Seeing the Lama: Charcoal, Evolution, anf Hawaiian Settlement

Abstract

Identification of plant taxa from charcoal has been applied for over a decade in Hawaiian archaeology, primarily as a means to select short-lived species for radiocarbon dating, or to screen for historical introductions. To a lesser degree, identification has been paired with ethnobotanical knowledge to develop cultural and functional interpretations, but often in an uncritical and invalid way. Charcoal may also help reconstruct the woody plant portion of envirorunents surrounding archaeological sites, but charcoal identification will live up to its full potential only when larger sets of data are available and synthesized. Recent analysis from northwest Kaua 'i sites (Figure 1), however, demonstrates that in stratified sites, even a small data set may be useful to discovering trajectories of human impact. In areas with stable occupation for many decades or centuries, a species or group of species present throughout a sequence perhaps enjoys a stable evolutionary state, while appearance or disappearance of species in a firewood catchment may suggest a human selective pressure. For north Kaua' i, a "settlement fringe flora" community is proposed.