Ethnoornithological and Genomic Perspectives on Royal Hawaiian Featherwork

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Hawaiian featherwork constitutes a treasured element of Hawaiian cultural heritage. Feather artefacts curated in museums today were acquired between the late 18th and the early 20th centuries and it is clear that their production required thousands of feathers sourced from Hawaiian forest birds. Many of these bird species are currently either in decline or extinct, but the extent to which featherwork manufacture contributed to this remains uncertain. We hypothesize that the sacred status of Hawaiian forest birds allowed for feather harvesting to occur in a sustainable manner. We are investigating this using a non-invasive, museum collection-based approach (counts of feathers, extrapolation to total birds exploited). Furthermore, we are employing genomic methods (target DNA capture, high-throughput sequencing) to learn more about the histories of these artefacts. For the genomic work, we make use of contemporary samples for the extant species, museum specimens from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the unique source of DNA that are loose feathers from the artefacts themselves. We create a population genomic framework within which data from cape feathers can be placed – to provide clues regarding provenances of feathers used in ‘ahu’ula as well as to confirm species identities of the birds used.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26025