Kua‘āina Kahiko: Life and Land in Ancient Kahikinui, Maui

Patrick V. Kirch 336 pp. In early Hawaii, kuaʻāina were the hinterlands inhabited by na kuaʻāina, or country folk. Often these were dry, less desirable areas where much skill and hard work were required to wrest a living from the lava landscapes. The ancient district of Kahikinui in southeast Maui is such a kuaʻāina and remains one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the islands. Named after Tahiti Nui in the Polynesian homeland, its thousands of pristine acres house a treasure trove of archaeological ruins--witnesses to the generations of Hawaiians who made this land their home before it was abandoned in the late nineteenth century. Kuaʻāina Kahiko follows kamaʻāina archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch on a seventeen-year-long research odyssey to rediscover the ancient patterns of life and land in Kahikinui. Through painstaking archaeological survey and detailed excavations, Kirch and his students uncovered thousands of previously undocumented ruins of houses, trails, agricultu