> > > Going there, I decided to FINALLY stop at a Historical Place roadside marker which I have driven past approximately ten billion times in my life. A short walk from the roadside, I found out that it was a field containing grassed-over trenches, redoubts and other fortifications from the Battle of Rangiriri Pa in 1863.
>
> What exactly is a "pa?" That article refers to it as "the pa," but I'm not sure what that means.

Oh... somehow I forgot that was something which would need explanation. A pa (sometimes spelled pah) is basically a Maori military fortification. They built sometimes very elaborate systems of trenches, terracing, bunkers and palisades during the intertribal wars in pre-European times and later adapted the idea for use with guns, against each other and the British.

Usually, pa sites are found on the top of a hill, the end of a peninsula, or a similarly defensible position. I don't know much about this -- I believe that in pre-European times, usually the village would be spread around outside it and people would retreat to it when enemies attacked, very similar to medieval European castle settlements.

Most of the volcanic cones in Auckland are heavily terraced pa sites. One Tree Hill is the best example; I spent an hour looking for a good aerial photo of it and couldn't find one. It's really a mountain-sized sculpture -- absolutely incredible to look at, and even more so when you consider that it was all done with stone and wooden tools. In the absence of a good picture of One Tree Hill, here is a picture of Mt Eden which at least shows a few of the terraces. I think each terrace would have had a wooden palisade along its edge. You can imagine how easy it would be to defend such a position from an enemy down on the flat.