realistically be doubled. However not all the sites still exist so the total number will never be known. In addition people often lived in favoured places again and again.
Sites are often difficult to find, especially where shell middens or obvious changes to the ground surface are absent. Consequently evidence of occupation in inland areas, or the use of the forested areas, is severely under-represented on the site distribution map.
Types of sites recorded
The sites are classified according to the evidence visible on the surface. Commonly recorded site types include pa (fortified or defended sites), middens (rubbish heaps including shell, bone, stone and charcoal), terraces (artificially levelled areas), storage pits (semi-subterranean structures for kumara and other foods), stone rows, heaps and mounds usually associated with clearing soil for gardens and for marking out garden plots, cultivated soil where the natural soil profile has been modified by repeated digging over, ovens (cooking sites including oven stones, charcoal and stained soil), working floors where stone tools have been made or prepared, rock carvings, rockshelters and caves which were used as occupation sites or for burials, botanical evidence such as wild taro, find spots where artefacts have been found but there is no other evidence of occupation, canoe landings (area on a foreshore cleared of stones) and human burials.
These site characteristics can appear singly or in combinations. The site records only identify the evidence which is visible on the surface. If excavation takes place, subsurface features such as storage pits, postholes, stone working areas or ovens may become apparent and expand on the interpretation.
Each of the main site types will be described, outlining the evidence uncovered by archaeology.
Pa
There are approximately 700 recorded pa within the Hauraki region (Fig. 4).These are usually on a headland, a ridge or spur end with natural slope defences supplemented by either a single or double ditch and high inner bank enclosing a living space and often having secondary lateral ditches or steepened scarps. Palisade posts provided extra security. Size varied considerably from very small, only large enough for a small family group, through to very large involving numerous terraces and complex defences. Many, but not all, pa were occupied more than once, with modifications to the defences or the layout of the pa.
On the Waihou and Piako Rivers pa were built on flat land adjacent to the river, taking advantage of naturally raised levees in an otherwise poorly drained landscape. The flatland pa were surrounded by large palisade posts enclosing the pa but may also have had ditches and banks such as those on Oruarangi and Paterangi. Parkinson (1784:106)
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