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When Did the Polynesians Settle
Hawai‘i?
A Review of 150 Years of Scholarly
Inquiry and a Tentative Answer1
Patrick V. Kirch
University of California, Berkeley
Departments of Anthropology & Integrative Biology
Abstract
The question of when Polynesians first discovered the Hawaiian Islands—the
most remote archipelago in the world—has engaged scholars for two centuries.
Abraham Fornander, Edward Handy, Te Rangi Hiroa, Kenneth Emory, and others
proposed theories and projected dates of first settlement based on oral traditions,
genealogies, and linguistic comparisons. With the advent of stratigraphic
archaeology and radiocarbon dating, new models of Polynesian settlement
emerged, seeming to push back the date of Polynesian settlement in Eastern
Polynesia. Until recently, orthodox opinion put initial Polynesian discovery of
Hawai‘i between ca. AD 300–750. In the past two decades, significant advances
in radiocarbon dating and the targeted re-dating of key Eastern Polynesian and
Hawaiian sites has strongly supported a “short chronology” model of Eastern
Polynesian settlement. It is suggested here that initial Polynesian discovery and
colonization of the Hawaiian Islands occurred between approximately AD 1000
and 1200. The only habitation site in the archipelago which has been securely
dated to this time frame is the O18 Bellows Beach site at Waimānalo, O‘ahu
Island.
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hawaiian archaeology
Among the general public and professional
archaeologists alike, one of the most
pervasive questions concerning the Hawaiian
past is: when did the Polynesian ancestors of
the Hawaiians first discover and settle the
islands? The Hawaiian archipelago is one of
the most remote on Earth, thousands of
kilometers from the probable immediate
Polynesian homelands of the Marquesas and
Society Islands in the South Pacific. It is even
more distant from the Americas and Asia.
The very fact that Polynesian seafarers in
their double-hulled voyaging canoes were
able to carry out such a feat of exploration
and discovery is astounding. Our curiosity
naturally drives us to ask--at what period in
history did this occur? Indeed, scholars have
been posing this question for at least a
century and a half, and attempting to answer
it by various means. Over this time, the
methods at our disposal for resolving
questions of ancient chronology have been
greatly refined. Not surprisingly, the
proposed answers to the question of
Hawaiian settlement have also changed.
This article surveys changing views about
initial Polynesian discovery and settlement of
Hawai‘i, beginning with Abraham Fornander
in the late 19th century, continuing through
early archaeological investigations of the
mid-20th century, to the radical re-thinking of
Eastern Polynesian chronology of the past
two decades. My personal involvement with
this question now spans almost a half-
century, beginning with my participation in
the excavation of several key sites at the
center of the debates. My aim here, however,
is not to propose a definitive new date for the
Polynesian discovery of Hawai‘i, so much
as to show how interpretation is affected by
changes in theory and method. I will, in my
conclusion, summarize what I believe to be
the best current estimate for the timeframe
of first Polynesian colonization of Hawai‘i.
But--caveat lector--the debate will continue.
Before Radiocarbon Dating: Early
Theories of Hawaiian Settlement
Various European explorers, traders,
missionaries, and others--from Captain
James Cook onwards--speculated about
where the ancestors of the Hawaiians and
other Polynesians came from, and about
when they had made their migrations into
and across the vast Pacific. But the first to
systematically compile a large body of
empirical data relevant to these questions,
and to lay out a formal argument and theory,
was Abraham Fornander, primarily in his
classic An Account of the Polynesian Race
(1878–1885), but also in a posthumously
published summary (Fornander 1919).
Fornander was not an archaeologist (indeed
his main profession was law, and he
practiced as a Magistrate of the Hawaiian
Kingdom’s courts); he did not draw upon
the material record of ancient sites or
artifacts. Fornander, who became fluent in
Hawaiian, regarded the Hawaiian traditions
as historical accounts of real individuals. He
also realized that these accounts could be
placed into a relative chronology using the
genealogies of the chiefly lines which he
also collected and analyzed.
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Based on his careful study of the Hawaiian
genealogies, Fornander realized that
“Hawaiian traditions on Hawaiian soil . . . do
not go back with any historical precision
much more than twenty-eight generations
from the present (about 1865), or say 840
years” (1919:232). On this basis, Fornander
felt he could safely assert “that these islands
were inhabited 800 or 900 years ago. . .”
(1919:233). Fornander did not believe that
this was the time of initial Polynesian arrival,
but simply the greatest time depth that could
be traced with historical accuracy based on
the genealogies. In fact, Fornander argued
that the islands had already been occupied for
some centuries, “ . . . by the same race of
people that inhabits them now” (1919:233).
Fornander’s overall theory of Polynesian
origins traced them back to “the Asiatic
Archipelago” (i.e., Island Southeast Asia),
and he allowed some centuries for the period
of initial migrations into the central Pacific.
His succinct views on the chronology of
Hawaiian origins follow:
We get, then, the following leading
propositions as chronological sign-posts,
approximately at least, of the Polynesian
migrations in the Pacific: 1. During the
close of the first and the beginning of the
second century of the present era, the
Polynesians left the Asiatic Archipelago
and entered the Pacific, establishing
themselves on the Samoa and Tonga
groups and spreading eastward and
northward. 2. During the 5th century
Polynesians settled on the Hawaiian
Islands and remained there
comparatively unknown until 3. the
eleventh century when several parties of
fresh immigrants from the Marquesas,
Tahiti and Samoa groups arrived at the
Hawaiian Islands, and for the space of
five or six generations revived and
maintained an active intercourse with
the first-named groups and the mother-
stock (1919:233–34).
The “fresh immigrants” referred to were the
several lineages of voyaging chiefs
(especially Māweke and his descendants
Mo‘ikeha and ‘Olopana, followed by Kila
and La‘amaikahiki; and Pā‘ao) who traveled
back and forth between Hawai‘i and
“Kahiki” and whose exploits are recounted
in the traditions collected by Fornander.
Fornander’s theory in many ways
foreshadows much of what came later in
discussions of Hawaiian origins and
chronology. It is remarkably modern in the
overall scenario proposed for Polynesian
migrations, and interesting in the two-phase
sequence for Hawaiian settlement (later to
be a key element in the “orthodox model” of
Kenneth Emory and Yosihiko Sinoto, see
below).
Professional anthropology incorporating
archaeology took hold in Polynesia in the
early 20th century, especially after the
appointment of Herbert E. Gregory as
Director of the Bishop Museum in 1920.
Gregory proclaimed “the problem of
Polynesian origins” as the major scientific
question to be tackled by the Museum’s
scientists; expeditions using a multi-pronged
approach combining ethnography,
archaeology, and physical anthropology
were dispatched to most of Polynesia’s
major islands and archipelagos (see Kirch
2000:20–24 for a summary of this period in
Polynesian research). Archaeology at this
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time lacked any direct methods for dating
Polynesian sites or artifacts, and was largely
relegated to the mapping of surface
architecture. Oral traditions, along with
detailed ethnographic comparisons, were the
main sources for historical reconstruction.
The Maori ethnographer Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir
Peter H. Buck), who succeeded Gregory as
Director of the Bishop Museum, synthesized
the results of the Museum’s major research
program in his popular book Vikings of the
Sunrise (1938).
In spite of the decades of research by Bishop
Museum’s and other anthropologists, Hiroa’s
account of Hawaiian settlement differs little
from that of Fornander. Hiroa places the first
arrival of Polynesians in Hawai‘i at AD 450
(Hiroa 1938:249). He states that this may
have been by the legendary voyager Hawai‘i-
loa, but argues “it is more likely that the
name of the first settler was forgotten, and
the [Polynesian] historians gave him the
name of the island in order to establish their
claim that he was the first settler.” Like
Fornander, Hiroa then picks up the thread of
colonization with a “later influx of people
from Tahiti . . . led by chiefs who became
distinguished ancestors of the chiefly families
of Hawai‘i” (1938:249). Hiroa identifies the
people who had already settled the Hawaiian
archipelago prior to the arrival of the Tahitian
voyaging chiefs as “the Menehune people”.
He argues that they were especially
associated with Kaua‘i Island, and speculates
that eventually they were pushed out of the
main islands and “. . . withdrew to the barren
and rocky islets of Nihoa and Necker”
(1938:250). Hiroa dates the last voyage
between Hawai‘i and Tahiti--which he says
was that of Pā‘ao--to AD 1275.
Kenneth P. Emory joined the Bishop
Museum staff in 1920 and was a major
contributor to the Museum’s research
program synthesized by Hiroa. Following
the research hiatus imposed by World War
II, Emory matriculated at Yale University to
obtain his long-delayed doctorate. His 1946
dissertation (never published but available
on microfilm, Emory [1946]) broke new
methodological ground by turning to the
evidence from Polynesian languages in
order to infer migrations and times of
divergence between the cultures of Eastern
Polynesia. Emory used an early form of
lexicostatistics or comparison of
vocabularies (including estimates of
percentage agreement in word lists) to assess
the relationships among the various
Polynesian cultures. Among his key
conclusions were that the original
Polynesian homeland was situated in
Western Polynesia (Tonga and Samoa in
particular), and that these Polynesian
ancestors “remained a considerable time in
West Polynesia before moving on [to
Eastern Polynesia]” (1946:274). Emory thus
anticipated the later debate regarding the so-
called “long pause” between the settlement
of Western and Eastern Polynesia (on which
see more below).
Emory’s model for the settlement of
Polynesia--and the dates associated with the
divergence of various branches of
Polynesian culture--was encapsulated in a
“tree” diagram, reproduced here as Figure 1.
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Figure 1. Emory’s tree diagram of Polynesian cultural relationships,
from his 1946 Yale dissertation, showing estimated “dates of
branching.” The settlement of Hawai‘i from Tahiti is estimated by
Emory to have occurred about AD 1150.
He situated the initial arrival of Polynesians
from the Western Polynesian homeland to the
Society Islands, dating their arrival to around
AD 200. Emory then inferred a diaspora out
of Tahiti, beginning around AD 900, with
various “dates of branching” estimated on the
basis of the oral traditions and genealogies.
The date of arrival in Hawai‘i was estimated
to have been around AD 1150. Echoing
Fornander and Hiroa, however, Emory left
open the possibility of an earlier visit by
Marquesan voyagers to Hawai‘i (1946:278).
He wrote: “At least we have good evidence
of direct contact between Hawai‘i and the
Marquesas, after enough time had elapsed
for Marquesan culture to take on
peculiarities of its own.”
The Radiocarbon Revolution and
Polynesian Settlement Chronology
At the time that Emory submitted his Yale
dissertation, Pacific anthropology was on the
cusp of a sea-change. Until then,
archaeology in Polynesia had largely
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hawaiian archaeology
contented itself with surface surveys of
monumental architecture and studies of stone
artifacts. Excavation had rarely been
ventured and even when it was, stratigraphy
was ignored (J.F.G. Stokes’ 1913 excavations
on Kaho‘olawe Island being a notable
exception). More critically, there was no
means to independently date the few artifacts
recovered. But in 1947 Edward Gifford of the
University of California at Berkeley led an
archaeological expedition to Fiji, on the
western boundary of Polynesia, revealing a
deeply stratified succession of pottery types
(see Kirch 2000:27–29 for an overview of
these developments). In 1950, Emory
commenced excavations at a rockshelter site
at Kuli‘ou‘ou, O‘ahu; the shelter had been
unsystematically probed by Jack Porteus as
early as 1938, and Emory knew that its
earthen floor contained a variety of artifacts
(Emory and Sinoto 1961).
These and other tentative forays into island
sites might have had little impact on
Polynesian anthropology were it not for the
contemporaneous development of the method
of radiocarbon dating by chemist Willard
Libby (Libby 1952). By the late 1940s Libby
had confirmed that his method worked by
dating wooden lintel beams from Egyptian
temples whose age had been independently
given by hieroglyphic dates. With the support
of the Viking Fund of New York, Libby put
out a call for archaeological samples from
different parts of the world. Emory was the
first in the Pacific to respond, sending a
charcoal sample from the base of the
Kuli‘ou‘ou Rockshelter (Gifford followed
shortly thereafter with samples from Fiji, and
then from New Caledonia). Emory’s account
reveals the excitement provoked by the
invention of a means for directly dating the
age of an archaeological site:
While this [excavation] was in progress,
in May of 1950, word came of W. F.
Libby’s momentous discovery of a
method for dating charcoal through
measuring radioactivity. A sample of
charcoal from a fireplace . . . was
submitted . . . revealing that the shelter
had been occupied about AD 1004. This
was the first radiocarbon date from any
island in the Pacific and it opened up
undreamed of possibilities for
reconstructing the prehistory of the area.
(Emory, in Emory et al. 1959:ix).
The invention of radiocarbon dating helped
to spark a boom in Polynesian and Pacific
archaeology. Emory launched a multi-year
Hawaiian Archaeology Program under the
auspices of the Bishop Museum, searching
nearly every island for rockshelter and sand-
dune sites rich in artifacts which could be
radiocarbon dated to develop a cultural
sequence for the Hawaiian Islands. He was
soon joined by University of Hawai‘i
student William J. Bonk, and Japanese
archaeologist Yosihiko Sinoto. Other field
teams were also mobilized during the 1950s
and early 60s, including Robert Suggs (from
the American Museum of Natural History)
in the Marquesas, the Norwegian Expedition
in Easter Island and other parts of Eastern
Polynesia, Jack Golson and then Roger
Green in New Zealand (and the latter in
Mangareva as well). Emory and Sinoto
extended the Bishop Museum’s program to
the Society Islands and the Marquesas in the
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early 1960s. Golson, Green, and their
students and colleagues also initiated
programs in Tonga and Samoa in Western
Polynesia. (For an overview of these
developments, see Kirch [2000:29–32].) As a
result, by the mid-to-late 1960s, a new
archaeologically-based and radiocarbon-
date defined chronology for Polynesia was
emerging. The use of oral traditions and
genealogies was regarded as passé, having
been superseded by a new and thoroughly
“scientific” methodology privileging
stratigraphic excavation of material remains,
and dating the associated charcoal using the
increasingly sophisticated radiocarbon
technique.
Among the major outcomes of this burst of
excavation and radiocarbon dating, the
following were especially significant in
shaping views concerning the sequence of
timing of settlement in Polynesia: (1) First,
the primacy of the Western Polynesian
archipelagoes as the original Polynesian
homeland was confirmed by the much older
archaeological sequences there, dating back
to at least 400 BC in Samoa and possibly as
early as 1,500 BC in Tonga (Groube 1971).
In both Samoa and Tonga, the early periods
were marked by the presence of pottery,
signaling a connection to Fiji and Melanesia
to the west. (2) The surprisingly old
radiocarbon dates obtained by Suggs
(1961:Table 1) in the Marquesas, 150 BC in
the case of the Ha‘atuatua dune site on
Nukuhiva, combined with small quantities of
potsherds, suggested that the Marquesas had
played a hitherto unsuspected role in the
initial settlement of Eastern Polynesia. Sinoto
(1966), expanding the Marquesan work to
Ua Huka and other islands of the group, also
found pottery but his dates suggested to him
that first settlement was somewhat later,
perhaps around AD 300. Nonetheless,
Sinoto believed that his data supported a
primary role for the Marquesas as a
“dispersal center” in Eastern Polynesia. (3)
Relatively early Polynesian dispersal
throughout at least parts of Eastern
Polynesia was also reinforced by the early
date obtained by the Norwegian Expedition
at Poike Ditch on Easter Island, AD 380
(Heyerdahl and Ferdon, eds., 1961:394).
By the early 1960s, a consensus model for
the radiocarbon-based chronology of
Polynesian settlement was emerging (Emory
1959; Green 1966, 1967; Emory and Sinoto
1965). Based largely on the new
archaeological evidence, the model also
incorporated rapidly developing insights
from historical linguistics, which also
indicated a later branching of the Eastern
Polynesian languages off of a considerably
older Proto Polynesian stem situated in the
Western Polynesian homeland. In brief, this
model had the ancestors of the Polynesians
arriving in the Tonga-Samoa region,
possibly as early as 1500 BC, where they
developed a distinctive Proto Polynesian
language and culture. Further expansion
eastwards--possibly directly from Samoa to
the Marquesas--took place by AD 300 if not
slightly earlier (Figure 2). Easter Island
appeared to have been settled around the
same time. Exactly when the Society Islands
(which had played such a key role in
Fornander’s and Hiroa’s theories) were
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Figure 2. Roger Green’s “family tree for the Polynesian languages” (Green 1966:Table
9). In this model, Hawaiian diverges from the Proto-Marquesic branch around the
middle of the first millennium AD.
colonized was somewhat uncertain, as no
early sites containing pottery were discovered
by Emory and Sinoto’s explorations. This led
to the view that Tahiti was settled from the
Marquesas, and that it became a second
“dispersal center” for Eastern Polynesia by
around AD 1200 (thus continuing to fit the
evidence from oral traditions).
Early Radiocarbon-Dated Sites in the
Hawaiian Islands
It was within this emerging Polynesian
settlement model that the empirical
archaeological and radiocarbon evidence
from several key Hawaiian sites first had to
be evaluated, in order to establish the place of
Hawai‘i in the model, including a probable
date for Polynesian discovery and settlement
of the islands. Throughout the 1950s, Emory
and his colleagues Bonk and Sinoto had
scoured the archipelago for stratified sites,
testing at least 33 locations on all of the
major islands except for Maui. But it was in
the vicinity of Ka Lae (South Point) on
Hawai‘i Island that Emory’s team
discovered and excavated three sites which
together seemed to provide a framework for
the entire Hawaiian cultural sequence, from
first settlement up until historic times. The
Pu‘u Ali‘i (H1) sand dune site anchored the
sequence at the base, the Waiahukini Shelter
(H8) continued the sequence through the
middle time period, and the Makalai Shelter
(H2) capped the sequence at the late end
(Emory et al. 1959:6–7, Figs. 23, 25). The
rich quantities of bone and shell fishhooks
from these sites provided a sequence of
typological changes which Emory’s team
used to construct a master chronology for
the islands, reported in detail in their classic
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monograph Hawaiian Archaeology:
Fishhooks (Emory et al. 1959).
Whereas the initial excavations at Kuli‘ou‘ou
on O‘ahu had returned a radiocarbon date of
AD 1004 ± 180, a much older age was
obtained from the base of the Pu‘u Ali‘i sand
dune site at South Point: AD 124 ± 60. This
was far older than anyone had previously
postulated for initial Polynesian settlement in
Hawai‘i--Fornander and Hiroa had estimated
that event at around AD 450, and Emory’s
linguistic analyses had led him to propose a
date of around AD 1150. But in light of the
new archaeological dates emerging from the
Marquesas and Easter Island, not to mention
the much earlier sites in Western Polynesia, a
date in the second century AD for Polynesian
arrival in Hawai‘i was entirely plausible. In
his preface to the Fishhooks monograph,
Emory therefore wrote: “Radiocarbon dates
for excavations reveal that the Hawaiian
Islands were well populated by AD 1000, and
that the first settlers may have arrived by AD
125” (Emory, in Emory et al. 1959:ix).
By the mid-1960s, Emory and Sinoto (Bonk
had dropped out of the team) began to harbor
doubts about the single early date from H1
that had anchored their initial Hawaiian
fishhook chronology at AD 125. An
extensive program of radiocarbon dating of
59 samples from the H1 and H8 South Point
sites, carried out in conjunction with the
Washington State University radiocarbon
laboratory (Emory and Sinoto 1969) failed to
replicate the early age first suggested for the
base of site H1. Reviewing the expanded
radiocarbon corpus, Emory and Sinoto
revised their Hawai‘i fishhook chronology.
They now proposed that the earliest deposits
were those at the bottom of the H8
Waiahukini rockshelter, which they
interpreted as beginning around AD 750
(1969:15). The H1 sand dune site was
believed to overlap in time with the lower
part of H8, and the fishhook-rich deposits of
the dune were suggested to have been
deposited between roughly AD 1000 to
1350. A revised settlement date for Hawai‘i
of AD 750 was seen by Emory and Sinoto as
fitting better with Sinoto’s sequence for the
Marquesas Islands, which began at AD 300
(Sinoto 1979). If the Marquesas were the
immediate homeland of the first voyagers to
Hawai‘i, as seemed to be the case based on
both material culture and linguistic
evidence, then a date for initial Hawaiian
settlement several centuries after the
Marquesas themselves were first occupied
was appropriate.
At the same time that Emory and Sinoto
were revising their estimate for initial
Hawaiian settlement from AD 125 to AD
750, two new sites were discovered and
excavated which added evidence to the
emerging picture about the timing of
Polynesian colonization of the archipelago.
The Bellows dune site (O18) at Waimānalo,
O‘ahu, was excavated in 1967 under the
direction of Richard Pearson of the
University of Hawai‘i, and published a few
years later by Pearson et al. (1971).2 A well-
stratified coastal dune adjacent to
Waimānalo Stream, O18 yielded a small but
striking assemblage of adzes, fishing gear,
and other artifacts, many of which appeared
closer to early Marquesan forms than to later
Hawaiian types. Five radiocarbon dates were
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obtained; with the exception of one late date
(<380 years), the dates spanned a range from
1600 to 700 BP (Pearson et al. 1971:Figs. 13,
14). However, two of the dates from Layers
II and III were stratigraphically inverted.
Based on these dates, Pearson et al.
(1971:230–231, Fig. 14) argued that the two
deepest layers spanned a period between
about AD 600 to 1100, and were
contemporaneous with the older deposits at
South Point sites H1 and H8.
On Moloka‘i Island, Kirch discovered a sand
dune site (Mo-A1-3) at the mouth of the
Hālawa Valley in the mid-1960s, and
excavated the deposits over two seasons in
1969–70 (Kirch 1971; Kirch and Kelly, eds.,
1975). The Hālawa dune site also yielded
artifact types arguably similar to early
Marquesan forms (and with simple two-piece
fishhooks very much like those from the O18
site on O‘ahu), as well as the stone
foundations and postholes from simple oval-
ended houses. A radiocarbon date of 1380 ±
90 BP from a hearth at the base of the
cultural deposit was taken to indicate initial
settlement between ca. AD 560–740 (Kirch
and Kelly, eds., 1975:Table 41).
The ‘Orthodox Scenario’ and the
Debate Over Long Versus Short
Chronologies
By the close of the 1970s, a synthetic model
of Polynesian settlement chronology had
emerged, one that is well reflected by various
chapters in The Prehistory of Polynesia
volume edited by Jesse Jennings (1979). In
his Introduction, Jennings provided a
graphic summary of the model, reproduced
here as Figure 3. His succinct text summed
up the achievements of three decades of
excavations and radiocarbon dating:
Pioneer explorers called Lapita . . .
reached both Tonga and Samoa by 1000
BC. The first eastwards movement
farther into the Pacific is recorded for
the Marquesas by AD 300. Thence went
two groups, one to Easter Island by AD
400 and the other to Hawaii by AD 500.
It is possible that another group went to
the Societies shortly after their arrival in
the Marquesas, but that thrust has not
been proved. Certainly, a second
movement to Tahiti (the Societies)
occurred by AD 600 and from thence to
New Zealand by AD 800. Secondary
dispersals from Tahiti to Hawaii and
New Zealand after AD 1000 are
possible but debated (Jennings 1979:2).
Re-reading this summary, it is remarkable
how faithful it remained to the old
Fornander and Hiroa theories, at least in so
far as Hawai‘i is concerned. An initial
migration ca. AD 500 from the Marquesas
(e.g., Hiroa’s “Menehune” people), was
followed by the arrival of Tahitian voyagers
after AD 1000 (e.g., the Māweke and Pā‘ao
voyaging sagas). Even though the new
model was based on the scientific evidence
of archaeology and radiocarbon dating, it
was still one that Fornander clearly would
have recognized!
The first book-length synthesis of Hawaiian
archaeology, including a cultural sequence
of four named phases, was published by
Kirch (1985).3 With respect to initial
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Figure 3. The orthodox model of Polynesian settlement as summarized by Jennings in
1979 (from Jennings 1979, fig. 3).
Polynesian arrival in the islands, Kirch wrote:
“Although the information concerning the
first few centuries of Polynesian occupation
in Hawai‘i is scant, there is sufficient
evidence to state that the archipelago was
colonized sometime during the three
centuries prior to AD 600” (1985:298). He
argued that Layer III at the O18 Bellows site,
and Layer III at the Pu‘u Ali‘i sand dune site
(H1) were the only two assemblages that
could actually be assigned to this initial
Colonization Period. Given the problems of
radiocarbon dating at H1, the ascription of
the Layer III assemblage there to this period
was based on its material culture (especially
adze and fishhook types). Kirch agreed with
the orthodox synthesis in pointing to the
Marquesas Islands as the immediate
homeland of the voyagers who discovered
Hawai‘i. He also opined that “there is some
element of historical reality in the Hawaiian
traditions of multiple contacts” (1985:66),
thus reinforcing the interpretation of a
secondary phase of contact with the Society
Islands.
As is often the case in science, just when a
particular paradigm appears to be
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hawaiian archaeology
unassailably constructed, cracks already have
begun to appear in the foundations. Such was
the case for the “orthodox scenario” of
Polynesian settlement in the early 1980s. The
model which was so succinctly summarized
by Jennings (1979), based on the work of
Emory, Sinoto, Green, Suggs, Golson, and
others began to come under attack by the
early 1980s. In a provocative essay, Irwin
(1981) questioned whether there had actually
been a significant “pause” in the eastward
expansion of early Polynesians from Western
Polynesia to Eastern Polynesia. Referencing
the early dates of Suggs in the Marquesas,
Irwin suggested that the loss of pottery may
have made initial colonization sites in
Eastern Polynesia less visible to
archaeologists. Kirch (1986) followed with a
more explicit critique of the “orthodox
scenario” as this applied to Eastern
Polynesia, arguing that the earliest settlement
phases through the central Eastern Polynesian
archipelagoes of the Societies, Marquesas,
Cook Islands, and Australs were as yet
inadequately defined. Again, the implication
was that the “pause” between the initial
Lapita settlement of Tonga-Samoa and
central Eastern Polynesia may have been
shorter than the orthodox scenario allowed
for.
A very different perspective on Eastern
Polynesian chronology was advanced by
Spriggs and Anderson (1993). Influenced by
radiocarbon dating developments in New
Zealand which had increasingly supported a
very late colonization of those large,
temperate Eastern Polynesian islands
(Anderson 1991), Spriggs and Anderson
opined that there had been quite a long
pause between the settlement of Western
and Eastern Polynesia. They proposed
applying “chronometric hygiene” to the
available radiocarbon dates from Eastern
Polynesian sites, eliminating from the body
of evidence dates which did not meet a set
of strict criteria. Using their method of
screening, Spriggs and Anderson claimed
that only for the Marquesas was there
possible support for colonization ca. AD
300–600, with the “central, northern, and
eastern archipelagoes” being settled ca. AD
600–950, and New Zealand between AD
1000–1200 (1993:211).
Refinements in Radiocarbon Dating
The “chronometric hygiene” approach
advocated by Spriggs and Anderson (1993)
was based in part on the increasing
recognition of various problems with
radiocarbon dating. Some of these had to do
with laboratory methods (e.g., questions
about pretreatment methods used by the
Gakushuin Laboratory in Japan), while
others concerned issues of sample type and
collection. Many of the early 14C dates, such
as those obtained by Emory and his
colleagues from the Hawaiian archaeology
program in the 1950s, had rather large
standard errors, a reflection of the crude
solid-carbon counting methods first used by
Libby and other pioneers of the radiocarbon
method. The shift to gas-proportional
counting, or to liquid scintillation counting
methods, were significant improvements but
the greatest advance came with Muller’s use
15
kirch
of accelerator mass spectrometry or AMS
(Muller 1977). By the late 1980s, AMS 14C
dating was rapidly becoming the standard,
largely replacing the older laboratory
methods. This advance in laboratory methods
had two major consequences for
archaeological dating: (1) standard errors
were reduced; and (2) samples of relatively
small size could now be dated. For charcoal,
sample sizes as small as 10 milligrams could
be dated by AMS, opening up the possibility
of dating individual seeds or small twig
fragments.
Equally important to the refinements in
laboratory methods was the realization by
archaeologists that they needed to pay close
attention to the kinds of samples they
submitted for dating. This was especially the
case for wood charcoal, perhaps the most
commonly dated material from Polynesian
sites. In the early years of radiocarbon dating,
when the crude laboratory methods required
large sample sizes, there was a tendency to
select the largest pieces of charcoal. Indeed,
the entire contents of hearths or earth ovens
(often including tens or even hundreds of
individual charcoal fragments) were often
submitted in bulk to the dating laboratory.
The problem, of course, was that such
samples in many cases included old growth
timber, which had an “in built” age that was
potentially much older than the time at which
the wood was actually burnt in the hearth or
oven. The date returned by the radiocarbon
lab may have been an accurate indication of
the age of the timber, but not of the “target
date” of human use of the site. With many
coastal sites, there was also the likelihood of
old driftwood being collected and used for
fuel. With dating materials other than
charcoal, there were additional potential
complications deriving from isotopic
fractionation (especially in bone samples)
and from reservoir effects (especially for
marine shell or other materials grown in the
ocean).
The most important step in developing new
protocols for radiocarbon sample selection
was the taxonomic identification of wood
charcoal based on anatomical characteristics
by comparison to a reference collection of
known woody plant species for the
particular region or island. In Hawai‘i, the
first efforts at archaeological wood charcoal
identification were made when Kirch, then
directing several large projects for the
Bishop Museum, approached University of
Hawai‘i botanist Charles Lameroux about
the problem. Lameroux’s laboratory
assistant, Gail Murakami started to develop
a reference collection for Hawaiian wood
charcoal, and she has continued to be the
main contributor to Hawaiian and other
Pacific wood identification (Murakami
1983). In the 1990s, Kirch also encouraged
James Coil to establish a reference
collection at Berkeley’s Oceanic
Archaeology Laboratory (Coil 2004). These
and similar efforts have now made it
possible for wood charcoal from Hawaiian
and other Polynesian sites to be identified
prior to 14C dating. Most importantly,
taxonomic identification allows the
archaeologist to select short-lived species,
and to reject wood samples that are likely to
have a significant in-built age factor.
16
hawaiian archaeology
Unfortunately, not all archaeologists working
Polynesia have availed themselves of the
ability to identify their samples prior to
dating; it is still necessary when reviewing
suites of dates from particular sites to
consider whether the samples in question
meet the new standards for sample selection.
The methodological advances just
summarized--both in laboratory methods and
in sample selection criteria--have had a major
impact on the evolving radiocarbon
chronology for Eastern Polynesia. Targeted
AMS re-dating of identified samples from
previously excavated Eastern Polynesian sites
such as Hane or Vaito‘otia-Fa‘ahia
(Anderson and Sinoto 2002) have typically
shortened the chronologies for those sites,
while dating of newly excavated sites such as
the Tangatatau Rockshelter (MAN-44) on
Mangaia (Kirch et al. 1995) or Onemea in
Mangareva (Kirch et al. 2010) have failed to
replicate the kinds of early first-millennium
AD dates for initial Polynesian settlement
obtained by Suggs or Sinoto. In short, the
argument in favor of a “long pause” and a
“short chronology” for Eastern Polynesia
have been greatly strengthened by the
advances in radiocarbon dating over the past
two to three decades.
The Emerging Chronological Picture for
Eastern Polynesia
Over the past decade or so, dating of a
number of key Eastern Polynesian sites, using
AMS radiocarbon methods on better
controlled (identified) samples has lent
considerable support to a “short chronology”
whereby the central archipelagoes of Eastern
Polynesia did not begin to be colonized until
after AD 800 or later (Allen, 2004;
Anderson et al., 1994, 1999; Anderson and
Sinoto 2002; Conte and Anderson 2003;
Green and Weisler 2002; Kirch et al. 1995;
Rolett 1998; Rolett and Conte, 1995 Weisler
1994, 1995). Recently, Wilmhurst et al.
(2011) have advanced claims that the
settlement of all but the Society Islands
occurred after AD 1190–1290; their
argument, however, depends on a fairly
extreme form of chronometric hygiene,
which rejects dates on any samples other
than charcoal from identified, short-lived
taxa.
Most important from the perspective of
Hawaiian settlement are the colonization
dates for the Society Islands and the
Marquesas, as these two archipelagoes have
long been considered to be the immediate
source regions for the first Polynesian
voyagers to Hawai‘i. For the Society
Islands, the oldest dates potentially
indicating a human presence are two 14C
dates on anaerobically preserved coconuts
from water-logged sediments in the lower
‘Opunohu Valley on Mo‘orea Island
(Lepofsky et al. 1992), with ages of 1270 ±
60 and 1360 ± 60 BP, possibly indicating
settlement by about AD 600. However, no
cultural materials were associated with these
putatively domesticated coconuts, and until
confirmed by additional results, it is not
certain that these dates indicate human
activity on Mo‘orea. The Vaito‘otia-Fa‘ahia
site on Huahine, originally thought to date as
17
kirch
early as AD 800–850, was re-dated by
Anderson and Sinoto (2002). Although there
is considerable range in the ages of the newly
dated samples (Anderson and Sinoto
2002:Table 1, Fig. 1), they conclude that the
“most reliable” suite of shell dates from the
site has a range of about AD 1050–1450.
The Marquesas, as noted above, initially
produced the earliest dates in Eastern
Polynesia, as old as 150 BC in the case of
Suggs’s excavations at Ha‘atuatua (Suggs
1961). The Hane dune site on Ua Huka
Island, excavated by Sinoto (1966), yielded
pottery and other artifacts similar to those
from Ha‘atuatua, and Sinoto’s original suite
of 14C dates led him to propose that Hane had
been settled as early as AD 300–600.
Anderson and Sinoto (2002:Table 2, Fig. 2)
dated ten new samples from Hane, with
results indicating that the site “. . . was
probably not earlier than about AD 1000,
according to the lower calibrated ranges of
the new results, and if actually around the
medians would be dated approximately AD
1100–1200” (2002:251). In 2009, Eric Conte
conducted renewed excavations at Hane. A
suite of as yet unpublished radiocarbon dates
from these excavations yielded results similar
to the Anderson and Sinoto (2002) re-dating,
again suggesting that the lowest levels at
Hane are unlikely to be older than AD 900–
1000 (Conte, pers. comm., 2010). These
revised dates from Hane are also consistent
with Rolett’s dating of the earliest levels at
the Hanamiai site on Tahuata Island, which
are bracketed in the interval between AD
1025–1300 (Rolett 1998:241, Table 4.1). In
short, the emerging chronological evidence
from the Marquesas strongly suggests that
initial Polynesian settlement of that
archipelago was unlikely to have occurred
before about AD 900, and may have been as
late as AD 1000.
Emerging chronologies for other Eastern
Polynesian islands are also relevant here. In
the southern Cook Islands, the Tangatatau
Rockshelter on Mangaia was occupied by
around AD 1000, based on a large suite of
14C dates (Kirch et al. 1995:55, Table 2).
Kirch et al. (2010) recently published a suite
of 14C AMS dates from the Onemea site on
Taravai Island in the Gambier (Mangareva)
Islands indicating initial Polynesian
colonization around AD 950. This age fits
well with Weisler’s claims for the
colonization of Henderson Island no later
than AD 1050, and possibly slightly earlier
(Weisler 1995:389, Table 2). Despite Hunt
and Lipo’s claims (2006, 2008) that Rapa
Nui was not settled until AD 1200, the full
corpus of dates from the Anakena Dune Site
(including those of Steadman et al. 1994) are
also compatible with a colonization date of
around AD 1000. In sum, the southeastern
archipelagoes and islands of Eastern
Polynesia have a set of radiocarbon
chronologies now converging on the period
from AD 900–1000.
With the caveat that the Society Islands
might still prove to have initial settlement
dates slightly earlier than elsewhere in
Eastern Polynesia, the extensive re-dating of
key sites and discovery and dating of new
sites throughout central Eastern Polynesia
strongly supports a “short chronology” that
18
hawaiian archaeology
begins no earlier than AD 900–1000. Given
that this region is widely regarded as the
immediate homeland for the first Polynesian
settlers to Hawai‘i, the obvious implication is
that Hawaiian colonization is unlikely to be
earlier than around AD 1000.
Paleo-Environmental Evidence for the
Initial Hawaiian Settlement
Evidence for human colonization of an island
or archipelago can come from two different
sources: (1) direct artifactual evidence from
human settlements such as sand dune
occupations or rockshelters; and, (2) indirect
evidence in the form of proxy signals of
anthropogenic disturbance, such as increases
in charcoal fluxes in lake or swamp
sediments, rapid changes in pollen
frequencies in these sediments, or the
appearance of commensal or synanthropic
plants and animals such as weeds, insects, or
rats. During the first few decades of
Polynesian stratigraphic archaeology, the
emphasis was almost exclusively on the
search for early habitation sites. With the
increased interest in an ecological or
environmental archaeology from the late
1960s on, however, indirect evidence for
anthropogenic disturbance on islands began
to be considered in the debate on long versus
short chronologies. The application of
palynological analysis to lake and swamp
sediments in Pacific islands has been
especially important in this regard (e.g.,
Kirch and Ellison 1994).
Beginning in the early 1990s, Steve Athens
and his collaborators applied the methods of
sediment coring and palynology to a number
of lake and swamp sites on O‘ahu Island,
such as ‘Uko‘a Pond and Kawainui Marsh
(Athens 1997; Athens and Ward 1993, 1997;
Athens et al. 1992). Analysis of cores
showed unmistakable signals of
anthropogenic disturbance, especially with
dramatic increases in microscopic charcoal
(from near 0 in pre-human levels to 25
mm2/cc in upper levels) and in significant
declines in native plant taxa, especially the
endemic palm Pritchardia and a now
extirpated shrub Kanaloa. These data were
revolutionary for the information they
provided about changes to the O‘ahu
landscape following Polynesian colonization
and land use, but they also had potential to
help establish the date of Polynesian arrival.
In an influential article, Athens wrote:
What, then, is the very earliest coring
evidence we have for the Polynesian
presence in Hawaii? The answer is
approximately AD 800, which is from
‘Uko‘a Pond. The securest evidence is
in the form of microscopic particulate
charcoal, though it is also supported by
the pollen evidence . . . Because
particulate charcoal does not occur in
sample intervals predating Polynesian
occupation in any of our cores on
O‘ahu, we feel confident that its
presence in the ‘Uko‘a Pond core (and
other cores) must be entirely due to
anthropogenic causes (Athens
1997:266).
Figure 4 reproduces Athens’ plot of the
‘Uko‘a Pond charcoal concentrations. A 14C
date of approximately AD 800 (Athens did
not publish the full details of the
19
kirch
Figure 4. Athens’ plot of charcoal concentrations in the ‘Uko‘a Pond core (Athens 1997:Fig.
12.7). Note that the dramatic rise in charcoal concentrations is bracketed between AD 800
and 1200.
radiocarbon dates from ‘Uko‘a Pond) is
associated with the first presence of charcoal,
while another date of AD 1200 is associated
with a dramatic spike in charcoal
concentrations. Thus, while Athens placed
the approximate date of Polynesian arrival at
AD 800, it would probably be more accurate
say that a dramatic spike in anthropogenic
charcoal is bracketed by radiocarbon dates of
approximately AD 800 and 1200. In later
work at the Ordy Pond on O‘ahu, Athens et
al. (1999) report that the first presence of
charcoal is bracketed by two radiocarbon
dates as between AD 1000–1100. And, a core
in an inland location in Maunawili Valley on
the windward side of O‘ahu shows
Pritchardia and other indigenous taxa
beginning to decline after about AD 1200
(Athens and Ward 1997). In all, Athens’
coring program on O‘ahu makes it clear that
by AD 1200 anthropogenic disturbance was
widespread on the island. Thus initial
Polynesian colonization must have occurred
some time prior to AD 1200, but is unlikely
to have been much before AD 1000.
On Kaua‘i Island, the team of David and
Lida Burney (2003) has applied sediment
coring and dating of charcoal influxes to
attempt to establish the earliest presence of
Polynesians on various parts of the island.
Their earliest reliable record for
anthropogenic charcoal comes from
Kekupua Fishpond on the island’s
southwestern coast. The first presence of
charcoal in a 2.2 m deep core comes at 1.4
m and has an associated 14C date of 830 ± 50
BP, or AD 1165–1260 when calibrated (at 1
20
hawaiian archaeology
s.d.). Burney et al. (2001; Burney and
Kikuchi 2006) have also carried out extensive
work in the Makauwahi limestone sinkhole,
an extraordinary sediment trap yielding a rich
record of biotic change on the island. Here
the earliest indication of human presence is
from the pelvis of a Polynesian-introduced rat
(Rattus exulans), directly 14C dated at 822 ±
60 BP, or AD 1160–1270 calibrated (at 1
s.d.).
Bones of R. exulans were also recovered
from limestone sinkholes in the ‘Ewa Plain
on O‘ahu, where they are associated with the
bones of extinct or extirpated avifauna,
including large flightless ducks
(Thambetochen sp.), and the shells of extinct
endemic terrestrial gastropods (Athens et al.
1999, 2002; see also Christensen and Kirch
1986). Direct AMS 14C dating on several of
these rat bones also provides proxy evidence
for initial Polynesian presence on O‘ahu, as
these rats were commensal and introduced by
humans. Figure 5 is a combined Oxcal
probability plot of the two earliest dates from
R. exulans bones from ‘Ewa, with a highest
probability calibrated age range of AD 970–
1030 (at 1 s.d.), or AD 890–1040 (at 2 s.d.).
Some scholars are reluctant to use the kinds
of proxy indicators of anthropogenic
disturbance described above as evidence for
human arrival on islands, and have rejected
dates on charcoal in sediment cores or on rat
bones (e.g., Wilmhurst et al. 2011). This
seems to me to be an extreme application of
“chronometric hygiene.” In the case of
Hawai‘i, the dates from numerous sediment
cores, combined with direct AMS 14C dating
of rat bones, has provided a consistent set of
dates strongly indicative of human presence
on O‘ahu by around AD 1000, with
evidence for widespread anthropogenic
disturbance by AD 1200. For Kaua‘i, initial
human presence is indicated by at least AD
1200.
Re-Evaluating “Early” Hawaiian Sites
The final set of evidence to consider before
returning to the question of when the
Hawaiian Islands were first settled by
Polynesians is the radiocarbon evidence
from the handful of habitation sites which
had been proposed as belonging to the
earliest phases of the Hawaiian cultural
sequence (Kirch 1985). For the South Point,
Hawai‘i Island sites there has been no recent
attempt at re-dating, although the older sets
of radiocarbon dates have been reassessed
(Dye 1992). Combining the four most
consistent 14C dates on charcoal from Layer
II at site H8 (Emory and Sinoto 1969:Table
1) yields calibrated age ranges of AD 1040–
1090 and 1120–1280 (at 1 s.d.), which
would be consistent with the general time
frame suggested by the paleoenvironmental
evidence just reviewed, and with the
emerging chronologies for Eastern
Polynesia. Nonetheless, it would be
desirable to attempt to re-date the base of
site H8 (and possibly also Layer III at H1)
using AMS methods, if suitable samples can
be located in the Bishop Museum
collections.
A second site for which claims of relatively
early settlement had been advanced is the
Hālawa Dune Site (Mo-A1-3) on Moloka‘i
21
kirch
(Kirch and Kelly 1975). Kirch and McCoy
(2007) submitted six samples from the
original 1969–70 excavations for AMS 14C
dating. Based on the results of this re-dating
combined with a re-analysis of the original
suite of dates, Kirch and McCoy conclude
that the Hālawa site dates no earlier than
about AD 1300, with the main occupation
phase dating to between AD 1400–1650
(2007:402).
This leaves only the Bellows Dune site (O18)
at Waimānalo, O‘ahu, as having a possible
claim of dating with the period of initial
Polynesian settlement of the Hawaiian
archipelago. In an attempt to establish the age
of the deeper stratigraphic deposits at O18,
Dye and Pantaleo (2010) dated seven samples
obtained during the original 1967
excavations, selecting only short-lived
materials. Based on the new results, and
using a Bayesian statistical framework, they
conclude that the O18 site was “established in
AD 1040–1219” (2010:113). Dye and
Pantaleo argue that this was “some 260–459
years after the current estimate of first
settlement” of Hawai‘i. That argument,
however, is based on the acceptance of AD
800 as the date of Polynesian colonization of
the islands, following Athens (1997). As I
have pointed out above, the ‘Uko‘a core from
which Athens derived the AD 800 date
actually only shows anthropogenic influences
occurring between approximately AD 800
and 1200. Dye and Pantaleo’s new dates for
O18, in my opinion, establish the site as the
earliest documented habitation in the
Hawaiian Islands. Their estimate of AD
1040–1219 is only marginally later than the
earliest dates on Rattus exulans bones from
the ‘Ewa Plain (see Figure 5). This is not to
say that the Bellows Dune site is the “ur-
colonization” settlement for Hawai‘i. But it
does strongly hint that the O18 occupation
dates to within the first century of
Polynesian arrival in the archipelago.
When Was Hawai‘i First Settled?
In this paper I have endeavored to trace the
efforts--over more than a century and a half-
-of various scholars to determine the
approximate time when Polynesian
explorers first made their remarkable voyage
from central Eastern Polynesia, across the
doldrums and into the North Pacific, to
discover Hawai‘i. Fornander and Hiroa were
limited to Polynesian oral traditions
calibrated to chiefly genealogies, but
thought that this event occurred sometime in
the mid-first millennium AD Emory applied
linguistic analysis to arrive at a date of AD
1150. But with the advent of stratigraphic
archaeology and radiocarbon dating, it
appeared for a time that the date of initial
settlement would be pushed back
considerably, possibly to the beginning of
the first millennium AD. Then a long
process of scientific investigation and self-
correction set in. The initial uncritical
enthusiasm for radiocarbon dating was
replaced by a more sober realization that
radiocarbon dating was complicated, and
that the early methods need improvement.
Archaeologists began to pay attention to
issues of sample type and selection. In the
half-century that has passed since Emory
22
hawaiian archaeology
and Sinoto obtained their first 14C dates from
Kuli‘ou‘ou, South Point, and other Hawaiian
sites, we have made huge strides forward in
the hard work of establishing solid cultural
chronologies throughout Polynesia.
To the question of “when was Hawai‘i first
settled by Polynesians” I would answer with
the following three points:
1. Although the debate over the chronology
for Polynesian expansion into Eastern
Polynesia still continues (e.g., Wilmhurst
et al. 2011; Mulrooney et al. 2011), there
is no question that some form of “short
chronology” has prevailed. With the
exception of the Society Islands (for
which our database for early settlement
remains inadequate), none of the main
archipelagoes and islands of central
Eastern Polynesia are likely to have been
colonized by Polynesians before AD
900–1000. Since this is the immediate
homeland region from which the
voyagers to Hawai‘i are presumed to
have come, a lower bound on the
settlement date for Hawai‘i also has to be
AD 900–1000.
2. The “proxy” paleoenvironmental
evidence for human presence in Hawai‘i,
which for now comes almost exclusively
from O‘ahu and Kaua‘i Islands, leaves no
doubt that human activities were creating
significant disturbances on both of these
islands by AD 1200. This then sets an
upper bound on Polynesian settlement at
this time. Moreover, the earliest dates on
human introduced Rattus exulans bones
on O‘ahu are consistent with Polynesian
arrival around AD 1000.
3. Re-dating of the O18 site at Bellows,
Waimānalo, O‘ahu puts the occupation
of that small hamlet at between AD
1040–1219. Obviously, this range falls
closely between the lower and upper
bounds indicated by the Eastern
Polynesian chronologies and the
paleoenvironmental evidence.
In my view, it is now reasonable to argue
that the first arrival of Polynesians in
Hawai‘i is unlikely to have occurred much
before AD 1000, although the event could
conceivably have been sometime in the 10th
century. There is also no question that at
least O‘ahu and Kaua‘i islands were already
well settled, with local populations
established in several localities, by AD
1200. Beyond this I fear it would be
dangerous to tread. But the research will
continue, and with future improvements in
methods accompanied by the inevitable
serendipity that archaeologists know they
must depend on, we may yet narrow down
the time frame of Polynesian discovery of
this most amazing archipelago.
Notes
1. This article is based upon the Keynote
Address delivered to the Society for
Hawaiian Archaeology at the 2010 Annual
Meeting at Wailua, Kaua‘i.
2. The main excavation at O18 took place
during the summer of 1967, as a University
of Hawai‘i field school. Although still a
Punahou student at the time, I participated in
the excavation at Pearson’s invitation, and
later helped to analyze the collections.
23
kirch
3. Although published by the University of
Hawai‘i Press in 1985, the manuscript was
based on lectures given by Kirch at the
University of Hawai‘i in the early 1980s.
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