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Pakohe - Argillite

Murray, J P fl 1880s-1890s: Mahakapawa Camp. 1888, Alexander Turnbull Library, G-561
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Earliest Maori communities recognised its superior qualities of hardness, strength, and ability to hold a sharpened edge, ideal for making tools (especially adzes) and weapons. Another property – conchoidal fracture (like that of obsidian – volcanic glass) provided a source of razor-sharp flakes for filleting fish, preparing roots and vegetables, woodcarving, flax work and net-making.

Maitai Quarry - Argillite [Bruce Campbell, 2007]
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Maori obtained pakohe by quarrying it from lenses in the mountains or by finding boulders which had survived millennia of pounding in mountain streams. Quarries with extensive areas of discarded argillite pieces which have been won from outcrops, but are unworked or only partly worked, can still be seen.

Skinner described the Rush Pool quarry in the eastern hills above Nelson City in the early twentieth century. He believed there were two main methods of quarrying, and quoted Elsdon Best to detail the first:

A very good (Maori) authority tells me that a fierce fire was kept burning on the face of the rock until it became red with heat. Water was then thrown on it. This caused the surface to crack and split up into small, or comparatively small, pieces; but the rock underlying the shattered surface became not shattered, but merely cracked in fairly large pieces. The shattered surface was loosened and thrown away, then the underlying part was split open (koara) and suitable pieces selected (uncracked pieces) to toki , etc. Surface rock was always deemed inferior, and was not used. Interior stone was much better for tools. The best stone of all was obtained from below the surface of the water.¹

Skinner added that it was clear that “… fire is of no avail unless water is applied”,² and observed that the pool in the quarry area appeared to be man-made.

The other method involved the use of hammerstones to break up small-size boulders, although they would be of little use with rockfaces not already opened up by fire and water. He described the hammerstones at the quarry as

… almost without exception, water-worn granite pebbles brought from Mackay’s Bluff or from the Boulder Bank. They range in weight from a few ounces to half a hundredweight … The transport of the larger ones for many miles over streams, through bush, and across a high saddle must have presented great difficulties …³

Maori often took argillite boulders overland or in waka, to be worked closer to home: many locations throughout Te Tau Ihu have stone-working sites where partly-worked adzes and numerous argillite flakes can be found.

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