Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 24, Number 12, 1 December 2007 — Full circle [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Full circle

New adze research provides evidence of ancient voyaging round-trips A

By Uza Simon | Public Affairs Specialist .

Polynesian oral histories deseribe baek-and-forth oeean-erossings between Hawai'i and the aneestral homeland of Kahiki, and voyaging experiments by Hōkūle 'a and other modern-day eanoes have demonstrated that these journeys eould be aeeomplished in traditional Polynesian vessels. Now, for the first time, hard physieal evidenee has been found that seems to eonfirm sueh aneient seafaring roundtrips, in the form of prehistorie woodworking tools, or adzes, from the Tuamotu Arehipelago near Tahiti made of stone traced to origins as far away as Kaho 'olawe.

Polynesian voyaging experts hail the study because they say it affirms the accomplishments of ancestral navigators and their traditional vessels. "Science has been inclined to dismiss cultural streams of knowledge, including oral histories, as purely romantic and instead has clung to the notion that Polynesians simply washed up on islands by accident after being hlown to sea," says UH anthropology professor Ben

W Finney, a co-founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. "The significance (of the new study) is that it stands in stark

contrast to the typical western putdown of the technology of native people." Scientists Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler of Australia's University of Queensland have published in Science Magazine their research on 19 adzes eollected by the Bishop Museum 70 years ago in the Tuamotus. Since these coral atolls have no available supplies of stone, the researchers set out to match the adze

stone with quarry sites on volcanic islands. Using new techniques for identifying the unique ehemieal composition of stone material, they found that most of the ancient tools eame from all directions, including the Austral Islands to the south, the Marquesas to the North, Tahiti to the west and the Pitcarin group to the southeast. Most stunning of all, nine adzes eame from 2,500 miles away on Kaho'olawe. Their ehemieal signature was an exact match to stone found on the island's western-fac-ing point known as Kealaikahiki — "the way to Tahiti." Noting in their paper that these findings are consistent with a pattern of travel and trade in pre-contact Polynesia, the researchers say that the stone is from Kaho'olawe but the adzes themselves are not carved in the Kaho'olawe style, "and thus may have been taken as a gift or memento, as is done today by modern traditional voyagers...and fashioned into adzes in the Tuamotus."

Finney says this bolsters the Polynesian view that the Tuamotus functioned as a crossroads of the Pacific, a navigational way-station where ancient seafarers stopped to make offerings and engage in trade while transiting between Hawai'i and nearby Tahiti. The inaugural Hōkūlea voyage in 1976 traveled this route, putting in at a Tuamotu atoll for a brief stopover before making landfall at its Tahiti destination. Bigger mysteries remain about why ancient voyagers dispersed as they did on long journeys. Adze researcher Collerson says that his newly published work affirms the purposefulness of Polynesian maritime activity and will only serve to bolster scientific interest in shedding more light on still unanswered questions. "Adze material has been preserved in museums throughout Polynesia," he says. "With further study, we will no doubt find even more exciting discoveries about the significance of trade and eontact throughout the Pacific." I

MO'OMEHEU • CULĪURE

lsotope and trace el- ^ ement data indicate that the source rock for this basalt adze collected on the low coral island of Napuka in the northwest Tuamotus wūs obtained from Kaho'olawe, 2,500 miles away. Photo: courtesy Betty Lou Kam, Bishop Museum.