Jim Eyles

Early Discoveries at Te Pokohiwi

Born in Blenheim on 10 January 1926, Jim Eyles grew up on a farm at Wairau Bar, a gravel spit jutting into Cloudy Bay known traditionally to mana whenua as Te Pokohiwi ū Kupe.¹² His father, Albert Roy Eyles, and mother, Daphne Eyles (née Deacon), farmed land where archaeological material lay just beneath the pasture.¹ When the family first ploughed Paddock 1 in 1925, the team turned up adzes alongside moa bones initially mistaken for cattle remains, filling two benzene tins with stone tools.¹ Over the following decade, as Jim grew up on the property, he watched local fossickers search the soil with potato forks before starting his own digging with a garden shovel.¹

In January 1939, thirteen-year-old Jim dug into a sand dune ninety metres from the homestead, uncovering Burial 1.¹³ The grave yielded an intact hollowed moa egg alongside a necklace of seven whale-ivory reels featuring a drilled sperm whale tooth pendant, which the family later sold to the Dominion Museum for 130 pounds.¹³ In March 1942, while digging a wartime air-raid shelter, Eyles struck Burial 2.¹⁴ Newspaper coverage in the Marlborough Express brought Canterbury Museum ethnologist Roger Duff to the site, initiating three decades of formal archaeological investigation.¹⁴

Excavations and Scientific Impact

Eyles worked closely with Duff across the 1940s and 1950s, uncovering numerous burials and features across the boulder bank.¹⁵ In 1942, Eyles and Baughan Wisely excavated a large cooking hollow containing moa bones and shell midden.¹ Subsequent ploughing across 1943 and 1945 exposed further grave sites, with Eyles recovering Burials 8 through 11 in April 1943, Burials 12 through 18 later that year, and Burials 22 through 29 in September 1945.¹

Canterbury Museum appointed Eyles to its official staff in 1950.¹ That same year, Eyles worked with Duff and survey staff to establish the site's first formal chain survey grid, excavating Quadrate XI.1.¹ Over subsequent years, Eyles uncovered Burials 30 through 36 between 1951 and 1952, and excavated Burials 37 through 39 in 1956 alongside Michael Trotter.¹

More than 2,000 artefacts and 44 human skeletons were recovered from the site. The remains were buried with careful orientation, grave goods, and distinct cultural markers.

In total, excavations at Te Pokohiwi recovered over 2,000 artefacts and 44 human skeletons.¹³ Radiocarbon testing placed the primary settlement between 1280 and 1300 CE, confirming early Polynesian colonisation and moa hunting.¹³ In recognition of Eyles's contributions, Duff named an extinct eagle species discovered at Pyramid Valley after him, calling it Eyles' harrier.¹

Museum Career, Memoir, and Repatriation

Eyles built a long career in museum administration, working at institutions in Canterbury, Hokitika, and Nelson while remaining rooted in Marlborough.¹ He received an OBE in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to archaeology.¹ In retirement, Eyles compiled his field recollections into a memoir, Wairau Bar Moa Hunter: The Jim Eyles Story, published posthumously in 2007.¹

Jim Eyles died on 12 November 2004.¹ In 2009, following a historic repatriation agreement between Canterbury Museum and Rangitāne o Wairau, the 44 ancestral skeletons recovered during mid-century excavations were formally returned to mana whenua and reburied at Te Pokohiwi.¹²³ Archaeological testing by the University of Otago preceded the reburial, confirming intact subsurface deposits and honouring the enduring historical significance of the site Eyles first opened with a spade.¹