Despotism, cooperation, and the evolution of social hierarchy in prehistoric Hawai‘i

Summary

Ancient Hawaiian society is often emphasized as a locus for the evolution of complex hierarchical polities. At the time of European contact, Hawaiian society was divided into a large class of commoners and a smaller class of hereditary chiefs and land-managers, the latter controlling a vastly disproportionate share of land and resources. This despotism by Hawaiian elites is regularly emphasized in discussions of the ‘development of the state’; however, the high level of cooperation inherent in this social organization is not. This paper is an attempt to compliment previous research by exploring the evolution of social hierarchy in Hawai‘i using a suite of models derived from evolutionary ecology and evolutionary game theory, specifically, the Ideal-Free and Ideal-Despotic Distribution models, economic defendability, and models of cooperation. In particular, problems associated with large-scale cooperation in despotic social groups are emphasized as a powerful force leading to hierarchy. The predictions of these theoretical models are evaluated using the archaeological record of the Leeward Kohala region on the Island of Hawai‘i.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Evolution and Ecology in Oceania

Keywords

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