Bet-hedging strategies, agricultural change, and unpredictable environments: historical development of dryland agriculture in Kona, Hawaii

Spatial patterns of seasonal crop production suggest coordination within and across dryland agricultural systems of Hawaiʻi Island

“…Initial land use might have occurred as early as the 13th century in Kohala , but initial agricultural investments in the built landscape do not appear to have occurred in any of the three until the 15th century and later (Allen 2004, TomonariTuggle 2006, McCoy et al 2017. From this point, and especially after the 16th century, a period of continuous agricultural investment is visible but spatially variable.…”

“…Others have argued that evidence of bad years is lacking and that the field systems' large scale could have been geared toward accumulating wealth assets, e.g., pigs, to support political ambition (Dye 2014), although yield variability could still influence aggression to acquire more wealth assets. In any case, most researchers agree, and modelling suggests, that production variation between the wet and the dry areas of islands and within individual field systems was a key component of increased coordination, whether through coercion or cooperation, apparent after AD 1600 in the archipelago (Allen 2004, DiNapoli and Morrison 2017.…”

“…Mulching with organic material was an important practice in all the systems for both moisture conservation and nutrient inputs (e.g., Lee et al 2006, Lincoln andVitousek 2016). Rock mulches, too, likely improved ʻuala yields (see Marshall et al 2017) by reducing evaporation of soil moisture (Allen 2004, Graf et al 2008) and improving soil nutrient availability, as is suggested from work in Rapa Nui . Furthermore, seasonal fallowing and shifting of quickly-maturing crops such as ʻuala would benefit the productive capacity and stability of these systems.…”

“…Ahupuaʻa boundaries on the more gradual slopes of Hawaiʻi Island delineate sociopolitical units organized around the availability of natural resources and labor (Gonschor and Beamer 2014). Within Kohala, argue that such ahupuaʻa delineation represents the most efficient allocation of resources for surplus production, and a general strategy toward increased managerial oversight and system integration has been suggested for Kona (Allen 2004). …”

“…For Kohala, note that infrastructure construction was likely most intensive after AD 1650, a situation supported by recent Bayesian analysis (Dye 2011a,b). In Kona, initial investments in infrastructure were perhaps made in the 15th century (Allen 2004) and continued until European contact In Kona and Kohala, early investments are thought to have been associated with domestic production (Allen 2004, Field et al 2011a, perhaps related to the introduction of ʻuala, where topdown management of production was limited. To some extent, this is seen in the localized nature of infrastructural improvements that do not span across individual political units.…”