Book Description
A first study from an archaeological perspective of the elaborate systems of Polynesian chiefdoms presents an original account of the processes of cultural change and evolution over three millennia.
Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 26,48 MB
Release : 1989-07-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521273169
A first study from an archaeological perspective of the elaborate systems of Polynesian chiefdoms presents an original account of the processes of cultural change and evolution over three millennia.
Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : University of California Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 43,50 MB
Release : 2019-05-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0520303393
In How Chiefs Became Kings, Patrick Vinton Kirch addresses a central problem in anthropological archaeology: the emergence of “archaic states” whose distinctive feature was divine kingship. Kirch takes as his focus the Hawaiian archipelago, commonly regarded as the archetype of a complex chiefdom. Integrating anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, traditional history, and theory, and drawing on significant contributions from his own four decades of research, Kirch argues that Hawaiian polities had become states before the time of Captain Cook’s voyage (1778-1779). The status of most archaic states is inferred from the archaeological record. But Kirch shows that because Hawai`i’s kingdoms were established relatively recently, they could be observed and recorded by Cook and other European voyagers. Substantive and provocative, this book makes a major contribution to the literature of precontact Hawai`i and illuminates Hawai`i’s importance in the global theory and literature about divine kingship, archaic states, and sociopolitical evolution.
Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 37,51 MB
Release : 2002-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0520234618
Providing a synthesis of archaeological and historical anthropological knowledge of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific islands, this text focuses on human ecology and island adaptations.
Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : Computer Science Press, Incorporated
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 31,37 MB
Release : 1988
Category : History
ISBN :
Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 42,41 MB
Release : 2017-11-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0520968891
The Pacific Ocean covers one-third of the earth’s surface and encompasses many thousands of islands that are home to numerous human societies and cultures. Among these indigenous Oceanic cultures are the intrepid Polynesian double-hulled canoe navigators, the atoll dwellers of Micronesia, the statue carvers of remote Easter Island, and the famed traders of Melanesia. Decades of archaeological excavations—combined with allied research in historical linguistics, biological anthropology, and comparative ethnography—have revealed much new information about the long-term history of these societies and cultures. On the Road of the Winds synthesizes the grand sweep of human history in the Pacific Islands, beginning with the movement of early people out from Asia more than 40,000 years ago and tracing the development of myriad indigenous cultures up to the time of European contact in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This updated edition, enhanced with many new illustrations and an extensive bibliography, synthesizes the latest archaeological, linguistic, and biological discoveries that reveal the vastness of ancient history in the Pacific Islands.
Author : Robert J. Hommon
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 13,18 MB
Release : 2013-04-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0199916128
Drawing on archaeological and ethnohistorical sources, this book redefines the study of primary states by arguing for the inclusion of Polynesia, which witnessed the development of primary states in both Hawaii and Tonga.
Author : Craig Benjamin
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 844 pages
File Size : 20,8 MB
Release : 2015-04-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1316298302
From 1200 BCE to 900 CE, the world witnessed the rise of powerful new states and empires, as well as networks of cross-cultural exchange and conquest. Considering the formation and expansion of these large-scale entities, this fourth volume of the Cambridge World History series outlines key economic, political, social, cultural, and intellectual developments that occurred across the globe in this period. Leading scholars examine critical transformations in science and technology, economic systems, attitudes towards gender and family, social hierarchies, education, art, and slavery. The second part of the volume focuses on broader processes of change within western and central Eurasia, the Mediterranean, South Asia, Africa, East Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania, as well as offering regional studies highlighting specific topics, from trade along the Silk Roads and across the Sahara, to Chaco culture in the US southwest, to Confucianism and the state in East Asia.
Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 12,38 MB
Release : 2015-10-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0824853482
Perhaps no scholar has done more to reveal the ancient history of Polynesia than noted archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch. For close to fifty years he explored the Pacific, as his work took him to more than two dozen islands spread across the ocean, from Mussau to Hawai'i to Easter Island. In this lively memoir, rich with personal—and often amusing—anecdotes, Kirch relates his many adventures while doing fieldwork on remote islands. At the age of thirteen, Kirch was accepted as a summer intern by the eccentric Bishop Museum zoologist Yoshio Kondo and was soon participating in archaeological digs on the islands of Hawai'i and Maui. He continued to apprentice with Kondo during his high school years at Punahou, and after obtaining his anthropology degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Kirch joined a Bishop Museum expedition to Anuta Island, where a traditional Polynesian culture still flourished. His appetite whetted by these adventures, Kirch went on to obtain his doctorate at Yale University with a study of the traditional irrigation-based chiefdoms of Futuna Island. Further expeditions have taken him to isolated Tikopia, where his excavations exposed stratified sites extending back three thousand years; to Niuatoputapu, a former outpost of the Tongan maritime empire; to Mangaia, with its fortified refuge caves; and to Mo'orea, where chiefs vied to construct impressive temples to the war god 'Oro. In Hawai'i, Kirch traced the islands' history in the Anahulu valley and across the ancient district of Kahikinui, Maui. His joint research with ecologists, soil scientists, and paleontologists elucidated how Polynesians adapted to their island ecosystems. Looking back over the past half-century of Polynesian archaeology, Kirch reflects on how the questions we ask about the past have changed over the decades, how archaeological methods have advanced, and how our knowledge of the Polynesian past has greatly expanded.
Author : Ben Fitzhugh
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 50,18 MB
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1461501377
This book makes a contribution to the developing field of complex hunter-gatherer studies with an archaeological analysis of the development of one such group. It examines the evolution of complex hunter-gatherers on the North Pacific coast of Alaska. It is one of the first books available to examine in depth the social evolution of a specific complex hunter-gatherer tradition on the North Pacific Rim and will be of interest to professional archaeologists, anthropologists, and students of archaeology and anthropology.
Author : Paul R. Ehrlich
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 545 pages
File Size : 22,99 MB
Release : 2001-12-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 0142000531
Why do we behave the way we do? Biologist Paul Ehrlich suggests that although people share a common genetic code, these genes "do not shout commands at us...at the very most, they whisper suggestions." He argues that human nature is not so much result of genetic coding; rather, it is heavily influenced by cultural conditioning and environmental factors. With personal anecdotes, a well-written narrative, and clear examples, Human Natures is a major work of synthesis and scholarship as well as a valuable primer on genetics and evolution that makes complex scientific concepts accessible to lay readers.