History
The site was discovered in 1939 by then schoolboy Jim Eyles who, in 1942, found more artefacts. Early investigations with Roger Duff unearthed a burial site. Bones were scattered and close to the surface. This was originally believed to have been due to ploughing, but work by Bruce McFadgen shows that at some stage, probably between the two periods of occupation, the site was subject to either large storm surge waves or a tsunami which probably contributed to the scattering. Using the techniques of the time about 2000 artefacts and 44 human skeletons were removed and examined in detail. The record seems to show that the partial skeletons of several children were found in shallow graves but these were in such poor condition and scattered that Duff was either unable or unwilling to keep the fragments using the methods of those days. The examination showed that the people were using the same cultural methods as those in eastern Polynesia, particularly the Marquesas Islands.69 adzes were found at Wairau Bar with only 3 being made of greenstone. 80 small, one piece,triangular, stone or bone fishing lures with lashed unbarbed hook were found.
Read more about this topic: Wairau Bar
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—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)