Risk Minimization and the Traditional Ahupua'a in Kahikinui, Island of Maui, Hawai'i

Rather than viewing the culture history of Kahikinui, Maui, as a process of gradual population growth and ecological adaptation, this article proposes that the settlement and subsistence system found in the district at European contact was implemented virtually intact in the mid-fifteenth century as a deliberate and conscious chiefly strategy-both to avoid the social risks inherent in increasingly factionalized windward polities and to minimize the environmental risks involved in settling this dry leeward district. By approximately A.D. 1650, the spatial distribution of settlement and the formalization of agricultural field systems suggest the implementation of the ahupua 'a, or traditional Hawaiian community land unit. Kahikinui, located at the fringes of the pre-Contact sociopolitical structure, may have been among the first areas to suffer from the breakdown of the traditional ahupua'a system after European contact in A.D. 1778. KEYWORDS: Hawaiian archaeology, leeward environments, Maui, risk

Which is the Pico of Kahikinui?

Includes bibliographical references (pages [124]-133)This thesis presents the results of an in-depth examination of a previously undisputed, long-held local oral history surrounding a wellknown 19th-century habitation site along the south coast of the island of Maui, Hawai'i. More specifically, it presents data and results from a detailed ethnohistorical, architectural, and archaeological investigation of Kahikinui House (State Inventory of Historic Places Number 50-50-15-1536), located in Kahikinui District, Maui, Hawai'i. The prevailing history associated with the site is that the house was built by a shipwrecked Portuguese sailor named Antone Pico from the wood of the wrecked ship and that this person also married a woman of royal lineage from the area. Accordingly, each aspect of the story surrounding Pico was tested following accepted ethnohistorical, architectural, and/or archaeological methods. Questions addressed by the study centered on the identity and ethnicity of the person believed responsible for construction of the house, whether or not the house was in fact built from the wood of a ship, overall site chronology, the identity of the person's wife, if she was from Kahikinui, whether she was of high status, and if so, whether Pico benefited from such a relationship. The findings of all work undertaken during the course of the project indicate that the majority of the tale in question is false. Perhaps the most important aspect of the work presented here is its illumination of the problems and consequences of relying solely upon local oral histories as a basis for archaeological research of a given topic. Evidence presented here sufficiently demonstrates that such histories may be poorly referenced and are often incredibly misleading. The availability of a fairly rich and diverse ethnohistoric record and the effort made to use it were important aspects of the current project because they provided the most assistance in answering research questions. Combined with the information, or lack of it, provided by the architectural and archaeological components of the study, a wellrounded and solidly based argument addressing research questions is presented.M.A. (Master of Arts

Settlement Patterns and Subsistence Strategies in Kahikinui, Maui

The nature of pre-Contact settlement patterns and subsistence practices in dry lee­ward portions of the Hawaiian islands has been one focus of archaeological inves­tigations for over three decades. This research has revealed two basic agricultural and settlement systems which are largely defined by geographical and environmen­tal parameters-"enclosed" systems which are found in narrowly circumscribed but relatively well watered valleys on the older islands, and "open" systems which are found in areas lacking such valleys and water courses on the younger islands. Archaeological studies of enclosed leeward systems include Nu'alolo Valley on Kaua'i (Bennett 1931; Soehren ms.), the Makaha (Green 1969, 1970) and Halawa (Klieger 1995; Damp 1998) valleys on O'ahu, and the Halawa Valley on east Molo­ka'i (Kirch and Kelley 1975). Open leeward systems have been studied in upcoun­try Kula on east Maui (Kolb, Conte, and Cordy 1997), and in Lapakahi (Rosen­dahl 1994) and Kaloko (Cordy et al. 1991) on the island ofHawai'i. The archaeological remains of these two pre-Contact leeward systems vary not only between the two basic types of geographical features (valleys and slopes), but also within the individual islands themselves. In enclosed leeward systems with perma­nent water courses, irrigated taro pondfields (or lo'i) and terraces can be found close to the water sources at the head of the valleys, spreading out downstream as seasonal water fl.ow permits. Permanent settlement in these valleys is generally concentrated toward the mouth of the streams (Kirch and Kelley 1975), with dispersed residen­tial housing being located upstream near the field systems (Green 1969, 1970). In the karst landscape of leeward coastal O'ahu, natural sinkholes constitute a separate agricultural component to this system (Davis 1995)