Contrast and Connection in a Colonial-Era Hawaiian Hinterland: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Households on the Nā Pali Coast, Kaua‘i Island

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While researchers once considered the residents of hinterlands as the passive recipients of social and cultural influence, scholars have increasingly reframed these regions as dynamic zones of innovation and creative adaptation. Hinterlands have often been mentioned in investigations of indigenous sites in the context of European colonialism. Still, little attention has been paid to the dynamics of social transformation in remote areas of colonial-era Polynesia, including Hawai‘i. While the Nā Pali Coast of Kaua‘i Island, Hawai‘i, was nominally incorporated into the Kaua‘i kingdom, in the period after European contact shifts in settlement patterns and modes of transportation rendered this region increasingly isolated. My research investigates how trajectories of household-level social and material transformation in this remote area differed from those more central areas of Hawai‘i. Preliminary results suggest that residents of the Nā Pali Coast maintained many familiar domestic practices throughout the nineteenth century, perhaps intentionally choosing to situate themselves on the margins of Hawai‘i’s emerging market economy. These practices included pursuits such as small-scale farming and fishing and household-level craft production. Despite the persistence of such established routines, however, artifacts from residential contexts suggest that residents of the Nā Pali Coast maintained deep connections to Hawai‘i as a whole.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23218