(excerpts)
Patrick McCoy
1999
DRAFT EIS
Mauna Kea Science Reserve Master Plan
Appendix E

Archaeological surveys undertaken between 1975 and 1997 in the Mauna Kea Science Reserve have identified a total of 93 sites.

Five of the 93 sites are of unknown function. The other 88 sites include: (1) 76 shrines; (2) 4 adze manufacturing workshops; (3) 1 positively identified burial site and 4 possible burial sites with an unknown number of interments at each site, and (4) 3 cairns that appear to be markers built either by surveyors or visitors to commemorate a visit.

The prospect of dating any of the sites seems remote at the present time since none of them appear to contain organic deposits or datable material of any kind. The only sites where artifacts have been found on the surface are the four adze manufacturing workshops.

Of the 93 sites, 81.72% are classified as shrines.

The quintessential characteristic of all the remains identified as shrines is the presence of one or more upright stones.

Kenneth Emory, who was the first one to describe the shrines on Mauna Kea and note their East Polynesian affinities, was of the opinion that the uprights represented or symbolized separate gods.

The adze makers, clinging to the ancient form of shrine at which to approach their patron gods, have preserved a most important link with their ancestral home. Each upright stone at a shrine probably stood for a separate god. The Hawaiian dictionary describes ‘eho as "a collection of stone gods" and this is the term which the Tuamotuans, the neighbors of the Tahitians, used to designate the alignment of upright stones on the low and narrow platform at their maraes, or sacred places. (Emory 1938:22)

The word ‘eho has various other meanings...According to Mary Kawena Pukui...‘eho is a term for a single stone image as well as a stone pile, particularly of the kind used to mark land boundaries.

Kamakau noted that "Boundary markers (kukulu ‘eho’eho) of tall stones (oeoe pohaku) were set up to identify the boundaries."

The use of a stone to represent a god and mark a land boundary are not necessarily incompatible, however.

p. 5
Sir Peter Buck [referred to] the architecturally simpler and generally smaller structures as shrines (kuahu), which Buck considered " a convenient term to designate a simple altar without a prepared court." Some of the larger, more complex structures, including those with courts, McCoy called marae, following Emory, who had used this term to describe structures on the island of Necker that he believed bore close resemblance to the so-called "inland" type of Tahitian marae. Though some of the stone remains in the Hawaiian Islands, including those on Necker and Mauna Kea, do in fact appear to more closely resemble some of the simpler forms of marae in Tahiti and the Tuamotus than any known form of Hawaiian heiau, it is probably best to discontinue using the term marae.

If one accepts the distinction that Buck made between shrines and temples, then the sites with prepared courts should be called temples. This report uses the generic term "shrine" to describe all of the religious structures that exist in the summit region of Mauna Kea.

p. 6
The vast majority of shrines are conspicuously sighted in the landscape, either on a ridgetop, or at a break in the slope, either a lava flow margin or a change in the slope of a glacial moraine.

The preference for prominent locations with commanding views of the landscape mirrors the pattern described by Gilbert McAllister and Buck for heiau.

Heiaus face in all directions of the compass, the only generalization being that most of them face the sea. (Buck 1957)

...no known shrines...on top of a cinder cone....on current evidence the tops of cinder cones were reserved for burial.

I could find no evidence in the foundations of the orientation to cardinal points. (Stokes 1991)

p. 7
...good reason to believe that each upright on a shrine stood for a separate god. The gods were not worshipped as images or icons, however.

p. 8
The use of unmodified or minimally worked stones to represent gods appears to have been more common in Hawaii than some other areas of East Polynesia where stone sculpture was more developed (e.g., Easter Island and the Marquesas)

While most of the uprights are unworked, the attribute data on form and size indicate that the procurement of slabs to be used as god stones (‘eho) was not arbitrary or random (that not just any slab was picked up off the surface). If it had been then the slabs used in shrine construction should be representative of the wide range of shapes and sizes found in the source areas. They are not a conscious search for slabs of certain shapes and sizes...

Most uprights range between 50 and 70 cm in length or height. A few are over 1 meter high.

Rocks have sex; the solid rock, columnar in shape, is male; the porous rock, loafshaped or split by a hollow, female. Chiefs and priests worshipped these rocks and pour awa over them as representatives of the god. If a stone of each sex was selected, a small pebble would be found beside them which increased in size and was finally taken to the heiau to be made a god. (Beckwith 1970)

p. 13
The number of uprights on a shrine varies from 1 to 24...but 54 of the 83 shrines...have just 1 to 3 uprights.

Ku and Hina function as man and wife in daily rites performed by the populace. With his sister-wife Hina (whose name means "prostrate"), Ku ("upright") united the people into a single stock, for Ku and Hina represented the male and female reproductive principles. Ku also symbolized the east, sunrise and the right hand; Hina the west, sunset, and the left. (Luomala 1987)

p. 16
The seven sites with courts are structurally and visually among the most impressive religious structures in the summit region. If one accepts the distinction Buck made between shrines and temples, these seven sites would be classified as small temples that according to Buck would have been made by a family group or lesser chief.

p. 18
A good example of a long row is Site 16194, which has a total of 12 and possibly 14 uprights. It is located at the 12,673 foot elevation on the east slope.

p. 20
Apart from a single ‘opihi shell of questionable age and adze rejects, no other obvious offerings of any kind — coral, shell, bone, stone, have been found on the shrines in the Science Reserve. It is hard to imagine that nothing was offered to the gods, thus leading to the obvious supposition that the offerings must have all been perishable materials, such as strips of pandanus that might, for example, have been tied around the uprights.

p. 21

The uprights themselves should perhaps be considered offerings.

The idea that a stone erected for the purpose of averting a disaster is regarded as an offering to the god Pele makes sense and is not inconsistent with the generally accepted view that uprights and other material objects were places for the gods to inhabit when they were needed.

p. 22
To expand and refine the earlier speculation, it now seems likely that the simple shrines were built and used by small family groups as originally thought, but that the larger, more complex structures were built and maintained by a priesthood. There are two initial reasons for thinking this may be the case. First, on the assumption that each upright stands for a separate god, the larger number of uprights on these sites points to a larger pantheon of gods (major and minor gods) that probably most Hawaiians would not have known. Second, many of the sites in this category are isolated from the main areas of worship. The separation has to have been deliberate. It implies a meaningful social boundary and, in this case, status differences.

We will never know what kind of rites were conducted at any of the shrines or the names of the gods that were invoked. The uprights on the larger, more complex sites, those which are inferred to have been built and used by priests instead of the heads of small family groups, may have possibly functioned in a way similar to that described by Raymond Firth for the stone symbols on the marae of Tikopia.

The material symbols also gave a kind of chart for navigation in ritual behaviour. The ritual of Marae Lasi in Uta had an intricate ground plan, and by reference to the stone symbols of the gods the performers could constantly orient themselves for assembly and individual action. The stones were also of great importance as mnemonics, serving to remind generation after generation of what had to be done, where and for whom. (Firth 1970)

p. 23
McCoy...has interpreted the shrine complex in the summit region as the remains of an historically undocumented and apparently unknown pattern of pilgrimage to worship the snow goddess, Poliahu, and other mountain gods and goddesses. In a paper on the adze quarry, he commented briefly on the probable origins of the pilgrimage process:

A large shrine complex located above the quarry suggests that the earliest activity on the top of the mountain was related to the worship of local gods and goddesses. This complex, which is interpreted as a 'pilgrimage center', is inferred to have had its origins in what would have been for the first colonists from east Polynesia a natural history anomaly — snow — which because it was 'matter out of place' must have been regarded as mystically dangerous.

The shrine complex, though undated, suggests that this anomaly was not avoided, but rather that it was quickly given a place in the local cosmology. (Douglas 1966)

While a few shrines could date to perhaps as early as AD 700-800, most were probably constructed at a later time, coinciding with the rise in population and intensification of adze manufacture in the adze quarry circa AD 1400-1600.

The shrines in the Science Reserve and those in the adze quarry are stylistically indistinguishable.