Hawaii II

  General Description   Hawai’i, also known as the Big Island, is the largest island of the Hawaiian archipelago. Our ’Hawaii 2’ refers to the period from 1200 to 1580 CE. 1200 marks the beginning of archaeologist Patrick Kirch’s ’expansion period’, ^[1] while 1580 is the approximate date of the formation of the first island-wide unitary kingdom. ^[2]
Population and political organization
According to reconstructions of Hawaiki, the ancestral Polynesian homeland, ancient Polynesians recognized the authority of the *ariki, that is, the head of a lineage, who had both secular and sacred authority and was in charge of most, if not all, rituals. ^[3] However, a few thousand years separate Ancestral Polynesians from the earliest Hawaiians, and it is not clear how much the latter retained of the former’s culture and sociopolitical organization. The earliest island-wide unitary kingdom on the Big Island emerged around 1580; ^[2] before then, the Big Island was probably divided into several small, independent polities. ^[4]
It is currently not possible to reconstruct the exact population of a typical Big Island community at this time. ^[5] No up-to-date estimates have been found in the literature. Scholars do, however, distinguish between distinct phases of demographic and agricultural development after the initial colonization period. From 1200 to 1400 CE, Hawaiians experienced significant population growth and adapted their technology and subsistence economy to local conditions while maintaining long-distance contact with Eastern Polynesia. From 1400 to 1580 CE, population growth peaked and began to stabilize, contact with Eastern Polynesia ceased, and large-scale dryland field systems were established across the Big Island. ^[6]

[1]: (Kirch 2010, 127-28) Patrick V. Kirch. 2010. How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai’i. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

[2]: (Kirch 2010, 174) Patrick V. Kirch. 2010. How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai’i. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

[3]: (Kirch 2012, 45) Patrick V. Kirch. 2012. A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

[4]: (Kirch 2016, personal communication)

[5]: Kirch, personal communication

[6]: (Kirch 2010, 127-28) Patrick V. Kirch. 2010. How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai’i. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.