Considering Archaeological Indicators of the Rise of Appointed Chiefs and the Feudal-land System in the Hawaiian Islands

Abstract

Two important pre-European changes in the Hawaiian Islands were (1.) the end of control of communities by local kin-group chiefs and their replacement with appointed chiefs, and (2.) the end of land control within communities by kin groups and the rise of a tenant household land system. These changes are discussed in the context of two models of Hawaiian history. One predicts the changes to have gradually occurred together between A.D. 1400 and 1600 and been in place by 1600. The other suggests appointed community chiefs rapidly appeared in the 1400s with the rise of island kingdoms, or perhaps in the 1300s, and that the end of corporate kin groups could have been contemporaneous or occurred centuries later. Inland expansion has been considered an archaeological indicator of these changes. Here it is argued not to be an indicator, and other possibilities are explored. It is concluded that we do not yet know when these two critical changes occurred