Returning to the Gardens of Lono: New Investigations in the Kona Field System, Hawaii Island

Summary

Hawai‘i Island’s Kona Field System is the largest dryland field system in the Hawaiian Islands. The chronology for the development of this system has been addressed through several major studies, including the landmark volume ‘Gardens of Lono’ which described intensive survey and excavations on the grounds of the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Kealakekua. Since its publication, radiocarbon dates from this and most other excavations in Kona have been rejected due to a lack of control for short-lived taxa, and new excavations of fields in Kealakekua suggest a much more recent chronology for the development of the fields. In 2015, we returned to the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden and conducted new excavations of a kuaiwi (field wall) aimed at recovering appropriate material for radiocarbon dating and new paleoethnobotanical studies. In this paper, we outline the results of excavation and discuss their implications for the development of agriculture in Hawai‘i.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Model Environments: Human Ecodynamics on Islands

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