Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-h6jzd Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-02-16T16:06:50.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strategies for constructing religious authority in ancient Hawai'i

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Mark D. McCoy ,
Thegn N. Ladefoged ,
Michael W. Graves  and
Jesse W. Stephen
Mark D. McCoy
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand (Author for correspondence; email: [email protected])
Thegn N. Ladefoged
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand (Email: [email protected])
Michael W. Graves
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, MSC01 – 1040, Anthropology 1, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA (Email: [email protected])
Jesse W. Stephen
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i, 2424 Maile Way, Saunders Hall 346, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822–2223, USA (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Through intensive archaeological investigation of temples in Hawai'i, the authors reveal a sequence of religious strategies for creating and maintaining authority that has application to prehistoric sequences everywhere. Expressed in the orientation and layout of the temples and their place in the landscape, these strategies develop in four stages over the course of a few hundred years, from the fifteenth to nineteenth century AD, from local shrines associated with agriculture to the development of a centralising priesthood serving the larger political economy.

Keywords

Hawai'ipre-contactpowerreligiontemplesterritories
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 329 , September 2011 , pp. 927 - 941
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bennett, W. C. 1931. Archaeology of Kauai (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 80). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.Google Scholar
Cachola-Abad, C. K. 1996. The significance of heiau diversity in site evaluations. Cultural Resource Management 8: 11–16.Google Scholar
Cordy, R. H. 2000. Exalted sits the chief: the ancient history of Hawai'i Island. Honolulu (HI): Mutual Publishing.Google Scholar
Graves, M. W. & Cachola-Abad, C.K. 1996. Seriation as a method of chronologically ordering architectural design traits: an example from Hawai'i. Archaeology in Oceania 31: 19–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, R. C. (ed) 1980. Makaha before 1880 AD (Pacific Anthropological Records 31). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.Google Scholar
Kamakau, S. M. 1961. Ruling chiefs of Hawai'i. Honolulu (HI): Kamehameha Schools Press.Google Scholar
Kamakau, S. M. 1976. The works of the people of old (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 61). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 1985. Feathered gods and fishhooks: an introduction to Hawaiian archaeology and prehistory. Honolulu (HI): University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 1990. Monumental architecture and power in Polynesian chiefdoms: a comparison of Tonga and Hawai'i. World Archaeology 22(2): 206–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 2004. Temple sites in Kahikinui, Maui, Hawaiian Islands: their orientations decoded. Antiquity 78: 102–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 2010. How chiefs became kings: divine kingship and the rise of archaic states in ancient Hawai'i. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirch, P. V., Millerstrom, S., Jones, S. & McCoy, M. D. 2010. Dwelling among the gods: a late pre-contact priest's house in Kahikinui, Maui, Hawaiian Islands. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 1(2): 145-60.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. & Sharp, W. D. 2005. Coral 230Th dating of the imposition of a ritual control hierarchy in pre-contact Hawai'i. Science 307: 102–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolb, M. J. 1991. Social power, chiefly authority, and ceremonial architecture in an island polity, Maui, Hawai'i. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Kolb, M. J. 1992. Diachronic design changes in heiau temple architecture from the Island of Maui, Hawai'i. Asian Perspectives 31(1): 9–37.Google Scholar
Kolb, M. J. 1994. Monumentality and the rise of religious authority in pre-contact Hawai'i. Current Anthropology 35(5): 521-47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolb, M. J. 1997. Labor, ethnohistory and the archaeology of community in Hawai'i. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4(3): 265-85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolb, M. J. 2006. The origins of monumental architecture in ancient Hawai'i. Current Anthropology 46(4): 657-64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, E. J. 1969. Alealea temple site, Honaunau: salvage report, in Pearson, R. J. (ed.) Archaeology on the island of Hawai'i (Asian and Pacific Archaeology series 3): 95–130. Honolulu (HI): Social Science Research Institute, University of Hawai'i.Google Scholar
Ladd, E. J. 1973. Kaneaki temple site: an excavation report, in Ladd, E. J. (ed.) Makaha Valley historical project: interim report 4 (Pacific Anthropological Records 19): 1–30. Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, T. N. & Graves, M. W. 2000. Evolutionary theory and the historical development of dry-land agriculture in North Kohala, Hawai'i. American Antiquity 65: 423-48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, T. N. & Graves, M. W. 2006. The formation of Hawaiian community boundaries, in Lilley, I. (ed.) Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands: 259-83. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, T. N. & Graves, M. W. 2008. Variable development of dryland agriculture in Hawai'i: a fine-grained chronology from the Kohala Field System, Hawai'i Island. Current Anthropology 49(5): 771–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, T. N., Graves, M. W. & Coil, J. 2005. Early sweet potato production in Hawai'i. Journal of the Polynesian Society 114(4): 359-73.Google Scholar
Malo, D. 1951. Hawaiian antiquities, Moolelo Hawai'i (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 2). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.Google Scholar
Mccoy, M. D. 2006. Landscape, social memory and society: an ethnohistoric-archaeological study of three Hawaiian communities. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Mccoy, M. D. 2008. Life outside the temple: reconstructing traditional Hawaiian ritual and religion through ritualized practices, in Fogelin, L. (ed.) Religion, archaeology and the material world (Occasional paper 36): 261-78. Carbondale (IL): Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.Google Scholar
McCoy, M. D. & Stephen, J. W. 2008. Examining the ritual landscape of North Kohala: a report on the 2008 monumental architecture field school. Report on file with the Hawai'i State Historic Preservation Division, Kapolei.Google Scholar
McCoy, P. C. 1999. Neither here nor there: a rites of passage site on the eastern fringes of the Mauna Kea adze quarry, Hawai'i. Hawaiian Archaeology 7: 11–34.Google Scholar
McCoy, P. C., Weisler, M. I., Zhao, J. & Feng, Y. 2009. 230Th dates for dedicatory corals from a remote alpine desert adze quarry on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i. Antiquity 83: 445-57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulrooney, M. A. & Ladefoged, T. N. 2005. Hawaiian heiau and agricultural production in the Kohala dryland field system. Journal of the Polynesian Society 114(1): 45–67.Google Scholar
Mulrooney, M. A., Ladefoged, T. N., Gibb, R. & Mccurdy, D. 2005. Eight million points per day: archaeological implications of laser scanning and three-dimensional modeling of Pu'ukohola Heiau, Hawai'i Island. Hawaiian Archaeology 10: 18–28.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C. L. N. 2001. Heiau orientations and alignments on Kaua'i. Archaeoastronomy 16: 46–82.Google Scholar
Stokes, J. F. G. 1991. Heiau of the island of Hawai'i: a historic survey of native Hawaiian temple sites; edited and introduced by Dye, T. S. (Bishop Museum Bulletin in Anthropology 2). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.Google Scholar
Swenson, E. 2006. Adaptive strategies or ideological innovations? Interpreting sociopolitical developments in the Jequetepeque Valley of Peru during the Late Moche Period. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26: 253-82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valeri, V. 1985. Kingship and sacrifice: ritual and society in ancient Hawai'i . Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Walker, W. M. ms. [1930]. Archaeology of Maui. Typescript in the archives, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu.Google Scholar
Weisler, M. I. & Kirch, P. V. 1985. The structure of settlement space in a Polynesian chiefdom: Kawela, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands. New Zealand Journal of Archaeology 7: 129-58.Google Scholar
Weisler, M. I., Collerson, K., Feng, Y-X, Zhao, J-X & Yu, K-F. 2006. Thorium-230 coral chronology of a late prehistoric Hawaiian chiefdom. Journal of Archaeological Science 33(2): 273-82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar