Archaeological Research Facility

Three specific objectives were outlined in our Scope of Work: (1) A reconnaissance survey of several selected environmental zones within the Park (e.g., the wet valleys, the colluvial and talus slopes inland of the peninsula, and the peninsula itself), in order to gain an overview of the kinds and distributions of major archaeological features. (2) Detailed plane table mapping and architectural recording of selected sites, including several known, but currently un-documented heiau and associated features. (3) Cleaning and re-recording of the test excavations conducted by Richard Pearson in 1966-67 in the Kaupikiawa lava tube complex in Kalawao (Site 312), which had produced an early 14C age determination.

This volume presents preliminary findings from archaeological fieldwork undertaken by three different institutionsin Kahikinui District on Maui. The contributors agreed last year that one aim of our work should be to prepare nontechnicalreports for public distribution in Hawai'i. In discussing the idea of such a volume, Patrick Kirch and I agreed that while thepublic in Hawai'i often is aware of archaeological fieldwork being conducted, all too rarely do they get a timely summary ofinitial findings. Often, results only become available some years later in highly technical reports. Easy-to-read summariesare rarely available. It seemed to us that providing such a summary of the Kahikinui research would be of considerableinterest to the public. After all, it is the public-the taxpayer-who ultimately has paid for much (though not all) of thisarchaeology, be it through national granting agencies, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, state university programs,or the State of Hawai'i Historic Preservation program.

Clinton Hart Merriam, who signed his name C. Hart Merriam was a naturalist who spent part of his professional life studying California Indians. He worked assiduously with native informants. For Merriam's background, which was that of a biologist and not ananthropologist, the reader is referred to a following section written by Alfred L. Kroeber, "C. Hart Merriam as Anthropologist." Although Merriam had a formal tie with the Smithsonian Institution which held a bequest known as the E.H. Harriman Fund, he was not a member of the Smithsonian staff. He had, in brief, an institutional connection, but he did not work under the direction of that institution.

Merriam's lists are published here exactly as he recorded them. No changes have been made in conformity with the agreement made with his heirs when the Merriam Collection was accepted by the Department of Anthropology at Berkeley. Merriam's phonetic system can be found at the end of this section.

Clinton Hart Merriam, who signed his name C. Hart Merriam was a naturalist who spent part of his professional life studying California Indians. He worked assiduously with native informants. For Merriam's background, which was that of a biologist and not ananthropologist, the reader is referred to a following section written by Alfred L. Kroeber, "C. Hart Merriam as Anthropologist." Although Merriam had a formal tie with the Smithsonian Institution which held a bequest known as the E.H. Harriman Fund, he was not a member of the Smithsonian staff. He had, in brief, an institutional connection, but he did not work under the direction of that institution.

The unity, such as it is, of the present collection of earlier articles is that they all deal with the people of one California tribe, the Pomo, whose center lay around Clear Lake in the northern Coast Ranges. The extent of the lands occupied by the several divisions of the Pomo tribe, their village locations, and boundaries of the numerous village communities or tribelets are shown on the accompanying map which is reproduced from O. Stewart's Notes on Pomo Ethnogeography (1940). Stewart's quite thorough work, carried out in the late nineteen-thirties, is to be taken as more accurate than the listing and mapping of Pomo tribelets given in Kroeber's Handbook of the Indians of California (1925, pl. 36). Kroeber's map was apparently mainly based on one earlier published by S.A. Barrett in 1908 and which is important in showing a very large number of village site locations.

The Pomo may have numbered in the late 1700s before the Spanish settlement of the coastal section of California about 8,000 persons. In the U.S. Census of 1910 some 1,200 were counted, making them, except for the Mono, the then most numerous tribe in the state. At present, or at least until very recently, somewhat more than a thousand Pomo lived on rancheria lands ranging from 50 to over 2,000 acres in Lake, Mendocino, and Sonoma Counties. The causes of this population decline were the same ones which affected all of the native Californians--the requirement of survival being to change their way of life to accomodate to the Americans who moved in and took over the land, introduced diseases, and homicide.*

Linguists have suggested that the Pomo language has been spoken in this area for about 15 centuries. Who the predecessors of the recent Pomo were, and what languages they spoke, we do not, and probably cannot ever, know. M.R. Harrington, working under the auspices of the Southwest Museum, excavated a site near Borax Lake, not far from Clear Lake itself, and recovered evidence of the presence of an ancient people who made a distinctive kind of projectile point which archaeologists know as Borax Lake Fluted. Opinions on the age of this site have been varied, but the recent work of C. Meighan and C. Haynes (Science 167:1213-1221, 1970) at the site and through a reexamination of the materials recovered

At Berkeley in the Anthropology files are lists of Chumash place names assembled by C. Hart Merriam and A.L. Kroeber. While there is little, if anything, new in these -- i.e., original information elicited from native Chumash in the present century -- it is possible that these lists may be of some utility to persons concerned with Chumash place names, particularly if they are at all concerned with these names which have earlier appeared in print.

The Merriam list is an abstract of his California place-tribal name card file which numbers some 18,000 entries. The Kroeber list is on cards bearing the title "Chumashan Villages. Arranged geographically from Handbook of American Indians, 1911." Kroeber located on then available USGS quadrangles the position of as many of these sites as he could, marking sites with approximate locations with an X and those of definitely determined locations with a dot. These quadrangle maps, now in the files, are too large to publish but they bear numerous notations by Kroeber on local geography and characterizations of the archaeological remains visible. It would appear that Kroeber went over much of the ground himself and that these annotations are based on field observations made by him. It is clear that the card file of village names and the quadrangle maps were the basis for the map appearing as Plate 48 in his Handbook of the Indians of California (1925) and titled "Part of the Habitat of the Chumash and Alliklik."