Michael J. Kolb

Monumentality and the Rise of Religious Authority in Precontact Hawai'i [and Comments and Reply]

Changes in temple labor investment and sacrificial offerings indicate that the rise in religious authority of the Hawaiian chiefly hierarchy correlates with an increase in political centralization and the intensifying role of the chief as divine intermediary through time. Initially, temples were small public courts akin to traditional Polynesian shrines used to reaffirm genealogical ties. During a period of internecine warfare and political instability and conflict in the I5th century A.D., temples became extremely large, a practical symbol of the burgeoning power of elites as they used ritual labor obligations to reaffirm chiefly genealogical relationships and enhance class cooperation. After island unification in the i6th century, chiefly religious activity shifted to sacrificial ceremonies and the consumption of surplus goods and foodstuffs as a result of status competition. By the time of European contact in the igth century, divinely sanctified rituals associated with war and levying taxes were instituted to enhance the status and power of the paramount chief through personal displays of material wealth. The Hawaiian case appears to follow a common trajectory among complex societies, where religious authority is increasingly expressed through the political economy, and serves as a contextual model of a complex chiefdom undergoing rapid political stratification.

Labor mobilization, ethnohistory, and the archaeology of community in Hawai'i

Hawaiian ethnohistory has long been used to generate archaeological models of the past. However, continued reliance on the direct historical method has molded our view of ancient Hawaiian society into one of an unchanging and “timeless” instituion. This paper develops a more heuristic approach to studying the past by critically analyzing both ethnohistoric and archaeological data. A descriptive model of labor mobilization is presented that identifies a three-tiered continuum of labor organization. This model then is used as a springboard to examine the ethnohistoric and archaeological landscapes of Waiohuli, a traditional Hawaiian community. A temporal analysis of Waiohuli architectural energetics illustrates how certain social relationships were enhanced and emphasized by the construction and manipulation of the communitys abuilt landscape over time. Results demonstrate that Waiohulis pattern of social organization was not timeless at all, but shifted from a period of regional centralization and control over labor to one of community independence.

The Origins of Monumental Architecture in Ancient Hawai‘i

At the time of European contact in AD 1778, chiefs in the Hawaiian archipelago had implemented a temple network that helped reaffirm an ideology of kingship, feudalize land ownership, impose ritual control over labor and production, and facilitate internecine warfare over territory. A corpus of 90 14C dates from 40 temples on the island of Maui indicates that this temple system originated AD 1200 and developed over four phases that correlate with some general sociopolitical trends distilled from ethnohistory. An important shift in temple construction and use is noted for \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage{wasysym} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

Monumentality and the Rise of Religious Authority in Precontact Hawai'i

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Elymian regional interaction in Iron Age western Sicily: a preliminary neutron activation study of incised/impressed tablewares

\end{document} AD 14521625, a time of island unification and changing land tenure practices. Overall, temple development follows a cycle of construction and use characteristic of incipient state development, coinciding with distinct periods of political tension when it was important to encourage and control social allegiances.

Staple Finance, Ritual Pig Sacrifice, and Ideological Power in Ancient Hawai'i

The archaeology of complex societies in western Sicily has traditionally focused upon Greek and Phoenician colonization rather than the development of the indigenous peoples of the interior. The Salemi regional survey project in western Sicily was conceived as a means to track long-term landscape change of this interior ‘indigenous’ landscape. From 1998 to 2000, this survey has conducted an extensive survey of 150 sq. km of the Salemi region, an intensive survey of 8 sq. km around a nearby Late Bronze Age (LBA) hilltop settlement of Mokarta (Mannino & Spatafora 1995; Spatafora & Mannino 1992; Tusa 1992), and an intensive survey of 25 sq. km around the Early Iron Age (EIA) hilltop settlement of Monte Polizzo (FIGURE 1). Survey work is part ofthe Sicilian–Scandinavian archaeological project (Morris et al . in press; http://dig.anthro.niu.edu/sicily ), an international team of scholars who are undertaking large-scale excavations at Monte Polizzo (FIGURE 2). Preliminary survey results reveal that these LBA and EIA peoples relied on an intricate valley hinterland around their hilltop residences. Moreover, marked differences exist between the LBA and EIA valley hinterlands.