Kua‘āina Kahiko: Life and Land in Ancient Kahikinui, Maui

In early Hawai‘i, kua‘āina were the hinterlands inhabited by nā kua‘āina, or country folk. Often these were dry, less desirable areas where much skill and hard work were required to wrest a living from the lava landscapes. The ancient district of Kahikinui in southeast Maui is such a kua‘āina and remains one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the islands. Named after Tahiti Nui in the Polynesian homeland, its thousands of pristine acres house a treasure trove of archaeological ruins—witnesses to the generations of Hawaiians who made this land their home before it was abandoned in the late nineteenth century.

Kua‘āina Kahiko follows kama‘āina archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch on a seventeen-year-long research odyssey to rediscover the ancient patterns of life and land in Kahikinui. Through painstaking archaeological survey and detailed excavations, Kirch and his students uncovered thousands of previously undocumented ruins of houses, trails, agricultural fields, shrines, and temples. Kirch describes how, beginning in the early fifteenth century, Native Hawaiians began to permanently inhabit the rocky lands along the vast southern slope of Haleakalā. Eventually these planters transformed Kahikinui into what has been called the greatest continuous zone of dryland planting in the Hawaiian Islands. He relates other fascinating aspects of life in ancient Kahikinui, such as the capture and use of winter rains to create small wet-farming zones, and decodes the complex system of heiau, showing how the orientations of different temple sites provide clues to the gods to whom they were dedicated.

Kirch examines the sweeping changes that transformed Kahikinui after European contact, including how some maka’āinana families fell victim to unscrupulous land agents. But also woven throughout the book is the saga of Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui, a grass-roots group of Native Hawaiians who successfully struggled to regain access to these Hawaiian lands. Rich with anecdotes of Kirch’s personal experiences over years of field research, Kua’āina Kahiko takes the reader into the little-known world of the ancient kua‘āina.

• Patrick Vinton Kirch, Author

  Patrick Vinton Kirch is professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Patrick V. Kirch transports readers to the remote district of Kahikinui on Maui, the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, to tell the story of life in the island’s backcountry (kua‘āina) in antiquity (kahiko). [The book] is intended to open up to the public what he has previously published in the scholarly literature and to paint a picture of what it was like to do archaeology on Maui; by these measures it is a definitive success. . . . While not intended as a book about ethics, this is nonetheless the story of an academic archaeologist’s efforts to be, in Hawaiian terms, pono (righteous, proper), at a time when to be an archaeologist in some circles was to be a social pariah. . . . Lastly, it should be said that not only are all the archaeological interpretations here backed up by copious bibliographic information, but also that this is an authentic account of the landscape and its people.
  —Mark D. McCoy, Southern Methodist University, Antiquity, 89 (2015)
• The book is perfectly balanced between science and culture, and they work together to magically bring the ancient Kahikinui community to life. One of the great strengths of Kua‘āina Kahiko is its accessible, almost conversational style, while at the same time the presenting a great deal of scholarly content and little-known facts about Hawaiian archaeology. . . . The sheer volume of research undertaken and presented in this volume is extremely impressive. To survey vast expanses of rough terrain and map thousands of sites with a plane table and alidade is a feat in itself, not to mention the extensive excavations and subsequent laboratory work and data analyses that were conducted. To have completed this amount of work is an accomplishment that cannot be underestimated and the resulting publications have made a huge contribution to our field.
  —Windy Keala McElroy, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Journal of Pacific Archaeology, 6:1 (2015)
• The strengths of the book lie in its exceptional writing, the evidence supplied to support hypotheses and conclusions, and the interesting topics of discussion. Kirch offers good explanations for Hawaiian words and the Hawaiian language glossary is easy to find and use at the end of the book. . . . Kirch delightfully conveys a sense of what it is like to be an archaeologist working in the Hawaiian Islands. He portrays the daily tasks and difficulties often encountered by archaeologists, especially in hot and arid leeward areas such as Kahikinui. Readers learn about the many conceptual tools archaeologists use to interpret what they find on and below the ground and analyze inside specialist laboratories.
  —Michael Dega, Scientific Consultant Services, Inc. (SCS), Asian Perspectives, 53:2 (Fall 2014)
• Like his recent work, A shark going inland is my chief (2012), [Kua‘āina Kahiko] is intended to open up to the public what he has previously published in the scholarly literature and to paint a picture of what it was like to do archaeology on Maui; by these measures it is a definitive success. . . . While not intended as a book about ethics, this is nonetheless the story of an academic archaeologist’s efforts to be, in Hawaiian terms, pono (righteous, proper), at a time when to be an archaeologist in some circles was to be a social pariah. For undergraduate students, this is a lesson in archaeological ethics in practice that should be read alongside the literature on clashes over archaeology in Hawai‘i, as well as the growing role of community-driven archaeology."
  —Mark D. McCoy, Antiquity
• One of the great strengths of Kua‘āina Kahiko is its accessible, almost conversational style, while at the same time presenting a great deal of scholarly content and little-known facts about Hawaiian archaeology. The reader shares in the excitement as Kirch enthusiastically described his discovery of a pānānā, or notched wall used for navigational purposes, a site type never before documented in the archaeological literature. . . . The quality of the storytelling served to virtually transport me from my stuffy office to Kirch’s world of adventure and discovery. To a fellow archaeologist of Hawai‘i, the sheer volume of research undertaken and presented in this volume is extremely impressive.
  —Windy Keala McElroy, Journal of Pacific Archaeology
• Kirch’s special relationship with the kama‘āina, or residents of the land, as well as his anecdotal prose, should make his book appeal to a general readership while still being instructive to specialists in Hawaiian archaeology, history, and the natural sciences. . . . The strengths of the book lie in its exceptional writing, the evidence supplied to support hypotheses and conclusions, and the interesting topics of discussion. . . . Kirch delightfully conveys a sense of what it is like to be an archaeologist working in the Hawaiian Islands. . . . This book presents the professional journey of one of Hawaiian archaeology’s most renowned scholars. Full of scientific information and cultural investigation, the large data sets are neither overwhelming nor too technical for the general reader. Anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book lighten the mood whenever the science becomes too serious. From cover to cover, the information here should be useful for all archaeologists working in Hawai‘i and anyone interested in archaeology or Hawaiiana in general.
  —Michael Dega, Asian Perspectives