Booth family triples Waitangi Museum collection

Booth brothers John, Chris, Webber and Robin with Ngati Rehia's Kipa Munro during the handover of a major collection of Maori artefacts at Waitangi Museum. Photo / Supplied

A single donation by a Bay of Islands family has tripled the size of the Waitangi Museum's collection of Maori artefacts.

Earlier this month brothers John, Robin, Webber and Chris Booth handed over 3000 artefacts which they had collected since childhood.

The collection was transferred to Waitangi Museum on long-term loan with support from hapu leaders such as Kipa Munro and Nora Rameka (Ngati Rehia) and Hugh Rihari (Ngati Torehina). The objects won't be put on display but will be available to researchers.

John Booth, a marine scientist who lives at Rawhiti, said as children they had little idea of the significance of what they were accumulating.

"We're relieved that we did our best, for the times, to treat the material with reverence. Over the last few months we have had several high-power academic and professional visits to the collection, and feel humbled that what we as kids had collected could be of such potential significance for today's archaeology and our understandings around the first peoples of Aotearoa."

So far the collection has spawned two academic papers with one more due to be submitted shortly to the Journal of Pacific Archaeology with another four or five in the pipeline. The Booth collection will also be the subject of a presentation at the NZ Archaeology Association conference in Thames next month, which the brothers hope will foster interest in more detailed analyses.

Sculptor Chris Booth said most of the objects were found around the Bay of Islands when the brothers were aged between 10 and 15. They included sophisticated shell and bone fish hooks, hammer stones, adzes, tattoo points and pumice containers. What set the collection apart was that the brothers catalogued the objects as they were found.

In the 1980s he had invited a number of kuia and kaumatua to view the artefacts. They allowed the brothers to remain caretakers of the collection until a suitably burglar-proof, vandal-proof, climate-controlled building existed in Northland to house it. Now that such a building existed it was time to hand the collection over, he said.