Hawaiian Ecodynamics, Amer. Anthrop. 2007 (original) (raw)
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Hawaii as a Model System for Human Ecodynamics
American Anthropologist, 2007
The human ecodynamics approach in archaeology privileges landscape as a core concept, asserting that there can be no environment or ecosystem detached from humans and their behavior. Drawing on recent research of a multidisciplinary biocomplexity project, I explore in this article the Hawaiian archipelago as a model system for studying human ecodynamics. Natural patterns of biogeochemical and climate gradients constrained the development of intensive agroecosystems over 1,000 years. An early phase of exponential population growth was linked with agricultural intensification of terraced irrigation systems, primarily on the older islands.
Journal of …, 2009
Intensive agricultural systems interact strongly and reciprocally with features of the lands they occupy, and with features of the societies that they support. We modeled the distribution of two forms of pre-European contact intensive agriculture -irrigated pondfields and rain-fed dryland systems -across the Hawaiian archipelago using a GIS approach based on climate, hydrology, topography, substrate age, and soil fertility. Model results closely match the archaeological evidence in defined locations. On a broader scale, we calculate that the youngest island, Hawai'i, could have supported 572 km 2 of intensive agriculture, 97% as rain-fed dryland field systems, while Kaua'i, the oldest island, could have supported 58 km 2 , all as irrigated wetland systems. Irrigated systems have higher, more reliable yields and lower labor requirements than rain-fed dryland systems, so the total potential yield from Kaua'i (w49k metric tons) was almost half that of Hawai'i (w97k metric tons), although Kaua'i systems required only w0.05 of the agricultural labor (w8400 workers, versus w165,000 on Hawai'i) to produce the crops. We conclude that environmental constraints to intensive agriculture across the archipelago created asymmetric production efficiencies, and therefore varying potentials for agricultural surplus. The implications both for the emergence of complex sociopolitical formations and for anthropogenic transformation of Hawaiian ecosystems are substantial.
Current Anthropology, 2008
Research in the leeward Kohala dryland agricultural field system on Hawai'i Island provides the opportunity to develop a fine-grained chronology for its development-both expansion and intensification-using a combination of chronometric and relative dating. Two pathways for agricultural development are identified for this field system, the first beginning as early as the fourteenth century and the second after the mid-seventeenth century. This chronology, combined with dating for residential features, religious sites, and territorial boundaries, makes it possible to link agricultural change with social and political dynamics in the late prehistoric period. This sequence is compared to four other relatively well-dated dryland field systems on the islands of Maui, Moloka'i, and Hawai'i. These systems can be assigned to either of the two pathways identified for Kohala, suggesting that dryland agricultural strategies can be sorted into (1) an earlier expansion and subsequent intensification in areas where conditions were better suited for such practices and (2) a later, more rapid expansion into and more limited intensification of areas associated with greater costs or risks. The second and later pathway for agricultural development is linked to earlier increases in populations living in more optimal locations, movement or expansion of these populations into marginal zones, regional population integration, and increasing surplus demands to fund chiefly ambitions involving territorial expansion.
"Intensive agricultural systems interact strongly and reciprocally with features of the lands they occupy, and with features of the societies that they support. We modeled the distribution of two forms of pre-European contact intensive agriculture – irrigated pondfields and rain-fed dryland systems – across the Hawaiian archipelago using a GIS approach based on climate, hydrology, topography, substrate age, and soil fertility. Model results closely match the archaeological evidence in defined locations. On a broader scale, we calculate that the youngest island, Hawai’i, could have supported 572 km2 of intensive agriculture, 97% as rain-fed dryland field systems, while Kaua’i, the oldest island, could have supported 58 km2, all as irrigated wetland systems. Irrigated systems have higher, more reliable yields and lower labor requirements than rain-fed dryland systems, so the total potential yield from Kaua’i (w49k metric tons) was almost half that of Hawai’i (w97k metric tons), although Kaua’i systems required onlyw0.05 of the agricultural labor (w8400 workers, versus w165,000 on Hawai’i) to produce the crops. We conclude that environmental constraints to intensive agriculture across the archipelago created asymmetric production efficiencies, and therefore varying potentials for agricultural surplus. The implications both for the emergence of complex sociopolitical formations and for anthropogenic transformation of Hawaiian ecosystems are substantial."
Current Anthropology, 2008
Research in the leeward Kohala dryland agricultural field system on Hawai‘i Island provides the opportunity to develop a fine-grained chronology for its development—both expansion and intensification—using a combination of chronometric and relative dating. Two pathways for agricultural development are identified for this field system, the first beginning as early as the fourteenth century and the second after the mid-seventeenth century. This chronology, combined with dating for residential features, religious sites, and territorial boundaries, makes it possible to link agricultural change with social and political dynamics in the late prehistoric period. This sequence is compared to four other relatively well-dated dryland field systems on the islands of Maui, Moloka‘i, and Hawai‘i. These systems can be assigned to either of the two pathways identified for Kohala, suggesting that dryland agricultural strategies can be sorted into (1) an earlier expansion and subsequent intensification in areas where conditions were better suited for such practices and (2) a later, more rapid expansion into and more limited intensification of areas associated with greater costs or risks. The second and later pathway for agricultural development is linked to earlier increases in populations living in more optimal locations, movement or expansion of these populations into marginal zones, regional population integration, and increasing surplus demands to fund chiefly ambitions involving territorial expansion.
Household expansion and agricultural intensification in ancient Hawaii
The Leeward Kohala Field System (LKFS) covering ∼60 km 2 on Hawai'i Island is one of the world's best-studied archaeological examples of preindustrial agricultural intensification. Archaeological correlates for households over a 400-y period of intensification of the LKFS (A.D. 1400-1800) indicate that household age, number, and distribution closely match the expansion of agricultural features at both macro-and microscales. We excavated and dated residential complexes within portions of five traditional Hawaiian land units (ahupua'a), two in the central core of the field system and three in the southern margins. Forty-eight radiocarbon dates from 43 residential features indicate an overall pattern of exponential increase in the numbers of households over time. Spatial distribution of these dates suggests that the core of the LKFS may have reached a population saturation point earlier than in the southern margins. Bayesian statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates from residential features in the core region, combined with spatial analysis of agricultural and residential construction sequences, demonstrates that the progressive subdivision of territories into smaller socioeconomic units was matched by addition of new residences, probably through a process of household fissioning. These results provide insights into the economic processes underlying the sociopolitical transformation from chiefdom to archaic state in precontact Hawai'i. household archaeology | radiocarbon dating | relative chronology | sociopolitical evolution | paleodemography
The Leeward Kohala Field System (LKFS) covering ∼60 km 2 on Hawai'i Island is one of the world's best-studied archaeological examples of preindustrial agricultural intensification. Archaeological correlates for households over a 400-y period of intensification of the LKFS (A.D. 1400-1800) indicate that household age, number, and distribution closely match the expansion of agricultural features at both macro-and microscales. We excavated and dated residential complexes within portions of five traditional Hawaiian land units (ahupua'a), two in the central core of the field system and three in the southern margins. Forty-eight radiocarbon dates from 43 residential features indicate an overall pattern of exponential increase in the numbers of households over time. Spatial distribution of these dates suggests that the core of the LKFS may have reached a population saturation point earlier than in the southern margins. Bayesian statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates from residential features in the core region, combined with spatial analysis of agricultural and residential construction sequences, demonstrates that the progressive subdivision of territories into smaller socioeconomic units was matched by addition of new residences, probably through a process of household fissioning. These results provide insights into the economic processes underlying the sociopolitical transformation from chiefdom to archaic state in precontact Hawai'i. household archaeology | radiocarbon dating | relative chronology | sociopolitical evolution | paleodemography
Archaeological Evidence for Agricultural Development In Kohala, Island of Hawaii
Journal of Archaeological …, 2003
Measuring subsistence change, especially when it involves questions of resource intensification, requires special attention to issues of data quality and relevance. This is particularly so when, as in Remote Oceania, the archaeological record is of relatively short duration and the nature of subsistence change was mostly quantitative, not qualitative. Agricultural development, particularly focused on the practice of dry land fixed field cultivation, is reviewed and a method developed for chronologically ordering the development of walls and trails constructed as the main structural features in three areas of the Kohala Dry Land Field System of Hawai'i Island. At least two different pathways to agricultural development are discernable, one of which documents intensification of effort over time and the other one shows the expansion of a relatively intensive system of dry land farming but little evidence of intensification. Differences in environment, geography, and the role of chiefs in underwriting agricultural development are likely factors that produce this pattern of dry land agriculture in Hawai'i.