Monumentality and the Rise of Religious Authority in Precontact Hawai'i [and Comments and Reply

Abstract

Changes in temple labor investment and sacrificial offerings indicate that the rise in religious authority of the Hawaiian chiefly hierarchy correlates with an increase in political centralization and the intensifying role of the chief as divine intermediary through time. Initially, temples were small public courts akin to traditional Polynesian shrines used to reaffirm genealogical ties. During a period of internecine warfare and political instability and conflict in the I5th century A.D., temples became extremely large, a practical symbol of the burgeoning power of elites as they used ritual labor obligations to reaffirm chiefly genealogical relationships and enhance class cooperation. After island unification in the i6th century, chiefly religious activity shifted to sacrificial ceremonies and the consumption of surplus goods and foodstuffs as a result of status competition. By the time of European contact in the igth century, divinely sanctified rituals associated with war and levying taxes were instituted to enhance the status and power of the paramount chief through personal displays of material wealth. The Hawaiian case appears to follow a common trajectory among complex societies, where religious authority is increasingly expressed through the political economy, and serves as a contextual model of a complex chiefdom undergoing rapid political stratification.