Before moving onto the track, pause at the carved waharoa. Introduce students to what it is and who made it: carved by Hugh Tareha of Ngāti Pārau, Waiohiki Marae. Ask: what does it mean that the entrance to a pā reserved in 1973 was carved by a living master carver from the hāpū who are kaitiaki of the site today? The gateway establishes that this is not a museum. It is a living place.
Before examining any individual feature, have students stand back and simply look. Ask: how big is this? How long would it take to walk the perimeter? How many people could have lived here? Do not answer these questions yet. Let the scale register before the analysis begins. This pause is not wasted time: it is the moment at which the earthworks become real rather than pictured.
From the highest point on the site, students conduct a brief viewshed survey. What can be seen from this position? The Heretaunga Plains, the river systems, the coast, and the approaches from inland are all visible on a clear day. Ask: if you needed to know who was coming toward you from any direction, and you had no technology to help, where would you build? The pā answers that question. Look down toward the Tūtaekūrī River and locate Waiohiki Marae below: the living community in the shadow of the ancestral site.
Identify and sketch at least one ditch and one bank. Note the depth and width of the ditch, the height of the bank above the ditch floor, and the direction the feature faces. Annotate the sketch: what would this feature do to someone attempting to enter the pā without permission? Older students can measure dimensions and record them as data.
Identify the flat terraced areas cut into the hillside. Note their width, their relationship to each other, and their position within the overall earthwork system. Ask: what would have happened on these platforms? Storage, cooking, sleeping, gathering, ceremony. The terraces are the residential and social infrastructure of the community. Their size and number give a rough sense of population.
Everything above ground level is gone: the palisades, the buildings, the people, the stored food, the tools, the sound and smell of a community. Students record three things that would have been present at Otatara during its occupation that are absent today and that the earthworks alone cannot tell them. This is the gap between archaeological evidence and lived experience, and it is a core historical thinking skill.
Walking the full perimeter of the earthwork complex, even partially, gives students a physical sense of scale that no aerial photograph or diagram conveys. Note changes in the earthwork system as you move: are the defences stronger on some sides than others? What does the variation tell you about the direction from which threat was anticipated?
Before returning to the bus, each student records in their own words: one thing the earthworks tell them that no secondary source could have told them as effectively, and one question the visit has opened that they cannot answer from what they have seen. These two statements are the starting points for the classroom work.
Otatara's earthwork system is complex and extensive. Students who know what they are looking for will see far more than those who do not.
| Feature | What to look for | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Terraces | Flat platforms cut into the hillside, often in steps | Living and working space: the size and number of terraces indicates community scale |
| Ditches | Trenches cut across slopes and across ridge approaches | Defensive barriers: depth and width indicate the labour investment and the seriousness of the threat anticipated |
| Banks | Raised earthen ridges, often paired with ditches | The excavated material from the ditch raised into a defensive wall: ditch and bank together multiply the obstacle |
| Palisade markers | DOC markers or slight linear depressions indicating post positions | The location of the wooden fence that topped the banks: absent above ground, recorded in the soil |
| Scarps | Steepened natural slopes on the outer edges | Natural terrain modified to increase the difficulty of approach: the pā working with the landscape rather than against it |
| Storage pits | Shallow depressions, often on drier ridgelines | Rūa kūmara (food storage pits): their placement tells you about food management and seasonal occupation |
Every prompt below starts with something students observed, sketched, measured, or questioned at Otatara. The field record is the anchor. The purpose of using a gen AI chatbot in this context is not to find out what Otatara was like: it is to test what the AI says against what students saw, to examine what sources the AI draws on, and to ask what kinds of historical evidence the AI can and cannot engage with.
Tell a gen AI chatbot that you visited Otatara Pā, one of the largest pā in New Zealand, and that you saw terraces, ditches, and banks. Ask it to describe what daily life at a large pā in Hawke's Bay might have been like. Then check: did the AI mention anything you could actually see at Otatara? What did it describe that left no trace in the earthworks?
You heard about two rangatira before the visit: Turauwha, who lived at Otatara, and Taraia, who came from Poverty Bay. Ask a gen AI chatbot to tell you the story of what happened between them. Then talk about it with your class: does the AI tell the story as belonging to Ngāti Kahungunu, or does it tell it from the outside? What is the difference?
You stood at the highest point of the pā and could see the Heretaunga Plains. Ask a gen AI chatbot why Māori built pā on elevated sites. Compare its answer with what you observed from the top of Otatara. Does the explanation fit what you saw? What did being there tell you that the AI explanation did not?
At Otatara you noted three things that would have been present during the pā's occupation but are absent today. Share your list with a gen AI chatbot and ask: how do historians find out about things that no longer exist at a site? What sources do they use when the physical evidence is gone?
Ask a gen AI chatbot to describe the design and function of a large pā site. Then read the description against your field sketches and notes from Otatara. Where does the AI account match what you observed? Where does it describe things the earthworks cannot show? Identify at least two claims the AI makes that are inference rather than evidence from a site like Otatara.
Share your ditch measurements (depth, width, facing direction) with a gen AI chatbot. Ask it to explain what these dimensions tell a historian or archaeologist about the function and construction of the ditch, the labour required to dig it, and what it implies about the community that built it. Evaluate each claim: is it supported by your measurements, or does it go beyond what the evidence allows?
Ask a gen AI chatbot what sources historians use to understand life at a large pā site like Otatara. For each source it names, ask: what can this source tell us, and what can it not? Which sources did you access directly during the visit? Which required mediation? Where does oral tradition held by Ngāti Pārau of Waiohiki Marae fit in the AI's account?
The whakataukī of Otatara holds two names and a complex history in a single line. Ask a gen AI chatbot to explain what a whakataukī is and how it functions as a form of historical record. Then ask it to explain the specific history the Otatara whakataukī encodes. Evaluate whether the AI understands the difference between a whakataukī as a knowledge system and a whakataukī as a quotation.
Ask a gen AI chatbot a specific historical question about Otatara Pā or about the conquest of Heretaunga by Ngāti Kahungunu. Carefully evaluate the response: what sources is the AI likely drawing on? Does it distinguish between established archaeological knowledge, inference, and speculation? Does it acknowledge the limits of what physical evidence can tell us? Write a source evaluation of the AI response using the same criteria you would apply to a written historical source.
Earthworks and oral tradition are both sources for the history of Otatara, but they tell different kinds of stories. Ask a gen AI chatbot to explain the methodological relationship between archaeological evidence and oral tradition in Māori history. Then evaluate: does the AI account respect the epistemological status of mātauranga Māori, or does it treat oral tradition as supplementary to physical evidence rather than as a distinct and primary knowledge system?
Using your ditch measurements and terrace observations, ask a gen AI chatbot to estimate the labour required to construct a pā at the scale of Otatara: person-days of digging, the social organisation required to coordinate that labour, and what the decision to invest that labour implies about the community's political situation and long-term intentions. Identify the assumptions embedded in the AI's calculation and evaluate whether the conclusion is historically defensible.
Ngāti Pārau of Waiohiki Marae are kaitiaki of Otatara today, as they have been continuously. Ask a gen AI chatbot to explain what kaitiakitanga means in the context of a site that is simultaneously an urūpā, a wāhi tapu, and a publicly accessible historic reserve managed by DOC. Evaluate the AI response against the principles of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Where does the AI engage substantively with these frameworks? Where does it generalise or avoid?
| Level | Years 0–6 | Years 7–10 | Years 11–13 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Student names at least two earthwork features observed at Otatara (terrace, ditch, bank, scarp, storage pit) and can point to them in their field sketch. Knows that Ngāti Pārau of Waiohiki Marae are kaitiaki of the site today, and that the waharoa they walked through was carved by a Waiohiki tohunga whakairo. | Student names all major earthwork feature types present at Otatara, produces an annotated field sketch of at least one ditch or terrace, and records at least one question the visit opened that cannot be answered from the earthworks alone. Can name Turauwha and Taraia and give a basic account of the history the site commemorates. | Student produces a complete field record: annotated sketches of at least two earthwork features with dimensions where measured, a viewshed note from the highest point, a list of features absent from the site that would have been present during occupation, and at least one inquiry question per curriculum area opened by the visit. |
| 2 | Student links each earthwork feature to a function: the terrace was living space, the ditch was a defensive barrier, the elevated position allowed the community to see who was approaching. Can explain in simple terms why the builders chose this specific site and can connect Waiohiki Marae below the pā to the living descendants of those who built it. | Student explains the relationship between earthwork design, defensive strategy, and the social organisation required to build at this scale. Articulates what the size of Otatara tells a historian about the community that built it. Connects the whakataukī of the site to the specific history of Turauwha, Taraia, and the establishment of Ngāti Kahungunu in Heretaunga. | Student constructs a connected account linking the physical evidence at Otatara (earthwork dimensions, terrace layout, defensive system, elevation) to conclusions about the community's scale, political situation, and investment in permanence, explicitly distinguishing at each step between what the evidence shows and what they are inferring from it. |
| 3 | Student compares what a gen AI chatbot said about pā life or pā design with what they observed at Otatara. Can say in simple terms what the AI got right, what it could not know from the earthworks alone, and what being at the site told them that the AI account did not. | Student documents a systematic comparison between a gen AI chatbot account and their field observations for at least one specific claim (about ditch function, terrace use, or community scale), identifies whether the AI claim is supported by observable evidence or is inference, and explains what the distinction reveals about how AI generates historical content. | Student evaluates a gen AI response to a specific historical question about Otatara against their field record and at least one authoritative source (a DOC conservation document, an archaeological report, or an account endorsed by Ngāti Pārau), applying standard source evaluation criteria and drawing conclusions about the conditions under which AI can and cannot be used as a historical research tool. |
| 4 | Student explains what being at Otatara provided that a photograph, video, or classroom description could not: standing inside a ditch and understanding its depth with their own body, walking the perimeter and feeling the scale of the site, looking out from the highest terrace and understanding immediately why the builders chose this position. | Student articulates why field observation at Otatara produces a different kind of historical understanding than secondary sources: the scale is registered physically, the viewshed logic is immediate, and the absence of what once existed is felt rather than described. Explains why the relationship between the carved waharoa, the earthworks above, and Waiohiki Marae below is a geography that cannot be understood from a map or photograph. | Student reflects on the epistemological difference between the three categories of evidence they engaged with at Otatara: physical earthwork evidence (directly observed, measurable), secondary historical accounts (mediated, interpretive), and mātauranga Māori held by Ngāti Pārau (transmitted through living relationships rather than documents). Articulates what each can and cannot constitute as historical evidence and what obligations each places on the researcher. |
| 5 | Student generates one question about Otatara they would like to investigate further, names at least one source that might help answer it, and can explain why that source would be more useful for this question than a gen AI chatbot. Can explain in simple terms what kaitiakitanga means at this site. | Student designs a follow-up inquiry based on their visit: a specific question about Otatara or about pā construction and occupation, a research plan naming the sources they would consult, and a reason for each source choice that reflects the historical thinking developed at the site and acknowledges the role of Ngāti Pārau as the primary holders of the site's oral history. | Student designs a research project that could be completed on a return visit combined with archival and oral history work: a research question, a methodology that specifies how physical evidence, written sources, and oral tradition will each be engaged, and a reflection on the ethical obligations that arise when researching a living taonga held in kaitiakitanga by Ngāti Pārau of Waiohiki Marae. |