A Re-examination of Kenneth P. Emory’s Theory of Necker Type Marae in the Summit Region of Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i: Many Marae or Shrines Later

Abstract

In 1923-24, Kenneth P. Emory, a pioneer in Hawaiian archaeology, recorded a number of small structures with upright stones on Nihoa and Necker Islands that he described as marae, the East Polynesian name for a wide variety of religious or ceremonial structures found in other parts of East Polynesia. In 1937 Emory described a small number of similar structures in the adze quarry on Mauna Kea, which not only resembled those on Nihoa and Necker, but others in the Society and Tuamotu Islands as well. Emory developed a theory which suggested that: (1) the Nihoa and Necker Island marae and the shrines on Mauna Kea and a few others from remote places in Hawai‘i, such as Pu‘u o ‘Umi on Mauna Loa, were an archaic style from an early period in the settlement of the Hawaiian Islands, and (2) these same archaeological remains had escaped replacement by later, more complex structures called heiau because of their geographical isolation. In this paper we re-examine Emory’s two-part theory based on a preliminary stylistic analysis of more than 200 shrines recorded in recent archaeological surveys in the summit region of Mauna Kea. We conclude that Emory and some of his contemporaries who held to the same general theory, such as Sir Peter Buck, were partially correct, but that geographical isolation is not an adequate explanation for all of the “non-monumental” religious structures on Mauna Kea. We point to inherent limitations in the comparative study of structural types based on architectural similarities alone, and suggest that more attention needs to be given to identifying the organizational principles and beliefs manifested in Polynesian religious architecture.