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Science 11 June 2004:
Vol. 304. no. 5677, pp. 1665 - 1669
DOI: 10.1126/science.1099619
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Reports

Soils, Agriculture, and Society in Precontact Hawai`i

P. M. Vitousek,1* T. N. Ladefoged,2 P. V. Kirch,3 A. S. Hartshorn,4 M. W. Graves,5 S. C. Hotchkiss,6 S. Tuljapurkar,1 O. A. Chadwick4

Before European contact, Hawai`i supported large human populations in complex societies that were based on multiple pathways of intensive agriculture. We show that soils within a long-abandoned 60-square-kilometer dryland agricultural complex are substantially richer in bases and phosphorus than are those just outside it, and that this enrichment predated the establishment of intensive agriculture. Climate and soil fertility combined to constrain large dryland agricultural systems and the societies they supported to well-defined portions of just the younger islands within the Hawaiian archipelago; societies on the older islands were based on irrigated wetland agriculture. Similar processes may have influenced the dynamics of agricultural intensification across the tropics.

1 Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
2 Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
3 Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
4 Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
5 Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai`i–Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
6 Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: vitousek{at}stanford.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Prehistoric agricultural depletion of soil nutrients in Hawai'i.
A. S. Hartshorn, O. A. Chadwick, P. M. Vitousek, and P. V. Kirch (2006)
PNAS 103, 11092-11097
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Phosphorus in Hawaiian Kikuyugrass Pastures and Potential Phosphorus Release to Water.
B. W. Mathews, J. R. Carpenter, L. E. Sollenberger, and S. Tsang (2005)
J. Environ. Qual. 34, 1214-1223
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Environment, agriculture, and settlement patterns in a marginal Polynesian landscape.
P. V. Kirch, A. S. Hartshorn, O. A. Chadwick, P. M. Vitousek, D. R. Sherrod, J. Coil, L. Holm, and W. D. Sharp (2004)
PNAS 101, 9936-9941
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