Archaeobotany of Ka'ūpūlehu

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Thousands of charcoal specimens from 23 traditional Hawaiian sites throughout Ka’ūpūlehu Ahupua’a in north Kona were analyzed to see how kama’aina (“people of the land”) interacted with their environment. Fifty-one plant taxa, including 36 plants of Hawaiian origin and six Polynesian introductions, were identified. Combining charcoal identification and ethnobotanical data, archaeobotanical analysis provides insight to the variety of plant species and the types of activities that took place across Ka’ūpūlehu. It also shows the cultural distribution of plant species in comparison to their natural distribution, indicating patterns of mauka-makai gathering practices, as well as cases of import from outside the ahupua’a. The overall pattern expressed by the findings is one of a dynamic plant community over an 800-year period. Food production, presumably involving arboriculture, is documented by certain taxa, while numerous native taxa indicate construction, tool fabrication, clothing, and other domestic economic activities. Though taxa used as fuel varied through time, no significant negative human impacts are apparent (e.g., extirpations or extinctions).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35563.0