| Abstract: |
Introduction: In the preface to <i>Volcanoes in the Sea</i> Macdonald and Abbott (1970: ix), in referring to the Hawaiian Islands and other islands in the mid-Pacific, noted: "We who make our homes in the islands tend to become complacent in our surroundings, giving little thought to the grandeur of the scenery around us and to the dramatic processes that brought it into being." Archaeologists working in Hawai'i are no exception to this observation. Although archaeologists now realize that "the Hawaiian Islands are not a 'cultural laboratory' in which environment can be held to have remained 'constant'" (Kirch 1985: 290), they tend to concentrate on the culture of the colonizing Polynesians as a major force that shaped the island ecosystem. Little attention is given to how natural events could have shaped and reshaped that ecosystem as well. The three major geologically based events that this paper will be concerned with are volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis. In the two thousand or so years that humans have inhabited the Hawaiian Islands, three volcanoes on the island of Hawai'i (Kilauea, Mauna Loa, and Hualālai) and one on the island of Maui (Haleakalā) have been active. Active volcanoes not only mean eruptions and lava flows but also earthquakes. Earthquake swarms both precede and follow eruptions and are the result of shifting of rocks in the volcanic structures when the volcanoes swell and shrink. Although most of the earthquakes in Hawai'j are small and do little or no damage, a few large earthquakes have been recorded on the island of Hawai'i in historic times (Macdonald and Abbott 1970: 252-254). Strong earthquakes can generate tsunamis, or seismic sea waves. In historic times in Hawai'i waves that have done moderate to severe damage have been generated locally or have come from the Aleutian Islands, South America, and Kamchatka (Macdonald and Abbott 1970: 260-261). How volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis in the last one to two thousand years have impacted both the people living in Hawai'i and the archaeological remains associated with them have not received the attention they deserve by archaeologists. There are two primary areas archaeologists must become more cognizant of as they study the archaeological record. The first is the impact such geological eventshad on the people who were living in the area. This not only includes direct impact to habitation, subsistence, and religious structures and activities, but also to the more subtle impact such events have on the underlying mind set and life ways that produced such structures and activities. The second is the impact such events, even in modem times, have on the archaeological record that is available for study.
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