Peter Mills, Professor of Anthropology
Professor Peter Mills’s areas of expertise are in archaeology, colonialism in the Pacific, stone tool analysis, and heritage management.
Posted July 2, 2024
Peter Mills is a tenured professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. He also serves as director of the heritage management graduate program. He founded the UH Hilo Geoarchaeology Laboratory in 2004.
Professor Mills’s areas of expertise are in archaeology, colonialism in the Pacific, stone tool analysis, and heritage management.
Mills received his bachelor of arts in anthropology from Vermont University in 1984, and his master of arts in anthropology with emphasis on archaeology of the American Southwest from Washington State University in 1987. He received his doctor of philosophy in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. He arrived at UH Hilo the following year.
Prof. Mills’s dissertation was on the archaeology of Pāʻulaʻula State Historic Site on Kauaʻi (formerly mislabeled as a “Russian fort” before his research). That dissertation research continued, leading to the publication of a book that Mills says is one of his most significant contributions to the academic literature.
Groundbreaking discovery
Hawaiʻi’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History (2002, UH Press) blows apart the long-held “belief” about a “Russian fort” on Kauaʻi.
In reality, the fort, formerly called Russian Fort Elisabeth and now properly named Pāʻulaʻula State Historical Park, was largely built by Hawaiian hands as part of King Kaumualiʻi’s residential compound. Although Kaumualiʻi had Russian allies at the time who helped with the site’s design, it was never occupied by the Russians as the commonly used name “Russian Fort” implied.
Instead, as Mills demonstrates in his book, the site was Kaumualiʻi’s fort, built as part of his Russian alliance to maintain Kauaʻi’s sovereignty from Kamehameha. As such, its unique architecture reflects much about Hawaiian culture in the early 19th century, and very little about Russians.
In 2015, Mills, along with Russian colleague Alexander Molodin, dean of the Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture, were recognized by the Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation for their outstanding preservation efforts related to the fort.
- See UH Hilo anthropologist Peter Mills receives Hawaiʻi’s highest recognition of preservation projects (April 9, 2015, UH Hilo Stories)
The fort was finally renamed Pāʻulaʻula State Historical Park in June 2022 shortly after the indictment of a Russian foreign agent, Elena Branson, who had been using her influence to keep the Russian moniker on the site.
Charting new waters
A second book that Mills cites as being a significant contribution to the literature is Connecting the Kingdom: Sailing Vessels in the Early Hawaiian Monarchy, 1790-1840 (2022, UH Press).
In this book, Mills examines the emergence of the Hawaiian nation-state from sources mostly ignored by colonial and post-colonial historians alike. He examines how early Hawaiian chiefs appropriated Western sailing technology to help build their island nation. Chiefs began building many of their own western-style vessels by the 1790s and purchased others with sandalwood. There were over a hundred Western-style vessels that were in Hawaiian hands, and Mills closely follows the histories of 60 Hawaiian-owned schooners, brigs, barks, and peleleu canoes, of which the names are still known.
Previous historians dismissed this ocean vessel acquisition as “chiefly folly,” but Mills makes the point that the monarchy’s own nineteenth-century sailing fleet helped transform interisland tributary systems, alliance building, exchange systems, and emergent forms of Indigenous capitalism.
Following publication of the book, in 2024 Mills was invited by the owners of a 19th century style two-masted tall ship to join the 12-person crew on sea trials after a major restoration effort. One plan is to use the vessel as a research and education platform in Hawaiian waters.
UH Hilo Geoarchaeology Lab
Prof. Mills founded the UH Hilo Geoarchaeology Laboratory in 2004. The project started back in 2003, when Mills teamed up with Kenneth Hon, a professor of geology now retired, as investigators on a Major Research Instrumentation Grant from the National Science Foundation. Shortly thereafter, UH Hilo geologist Steve Lundblad joined with Mills while Hon moved into other roles.
That initial grant was used to found the lab to specialize in non-destructive analyses of basalt and volcanic glass artifacts from the Pacific using an Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometer that allows rapid study of the material without any damage to the artifacts.
The EDXRF is used to detect and record the geochemical “fingerprints” of the stone tools that prehistoric Hawaiians quarried from various sites, and tracks the extent to which that material was traded throughout the islands.
Over the initial three-year period of the project, the researchers processed thousands of stone samples obtained from sites on Hawai‘i island and housed in UH Hilo collections. Lundblad and Mills then worked with another NSF grant to non-destructively analyze basalt artifacts in museum collections throughout Hawai‘i.
With the lab fully established, Mills and Lundblad became pioneers in analyzing basalts on a large scale with the instrument. The team has been utilizing the lab to advance research and train students for over 20 years. The researchers say the EDXRF system, and the newer generation spectrometer later acquired, has generated a quantum change in the level of sampling of prehistoric Hawaiian stone tools. The team became leaders for using this technique in the Pacific Ocean basin, and this work became a big contribution to the literature.
Because of the customized calibrations for basalt that Mills and Lundblad have developed, the spectrometer has also become a valued tool for near real-time evaluation of fresh lava from Kīlauea and Maunaloa volcanoes.
The EDXRF system also is well adapted for undergraduate and graduate student use, and allows a new generation of Pacific Islander students to be trained in state-of-the-art geological and archaeometric techniques. Mills regularly mentors student interns in the Geoarchaeology Lab combined with huakaʻi (excursions) in the field.
“Seventeen students have become co-authors on peer-reviewed publications through the lab,” says Mills.
Mills says the research conducted in the lab strengthens today’s culture and community in a number of ways.
“One way is by demonstrating that social and economic relationships in Hawaiian culture have always extended beyond ahupuaʻa boundaries,” Mills says in an interview in 2012. “Observations that the ahupuaʻa system emphasized self-sufficiency are certainly valid, but not to the point that people living in them were isolated from others socially or economically. We also hope that by developing non-destructive methods of analysis, we can encourage more culturally appropriate kinds of scientific inquiry.”
Ultimately, the research through the lab is constructing a much clearer picture of how Hawaiians used the resources around them and contributes to a greater understanding of how they built their culture in a relatively short span of time.
Historical archaeology of Hawaiian ranching sites
In 2001, Mills began an historical archaeology project to investigate the development of ranching traditions in Hawaiʻi in the ahupuaʻa of Humuʻula on the eastern slopes of Maunakea.
The professor, often with his students, regularly takes huakaʻi (field trips) up the mountain to collect data. For example, studies in 2009 and 2011 focused on two ranching stations at Laumaiʻa. The earliest station appears to have been in use in the 1860s and abandoned shortly thereafter.
This project has led to a collaborative relationship with anthropologist Carolyn White and her students at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Mills is currently (2024) finishing up his third book, this one focusing on the archaeology and ethnohistory of ranching culture on the eastern slopes of Maunakea in the Humuʻula District.
Learn more
- Visit Prof. Mills’s website for more on his research, teaching, and community work.
By Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of Keaohou and UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
