Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 33, Number 3, 1 March 2016 — Unearthing the Polynesian Past: Explorations and Adventures of an Island Archaeologist [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Unearthing the Polynesian Past: Explorations and Adventures of an Island Archaeologist

Patrick Vinton Kirch University ofHawai'i Press After nearly 50 years of exploring the Paeihe from Mussau to Hawai'i to Easter Island, renowned archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch has released this lively memoir of his adventures, including 70 black and white illustrations. An excerpt: "One thousand years before Christ, the Lapita ancestors of the Polynesians

arrived in the sun-drenched archipelagoes of Tonga and Samoa, the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki. Over ensuing centuries, the descendants of these voyagers who were the first humans to explore the vast Pacific perfected the arts of non-instrumen-tal navigation, sailing by the stars, winds, and currents. Their craftsmen carved large double-hulled canoes with sewn-plank timbers, propelled by sails of woven mats. In these deep-water craft, carrying everything needed to establish new colonies, they

explored and settled every habitable island and archipelago across the untracked central and eastern Pacific, even reaching the shores of South America. They were truly, as Hiroa claimed, 'the supreme navigators of history.'" Available at Native Books or online at www.uhpress.hawaii. edu/p-9503-9780824853457.aspx. ■