Isotope and trace element data indicate that the source rock for this basalt adze collected on the low coral island of Napuka in the northwest Tuamotus was obtained from Kaho'olawe, 2,500 miles away. Photo courtesy Betty Lou Kam, Bishop Museum.

Adze Research
Comes Full Circle

New adze research provides evidence
of ancient voyaging round-trips

By Liza Simon | OHA Public Affairs Specialist

Polynesian oral histories describe back-and-forth ocean-crossings between Hawai'i and the ancestral homeland of Kahiki, and voyaging experiments by Hōkūle'a and other modern-day canoes have demonstrated that these journeys could be accomplished in traditional Polynesian vessels. Now, for the first time, hard physical evidence has been found that seems to confirm such ancient seafaring round-trips, in the form of prehistoric woodworking tools, or adzes, from the Tuamotu Archipelago near Tahiti made of stone traced to origins as far away as Kaho'olawe.

Polynesian voyaging experts hail the study because they say it affirms the accomplishments of ancestral navigators and their traditional vessels. “Science has been inclined to dismiss cultural streams of knowledge, including oral histories, as purely romantic and instead has clung to the notion that Polynesians simply washed up on islands by accident after being blown to sea,” says UH anthropology professor Ben Finney, a co-founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. “The significance (of the new study) is that it stands in stark contrast to the typical western put-down of the technology of native people.”

Scientists Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler of Australia's University of Queensland have published in Science Magazine their research on 19 adzes collected by the Bishop Museum 70 years ago in the Tuamotus. Since these coral atolls have no available supplies of stone, the researchers set out to match the adze stone with quarry sites on volcanic islands. Using new techniques for identifying the unique chemical composition of stone material, they found that most of the ancient tools came from all directions, including the Austral Islands to the south, the Marquesas to the North, Tahiti to the west and the Pitcarin group to the southeast.

Most stunning of all, nine adzes came from 2,500 miles away on Kaho'olawe. Their chemical signature was an exact match to stone found on the island's western-facing point known as Kealaikahiki — “the way to Tahiti.” Noting in their paper that these findings are consistent with a pattern of travel and trade in pre-contact Polynesia, the researchers say that the stone is from Kaho'olawe but the adzes themselves are not carved in the Kaho'olawe style, “and thus may have been taken as a gift or memento, as is done today by modern traditional voyagers…and fashioned into adzes in the Tuamotus.”

Finney says this bolsters the Polynesian view that the Tuamotus functioned as a crossroads of the Pacific, a navigational way-station where ancient seafarers stopped to make offerings and engage in trade while transiting between Hawai'i and nearby Tahiti. The inaugural Hōkūlea voyage in 1976 traveled this route, putting in at a Tuamotu atoll for a brief stopover before making landfall at its Tahiti destination.

Bigger mysteries remain about why ancient voyagers dispersed as they did on long journeys. Adze researcher Collerson says that his newly published work affirms the purposefulness of Polynesian maritime activity and will only serve to bolster scientific interest in shedding more light on still unanswered questions. “Adze material has been preserved in museums throughout Polynesia,” he says. “With further study, we will no doubt find even more exciting discoveries about the significance of trade and contact throughout the Pacific.”