Abstract:
Measuring subsistence change, especially when it involves questions of resource intensification, requires special attention to issues of data quality and relevance. This is particularly so when, as in Remote Oceania, the archaeological record is of relatively short duration and the nature of subsistence change was mostly quantitative, not qualitative. Agricultural development, particularly focused on the practice of dry land fixed field cultivation, is reviewed and a method developed for chronologically ordering the development of walls and trails constructed as the main structural features in three areas of the Kohala Dry land Field System of Hawai'i Island. At least two different pathways to agricultural development are discernable, one of which documents intensification of effort over time and the other one shows the expansion of a relatively intensive system of dry land farming but little evidence of intensification. Differences in environment, geography, and the role of chiefs in underwriting agricultural development are likely factors that produce this pattern of dry land agriculture in Hawai'i.