Overview

In early Hawai‘i, kuaaina were the hinterlands inhabited by kuaaina, or country folk. Often these were dry, less desirable areas where much skill and hard work were required to wrest a living from the lava landscapes. The ancient district of Kahikinui in southeast Maui is such a kua‘?ina and remains one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the islands. Named after Tahiti Nui in the Polynesian homeland, its thousands of pristine acres house a treasure trove of archaeological ruins—witnesses to the generations of Hawaiians who made this land their home before it was abandoned in the late nineteenth century. Kua‘?ina Kahiko follows kama‘?ina archaeologist Patrick Vin- ton Kirch on a seventeen-year-long research odyssey to rediscover the ancient patterns of life and land in Kahikinui. Through painstaking archaeological survey and detailed excavations, Kirch and his students uncovered thousands of previously undocumented ruins of houses, trails, agricultural fields, shrines, and temples. Kirch describes how, beginning in the early fifteenth century, Native Hawaiians began to permanently inhabit the rocky lands along the vast southern slope of Haleakal?. Eventually these planters transformed Kahikinui into what has been called the greatest continuous zone of dryland planting in the Hawaiian Islands. He relates other fascinating aspects of life in ancient Kahikinui, such as the capture and use of winter rains to create small wet-farming zones, and decodes the complex system of heiau, showing how the orientations of different temple sites provide clues to the gods to whom they were dedicated. Kirch examines the sweeping changes that transformed Kahikinui after European contact, including how some maka’?inana families fell victim to unscrupulous land agents. But also told throughout the book is the saga of Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui, a grass-roots group of Native Hawaiians who struggled to regain access to these Hawaiian lands.

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9780824839550

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Patrick V. Kirch transports readers to the remote district of Kahikinui on Maui, the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, to tell the story of life in the island's backcountry (kua'aina) in antiquity (kahiko). [The book] is intended to open up to the public what he has previously published in the scholarly literature and to paint a picture of what it was like to do archaeology on Maui; by these measures it is a definitive success. . . . While not intended as a book about ethics, this is nonetheless the story of an academic archaeologist's efforts to be, in Hawaiian terms, pono (righteous, proper), at a time when to be an archaeologist in some circles was to be a social pariah. . . . Lastly, it should be said that not only are all the archaeological interpretations here backed up by copious bibliographic information, but also that this is an authentic account of the landscape and its people.--Mark D. McCoy, Southern Methodist University Antiquity, 89 (2015) The book is perfectly balanced between science and culture, and they work together to magically bring the ancient Kahikinui community to life. One of the great strengths of Kua'aina Kahiko is its accessible, almost conversational style, while at the same time the presenting a great deal of scholarly content and little-known facts about Hawaiian archaeology. . . . The sheer volume of research undertaken and presented in this volume is extremely impressive. To survey vast expanses of rough terrain and map thousands of sites with a plane table and alidade is a feat in itself, not to mention the extensive excavations and subsequent laboratory work and data analyses that were conducted. To have completed this amount of work is an accomplishment that cannot be underestimated and the resulting publications have made a huge contribution to our field.--Windy Keala McElroy, University of Hawai'i at Manoa Journal of Pacific Archaeology, 6:1 (2015) The strengths of the book lie in its exceptional writing, the evidence supplied to support hypotheses and conclusions, and the interesting topics of discussion. Kirch offers good explanations for Hawaiian words and the Hawaiian language glossary is easy to find and use at the end of the book. . . . Kirch delightfully conveys a sense of what it is like to be an archaeologist working in the Hawaiian Islands. He portrays the daily tasks and difficulties often encountered by archaeologists, especially in hot and arid leeward areas such as Kahikinui. Readers learn about the many conceptual tools archaeologists use to interpret what they find on and below the ground and analyze inside specialist laboratories.--Michael Dega, Scientific Consultant Services, Inc. (SCS) Asian Perspectives, 53:2 (Fall 2014)

Author Information

Patrick Vinton Kirc is the Class of 1954 Professor of anthropology and integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

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