Warming to the Tempo of Change in Old Hawai`i

Summary

Archaeologists sometimes claim that the refined chronologies

yielded by Bayesian calibration make it possible to distinguish between

Levi-Strauss's "hot" and "cold" societies. Historians of Hawai`i leave

little doubt that Hawai`i was a "hot" society in the early historic

period. A review and comparison of chronologies for the tempo of change

in pre-Contact Hawai`i distinguishes the "cold" society reconstituted by

ad hoc methods from the "hot" society reconstituted by the Bayesian

method. We make two claims: 1) the ad-hoc chronologies from Hawai`i are

incongruous with the historical record and 2) Bayesian chronologies

provide context and time-depth for the "hot" Hawaiian society described

by historians.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Moments in Time: Re-creating History with the Bayesian Approach

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15403