| Abstract: |
The socio-political evolution of Hawaiian society has long held a prominent position in the anthropology of Oceania. This study differs from previous research in its comprehensive and systematic application of Hawaiian oral traditions to address the questions of how and why Hawaiian society developed its hallmark complexity. The temporal focus of this study is the span of 23 generations from the last set of migrations to Hawai'i to the political unification of the Hawaiian Islands under Kamehameha Pai'ea. The spatial range of this study includes the political centers of the main Hawaiian Islands-Hawai'i, Maui, O'ahu, and Kaua'i. A detailed analysis of Hawaiian oral traditions demonstrates that the information found in them is highly consistent and form a cohesive, reliable picture of the past. The cumulative information from numerous sources provides a clearer view of the political and genealogical relationships of the ruling chiefs and their families. Such data reveals a complex set of factors acting upon Hawaiian socio-political evolution. Evolutionary theory is applied to identify such factors and to explain their differential persistence under varied natural and social environmental settings across both time and space. The findings reveal that established models of Hawaiian socio-political evolution must be reassessed in light of the information provided in Hawaiian oral traditions about the social context that conditioned the behaviors of Hawaiian ruling chiefs and chiefesses. New models are offered which build upon earlier ones and which include critical variables never before addressed.
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