In November 2005, archaeologist Patrick V. Kirch was exploring the Kaeke region in the uplands of Nuu when he came upon a curious assortment of basalt stones and flakes scattered on the ground. He immediately recognized the site as a place where native Hawaiians had fashioned adzes, the tools used to cut and shape wood.
This “Nuu Quarry” was a rare discovery. Previously, only one adze quarry was known on the entire island of Maui, on the western rim of Haleakala Crater. In the years following the discovery, Kirch and others analyzed the quarry and published their research in a 2009 report.
Based on estimates of output, the Nuu Quarry was relatively small. Kirch and his team projected the Nu‘u Quarry volume at approximately 33,000 cubic meters. This is slightly more than 1% of the volume at the largest adze quarry in Hawaii, at Mauna Kea, where the total production output may have been as much as 2 million cubic meters.
Based on the small size of the quarry, Kirch concluded that the adzes made at Nuu were primarily for Kaupo locals. Conversely, Hawaiians traded the adzes made at Mauna Kea all across the islands.
Although the adzes made at Nuu were mostly used by Kaupo natives, Kirch did find basalt flakes from Nuu adzes at two sites in Kahikinui, a traditional district neighboring Kaupo.
The basalt flakes found in Kahikinui were sourced to Nuu through energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) technology, which examines the geochemical composition of stones. This can help identify the source of stones, as stones from different areas have a different geochemical “fingerprint”.
Fortunately, the Kahikinui sites with Nuu adze flakes also contained material that could be radiocarbon dated. Based on this, Kirch was able to estimate that Kaupo natives were making adzes at the Nuu Quarry during the 1600s and 1700s.
At Nuu, Kirch found mostly adze blanks or preforms, in other words, adzes that were still in the early stages of production. These blanks and preforms were “rejects” — stones that craftsmen had partially worked and then discarded because of fractures and other imperfections.
The shapes of the adze blanks and preforms were primarily trapezoids and rectangles, although there were also disc-shaped stones that may have been blanks for game pieces. As to adze size, Hawaiians made both large and small adzes at Nuu.
Finally, Kirch noted that Hawaiians performed most stages of adze creation at the Nuu Quarry, including shaping early-stage blanks and later-stage preforms. However, he noted that they did not perform final polishing there.
Kirch did not pursue this line of thought regarding final polishing further in his 2009 report. However, because the Nuu adzes were made for Kaupo residents, this end-stage work must have been performed in the area.
Indeed, in the archeological research of the early 1900s, there are descriptions of places where Kaupo natives polished and grinded adzes, likely the same ones that began their life at Nuu.
For example, in 1929, archaeologist Winslow Walker surveyed Kaupo and other areas of Maui, later writing in his manuscript Archaeology of Maui:
“In one site [at Waiuha Bay] a large flat rock with two shallow depressions was found. It was said to have been used as a place for grinding stone adzes. Another stone of this kind was found at Nuu and one, named Pohaku Helani, near J. V. Marciel's house at Kaupo.”
J. V. (Joseph Vierra) Marciel’s house is in the uplands of Kaupo in Keaku Valley, near the former village of Maua. Pohaku Helani, the adze-grinding stone named by Walker, is in a pasture just up from Marciel’s house. A bowl-shaped depression is clearly evident on the broad stone. Interestingly, Helani is also the name of a mountain area directly above Keaku Valley, near the Haleakala Crater rim. Although speculation, there could be a connection between this adze-grinding stone named Pohaku Helani in Maua village and the mountain area of Helani above. Notable, Helani was (and still is) rich in the koa and ohia trees that Hawaiians of old would hew with adzes to build canoes, houses and other important items.
As for the adze grindstone at Waiuha Bay, the same Joseph Vierra Marciel mentioned above drew a sketch of the grindstone at Waiuha Bay in the 1920s. This drawing was part of a sketchbook of Kaupo archaeological sites Marciel sent to Kenneth Emory, an archaeologist at the Bishop Museum. A tracing of Marciel’s sketch of the Waiuha Bay grindstone is shown below.
The adze grindstones Walker described at Waiuha Bay and Nuu may still be at those places, though this is unclear. Moreover, Kaupo was densely populated in the centuries before Westerners arrived, so further archaeological explorations may turn up additional adze-working sites.