How Chiefs Became Kings

Four decades of field research, thinking, and writing about the Hawaiian Islands and their unique variant of Polynesian culture lie behind this book. When I first entered the field of Hawaiian archaeology, in the late 1960s, Hawai'i was regarded as the most complex of the Polynesian chiefdoms; indeed, ethnohistoric accounts of Hawai'i influenced thinking within the New Archaeology about the very nature of chiefdom societies. Everyone who has tackled the Hawaiian case -- whether from ethnographic or archaeological perspectives -- recognizes that Hawai'i stands apart in certain respects from its Polynesian sister societies. Nonetheless, I only gradually came to the conclusion that these differences were not merely quantitative, in the sense of more intensive production, greater stratification, or more elaboration of material symbols of elite status, along a Polynesian continuum. In addition, Hawaiian society at the moment of contact with the West was qualitatively distinctive from other Polynesian groups. The very structure and fabric of society had diverged significantly from that typical elsewhere in Polynesia, most especially in the ways that the control over land and production had been divorced from the kinship system. Thus, instead of sitting at the apex of a "conical clan," which ramified downward to incorporate the entire society, the hereditary ali'i (elites) of Hawaii had become a separate, endogamous class. The highest ali'i claimed descent from the gods; indeed, they claimed to be ali'i akua, "god-kings." As in other parts of the ancient world, the Hawaiians had invented divine kingship, a hallmark of archaic states.