Colluvial slope agriculture in context: An extensive agricultural landscape along the slopes of Punalu‘u Valley, O‘ahu Island, Hawai‘i

Abstract

Archaeological research on traditional Hawaiian agriculture has generally focused on two primary strategies: irrigated pondfield and intensive dryland cultivation. However, other cultivation strategies, such as colluvial slope agriculture, were practiced but have been less intensively studied and remain poorly understood. To begin to remedy this paucity of information, a joint education and research project between International Archaeological Research Institute, Inc., the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) Department of Anthropology, and Kamehameha Schools (KS) was conducted in Punalu‘u Ahupua‘a to examine an integrated slope agricultural, religious, and residential complex. Subsurface investigations and radiometric dating indicate that initial vegetation clearing of the area may have occurred as early as the late thirteenth to early fifteenth centuries AD. As early as the fifteenth century, some stands of economic trees were growing, which may have coincided with initial placement of boundary walls along some portions of the slopes. Major expansion of the surface agricultural infrastructure along the landscape occurred through the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries AD. Religious structures and associated features were built as early as the seventeenth century and later. These results situate colluvial slope agriculture within the broader context of traditional Hawaiian agronomic strategies and political and social processes across the Hawaiian archipelago.

Keywords:

• Bayesian models
• chronology
• surface architecture
• arboriculture

Supplementary information

Supplemental Information 1: Methods of Bayesian Model and Tempo Plot Construction for Morrison et al.: Colluvial slope agriculture in context: An extensive agricultural landscape along the slopes of Punalu’u Valley, O’ahu Island, Hawai’i. S1-1-MCMC Output, S1-2-Tempo Activity Plot, S1-3-R Script, S1-4-Colonization Model, S1-5-OxCal Model, S1-6-Colonization Prior. Supplemental Information 2: Uranium Dating Methods.

Acknowledgements

Kamehameha Schools presented the concept of collaborating with International Archaeological Research Institute Inc. (IARII) and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa to provide students with the opportunity to be trained locally in technical archaeological skills on KS land. We would like to thank the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa College of Social Sciences and all the field school students who joined us during the summers of 2018 and 2019. We also thank Beau Dinapoli and an anonymous reviewer for providing detailed comments that helped to improve the manuscript significantly. The following individuals contributed to the project in important ways: J. S. Athens, Makanani Bell, Joey Char, Tom Dye, Jennifer Huebert, Justin Maxwell, and Rona Ikehara-Quebral. Finally, we thank the community of Punalu‘u for their support and interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.