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An Early Prehistoric Site at Bellows Beach, Waimanalo, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands
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A STRATIFIED pr ehistoric site located in sand dun es at Bellows Air Force Base on the windward coast of Oahu, Hawaiian Islands, was excava ted during 1967. A living area containing pits and house remains dating from A. D. 6 0 0 was excavated according to natural layers . Th e artifacts are similar to those found from th e South Point (Ka Lae) area of Hawaii and to early types from th e Marquesas I slands. Osteometric data on five burials found in pits ar e presented. The remains of dom esticated dogs and pigs, in addition to th ose of th e Hawaiian rat, were recovered. It is thought that the 018 or Bellows Site was occupied by a co-residenti al dom esti c group relying on the sea and agricult ural areas in Waimanalo Valley for their subsistence. During th e winter of 1967, Unite d Sta tes Air Force personnel at Bellows Air Force Base on windward Oahu notified the Bernice P. Bishop Museum th at con structi on work in several areas of the base had un earthed human skeleto ns, though t' to be prehist oric. Mr. Lloyd Soehren investigated the ar ea on severa l occasion s, suggesting that locations removed by several hundred metres from the shore of Waimanalo Ba y ap peared t o he isolated burials, while the locus near the shore appeared to be a village site. A crew of volunte ers began work on the supposed village for about eigh t week-ends in February and March, under the joint superv ision of Mr. Soehr en and the senior author. During the month f August, 1967, a portion of the site wa s excavated by a crew of about 10 for 14 working days as part of a field training programme of th e Summ er Session of th e University of Hawaii.
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... Grayson (1979) argues that despite the problems associated with NISP (also with MNI), it is possible to introduce other lines of complementary evidence, such as taphonomic studies. There are limited examples in Pacific fishing studies where only NISP was reported (e.g., Allen 1992a;Kirch 1988;Pearson et al. 1971;Weisler 1999Weisler , 2004, unlike fishing studies outside the Pacific, where NISP values are more commonly used as the only measure of taxonomic abundance (e.g., Amundsen et al. 2005;McKechnie 2007;Rick and Erlandson 2011;Robson et al. 2013;Zangrando 2007). Grayson (1979) and Lyman (2008) concur that NISP is the most useful measure of taxonomic abundance, and there has been strong historic precedent for this in North American zooarchaeological analysis. ...
... In the pre-1980s Pacific ichthyoarchaeology, the problems associated with taphonomy and site formation processes were acknowledged but rarely addressed; these include the impact of soil pH on fish bone preservation (e.g., Allo 1970), the general friability of fish bone in archaeological deposits (e.g., Kirch and Rosendahl 1973;Pearson et al. 1971;Shawcross 1975), the effects that high oil content of tuna bone has on preservation (e.g., Davidson et al. 1998;Severance 1986), and the effects of scavengers such as dogs and pigs (Davidson 1971). There has been more intensive research on taphonomy and site formation processes outside the Pacific as it relates to storage and preservation (e.g., Carenti 2013;Jones 1984;Smith et al. 2011), butchery and processing techniques (e.g., skeletal element representation; Cerón-Carrasco 1994;Colley 1984;Van Neer et al. 2007;Zohar et al. 2001), trade and resource movement (e.g., Barrett 1997;Broughton et al. 2006;Carvajal-Contreras et al. 2008;Perdikaris et al. 2007), and cultural versus natural site accumulation (e.g., Van Neer and Morales 1992; Zohar et al. 2014). ...
... Even fewer studies completed taxonomic identifications of archaeological fish bone for diet and subsistence reconstructions (e.g., Gifford 1951;Wallace and Wallace 1969). Increases or decreases in fish bone assemblages, or more commonly, the relationship between marine and terrestrial diets over time was discussed, but since the quantities of fish bone identified to taxon were often low, temporal change was difficult to assess (e.g., Kirch 1971;Kirch and Rosendahl 1973;Pearson et al. 1971;Skjølsvold 1972). ...
The Pacific Islands—consisting of culturally diverse Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia—is the ideal region to investigate the development of prehistoric fishing studies, as nowhere else on Earth is there such environmental contrasts among island types and their marine environments. We review the ichthyoarchaeological literature for the Pacific and assess developments in recovery methods, reference collections, taxonomic identifications, quantification, taphonomy and site-formation processes, ethnoarchaeology, approaches to diet and subsistence reconstructions, sustainability, and the importance of applied zooarchaeology for fisheries management and conservation. Ichthyoarchaeologists are beginning to work more closely with resource managers, fisheries biologists, policy makers, and indigenous communities to produce holistic studies of conservation management, resource sustainability, and assessments of human impacts on marine ecosystems over centuries to millennial time scales.
... The Waimānalo assemblages are from Bellows Beach (the current Bellows Air Force Station). The bulk of the assemblage was excavated as part of University Hawaiʻi field schools in the 1960s at Bellows Dune (Pearson et al., 1971), one of the earliest deposits in the archipelago (Site 50-80-15-4852 (O18)) (Dye and Pantaleo, 2010). Portions of the assemblage also stem from a cultural resource management (CRM) project by Barrera (1984) at Site 50-80-15-1445 at the Air Force station. ...
Exchange systems are constituted by multiple materials moving in different patterns. Factions in societies negotiate access to these materials based on their social and practical utility, as well as whether and how society honors property rights claims to a resource. In Hawaiʻi, there has been a primary focus on the movement of staples and wealth that fueled political economies with less attention placed on materials largely outside those political economies. Volcanic glass is one item that is hypothesized to have moved in a decentralized manner as a common pool resource, though these interpretations are based on data largely from a single island and source. Here, we build on this research by evaluating and interpreting evidence of volcanic glass exchange on the island of Oʻahu. We show that the composition of assemblages can be best predicted by the distance from archaeological locations (destinations) to multiple sources (origins). Furthermore, the density of sources proximal to archaeological locations influences assemblage composition. For Oʻahu, we find no evidence that leaders claimed property rights in volcanic glass at the scale of our analysis.
... Parrotfishes form an important part of the diet of the critically endangered, endemic, Hawaiian monk seal diet (goodman-Lowe, 1998; Longenecker et al., 2006; Longenecker, 2010;Cahoon, 2011) and are a prominent fish component of Hawaiian archaeological deposits (Pearson et al., 1971;Kirch, 1979Kirch, ,1982goto, 1984;o'Day, 2001). equations that allow total body size to be estimated from the size of parrotfish remains will help inform conservation decisions for an apparently food-limited marine mammal and lead to better understanding of prehistoric patterns of human resource exploitation in Hawai'i. ...
This paper is a cross-comparative examination of how tropical forested islands were populated by humans. It first describes the unique ecological conditions of these environments, how they fluctuated during glacial cycles, and the challenges and affordances they provided people. The paper then explores the global archaeological record, classifying modes of colonisation that led insular tropical forests to be populated. These modes include terrestrial colo-nisation followed by insularisation (Mode A), maritime colonisation followed by major landmass reconfiguration (Mode B), maritime colonisation of uninhab-ited islands that always remained insular (Mode C), and maritime colonisation of already inhabited islands (Mode D). Finally, the paper discusses how, amongst Homo sapiens, ongoing dynamism between human adaptive behaviours and environmental flux stimulated processes of diversification, speciali-sation, and connectivity in these crucial ecologies; by contrast, archaic hominins like Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, and Homo luzonensis may have found changes associated with forest expansion and insularity extremely challenging.
Tracing the origins of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians back to the shores of the South China Sea, archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch follows their voyages of discovery across the Pacific in this fascinating history of Hawaiian culture from about one thousand years ago. Combining more than four decades of his own research with Native Hawaiian oral traditions and the evidence of archaeology, Kirch puts a human face on the gradual rise to power of the Hawaiian god-kings, who by the late eighteenth century were locked in a series of wars for ultimate control of the entire archipelago. This lively, accessible chronicle works back from Captain James Cook's encounter with the pristine kingdom in 1778, when the British explorers encountered an island civilization governed by rulers who could not be gazed upon by common people. Interweaving anecdotes from his own widespread travel and extensive archaeological investigations into the broader historical narrative, Kirch shows how the early Polynesian settlers of Hawai'i adapted to this new island landscape and created highly productive agricultural systems.
In How Chiefs Became Kings, Patrick Vinton Kirch addresses a central problem in anthropological archaeology: the emergence of "archaic states" whose distinctive feature was divine kingship. Kirch takes as his focus the Hawaiian archipelago, commonly regarded as the archetype of a complex chiefdom. Integrating anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, traditional history, and theory, and drawing on significant contributions from his own four decades of research, Kirch argues that Hawaiian polities had become states before the time of Captain Cook's voyage (1778-1779). The status of most archaic states is inferred from the archaeological record. But Kirch shows that because Hawai'i's kingdoms were established relatively recently, they could be observed and recorded by Cook and other European voyagers. Substantive and provocative, this book makes a major contribution to the literature of precontact Hawaii and illuminates Hawaii's importance in the global theory and literature about divine kingship, archaic states, and sociopolitical evolution.
The result of a radiocarbon determination is commonly expressed as an age given in radiocarbon years. An error is usually assigned to each value as a measure of the statistical uncertainty of the measurement. Date lists published in this journal use a standard form of reporting dates and their errors (see Editorial Statements in Radiocarbon, v. 3 and v. 4). The conversion of a radiocarbon age, given in radiocarbon years B.P. (i.e., radiocarbon years elapsed since the origin of the sample) to a true calendar year makes necessary certain assumptions with respect to: (1) the half-life of C 14 , (2) the production rate of C 14 by cosmic rays, (3) the size of reservoirs into which C 14 is distributed and the exchange rate of this distribution. Libby (1955, p. 10) has shown that as an approximation one may assume that reservoir size and production and distribution rates, and therefore the C 14 activity in atmospheric CO 2 have been constant. However, the more accurate measurements of recent years have shown that at least one of these quantities must have varied with time. This means that a more complicated relationship exists between radiocarbon age and exact calendar age of a sample than had been assumed by Libby. This relationship cannot be determined theoretically, but can be derived empirically by determination of the radiocarbon contents of samples of known age. The following summarizes our present knowledge regarding differences between radiocarbon ages and true ages and the present status of the empirical calibration of the radiocarbon time scale.
Uni versit y of T oronto * A bstract . Individual burials recovered by archa eological excavation from two p rehisto ric T ongan bu rial mounds are descri bed . Re mai ns (often incom plet e) of some 99 individ ua ls ar e analysed wh ere possible according to age an d sex and an assessment of sta t ure and build atte mpted. M orphological and some metrical dat a for bo t h cranial and infr acrani al mat eri al, and nonm et rical dat a on dentition are pr esent ed. A section on pa laeopatho logy is included . Limited co mpa riso ns are drawn bet ween th e excavated sa mp le and modern (c. 1920) T ongans. 1.1. The report that follows is an osteological (odontological) an alysis of cranial a nd infracrani al remain s from two Polynesian burial mounds (To -At-l and T o-At-2) excava ted by J. M. Davidson in 1964 on th e island • of T ongat apu (Davidson, thi s volume). This study was carr ied out during a six-week period from July 1967 to mid-August at the Auckland In stitute and Mu seum in Auckland, Ne w Zealand. It constituted part of a summer's . . independent fieldwork pro gramm e for purposes of collecting data to be used in my doctoral dissertation in Physical Anthropology at th e Uni versity of T oront o. 1.2. A CKN OW LE DGE MENTS I wish to acknowl edge the assista nce of Miss Janet David son and others at th e Auckland Institute and Mu seum in Auckland, Ne w Zealand , for making available for study the skeletal collection here to be describ ed. My thanks ar e also due to Miss Da vidson for supplying me with information regarding her archaeological excava tions a nd exhumation of th ese bones. Also, I am indebted to th e Department of Anthropology, Universit y of Auckland 's photographer, Mr . Cyr il Schollum, who did much of th e ph otographic work here presented, as well to Mr. John Glover for assistance and fine work at th e Univ ersity of T oronto.