Colyers Island (Cow Island; Jones Island), Greenhills, Invercargill City, Southland Region, New Zealandi

Regional Level Types
Colyers Island (Cow Island; Jones Island)	Island
Greenhills	Village
Invercargill City	City
Southland Region	Region
New Zealand	Country

The following description of COlyers Island is provided by Chris Jennings:

"Colyers Island the largest quarried source of Bluff argillite, an indurated metasediment used to produce adzes during the first few centuries of Polynesian (Māori) colonisation in New Zealand. The quarried stone on the island is not technically an argillite, but sediments of volcanogenic origin that underwent contact-metamorphism by the underlying Median Batholith. Archaeologists in New Zealand have erroneously applied the term ‘argillite’ to materials used for adzes in the Nelson-Marlborough and Southland regions, but use of the term endures regardless. Although little is known about occupation of Colyers Island, extensive evidence of pre-European quarrying has been recorded in the intertidal area around much of the island. Acquisition of Southland argillite (Bluff argillite and Riverton argillite) is thought to have been the driving force behind the earliest pre-European activity in the Southland region. Adze blanks and preforms on the island were likely transported to other sites in the Bluff Harbour area for the final stages of manufacture. Bluff Harbour is one of the regions of the world where a set of environmental conditions cause the creation of ventifacts – rocks shaped through abrasion by windborne sediment particles. Most of the worked boulders on the island are ventifacts. The types of adzes produced from Bluff argillite were exclusively Archaic Period (~1300-1500 AD) types, indicating Colyers Island was most likely exploited during this time. To date, the only evidence of pre-European activity on the island that is not related to quarrying or adze manufacture is the remains of a fish trap on the southeastern part of the island.

The earliest European visitors to the island were most likely members of a group seeking native flax aboard the brig Perserverance in 1813. One of the members, R. Jones is probably who the island was first named after. The first European settler of the Island was James Colyer, who purchased the island (then known as “Cow Island”) in 1870. Stone from the nearby Greenhills area was quarried to create a rail embankment on the west side of the Harbour during the 1860s, and although Colyers Island may have been considered as a source is well, there is no European evidence for quarrying at the archaeological sites on the island. The only evidence of European activity directly related to the rocks of the island is one large rock that is split into four portions with a crater on its upper surface. This correlates with a letter to the editor written by James Colyer himself in 1978, advocating the use of dynamite, and recounting his own testing of the explosives on the island.

Colyers Island is private property. It is illegal under the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act (2014) to collect pre-European artefacts or disturb archaeological sites."

Fossils

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References