Methodological Considerations for Modeling the Temporal Characteristics of Hawaiian Architecture: An Example from Kekaha Kai, North Kona

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Supporting Practical Inquiry: The Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Thomas Dye" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this presentation we build on Tom Dye’s pioneering approach to modeling the temporal parameters of Hawaiian architecture with an example from Kekaha Kai, North Kona, where he conducted archaeological investigations nearly two decades ago. We report a suite of uranium-thorium dates acquired from coral offerings recovered across the surface of a ritual structure (heiau) and the natural source environment of the corals, the foreshore. Our approach is influenced by transport and depositional models used by coastal geomorphologists when dating the development of coastal landforms. We evaluate the degree to which seemingly pristine fragments of coral harvested from the source environment contain inbuilt age. We classify environmental corals according to water worn erosional characteristics and provide precise temporal estimates for each sample. These analytical methods are then applied to dozens of coral samples collected from the surface of the ritual structure. The results indicate that the acquisition of suites of coral dates is necessary to gain a full understanding of the temporal range of ritual structures in Hawaii and that archaeologists should consider both the erosional condition of the archaeological samples and the relationship between the age and condition of coral samples in the source environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Supporting Practical Inquiry: The Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Thomas Dye   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36387.0