Through Volcanic Glass, Darkly

Abstract

Few tools are available to us for the construction of the chronological frameworks that are vital to an understanding of the evolution and history of pre-contact Hawaiian culture. The presence, absence, and/or frequency of a few portable ar­tifact types and of even fewer non-portable artifact types may indicate that a site or deposit (or simply the artifact itself) is relatively early or relatively late (e.g. Emory et al. 1959; Pear­son et al. 1971; Kirch 1974). However, the Hawaiian archaeo­logical record is devoid of time-sensitive evidence such as pottery or other artifactual material whose formal attributes or frequencies vary through time sufficiently to make possible the construction of detailed inter-site relative chronologies.