1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910820985603321

Autore

Kirch Patrick Vinton

Titolo

How chiefs became kings : divine kingship and the rise of archaic states in ancient Hawai'i / / Patrick Vinton Kirch

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2010

ISBN

1-282-91790-0

9786612917905

0-520-94784-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (286 p.)

Disciplina

320.4969

Soggetti

Chiefdoms - Hawaii - History

Hawaiians - Kings and rulers

First contact (Anthropology) - Hawaii

Hawaiians - Politics and government

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1. From Chiefdom to Archaic State: Hawai'i in Comparative and Historical Context -- Chapter 2. Hawaiian Archaic States on the Eve of European Contact -- Chapter 3. Native Hawaiian Political History -- Chapter 4. Tracking the Transformations: Population, Intensification, and Monumentality -- Chapter 5. The Challenge of Explanation -- Notes -- Glossary of Hawaiian Terms -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.