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Overview
Tuhinga 18: 11-47
ABSTRACT: To pre-European Maori, fishing was a significant component of subsistence, and the abundant coastal fish stocks provided a rich and readily available resource. However, interpreting early Maori fishing activities using indirect sources of information, including oral traditions, archaeological evidence and historical accounts, may reflect regional, localised and chronological variation, and also be subject to cultural interpretation. Pre-European Maori fishing provided the main source of sustenance, with methods of procuring fish based on the careful observations of generations of fishermen. Fish were taken with nets (some over a mile/1.6 km in length), traps, spears and hook-and-line. Fishhooks made of wood, stone, bone, ivory or shell, based on designs developed over many thousands of years, were used as lures (pa kahawai, pohau manga) or suspended hooks (matau). Maori use of traditional materials to make hooks rapidly declined in favour of metals after European contact, although the demand for Maori artefacts by curio hunters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the manufacture of large numbers of replica traditional hooks for trade. Early explorers, historians and archaeologists have commented that they considered the Maori hooks to be ‘ill made’ or ‘impossible looking’, and were unable to decide how the hooks actually caught fish. Matau were made to a ‘circle’ design and function in a different manner to modern J-shaped steel fishhooks to catch fish. Recently, many commercial long-line fisheries have readopted the traditional hook shape in recognition of its advantages and improved catch rates.
KEYWORDS: Pre-European New Zealand Māori fishing, matau, fishhooks, rotating or circle hooks, pā kahawai, pohau mangā, fishing lures, curio trading.