Garden Offerings in the Kona Field System, Hawai'i Island: A Fine-Grained Chronology and Its Implications

Identifying and explaining the end of long-lived practices is a major challenge for anthropological archaeology. We present high-precision uranium series dating ( 230 Th/U) chronology an undocumented aspect Hawaiian religion: use corals as offerings in gardens. Our results from upland gardens Kealakekua (Kona District, Hawai`i Island) document onset religious at same time farming area around AD 1400, with no samples to after 1635. There are similar conspicuous endings coral temple sites on small, isolated island Nihoa uplands Maui. On Nihoa, lack 1606 can be reasonably linked abandonment permanent settlement island. In Maui sites, case Kealakekua, 1600–1700 suggests disruption ritual tradition when other metrics point rise state authority over religion.