Preliminary field report: the geochemistry of the Kookoolau Complex, Mauna Kea adze quarry (50-10-23-4136), TMK: 4-4-15:10

Author:

Lundblad, Steven P., Mills, Peter R.

Title:

Preliminary field report: the geochemistry of the Kookoolau Complex, Mauna Kea adze quarry (50-10-23-4136), TMK: 4-4-15:10

Year:

2006

Pages:

97 pages

Subject:

Adzes economic aspects Hawaii Adzes social aspects Hawaii Geochemistry Mauna Kea Adze Quarry Quarries and quarrying Mauna Kea

Summary:

This report includes a geochemical study conducted in part under a Natural Area Reserves System (NARS) permit from May 15, 2005 to May 15, 2006 within the Mauna Kea Adze Quarry complex, ahupuaa of Kaohe, district of Hamakua, Island of Hawaii (State Historic Preservation Division # 50-10-53-4136). In addition to being within NARS boundaries, the site carries great significance in the Native Hawaiian community, it is listed on the Hawaii State Register and National Register of Historic Places, and it is a National Historic Landmark. The Mauna Kea Adze Quarry includes a variety of workshops, rockshelters, open-air shelters, shrines, and a few known rockart features, but the most immediately striking features are the enormous piles of chipping debris from the manufacture of possibly hundreds of thousands of stone adzes (koi). Nineteenth century Boundary Commission testimony clearly places the quarry within the single ahupuaa (traditional land division) of Kaohe. The site is somewhat enigmatic because most Hawaiian economic models suggest that each ahupuaa was mostly self-sufficient, but the scale of the quarry indicates that its products were distributed far beyond Kaohe. The quarry (as currently defined) is also located at elevations 9,000 to 12,500 feet above sea level, where people could not have readily obtained food or fuel. This latter fact suggests that workers at the quarry must have received organized logistical support, either through chiefly sponsorship, or through commoner social networks. The current project is intended to build upon over three decades of prior research on the site by providing a sustained and non-destructive method of determining Hawaiian stone tool exchange patterns. The project was conceived in 2004 when the University of Hawaii at Hilo obtained an Energy-dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometer, as part of a National Science Foundation grant. It has a customized sample chamber that accommodates large artifacts such as adze blanks, poi pounders, and stone bowls and can rapidly generate broad-spectrum geochemical analyses with levels of precision in the parts per million range. The use of the EDXRF spectrometer is primarily devoted to the study of ancient Polynesian trade and voyaging patterns. However, Hilo's EDXRF spectrometer is currently the only one in Hawaii committed to cultural research.

URL:

https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/millsp/documents/NARreport.pdf

Date:

2006

Collection:

Monographs