Unearthing the Polynesian Past

Unearthing the Polynesian Past PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780824868345
Category : Archaeologists
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description

Unearthing the Polynesian Past

Unearthing the Polynesian Past PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780824868345
Category : Archaeologists
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description


Unearthing the Polynesian Past

Unearthing the Polynesian Past PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824853482
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Perhaps no scholar has done more to reveal the ancient history of Polynesia than noted archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch. For close to fifty years he explored the Pacific, as his work took him to more than two dozen islands spread across the ocean, from Mussau to Hawai'i to Easter Island. In this lively memoir, rich with personal—and often amusing—anecdotes, Kirch relates his many adventures while doing fieldwork on remote islands. At the age of thirteen, Kirch was accepted as a summer intern by the eccentric Bishop Museum zoologist Yoshio Kondo and was soon participating in archaeological digs on the islands of Hawai'i and Maui. He continued to apprentice with Kondo during his high school years at Punahou, and after obtaining his anthropology degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Kirch joined a Bishop Museum expedition to Anuta Island, where a traditional Polynesian culture still flourished. His appetite whetted by these adventures, Kirch went on to obtain his doctorate at Yale University with a study of the traditional irrigation-based chiefdoms of Futuna Island. Further expeditions have taken him to isolated Tikopia, where his excavations exposed stratified sites extending back three thousand years; to Niuatoputapu, a former outpost of the Tongan maritime empire; to Mangaia, with its fortified refuge caves; and to Mo'orea, where chiefs vied to construct impressive temples to the war god 'Oro. In Hawai'i, Kirch traced the islands' history in the Anahulu valley and across the ancient district of Kahikinui, Maui. His joint research with ecologists, soil scientists, and paleontologists elucidated how Polynesians adapted to their island ecosystems. Looking back over the past half-century of Polynesian archaeology, Kirch reflects on how the questions we ask about the past have changed over the decades, how archaeological methods have advanced, and how our knowledge of the Polynesian past has greatly expanded.

The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms

The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
A first study from an archaeological perspective of the elaborate systems of Polynesian chiefdoms presents an original account of the processes of cultural change and evolution over three millennia.

An Archaeology of Abundance

An Archaeology of Abundance PDF Author: Kristina M. Gill
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813057000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The islands of Alta and Baja California changed dramatically in the centuries after Spanish colonists arrived. Native populations were decimated by disease, and their lives were altered through forced assimilation and the cessation of traditional foraging practices. Overgrazing, overfishing, and the introduction of nonnative species depleted natural resources severely. Most scientists have assumed the islands were also relatively marginal for human habitation before European contact, but An Archaeology of Abundance reassesses this long-held belief, analyzing new lines of evidence suggesting that the California islands were rich in resources important to human populations. Contributors examine data from Paleocoastal to historic times that suggest the islands were optimal habitats that provided a variety of foods, fresh water, minerals, and fuels for the people living there. Botanical remains from these sites, together with the modern resurgence of plant communities after the removal of livestock, challenge theories that plant foods had to be imported for survival. Geoarchaeological surveys show that the islands had a variety of materials for making stone tools, and zooarchaeological data show that marine resources were abundant and that the translocation of plants and animals from the mainland further enhanced an already rich resource base. Studies of extensive exchange, underwater forests of edible seaweeds, and high island population densities also support the case for abundance on the islands. Concluding that the California islands were not marginal environments for early humans, the discoveries presented in this volume hold significant implications for reassessing the ancient history of islands around the world that have undergone similar ecological transformations. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson

A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief

A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520303415
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Tracing the origins of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians back to the shores of the South China Sea, archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch follows their voyages of discovery across the Pacific in this fascinating history of Hawaiian culture from about one thousand years ago. Combining more than four decades of his own research with Native Hawaiian oral traditions and the evidence of archaeology, Kirch puts a human face on the gradual rise to power of the Hawaiian god-kings, who by the late eighteenth century were locked in a series of wars for ultimate control of the entire archipelago. This lively, accessible chronicle works back from Captain James Cook’s encounter with the pristine kingdom in 1778, when the British explorers encountered an island civilization governed by rulers who could not be gazed upon by common people. Interweaving anecdotes from his own widespread travel and extensive archaeological investigations into the broader historical narrative, Kirch shows how the early Polynesian settlers of Hawai'i adapted to this new island landscape and created highly productive agricultural systems.

Unearthing New Zealand

Unearthing New Zealand PDF Author: Michael Malthus Trotter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeological surveying
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
"In the last 25 years archaeological research in New Zealand has undergone something of a revolution. Using new techniques and drawing on a wide range of disciplines, archaeologists are now piecing together a new and far more complex picture of the human occupation of this country over the last 1000 years. Until then it was popularly beieved that New Zealand had in the past been settled by two waves of non-European colonisers. It was commonly thought that the "Maoris", the Polynesians who inhabited the country at the time of Cook, had been preceded by a darker, possibly Melanesian and more primitive race called "Morioris". They had been supplanted by the Maoris who had arrived in a "Great Fleet" from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki some time in the fourteenth century. Today we know this version of events to be wrong -- a myth promulgated by Pakeha researchers at the beginning of the century. Instead, we now realise that this courntyr was probably first settled by Polynesians about 1000 years ago. From this founding population of possibly only a handful of settlers emerged the Maoris -- first as moa hunters, essentially itinerant hunters and gatherers whose impact on the new land was to have far reaching effects. By 500 years ago the changed environment had forced changes upon their economy and lifestyle in favour of more permanent settlements base around a largely agricultural economy. Gradually the classic and familiar Maori culture emerged to be altered and submerged in its turn by the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago. "Unearthing New Zealand" tells the fascinating story of this country's prehistory, reconstructing from archaeological evidence a sometimes extraordinarily complete picture of how these people lived and died. Its emphasis on social aspects -- food and clothing, work practices, burial customs, disease and death -- represents a new dimension in archaeological thinking ..."--Inside front cover.

Legacy of the Landscape

Legacy of the Landscape PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824817398
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Precontact Hawaiian civilization is represented by a rich legacy of archaeological sites, many of which have been preserved and are accessible to the public. This volume provides for the first time an authoritative handbook to the most important of these archaeological treasures. The 50 sites covered by this book are distributed over all the main islands and include heiau (temples), habitation sites, irrigated and dryland agricultural complexes, fishponds, petroglyphs, and several post-contact (early 19th-century) sites. Site locations are shown on individual island maps, and detailed plans are provided for several sites.

Feathered Gods and Fishhooks

Feathered Gods and Fishhooks PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824819385
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 800

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Book Description
This text aims to combine all the evidence for Hawaiian prehistory into a coherent pattern. It presents a balanced cultural history of the Hawaiian group of islands, from the first Polynesian settlement to the time of European contact and is grounded in the archaeological evidence.

How Chiefs Became Kings

How Chiefs Became Kings PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520303393
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In How Chiefs Became Kings, Patrick Vinton Kirch addresses a central problem in anthropological archaeology: the emergence of “archaic states” whose distinctive feature was divine kingship. Kirch takes as his focus the Hawaiian archipelago, commonly regarded as the archetype of a complex chiefdom. Integrating anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, traditional history, and theory, and drawing on significant contributions from his own four decades of research, Kirch argues that Hawaiian polities had become states before the time of Captain Cook’s voyage (1778-1779). The status of most archaic states is inferred from the archaeological record. But Kirch shows that because Hawai‘i’s kingdoms were established relatively recently, they could be observed and recorded by Cook and other European voyagers. Substantive and provocative, this book makes a major contribution to the literature of precontact Hawai‘i and illuminates Hawai‘i’s importance in the global theory and literature about divine kingship, archaic states, and sociopolitical evolution.

On the Road of the Winds

On the Road of the Winds PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520234618
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Providing a synthesis of archaeological and historical anthropological knowledge of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific islands, this text focuses on human ecology and island adaptations.