What secrets do Hawai'i's heiau hold?

For Michael Graves, head of the University of Hawai'i's anthropology department, the traditional shrines are a place of ongoing ritual activity and a potential source of cultural information.

Graves, who has been studying heiau on Maui and the Big Island for more than a decade, has just received a $50,000 grant to study more than 130 heiau on Maui and another hundred in a 10-square-mile area in Kohala on the Big Island. There, he hopes to get a glimpse of Hawai'i society and religion, pre- and post-contact.

Graves believes that better understanding of Native Hawaiian spirituality practices will also help us gain insight into cultures in which religion intertwines with politics. Two weeks ago, he met with 10 undergraduate students to discuss ethical issues of archaeology, including the responsibilities of archaeologists to the public and to the native communities.

It's an issue he's intimately acquainted with, especially in light of his Kohala heiau project.

Among those guiding the 10 National Science Foundation students is Lahela Perry, a UH doctoral student. She fields a question from a student who asks what happens if you come upon unfamiliar items.

"There are people who have the gift who can listen to the voice of the object," said Perry, shaking a long, curly lock from her eyes. "Some people have these gifts. I don't have that gift, personally."

She is also teaching them the nuances of gaining entree to a society, recognizing its issues and connecting with its kupuna.

Perry is not the only Hawaiian involved. Kohala resident Fred Cachola, who has been collecting stories about the area handed down from the time of Kamehameha, will share his stories for the first time with Graves and his students. And his daughter, Kehau Cachola-Abad, will serve as an unpaid adviser to the project. Over years, she has gathered stories herself both from her father and from historical sources, and as part of this project will create a database for them.

The Kohala project focuses on an era when Hawai'i's chiefs and their religious advisers tried to lead, battle and stretch agricultural resources for the good of the group.

One thing the project team will look at is "the roles of chiefs, relationships of chiefs to religious authorities, and the way in which religious authorities may have affected resources or resource production," Graves said.

For example, a chief might want to establish himself or promote his position or engage in warfare. At times like that, it wouldn't be unusual to consecrate or dedicate a heiau.

"It could be an existing heiau that they would refurbish, but at times they had heiau built for the express purpose of demonstrating the mana, the authority, the ability that they possessed," Graves said.

What was done at the heiau? Offerings would be given: Fruit and vegetables, pigs, fish. Even humans.

"We always want to be careful here," Graves said. "Because (human sacrifice) ... is a practice we find strange and abhorrent does not mean we can't try to understand it or apprehend it in a scholarly way."

It's likely that the frequency with which human sacrifice occurred was exaggerated by Westerners, he said.

"It's probably a kind of offering that may have developed, or been more common — if it ever was common — late in time, or with a greater occurrence when Europeans show up here," said Graves. "They destabilized things a lot. They're part of the reason that aggression increases in the late 18th and early 19th century."

Outsiders brought with them new technology that made it easier to sail, and guns and tactical information that made warfare more effective.

"It wouldn't be too surprising to me that human sacrifice might have increased at this time because chiefs needed to demonstrate that they had that capacity to engage in warfare at this particular juncture."

He's referring to a 50-year period, about 1775-1825, that was a particularly violent time in Hawaiian history, though not the only time human sacrifice occurred.

The team will also study the deities of that time.

"One of the ways in which we distinguish a polytheistic religion, such as traditional Hawaiian religion, from most of the major religions we see today with a single god is that ... (when we think of) a single god, we think of an all-purpose god, capable of doing or representing many things for us," Graves said. "Hawaiian gods to a greater degree were more specialized, representing different functions of the world or of human nature."

Early Hawaiians may have worshipped, say, a separate god of agriculture or warfare or hula.

"As occasions would demand, you'd invoke a particular god at that time," he said, but added, "That doesn't mean they would be the only gods you'd worship."

These gods would be "vertically organized," he said. The hierarchy: Some would have their individual gods, but groups might come together to pay homage to a greater-than-life deity, such as Lono. Because there was no single spiritual leader, the religion was much more defused — though the worshippers might share "a pantheon of deity."

Graves hopes all this will reveal more than just Hawai'i's religious practices.

"This was a society where religion and politics as well as other domains were closely intertwined. The state, the polity and religion were completely connected to each other," he said.

"There are modern examples of state-sponsored religions and ... (a) dominant religion. America has that to a certain respect. Wanting to understand how this worked in the past is not irrelevant to helping us understand how this works in the present."