Report on Midden Exposed by Coastal Erosion in Lapakahi State Historical Park, North Kohala District, Hawai‘i Island

Abstract

Climate change is impacting coastal sites at an alarming rate.We report on coastal midden exposed by storm damage in the archaeological interpretive area of Lapakahi State Historical Park, North Kohala District, Hawai‘i Island, specifically, Site 50-10-02-04043, a canoe shed (halau). Site 04043 was first recorded, but not excavated, in the 1970s. Radiocarbon dating reported here suggests deposits did not begin accumulating until ca. cal AD 1700–1900, surprisingly late given its coastal location and previous dating of leeward Kohala sites. To help understand this we considered how the coastline has changed over time. We estimate, based on high-resolution airborne LiDAR bathometry, that this location was around 100m inland at the time people first arrived in the Hawaiian Islands. The subsidence of Hawai‘i Island slowly brought the coastline closer and it would have been around 10m from this location when deposits began accumulating. The contents of the midden are consistent with previous studies of subsistence in leeward Kohala.We attempted to improve on the specificity of the faunal inventory through ancient DNA but failed to recover intact DNA in fragmentary faunal bone samples. We note that reporting negative results is important for the judicious use of this technique. In sum, our results highlight the critical importance of a targeted, systematic study of early settlement—something that has never been done in the Hawaiian Islands—rather than relying on the type of salvage excavations described here.