F44 Central Cave  (click on photo for alternate view)   

Modified cave shelter. This complex feature is a cave formed in the bedrock, but extensively modified including a wall of paenga on the shelter’s north interior side. The entry or passageway is on the north side of the structure and cave and it faces 0 degrees, north (A). There is another opening measuring 1.5m directly above the center of the cave (B). The interior chamber of the cave floor measures about 7m by 5m. The northern opening is about 3 m long by 50cm wide. There is a pile of stones in the middle of the cave directly below the opening, at least 3 of which are paenga.  The entire chamber may have been covered by a stone-constructed roof, but it has subsequently collapsed, in part. There are numerous poro scattered over the interior floor and there are three in the north wall. There is a scatter of animal bones (sheep?) in the southeastern corner of the cave. The cave is lowest and most narrow at the south end and highest at the southeastern corner of the ceiling opening, measuring 2.45m from the floor. The cave area slopes down from north to south, and the floor is littered with rubble. The northern passageway at the outer opening is constructed of stacked ahu stones (dressed columnar forms) and paenga making up three walls (east and west running parallel to a southern wall). There is a long (1.23m) paenga covering the stacks as a lintel. The mouth of the passageway measures 40cm wide by 69cm tall. The entrance is built into a pile of poro. In the north wall and ceiling there are 32 paenga with visible holes (a minimum count); the rest are either ahu stones or buried paenga. On the floor there are at least 7 paenga. The inside end of the entryway is made up of a paenga stone as the first floor stone and two ahu stones as the walls.  This is a remarkable structure, but appears to be unstable and further collapse near the roof opening may be likely.

Close This Report Next Feature by  Number Next Feature by Class