Research Designs for Hawaiian Archaeology

Research Designs for Hawaiian Archaeology Research Designs for Hawaiian Archaeology Agriculture, Architecture, Methodology Thomas S. Dye, editor Special Publication 3 Society for Hawaiian Archaeology All rights reserved. Copyright © 2010 by Society for Hawaiian Archaeology. Published in 2010 in the United States of America by Society for Hawaiian Archaeology, P.O. Box 23292, Honolulu, HI 96823. Contents List of Figures vii List of Tables ix 1 Watershed: Testing the Limited Land Hypothesis Robert J. Hommon 1 2 Traditional Hawaiian Surface Architecture: Absolute and Rel- ative Dating Thomas S. Dye 93 3 Lady Mondegreen’s Hopes and Dreams: Three Brief Essays on Inference in Hawaiian Archaeology Dave Tuggle 157 Index 185 v List of Figures 2.1 Map of the Hawaiian Islands . 96 2.2 Oblique schematic of Kaneaki Heiau . 98 2.3 Plan of site 50–10–04–22268 ................... 104 2.4 Interior of the U-shape enclosure at site 50–10–04–22268 . 105 2.5 Panoramic view of site 50–10–04–22268 ............ 106 2.6 Hypothetical stratigraphic section . 110 2.7 Bayesian calibration yields interpretable results . 113 2.8 Deduction and induction . 115 2.9 Plan of site 50–10–04–22119 .................... 121 2.10 Dated enclosure at site 50–10–04–22119 ............ 122 2.11 Plan of site 50–10–04–22201 ................... 124 2.12 Plan of site 50–10–04–22248 ................... 125 2.13 Plan of site 50–50–17–1089 .................... 127 2.14 Plan of site 50–50–17–1088 .................... 128 2.15 Estimated ages of construction events . 132 2.16 Plan of H¯apaiali‘i Heiau . 134 2.17 Posterior probability distributions for H¯apaiali‘i Heiau . 136 2.18 Generation length model . 139 vii List of Tables 1.1 Expansion scenarios in the Kohala Field System . 12 1.2 Hawaiian Islands depopulation rates . 54 1.3 Tahiti: Estimated depopulation rates, 1769–1863 ....... 55 1.4 Marquesas: Estimated depopulation rates, 1840–1926 ... 55 1.5 Hawaiian Islands: Ancient population estimates . 56 1.6 Ratio of Phase 1 and 2 14C dates . 59 1.7 Cognate names of chiefs, Hawai‘i and New Zealand . 65 2.1 Architectural component descriptors . 102 2.2 14C dates from beneath surface architecture . 122 ix 1 Watershed Testing the Limited Land Hypothesis Robert J. Hommon National Park Service, retired He ali‘i ka ‘aina;¯ he kauwa¯ ke kanaka. The land is a chief; man is its servant. (Land has no need for man, but man needs the land and works it for a livelihood.) Pukui (1983, 62) Mohala¯ i ka wai ka maka o ka pua. Unfolded by the water are the faces of the flowers. (Flowers thrive where there is water, as thriving people are found where living conditions are good.) Pukui (1983, 237) About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service! Charles Darwin, responding in a September 18, 1861 letter to a “great naturalist’s” view that “[t]he mistake is, that Darwin has dealt with origin. Why did he not put his facts before us, and let them rest?” Darwin and Seward (1903) 1 2 Robert J. Hommon Preface • In the centuries following the establishment and growth of the first successful Hawaiian colony by voyagers from central East Polynesia, small groups of people, probably led by junior chiefs, established colonies in far-flung locations throughout the main islands that were best suited for reliable, sustained economic production. • These initial colonies, numbering about 30, formed the salubri- ous cores of chiefdoms, later to become constituent districts of large polities. • The colonies grew, expanding settlement laterally along coast- lines and transforming inland ecosystems into agricultural com- plexes along valleys and un-dissected slopes. • In leeward regions, notably on the island of Hawai‘i, extensive inland agricultural development may have been spurred by the arrival, shortly before the fifteenth century, of a new staple crop, the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). • In the final stage of growth, population doubled to the maximum ancient size within a short time, approximately the fifteenth century. During this period of economic expansion, the aristoc- racy benefited from rapidly increasing revenues in the form of food, manufactures, and luxury goods for themselves and their retinues. • By the sixteenth century, rain-fed agriculture was being prac- ticed increasingly in marginal zones where the frequency and severity of drought-caused crop failure varied inversely with rainfall. • The Hawaiian population stabilized and may have begun to decline during the late sixteenth century, possibly because agricultural expansion was approaching the limits of arable land. • As the limits of agricultural land were approached, food shortages and possibly population overshoot led occasionally to lo- calized famine. • Chiefs in power during the relatively rapid transition from gen- eral expansion to economic stress experienced diminishing con- tributions in taxes and corvée labor. Watershed: Testing the Limited Land Hypothesis 3 • By the beginning of the seventeenth century, in response to economic shortages and uncertainty, governing chiefs of large and powerful multi-district polities were applying a newly-developed political tool, conquest warfare, to augment their revenues by capturing other polities complete with their resident producers. • In the context of competing, belligerent polities, leaders increasingly came to be selected for their political and military skills regardless of hereditary status ascribed by genealogical rank and sacred character. • By the eighteenth century, internal economic, social, and political dynamics of the competing Hawaiian polities had trans- formed them into primary incipient states in every significant re- spect, including large populations, endogamous socioeconomic classes, and centralized governments. These governments, sanc- tioned by state religions, headed by kings, and organized into three or more strata of offices occupied by members of the hereditary nobility, exercised their authority to collect taxes, raise armies, wage true conquest warfare, and construct public works. These were major elements of the model of ancient Hawaiian history detailed in my 1976 dissertation and amplified in a 1986 paper (Hommon 1976, 1986). The model, describing the rise of what are now termed archaic states, was based on the scant then-available body of data that was often, in retrospect, of questionable accuracy, reliability and applicability. Nevertheless, three decades of subsequent research often have served to test and frequently to support the model. The value of such model-building in generating testable hypotheses seems clear. This paper focuses on a hypothesis arising from principal elements of the model. The Limited Land Hypothesis can be considered a revised and testable version of the filled land notion that has been discussed by researchers in Hawai‘i for more than thirty years. This hypothesis concerns what appears to have been a watershed process in ancient Hawaiian history. I propose that the broad-spectrum trans- formation of Hawaiian culture in the last centuries before Western contact in 1778 was to a significant degree associated with a marked reduction in the rate of long-term agricultural expansion as natural and cultural limits on arable land were reached. 4 Robert J. Hommon The primary purpose of this paper is to urge the members of Hawaii’s archaeological community to incorporate rigorous tests of the Limited Land Hypothesis into future research. The body of the paper is divided into three parts: Part 1 introduces the Limited Land Hypothesis and defines its terms. Part 2 summarizes an array of features of Hawaii’s indigenous history that have supported the construction of the hypothesis and that may be further illuminated as future research lends support to the hypothesis. Part 3 outlines research procedures that can be applied in the field and the lab to test the hypothesis. Part 1. Introducing the Hypothesis The Limited Land Hypothesis states: By ad 1550 ancient Hawaiian agricultural expansion slowed significantly as it approached effective limits on staple production imposed by available technology, sociopolitical factors, and natural variables including rainfall and soil fertility. This hypothesis pertains to primary agricultural expansion, that is, the process of transforming previously uncultivated land into cropland. Expansion refers to areal augmentation as distinguished analytically from intensification, which refers to the process of increasing production per unit of land already under cultivation. Under some circumstances, these processes can be observed in isolation, as for example expansion in the form of initial clearing and planting in a shifting cultivation regime, involving no long term investment or increased intensification such as the addition of terraces in an already established agricultural complex. More commonly the two processes probably took place simultaneously in ancient Hawai‘i. For example, establishing new lo‘i (pond-fields) along a permanent stream involved both areal expansion and construction of terraces, irrigation canals and other long-term improvements that together constituted landesque capital intensification (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Kirch 1994). Watershed: Testing the Limited Land Hypothesis 5 The hypothesis can be tested in any irrigated, rain-fed, or flood- water agricultural complex where the expansion process can be an- alyzed archaeologically. In principle it can be tested at any scale, ranging from a single cluster of lo‘i to the archipelago as a whole. The term ancient refers to the time span from the establishment of the first successful colony in Hawai‘i in about ad 800 (Athens et al. 2002, 57) to about ad 1800, selected arbitrarily for present purposes to approximate the time of effective transformative interaction with the non-Polynesian world.

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