An Archaeologist on Holiday

By Brenda Sewell

Increasing age is no barrier to having fun or adventures. One merely tempers the adventure to suit the age. So whilst skydiving, hang gliding, scuba diving or climbing mountains get the adrenalin flowing for a 20 or 30 year old, these antics may not appeal to a 60 or 70 year old. It all depends upon the person and their physical ability and their desire to do such a thing. My husband, Eric, was still scuba diving over the age of 70 but skydiving held no attraction – then or even when he was 40. And as for climbing mountains, neither he nor I are capable, although we still enjoy the pleasure of tramping in the bush and of snorkelling near our home on the Coromandel Peninsula. These activities are as much fun now as they were 50 years ago, albeit on a less vigorous scale.
For the past 25 years we have visited many places, had adventures in quite a few and fun in all of them. These are what I call ‘elderly adventures’ – great experiences with people of other cultures. None of our escapades were life threatening or even scary. They were wonderful encounters that brightened our lives and made us more aware of different peoples and the many facets of their cultures. And in doing so, we had such fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heather Mackay
• Release date: Jan 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310311765

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Increasing age is no barrier to having fun or adventures. One merely tempers the adventure to suit the age. So whilst skydiving, hang gliding, scuba diving or climbing mountains get the adrenalin flowing for a 20 or 30 year old, these antics may not appeal to a 60 or 70 year old. It all depends upon the person and their physical ability and their desire to do such a thing. My husband, Eric, was still scuba diving over the age of 70 but skydiving held no attraction – then or even when he was 40. And as for climbing mountains, neither he nor I are capable, although we still enjoy the pleasure of tramping in the bush and of snorkelling near our home on the Coromandel Peninsula. These activities are as much fun now as they were 50 years ago, albeit on a less vigorous scale.

‘Fun’ is the operative word. I have been lucky enough to be able to enjoy my favourite pastimes all my life. My school friend, Ann, and I came to New Zealand from England in our early 20s, joined the Auckland Tramping Club and revelled in the bush, mountains and sea – so different to what we had been used to in Cheshire. We had planned to return to England after a year or so, but this date was constantly reviewed as we were enjoying ourselves so much. After a couple of years in New Zealand I married Eric, one of our tramping buddies, and when our children arrived they brought another dimension to our lives. We took them tramping, camping and snorkelling, and life was constantly on the go.

When John, our youngest, was well established at school, my friend Rosemary and I (then aged 40) began studies at Auckland University as part-time students, while after school hours, weekends and holidays with family took preference. Those were busy and exciting years. Our university friends (my juniors by 20 years!) enriched our lives. Our studies centred on anthropology and the study of different cultures, and then increasingly on archaeology. We were lucky enough to be included in several fascinating research excavations in New Zealand while still students. After three years studying for my MA, I joined the Auckland Regional Archaeology Unit, an off-shoot of the Historic Places Trust.

Here I was able to spend several interesting years working mainly in South Auckland during a period of industrial expansion, when many of the stonefield archaeological sites were being bulldozed almost before we examined them. It was a job-hobby that involved most of the family. Our elder daughter, Mary, spent the long vacation before she started her university studies as an archaeological surveyor; John, during school holidays, worked on several excavations; and Eric often joined the team at the weekends. When we worked near Opito Bay he organised hunting and fishing expeditions for the partners of several excavators, and we were treated with fresh fish, smoked fish, mussels and crayfish for dinner.

During these later years our children were growing up and leaving home, providing Eric and me with more free time and, with two incomes, the ability to explore countries and people further afield. So for the past 25 years we have visited many places, had adventures in quite a few and fun in all of them. These are what I call ‘elderly adventures’ – great experiences with people of other cultures. None of our escapades were life threatening or even scary. They were wonderful encounters that brightened our lives and made us more aware of different peoples and the many facets of their cultures. And in doing so, we had such fun.

VANUATU - 1981

The aluminium dinghy ploughed its way across the open stretch of water between the mainland and Lelepa Island, wallowing in the deeper troughs while we endured the occasional dousing of salty sea spray. We sat tight and tried not to move. There was minimum free board and the boat was considerably overloaded but we did not care, we were off on our own adventure; an escape from the organised group of divers we had been with for the previous nine days. Not that we had any reason to complain. We were with a great bunch of people and the diving was fantastic, but a trip where almost every minute of daylight was planned (and organised around diving and snorkelling locations) left little time for individual adventures. So on our last free day of the holiday, when local resident Reese offered us the opportunity of a trip to Lelepa Island to view the cave paintings, we jumped at the chance.

Under normal circumstances a short boat ride to Lelepa would have presented no problems but in 1981, less than a year into independence, Vanuatu was still in a state of flux. When asked, the new director of the museum in Port Villa admitted that he had no idea of how we could see the cave paintings at Lelepa. He did not know where to find a boat or even who to ask about one. Long time resident, Reese, knew everybody and how to plan such a trip and the organisation was completed in minutes. Next morning we were picked up by George (his maintenance man cum driver) in one of Reese’s vehicles and set off to visit some of George’s relatives on the island. George had little formal education but he spoke his own language on Lelepa Island, as well as pigeon English and French, and thus was an invaluable aid to us.

We left the car near the road at a beach from where we could see Lelepa across the water, and gathered pandanus fronds and other easily flammable vegetation, piled everything high in a mound and struck a match. After several false starts smoke began billowing skywards and before long we could see the dinghy coming towards us in answer to our smoking message. We waded across the shallow water and clambered aboard. Manu, the 16 year old son of the chief of Lelepa, met us as we landed on the island and he took control; he escorted us around and introduced us to everyone we met as we walked through the village and plantations.

Under the coconut trees, near the shore, a number of men were working on several dugout canoes at various stages of construction – all using the traditional tool, an adze. However, the traditional material from which adzes were made – stone – had been replaced by steel tools two or three hundred years earlier. Some men were hollowing out tree trunks to form the body of the canoe. One man had only just begun working on the process while several others were almost completed. All these canoes were small – of the one man variety – and were used daily for fishing or short distance travel from one point on the island to the next. In the past, there used to be large sailing canoes with a single outrigger, capable of carrying up to 30 people. But now these have been replaced by aluminium dinghies and outboards. One man called us over and demonstrated his skill. His adze flew through the air and ribbons of wood curled off the tree trunk. It looked so easy but experts always have this ability – to make what they are producing look effortless. I was allowed to look but not touch as this was men’s work.

All over the island there was activity, with crops being planted in one part and harvested elsewhere – yams and taro in neat mounds, and maize in straight lines, interspersed with towering bananas, sago palm and sugarcane. Manu led the way amongst the crops and in one place, where a group of women were weeding between the rows of corn, he bent down and picked up a perfect adze made from a large bivalve shell. The shell was solid and heavy with a cutting edge about 50 millimetres long. Of course the handle and lashing had long gone. A tool like this would have made the initial stage of making a canoe easy work, as large chunks of wood would have been removed with every stroke.

In the village Presbyterian Church Hall we joined a group of women weaving pandanus mats and baskets. Their fingers moved too fast for me to follow the creation of the patterns; at one point a warp thread became a weft and at other times the thread moved back on itself quite seamlessly. The baskets would be sold in the Saturdaymarket in Port Villa.

Making fire.

The village itself looked like a model Pacific village set up for display in a museum. The houses were well spaced apart and roofed with neat and tidy thatch. Between the houses the bare earth was swept clean of any leaves or litter – it was so tidy it looked as if it had just been tended to a few minutes ago. Certainly the village had been swept that morning as Manu told us it was the first job of the day and the last at night. Rocks and small shrubs that looked like ornamental cordyline lined the path between the houses. On the outskirts of the village were pens where the pigs were kept.

We sat under the trees on the coral sand and ate our lunch, listening to the singing coming from the church hall. We relaxed in the power of the music and let the moment wash over us like a blanket of peace. Why did we come to this village? Why suffer the discomfort of getting soaking wet, meeting strangers and eating lunch accompanied by millions of sandflies, and only a slightly less number of flies and wasps? Was it worth it? To that question the answer was ‘yes’. We could have been relaxing by the hotel pool with a good novel and a refreshing maitai, as were the rest of our group from Auckland. Instead, we had journeyed to look at some of the earliest Pacific cave art, painted by the people exploring a new land over 3000 years ago.

Manu led the way as we climbed down into the dark cavern to look at the cave paintings. These were nothing like Lascaux or other ancient paintings seen in the caves of France and Spain. They were simple handprints, over and over again. What did they represent? Were they a totemic aid in a hunting expedition or a message for a following group? Did the number of handprints represent the actual number in that group, or were they a sort of compass bearing as to the route they were following? No-one knows although there are many theories. But what was clear is that a number of people had come and sheltered in this very cave so long ago and had left their mark, maybe no more than as an indication that they had been there. And now we were in the very same place. We felt an invisible but telling link from the makers of those handprints, through the generations to the people today tending their crops and weaving their mats, and indirectly to us, mere visitors and strangers, watching and listening. There was no blinding flash of understanding but we experienced feelings of empathy and sympathy.

This was in 1981 and only one year after independence. Previously Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides) had been controlled by a condominium from France and England where there was duplication of everything – government departments, police and hospitals. We were told that if you were really sick it was best to go to the British hospital but the food and wine were better at the French one! The prison, too, was typical of the country. One day we visited friends who possessed a magnificent shell collection and while we were admiring drawer after drawer of shells a bell started to ring from a building across the road.

‘That,’ said Don, ‘is the prison controller calling all the prisoners to return for lunch. They do government work during the day and return to prison when called – for lunch or at the end of the day.’

On the island there was nowhere to escape if an attempt was made, so prisoners were only locked up at night. It seemed a comfortable way of dealing with offenders on an island where really, there was little in the way of crime.

HAWAII - 1986

Flying into Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii presents an impressive sight. Close to the shore the deep indigo blue sea changes to a lighter blue as the waves surge over sand to crash on to one beach after another, each separated by fingers of volcanic rock spewed from Mauna Kea or other volcanoes millions of years ago.

My first visit to the Big Island was a one day visit, flying out of Oahu at 6 am with Paul, an archaeologist working at the Bishop Museum. We picked up the museum jeep and drove through a barren volcanic landscape where many of the lava flows were smooth and black with a shiny appearance – known as pahuehue. The land from Waimea to the Mauna Kea State Park was being developed into large section blocks for the wealthy who desired to escape the heat and humidity of the coast or for even wealthier Americans from the mainland. The 4,200 metre high volcano, Mauna Kea is, geologically speaking, comparatively young, having been formed less than one million years ago. Despite its youth it presents a bleak, ancient and foreboding atmosphere with a world famous observatory on its summit. However, we were not there to look at the night sky from the observatory but at the extraordinary rocks beneath our feet. Part of Mauna Kea is a spectacular archaeological site and one of the largest prehistoric stoneworking areas in the world. Paul’s research on this ancient quarry is world class and I was so lucky to have him as my guide to view the site.

At the 2,700 metre level of the Observatory Public Shelter we met up with the rest of our party – three young students, Tom, Kim and Chris — who had camped out the previous night at the shelter. At that height it can become freezing cold on the mountain and the girls’ pinched and pale faces suggested that they had suffered, although the contents of a now empty bourbon bottle probably helped to stave off the worst of the cold.

The jeep slowly climbed the steep gravel road up the mountain, through a jagged scoria landscape enveloped occasionally in clouds. As we clambered out of the vehicle at 3,700 metres and put on our boots Paul said, ‘We will walk slowly. The altitude will affect us, especially as we started at sea level only two or three hours ago. Don’t rush. Just take your time and enjoy the experience.’

Chris, who was looking decidedly green, queried, ‘Will it be a long walk?’

No one answered. Paul knew that it would be a long day but he didn’t want to discourage her, so he grunted non-committally and set off before any further questions could be fired at him.

We left the jeep and started walking, all feeling a little lightheaded. As we trudged uphill my head pounded slightly but it got no worse. Chris kept on dropping back to vomit and Kim complained of a splitting headache that made concentrating on walking over the rocks difficult, but the anticipation of visiting such an important archaeological site kept us going and we were not disappointed. The stoneworking areas were scattered over about 1,820 hectares (seven square miles) of rugged mountainside, each area separated by expanses of bare or jumbled jagged rocks. We saw many places where rocks had been chipped and shaped in the first stages of being made into adzes. In some places basalt boulders had been broken out of the rock outcrop and in others, smaller blocks of basalt had been created when large boulders had been thrown down off a high cliff and broken up. In each case these could then be flaked in the initial phase of creating a stone adze.

Paul explained, ‘Throughout the Pacific, adzes were made rather than axes as found in most other parts of the world. Both were mounted on a wooden handle but an axe has the cutting edge parallel to the haft while the cutting edge of an adze is at right angles to the haft. Axes and adzes were both stone tools designed primarily to chop. Although the axe is more universal in distribution,’ he continued, ‘adzes are found widely throughout Asia and the Pacific, including Hawaii and New Zealand.’

‘Why did Polynesians choose to be different?’ asked Tom.

‘No one knows for sure why,’ replied Paul. ‘Adze were a very efficient tool and excellent for hollowing out logs to make into canoes, but were also used to make houses and all sorts of smaller wooden items.’

‘Is it very hard to make an adze?’ queried Tom.

‘Not really. Once you have the skills to flake the boulders the initial stages in production are quite quick. The most time consuming task is the final shaping, grinding, polishing and sharpening the blade. That’s why most adzes were reshaped and resharpened time and time again after they had broken,’ explained Paul.

‘If an adze was worked on after every time it broke, would it not become smaller at each reworking?’ asked Chris.

‘Precisely,’ answered Paul. ‘That could be one reason why so many adzes that have been found are very small – they were easily lost or could indeed have been reduced to such a state that they were not worth reworking again and were discarded.’

At one important site, known very prosaically as Site 2, a rock shelter had been made beneath an overhang in a cliff, with a small wall built in front on the edge of the drip line to give added shelter. Here, 900 years ago, people sat in the shelter beside a couple of square stone-edged hearths, sheltering from the rain or, like us, from the cold wind. Above the shelter on the top of the cliff was a pile of basalt flakes, discarded by the adze maker as he worked alongside a small shrine consisting of upright rectangular blocks of basalt. Paul showed us small piles of stones on the shrine and told us that it had been a tradition to bring an offering or a rock wrapped in a ti leaf to place there.

Some newly flaked rocks had obviously been placed on the shrine recently and Paul said that it looked as if some people were continuing with this practice even in the 20th century. Standing by the shrine with the wind whipping about us and clouds swirling above and around, the past did not seem far away at all. If a stonemason had appeared out of the mist dressed in a short maro or flax skirt with a feather headdress, we would not have been surprised.

At another site the basalt flakes lying on the working floor were of a much better quality rock than others nearby, and, according to Paul, these boulders had been brought here from some distance away. Just climbing up from one site to the next was tiring for us but nearly 1,000 years ago, there had been people who not only worked here but also carried heavy blocks of good quality rock at least 500 metres from its source. We began to appreciate the importance of the mountain and the special traditional and religious significance of the upright stones forming the shrines.

Over lunch, sheltering in a large hole excavated centuries ago to reach the precious best quality basalt boulders, we squatted in the lee of the huge rocks, avoiding the patches of old snow still lying around. The location for the largest shrine of all had been carefully chosen. The many uprights were placed on the only flat piece of rock – here the pahuehue lava was flat and shiny, and seemed smooth enough to have been polished. When the shrine was in use, the uprights, averaging 500 millimetres high, would have been standing tall. But in the 18th century, stone adzes were replaced by metal ones supplied by European explorers or traders, and the need for good quality stone became redundant. The stoneworking areas, and consequently the shrines, were then abandoned.

Examining the shrine, Paul exclaimed with excitement, ‘Look at this. All the stones are upright again. The last time I was here the stones were lying flat and scattered higgledy piggledy everywhere. There has obviously been a resurgence of old time traditions and people are coming here and reusing the shrines. Here too, there are even offerings placed in ti leaves.’ Flowers and even fruit had been placed on the shrine, and Paul was worried about the possible misuse of precious archaeological sites. I, on the other hand, felt that renewed interest in old time practices and beliefs could only bode well for the future continuance of indigenous Hawaiian culture and the preservation of many sites, even if some were compromised by the addition of modern items.

Eventually, and all too soon as far as I was concerned, it was time to scramble back uphill to the jeep. We were all feeling the effects of the altitude and at the end of a long day found it quite exhausting but it had been worth every gasping breath. Paul drove us back to Kona Airport while we slept soundly all the way.

The next time I returned to the Big Island was in 2000 when Eric and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.

INDIA, KULLU VALLEY - 1992

Kullu Valley: Mobile shrine (rath).

Instead of using a regular travel tour company we travelled to Delhi with a New Zealander, Peter, who had lived in the Kullu Valley for some years and wanted to return to visit old friends there. The deal was that we paid for his fares and he organised the trip, for he knew the valley well and would arrange for us to stay in Indian homes as guests. The main disadvantage was that he was chronically disorganised; even at Delhi airport the bags containing our tents and sleeping mats fell into pieces, scattering poles and steel pegs in all directions. As Eric and I scrambled around the legs of fellow travellers, retrieving our items, Peter shuffled through his paperwork looking worried. Finally all our gear was on trolleys and we walked out of the airport to be assailed by an almost solid cloud of diesel fumes.

‘Ah,’ said Peter, ‘the perfume of Delhi. There is nothing in the world like it.’

After a few days in Delhi, Peter announced that we should go to the Light and Sound Show in the Red Fort. I was delighted with the idea but the only night we could see it was when it was presented in German so we decided to give it a miss. If he had made earlier enquiries we could have gone the previous night and I felt a little miffed.

We flew out to the Kullu Valley courtesy of Vayadoot Airlines on a 48-seater Hawker Sidley. The airline seats consisted of a pipe frame with crossed strings forming the back, rather like an old fashioned deckchair, and gave no support at all. Fortunately the flight took no more than two hours, including a stop at a military airfield somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where we had to wait on the ground for clearance to land at Kullu.

Peter explained, ‘We may not make the Kullu Valley because the monsoon rains are late in leaving and there have been many storms. Once a plane flies into the valley it cannot turn round because the valley is too narrow with steep sides. If this happens we will be offloaded somewhere and a bus will take us the rest of the way. This could take up to 24 hours but as we have plenty of time it won’t cause a problem. Just relax.’

So we did and there was no problem. We flew up the valley with rice fields on either side of the plane’s wings, appearing remarkably close. Men working in the fields were clearly visible and we could even see each individual shovelful of soil as the ground was turned over. I felt like waving back to a group of waving children as we roared past.

The Kullu Valley is very fertile and rich. There are rice and wheat fields on the alluvial flats by the Beas River, corn fields and many apple orchards on the hillside slopes. The Beas was the furthest east Alexander the Great came with his army – certainly a great distance from his home in Greece. The valley was a mosaic of green and gold; the rice was ready to harvest, gleaming golden fields shimmering in the sunlight, while the high stands of corn were still green with the cobs not yet ready to reap. As we explored the valley we walked through many apple orchards, the apples all ripe and ready for picking, and every time we met someone on the road we were given an apple to take with us – huge apples, red and juicy.

The road followed the river up the valley from Kullu and then uphill to Naggar where we stayed for a week, exploring and acclimatizing to the altitude at 2,000 metres above sea level. Our home in Naggar was the old castle/fort built in the middle of the 15th century as the raja’s headquarters when he ruled the entire Kullu Valley. Naggar remained the capital of the valley for about 200 years when in 1660 the capital moved to Sultanpur (Kullu town). Built 600 years ago the raja’s headquarters was so strong and well built it had been converted into a rest house, 100 years prior to our visit. It did not appear to have changed much in the intervening years and the furniture in our bedroom looked as if it came from its earlier occupation. But unlike its use 200 years ago, we did have our own bathroom with hot water in the shower – for most of the time. The old stone fort was built around a courtyard with stupendous views from every window overlooking the valley some 1,000 metres