Hawaiian Archaeology Volume 13
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Item Commentary: A Call for Documenting Sites with Archival Images in a Best-Practices Workflow(06/01/13 12:00 AM) Becket, JanePhotographic documentation is an integral part of archaeological research but is not often given enough consideration. This paper outlines the basics of field photography and suggests ways in which high-quality images of archaeological sites can be captured and archivally preserved. This suggested workflow covers lighting conditions, tonal ranges, grayscale and color images, equipment choices, and archival systems. Recent iPhone apps facilitate making high-quality images, and new versions of Lightroom make it easy to manage libraries of images that also include large, archival files. In addition to offering detailed, practical information based on current technology, this paper calls for the creation and dissemination of archival images in order to communicate details about sites to a broader audience than at present. Although the formal parameters of a survey may not call for such images, there is yet an obligation to make them. Creating a set of archival, high-quality images is a form of give-back to the community: a set of files from a high-end digital camera or from scanned black-and-white negatives will ensure that sites remain visually available to researchers and community members for many decades after vegetation has grown back.Item The Archaeology of Recent Fills on O'ahu: The He'eia Fishpond Caretaker's House Site(06/01/13 12:00 AM) Allen, JaneTwentieth-century fills, which are by now encountered at virtually every archaeological site on O'ahu, are generally considered meaningless as contexts. Their cultural contents are usually treated only as isolates. The results of analysis of an extensive and varied collection of post-Contact artifacts recovered in 2009- 2010 from fills at the house site of the caretaker of windward O'ahu's historic He'eia Fishpond, however, suggest that even 20th-century fills can produce important information. Two distinct, although chronologically overlapping, assemblages appear likely to have been used _by two different consumer groups. One assemblage, dominated by W estem ceramics manufactured between 1870 and circa 1910, was probably used by former fishpond caretakers and their guests. The other assemblage, dominated by Asian wares manufactured between the 1870s and the 1930s or 1940s, was used by Asian residents in nearby areas including the former Japanese Fishing Village, which housed laborers who worked at He'eia Agricultural (Sugar) Company and Libby, McNeill and Libby's later pineapple plantation, and then, after the plantations failed, Asian residents who fished offshore for a living. These findings suggest that, in spite of their secondary depositional contexts, 20th-century fills and the materials they contain can yield important archaeological information about past life in an area, and about its former occupants.Item Variation in Lithic Sources Utilized by Late Pre-Contact Elites in Kona, Hawai'i Island(06/01/13 12:00 AM) Rieth, Timothy M.; Mills, Peter R.; Lunblad, Steven P.; Morrison, Alex E.; Johnson, AdamA growing body of data supports the exchange of tool-quality basalt and volcanic glass across ahupua 'a, moku, and to a lesser degree, island boundaries. Elites are argued to have had the greatest access to these nonlocal, patchy, resources. To examine this issue, and any potential variation in stone resource procurement, we present the results of non-destructive EDXRF analyses for two ali 'i-associated basalt and volcanic glass collections dating to ca. AD 1600-1830 from adjoining Keokea and Honaunau Ahupua'a in Kona, Hawai'i Island. The collections were recovered from excavations at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park. These collections are compared to the large collection from the Kahalu 'u Habitation Cave, Kahalu'u Ahupua'a, which is contemporaneous and is also associated with ali 'i. Our results contradict the expectation that the collections would be similar, but instead indicate a significant degree of variation that is only partly explained by differences in site activities. Our results suggest that ahupua 'a may have functioned primarily to organize the production of tribute, and that ali 'i and maka 'iiinana led social lives that transcended ahupua 'a.Item Five Centuries of Dryland Farming and Floodwater Irrigation at Hokukano Flat, Auwahi, Maui Island(06/01/13 12:00 AM) Kirch, Patrick V.; Holson, John; Cleghorn, Paul; Schneider, Tsim; Chadwick, OliverExcavations were undertaken at an intensive dryland cultivation site at Hokiikano Flat, Auwahi ahupua 'a, Kahikinui District, Maui. Survey for the Auwahi Wind Farm Project identified several agricultural features, including remnant portions of an intensive field system with regularly spaced embankments and water diversion features. The site encompasses a depositional basin of approximately 5. 9 hectares situated mauka of the Pu 'u Hokiikano cinder cone. This is the largest formal field system thus far recorded in Kahikinui. Six trenches totaling 195 m were mechanically excavated through field embankments and a probable 'auwai channel. This paper discusses the stratigraphy of the trenches, radiocarbon dating, nutrient availability of cultivated soils, and changing landscape induced by Hawaiian cultivation and land use practices. A sequence of five centuries of intensive land use and cultivation is presentedItem Suggested Best Practices for the Application of Radiocarbon Dating to Hawaiian Archaeology(06/01/13 12:00 AM) Rieth, Timothy; Athens, J. StephenOngoing studies (Duarte 2012; Rieth et al. 2011; Rieth personal communication) show that fully 90 percent of 2,334 radiocarbon determinations reported from archaeological contexts on Hawai'i Island, Maui, and portions of O'ahu have been from samples of wood charcoal of unspecified taxa or plant parts. Some unidentifiable portion of these dates are unrelated to, and older by as much as a century than, archaeological events of interest because, among other factors, they derive from the heartwood of one or more long-lived trees of unknown in-built age (Dye 2000). The fact that, in the absence of the samples' botanical sources, accurate dating results cannot be distinguished from inaccurate ones renders such unidentified samples poorly suited to the task of supplying the level of reliable chronometric accuracy required to understand processes in the brief and recent span of the Hawaiian archaeological record at any scale, from individual hearth use to multi-island agricultural expansion. The remaining ten percent of examples reviewed in the above-mentioned study are those reported by researchers who have avoided the problem of in-built age by dating only samples from individual, identified short-lived plants or plant parts such as seeds or twigs, an approach rooted in Murakami'Item Front Matter, Table of Contents, and Back Matter(06/01/13 12:00 AM)Front Matter, Table of Contents, and Back MatterItem Changing Patterns of Firewood Use on the Waimanalo Plain(06/01/13 12:00 AM) Dye, Thomas S.; Sholin, Carl E.Wood charcoal identifications from 35 dated traditional Hawaiian fire-pits on the Waimanalo Plain are analyzed for evidence of change over time and difference across space. Plant taxa identified in the firewood are classified according to habit, origin, and elevational distribution. Early in traditional Hawaiian times, firewood was commonly brought to the plain from inland forests and fires were made primarily with native plants. Later, firewood was more likely to be collected locally, and it typically included both Polynesian-introduced and native plants. This change in behavior appears to have taken place in the fifteenth century. It was likely associated with a vegetational change in which the native lowland forest was replaced with a variety of useful plants, especially near Puha Stream.