Despite the massive changes in the area over the past 160 years, stories have surfaced from the earth beside the cottage on Wynyard Street. Around 2007, when buildings to the south of the cottage were demolished to make way for the university’s business school, an archaeological team found a midden containing traces of earlier Māori life: obsidian flakes, chert and greywacke tools, and a bird-bone awl that may have been used to make dog-skin cloaks. It was restructured in the 1920s by Malcolm Draffin, one of the architects of the Auckland War Memorial Museum in the nearby Domain.
Author: Ahmed Uzair Aziz, PhD Candidate in Māori Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Published at: 2026-02-04 23:30:11
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