Anaweka waka and beyond

In 2011, picnickers on the banks of the Anaweka River in Tasman district discovered a 6m length of cut wood. It was the hull of a waka, carved out of mataī between 1226 and 1280AD. This was remarkable enough – it is now considered one of the country’s earliest archaeological finds – but further linking the hull to our early ocean-faring history was the shape of a sea turtle, carved in raised relief at the shaped end of the hull. Sea turtles are rarely seen in Māori carving, we are told in Crafting Aotearoa, but they are frequent motifs across the Pacific where turtles were traditionally regarded as “sacred guides for the first voyagers to venture to Hawai’i”.