The Dynamics of Economic and Sociopolitical Structure in Late Prehistoric Hawai'i: An Emergent 'Archaic State'

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，帕特里克·基尔奇博士和他的同事将在夏威夷莫洛卡伊岛和毛伊岛的考古遗址进行一个季节的实地考察。在过去的研究中，这个团队和其他人已经找到了一些可以追溯到公元1200年至1795年之间的房屋和仪式结构，这些将成为挖掘的重点。该小组将收集文化和生态数据，以确定领土定居模式随时间的变化；重建聚落和土地利用年表；分析家庭单位内的建筑、食物资源和信誉差异；确定地域单位间外地石材资源的分布；考察支撑经济的农业和海洋资源生产基地；了解仪式建筑如何随时间和空间而变化；研究集约土地利用对环境的影响。多年来，人类学家一直把波利尼西亚作为一个独特的测试案例，以确定国家层面的社会是如何进化的。波利尼西亚群岛是由一个单一的文化群体在相对较短的时期内定居的，在接触的时候，他们证明了社会组织的形式在复杂性上有很大的不同。通过精心控制的比较，科学家们试图将它们按发育顺序排列，并从环境角度解释它们所达到的不同阶段。在夏威夷达到了最高的复杂程度，人种学家认为，在史前晚期，达到了州一级的组织。Kirch博士希望研究这一过程。他正确地指出，只有考古学才能产生可以追溯这一步的数据，而研究的目标就是恢复这些信息。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将使我们深入了解国家形成的过程，并将为许多考古学家提供感兴趣的数据。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Patrick Kirch and his colleagues will conduct one season of fieldwork at archaeological sites located on the Hawaiian islands of Moloka'i and Maui. In past research this team and others have located a number of house compounds and ritual structures which date from the period between A.D. 1200 - 1795 and these will form the focus for excavation. The team will collect both cultural and ecofactual data to: determine variability in territorial settlement patterns over time; reconstruct the chronology of settlement and land use; analyze architectural, food resource and prestige-good variation within household units; determine the distribution of non-local stone resources between territorial units; examine the agricultural and marine resource production base which supported the economy; learn how ritual architecture changed over time and space; and study the environmental effects of intensive land use. For many years anthropologists have used Polynesia as a unique test case to determine how state level societies evolved. The Polynesian islands were settled by a single cultural group over a relatively short period and at the time of contact they evidenced forms of social organization which varied greatly in complexity. Through carefully controlled comparisons scientists have attempted to place them in a developmental sequence and to explain the different stages reached in environmental terms. The highest degree of complexity was reached in Hawaii and ethnographers believe that in late prehistoric times a state level of organization was achieved. Dr. Kirch wishes to examine this process. He correctly notes that only archaeology can produce the data which can trace this step by step, and the goal of the research is to recover such information. This research is important for several reasons. It will yield insight into the processes of state formation an will provide data of interest to many archaeologists.