Emergent Landscapes: Simulating the Distribution of Residential Features in a Hawaiian Dryland Agricultural System

Author(s): Thegn Ladefoged; Benjamin Davies

Year: 2017

Summary

Cultivation in the Leeward Kohala Field System (Hawai‘i Island) required sufficient rainfall for crops to flourish. Periodic droughts restricted production to upper elevations where orographic rainfall was higher and more dependable, likely influencing the labour needs and settlement patterns of resident populations. We employ a series of spatially-explicit agent based models incorporating cultural conceptions of kapu (sacred) and noa (profane) in conjunction with environmental parameters and individual decision-making. The models explore how the ecodynamics of land use and post-depositional processes within this highly productive rain-fed agricultural system combined to pattern the distribution of archaeological features we observe in the present. We propose that the constriction and expansion of cultivation in response to variation in seasonal and annual rainfall produced a palimpsest landscape of periodically abandoned and reused residential features and temporary structures.

Cite this Record

Emergent Landscapes: Simulating the Distribution of Residential Features in a Hawaiian Dryland Agricultural System. Thegn Ladefoged, Benjamin Davies. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 431519)

Spatial Coverage

min long: 111.973; min lat: -52.052 ; max long: -87.715; max lat: 53.331 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15246