| Abstract: |
Introduction: Polynesian chiefdoms, including those of Hawai'i, have been the focus of classic research concerning the development of cultural complexity. Service (1962) defined a <i>chiefdom</i> as characterized by permanently centralized redistribution of resources' administered through the hereditary office of chief as well as social stratification in which all individuals are ranked according to kinship distance from the chief. At the time of European contact, Hawai'i consisted of several chiefdoms, each divided into districts, which in turn consisted oflocal territorial units or <i>ahupua'a</i>. This territorial hierarchy was accompanied by a hierarchy of chiefly offices. The head of the chiefdom was a paramount chief who appointed lesser chiefs to administer the districts and <i>ahupua'a</i>. At each level of the hierarchy food and other materials were periodically collected to support the chiefs, who did not engage in subsistence activities, and to enable them to subsidize warfare, feasts, and ceremonies, or other public projects. The chiefly class, or <i>ali'i</i>, traced their ancestry to a senior ruling line. Rituals organized by a hierarchy of priests, material symbols of status, and an elaborate system of taboos all served to legitimize and maintain their political power (Earle 1978
Sahlins 1958). Service (1962, 1975) proposed that chiefdoms develop in areas with marked environmental differences where centrally located settlements with preferential access to varied natural resources emerge as redistributive centers. Social stratification follows redistribution, as individuals prominent in economic activities come to hold hereditary offices and maintain or increase their influence through the efficient management of regional specialization and exchange. Service's hypothesis was followed by others that proposed that complex societies develop in response to environmentalcircumstances reqUInng centralized economic management (Brumfiel and Earle 1987: 2). Few attempts have been made, however, to test Service's original hypothesis with archaeological data. Earle (1977, 1978) used ethnohistoric data to test the applicability of Service's redistributional hypothesis in Hawai'i. He rejected Service's hypothesis, noting that in Hawai'i the local <i>ahupua'a</i> encompassed parts of all available environmental zones, so that the need for regional redistribution of resources did not exist. He observed that any ecological differences between regions were resolved by the pursuit of different subsistence strategies rather than reliance on exchange. Earle also suggested that the redistribution characteristic of Hawaiian chiefdoms was actually a form of "taxation" used to support the elite and did not involve the widespread redistribution of necessities. Furthermore, this redistribution was ceremonial in focus and irregular in occurrence, and it could not have functioned to ensure distribution of subsistence items. Earle suggested that the key to the development of Hawaiian chiefdoms was not the distribution or redistribution of resources per se as Service had argued, but rather the use of certain resources to finance other status-earning activities. Earle has proposed a "dual economy" for the Hawaiian chiefdom consisting of a "political economy," characterized by "redistribution" in which food and other resources were collected to finance chiefly institutions, and a "subsistence economy," characteristic of the largely self-sufficient local communities within the chiefdom. He has also said that small-scale, reciprocal, and unregulated exchange in certain resources such as adze stone probably took place at the local level (Earle 1987:66). My research is an attempt to use archaeological evidence to study the distribution of a material resource in Hawaiian chiefdoms and to allow further evaluation of the role of redistribution in the development of this complex society. Specifically, this article focuses on the spatial and temporal distribution of adze stone on Hawai'i Island and the implications of these distributional patterns for prehistoric Hawaiian exchange systems and the development of complex chiefdoms in Hawai'i.
|
