Mr Cocker’s Benger Burn discoveries: A tussock rain cape from Central Otago, New Zealand, re-Examined

Abstract

When Te Rangi Hiroa published "The evolution of Mäori clothing Part IX" in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, he wrote of a then recent visit to the Otago Museum (1926a: 111):… the author had the good fortune to examine a unique garment in the Otago University Museum. It was a very old South Island rain cape with tags of tussock grass, Poa caespitosa. There were two rain-capes in the Otago University Museum with old labels stating that they were made of tussock grass. On examining the first, it was obvious that tussock had not been used for the rain tags.... It was therefore with feelings of suspicion that the second cape was examined. Here, however, all doubt was happily dispelled, for whilst the warps and wefts were of dressed flax-fibre, the rain tags throughout were of tussock.... The garment was found in a cave on Mount Benger in Central Otago.