 The fireplace may have been given a lining of stones, sometimes covered with a plaster of mud or clay.Settlers used a thatch of raupo, toitoi, flax, fern, or totara bark; they erected tents from poles, saplings, canvas, and planks or split slabs; and made tree-fern huts or more permanent dwellings from clay, sods, wattle and daub, or stone.A slab hut is actually a 'slab-walled' structure.