a visitors' centre, luxury hotel and golf course
on coastal lands near Kaikoura; a group of Maori landowners has sought
to subdivide and sell a two-hectare section outside Mt Maunganui; and
Northland iwi also have plans to develop coastal property, according to
Historic Places Trust kaihautu, or national manager of Maori heritage,
Te Kenehi Teira.
"There is a clear overlap between archaeological sites and wahi
tapu areas that Maori consider heritage taonga. The issue is complicated
because often coastal lands are the only lands Maori Land Courts have
left in the hands of Maori, and they want to develop them for their economic
interests. The issues can be further complicated if some of the Maori
owners want to sell off the land and others want to keep it," Teira
says.
The Historic Places Trust is supporting the establishment of iwi and
hapu resource management units that will have the training to work with
archaeological and other cultural resources. They will be the local representatives
with whom planners, developers and archaeologists can work to address
issues that arise around construction projects.
Sceptics argue archaeologists have already gathered enough information
to establish an accurate understanding of New Zealand's past. What can
be learned by excavating one more shell midden?
Senior archaeologist with the Trust, Dr Rick McGovern-Wilson says it
is true most excavations will not divulge a lot at general level. But
each individual excavation can tell us about cultural, environmental and
economic practices. "A scruffy little shell midden on the Otago Peninsula
is different from shell middens on Banks Peninsula or Golden Bay or Waikanae
or Bay of Plenty."
And, he continues, archaeological sites are a finite resource that should
be protected as much as possible for future use.
"It is important to preserve sites in situ because scientific knowledge
is changing so fast we don't know what we will be able to learn from them
in future. Twenty years ago we were just scratching the edges of our knowledge
of isotopes. Now we can look at the isotopes of calcium, nitrogen and
sulphur in a human bone and tell if the person's diet was largely terrestrial
or marine."
In some cases, overseas investors are the driving forces behind big developments
that threaten heritage sites. Summerlee Station on Cape Kidnappers is
now in the hands of investors with plans for a golf course and resort
in area dense with sites from Maori occupation and early European whaling.
A lifestyle subdivision at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands threatens to
alter a heritage landscape that includes a major pa site and the site
of the first Christian mission in New Zealand.
McGovern-Wilson says too many rural councils are willing to rubber stamp
the projects of overseas investors, in part because they add revenues
to council coffers that will fund badly needed roads or public works.
He complains the Overseas Investment Commission does not adequately inform
foreign investors about their obligations under the Resource Management
and Historic Places Acts.
"People are buying up big chunks of New Zealand, often sight unseen.
They are unaware of the checks and balances I place to protect heritage
sites. We end up dealing with lawyers and front people who don't want
their $10 million deals to come unstuck. Heritage issues are the last
things they consider. The problem is not with development per se. The
problem is that developers, foreign and local, address heritage issues
in an ad hoc way when they already have their plans and resource consents
in place."
"We are not anti-development. We do not want to use archaeology
as an excuse to stop development. If we are bought into the planning process
at the start we can find ways to protect sites. This could mean creating
a reserve within a subdivision. Or it could mean moving a road from one
location to another or rejigging subdivision boundaries so individual
lots coincide with individual middens."
Omaha Beach, 80 kilometres north of Auckland, demonstrates the impact
large-scale subdivisions can have on heritage resources and ways that
impact can be cushioned. There, 650 houses have been built on a section
of a sand spit that held hundreds of shell middens. Before the Omaha development
began, the developer placed 50 known middens in a reserve. For two years,
a team of archaeologists and iwi monitors recorded, mapped and collected
samples from a further 150 middens they identified during the course of
construction. Head archaeologist Dr Rod Clough says, though the project
had its ups and downs, it is a good example of how developers can work
with specialists and iwi to manage archaeological resources.
About 55,000 archaeological sites have been recorded by the New Zealand
Archaeological Association, and each year, 600 or so are added to the
record. A small proportion of these, just 836, are registered with the
Historic Places trust. The fate of those archaeological sites - like that
of heritage buildings or traditional Maori sites - lie in the hands of
district and regional councils. To them, the Government has delegated
the role of protecting heritage resources. However, all 55,000 sites,
registered or not, are protected by the archaeological authority provisions
of the Historic Places Act from any works that will affect them.
Archaeologists are concerned the legal mechanisms in place to protect
archaeological sites were designed to deal with a slower-paced developmental
regime. They fear that the pace of development has increased to such an
extent in recent years that, unless steps are taken, many sites will be
lost. Prickett says archaeologists and their allies need to fight to get
more sites into public ownership. Hard decisions have to made about what
to save, what to fight for, and what not to fight for. If heritage advocates
are not involved in these decisions, others will make them and those decisions
may not protect cultural resources.
Paul Titus is the principal in Titus
Writes , a network of freelance writers, photographers and graphic
artists.
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