COM 0349.065 2006-2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Farias2 multiple sources and disciplines. (2) To create an in-district repository for cultural resource management at the community level. (3) To provide educational opportunities for community members. (4) To generate extensive analyses and multiple GIS layers that will serve as an educational tool, a data analysis tool, and a foundation for evolutionary ecological theory building. (5) To test the east/west, windward/leeward theory in a mixed environment. The resulting data, together with what is revealed through the use of GIS, will be used to generate the kinds of large scale comparisons that existing functional categories, and parceled data will not provide. In the end, it is hoped that a more dynamic and realistic picture of this region will be revealed, providing a greater understanding of the prehistory of the Ka'0 district, and its true place in the prehistory of Poynesia. For the purposes of my current Master's thesis research, the district of Ka'0 was selected as a research site for severe) reasons. First, it is the largest district in the state of Hawaii's with both windward and leeward environmental zones located within its boundaries. Second, ifs intermediate location on the southwestern portion of the island of Hawaii's makes ft a good place to test previous settlement, expansion, evolution and complexity theories about Hawaii's in general. Third, a landscape approach which includes natural history and geographic information could be useful in order to locate key agriculture) areas within district boundaries that could be systematically compared with sites both in Hawaii's and elsewhere. Fourth, the area for the most part has retained ifs rural character, with the exception of areas where modem agriculture has changed the face of the landscape. Therefore, future archaeological field research into certain regions could prove to yield interesting results about the prehistoric period of Hawaii's. Further, my genealogical connection to the district coupled with over ten years of personal volunteer involvement in community and culturalty related preservation and documentation work on the island of Hawaii has fostered my overall personal interest in the prehistory of the region. Finaly, all of my current research within the district is the basis of my master's thesis, which will in turn form the foundation for future Ph.D. fieldwork, and in due time, become a part of my Ph.D. Dissertation. Future work will expand on this previous research and is inspired by the work I was involved in during the summer 2002 field season in Rapa Nui (Easter Island), where high school age students learned and participated in documenting the archaeology of their own sites, under the direction of Terry Hunt, PhD., and the University of Hawaii at MBnoa Pacific Archaeology Program. It is my hope that my research and it's educational component will contribute to the planned development of a Ka'0 Cultural Center as a first step to community management of cultural resources through education and training. Finally, the center will act as an example for future statewide and government-wide management of cultural resources, and could be implemented elsewhere in Hawaii and in the United States. It is for this reason that support the establishment of a preservation program for Ka'u, ran by the community and supported by those who Inre here for our future generations. Further, research in Ka'u and Punalu'u must continue ff we are to team about the migration of people from Polynesia, the ways that our ancestors pract~ed their religion and agriculture, and if we are to have a legacy to pass on to the future. That legacy must be based on sound scienfific principles, as well as cultural common sense.