in 1989. History and legend The area is rich in history and legend. Modern archaeology favours a date for the first settlement of New Zealand by Polynesian people about 1150 AD when population was concentrated on the east coast of the South Island. There is a substantial early settlement site of the Archaic or moa hunter phase of Māori culture near Palmerston on the sea coast at the mouth of the Shag River. It has been known to Europeans since the 1840s and was investigated from an early time by archaeologists. In 1987 and 1989 it was very thoroughly re-excavated by a team including Professor Atholl Anderson. It was determined it had been in permanent, year round occupation 'for a period of perhaps 20–50 years in the 14th century AD'. (Anderson and others, 1996, p. 67.) The area is also the traditional site of the wreck of the Arai Te Uru canoe. There are several versions of the tradition but they tell of the arrival of Rākaihautū from the ancestral homeland Hawaiki who met the Kahui Tipua people who were already here. He showed them kumara, or sweet potatoes, and they built canoes including Arai Te Uru to go to Hawaiki and bring back this new and valuable food. However, on its return the vessel became waterlogged off the Waitaki River mouth. It spilled food baskets on Moeraki and Katiki beaches and was wrecked at Shag Point / Matakaea, where it turned into what is now called Danger Reef. Its steersman, Hipo, sits erect at the stern. After this the crew explored the southern South Island giving many place names. Kahui Tipua are 'ghost or giant people' with mythic or magical attributes, although they are also the real ancestors of people living now. (Anderson, 1983, p. 7.) If the explorers didn't get back before dawn they turned into hills and other natural features. One of them was a woman Puketapu who got as far south as Owaka in South Otago. When she got back to the Waihemo Valley dawn broke and she was turned into the hill Puketapu overlooking Palmerston. The story is seen as an allegorical explanation of the fact that kumara won't grow south of Banks Peninsula. Arai Te Uru is an ancestral canoe of the Kati Mamoe people who came to the south before Kai Tahu (Ngāi Tahu in modern standard Māori) but were preceded by earlier