Neither Here Nor There: A Rites of Passage Site on the Eastern Fringes of the Mauna Kea Adze Quarry, Hawai'i

Abstract

The archaeological study of religion and ritual, "denounced by the brave and avoided by the sensible," (Grme 1981:218, quoted in Garwood et al 1991:v), is clearly one of the most neglected and, thus, underdeveloped areas of archaeological theory and practice. l The reasons for this are not hard to find. Chief among them is the vexed issue of how ritual is to be defined. Most archaeologists would probably agree with John Barrett in doubting that "a satisfactory definition could ever operate cross-culturally and at a resolution sufficient for detailed empirical study" (Barrett 1991: 1). Catherine Bell has suggested that we in fact abandon the concept of ritual as a natural category of human practice with a single set of defining features and think instead in terms of "ritualization," defined by her as "a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, more quotidian, activities" (Bell 1992:74). Bell's concept, which should appeal to archaeologists because it is set forth in a framework of practical activity, is employed in the analysis and interpretation of a site (50-10-23-16204) situated on the eastern fringes of the Mauna Kea Adze Quarry (Fig. 1), some one-half km from the nearest source of tool-quality raw material in a flow located on the eastern side of the Humuula Trail (Fig. 2). The evidence suggests that this ambiguously located site, situated outside the quarry proper but still a part of it because of the activities that took place there, was the locus of initiation rites for apprentice adze makers who, because they were "transitional beings," were outside the normal social structure and, thus, "neither here, nor there" (Turner 1967:97).