Why Are There Terraces on Auckland's Volcanoes?
The terraces you see cut into Auckland's volcanic cones are the remains of pā, the fortified settlements Māori built on the maunga. The flat steps, ditches and pits in the slopes are centuries-old earthworks, not natural features.
Why are there terraces on Auckland's volcanoes?
Because the cones were fortified settlements. For centuries before European arrival, Māori built pā on many of Auckland's maunga, shaping the slopes into the terraces, banks and ditches that survive today. What looks like natural stepping on cones like Maungakiekie and Maungawhau is in fact a built landscape, among the largest earthwork sites in the country, telling the story of who lived on the volcanoes and how.
What the terraces were for
The flat terraces were living and working space. Cut into the steep slopes, they created level platforms for houses, storage and daily life on ground that was otherwise too steep to use. Arranged up the cone, they let a community live on a defensible height with the land worked around them. The scale of the terracing on the bigger maunga points to large, well-organised populations.
Ditches, banks and storage pits
Look closer and you see the defences and the larder. Many pā were ringed with ditches and banks, earthworks built to defend the settlement, still clearly visible on cones today. Scattered across the terraces are rua, storage pits dug to keep kūmara and other crops through the winter. Together the terraces, ditches and pits are the physical record of a fortified, food-storing community.
Why the cones were chosen
The maunga offered the two things that mattered most: defence and food. Their height made them natural fortresses, hard to attack and easy to watch from, while the rich volcanic soil around and on them was excellent for growing kūmara. That combination made the cones prized and contested, which is exactly why so many were so heavily terraced and fortified. The earthworks are the mark of how valuable this volcanic land was.
Read the history in the slopes
Volcanic AKL carries the pā history and earthworks of the maunga alongside the walking routes, so you know what you're standing on. Works offline.
Explore Volcanic AKLRelated: What are the tūpuna maunga?