Variable Development of Dryland Agriculture in Hawaiʻi

Abstract

Research in the leeward Kohala dryland agricultural field system on Hawaiʻi Island provides the opportunity to develop a fine‐grained chronology for its development—both expansion and intensification—using a combination of chronometric and relative dating. Two pathways for agricultural development are identified for this field system, the first beginning as early as the fourteenth century and the second after the mid‐seventeenth century. This chronology, combined with dating for residential features, religious sites, and territorial boundaries, makes it possible to link agricultural change with social and political dynamics in the late prehistoric period. This sequence is compared to four other relatively well‐dated dryland field systems on the islands of Maui, Molokaʻi, and Hawaiʻi. These systems can be assigned to either of the two pathways identified for Kohala, suggesting that dryland agricultural strategies can be sorted into (1) an earlier expansion and subsequent intensification in areas where conditions were better suited for such practices and (2) a later, more rapid expansion into and more limited intensification of areas associated with greater costs or risks. The second and later pathway for agricultural development is linked to earlier increases in populations living in more optimal locations, movement or expansion of these populations into marginal zones, regional population integration, and increasing surplus demands to fund chiefly ambitions involving territorial expansion.

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