By: Ryan Pilanca
Have you ever wondered how the ancient Hawaiians built a heiau? Well in this project we found out just how they did it. Hui Kaha Pohaku is our group name, in Hawaiian it means ‘’group that maps the placement of stones.’’ Our purpose was to go out and remap the heiau that had been destroyed over time, by nature. When we got onto the site we did physical labor along with taking copious notes in our outdoor classroom. We measured out the whole area using the plane table mapping technique.
I went on four field trips aside from the orientation. Overall it was a great experience. The boys went to a site called pao’umi heiau and the girls went to another site called keikiho’okama. When on the site we put flags on the main stones and ridges so that we could see where the wall was. After flagging the whole area we set up the plane tables and mapped every flag and its distance. When all the mapping was done we started drawing the maps out. The final part was drawing all the details such as the distance, the direction and the legend.
After all this was done I looked back and I am proud to have worked on the site. It will be there when I’m gone and my children will know that I helped rebuild that heiau
I would recommend the project to the up and coming underclassmen.
