Johns Hopkins Gazette: April 1, 1996

Digging Hawaii

Mike Field
Staff Writer

     This is a story about a Russian scientist at Johns Hopkins
University digging up prehistoric temple artifacts on the island
of Maui. Call it, How did a nice lady from the Soviet Academy of
Sciences end up on familiar terms with the Hawaiian shark god,

     The answer, of course, was that now long-ago event known as
perestroika, wherein the vast edifice of Soviet society cracked,
enabling--or forcing--thousands of ordinary Soviet citizens from
all walks of life to take a more entrepreneurial approach to
their jobs.

     A prime example of this phenomenon can be found in one Elena
Ermolaeva, a Hopkins doctoral candidate in sociology studying
with professor Christopher Chase-Dunn. Prior to 1989, Ermolaeva
was a member of the Institute of Sociology within the prestigious
U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences--about as choice a job as a Soviet
citizen could wish for. She had her own place in Moscow, and for
13 years got to travel throughout the many republics of the
Soviet Union doing all kinds of interesting work.

     "The institute was huge, and we worked all over and were
always well treated wherever we went," Ermolaeva recalls fondly.
"I worked for a time on the Iranian border and have been other
places the average Russian has not." 

     As a member of the Academy of Sciences, Ermolaeva enjoyed
the privilege of pursuing research in her field without
associated teaching duties. "My special field of interest was the
linguistic equivalents of survey instruments," she said. "How do
you make questionnaires understandable to different cultures so
your results can be accurately compared? In the Soviet Union this
was an important topic."

     When perestroika came and the formerly closed society began
to open up, one of the first opportunities available was the
chance for the best scientists to travel to peer institutions in
the West. "In 1990 I was one of 60 members of the institute
selected to study abroad," Ermolaeva said. After a month spent
studying in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, she came to
Hopkins and began to work closely with Professor Chase-Dunn,
whose work in world systems theory seeks to understand universal
issues by studying isolated cultures that become, in effect, a
whole world unto themselves.

     Hawaii, which was cut off from outside contact until Captain
Cook landed at Waimea on the island of Kauai in 1778, is the
perfect case study for such theories. So it seemed only natural
when Ermolaeva decided to augment her Soviet doctorate with an
American degree from Johns Hopkins that she should turn to
America's "paradise in the Pacific" to pursue her research.

     "I am particularly interested in border areas and buffer
zones between cultures," said Ermolaeva of her work, which she
believes has considerable relevance to the current developments
in Eastern Europe. "Hawaii had minimal outside contact for
hundreds of years, so we can look at the Hawaiian archipelago as
a small world system. I am researching communities bounded by
exchanges within that system."

     Although a Russian by birth of Polish/Slavic heritage,
Ermolaeva's dark hair and mysterious eyes bespeak the melting pot
culture of her former Soviet homeland. "Me? I am from nowhere,"
she said in characteristic self-deflating style with a lugubrious
Slavic accent. Her little joke is not tinged without a certain
irony, however. In a sense, since the breakup of the Soviet
Union, she is a woman from nowhere, as the multicultural
"worker's paradise" of 15 autonomous republics has devolved into
many separate--and oftentimes squabbling--nation-states.

     "Now Russia is so small," she said in complete earnestness.
It's hard to imagine a country that stretches 6,250 miles from
east to west as small, exactly, but what Ermolaeva refers to is
the diminished scope of cultures and nationalities, not the sheer
physical size of the place. Russia shorn of her world power and
separated from the other republics is indeed a Russia made
smaller--at least from a sociologist's point of view. "In the
past, you could work anywhere. Now, we are no longer welcome in
many of the republics," said Ermolaeva with a sigh.

     Russia's loss however, soon became Hawaii's gain as
Ermolaeva turned her talents to investigating the preliterate,
highly stratified society that Captain Cook discovered when he
arrived there more than 200 years ago. In order to better
understand the complex interplay of culture, climate and
geography that shaped the social development of ancient Hawaii,
she has visited the islands on three separate occasions over the
past six years, staying about 20 days each time.

     Not bad for a former Soviet sociologist whose prior
knowledge of Hawaii consisted of a general sense of its location
in the Pacific and the history imparted from a popular--though
inaccurate--Russian folk song. "The title of the song translates
to Why the Aboriginals Ate Captain Cook," said Ermolaeva with a

     Now the woman "from nowhere" has become an expert in certain
aspects of Hawaiian history, and her rootlessness has proved
helpful in her research. Archaeology in Hawaii can often be a
contentious undertaking. Many residents of native descent take a
dim view of outsiders digging graves or religious sites, and a
vocal but influential minority that advocates Hawaiian
independence will occasionally confront archaeological
expeditions they feel are intruding onto sacred sites.
Mainlanders--that is, Americans from outside Hawaii--are
especially liable to find a less-than-cordial welcome for their

     Yet in Hawaii, Ermolaeva has found herself welcomed as one
of their own. Her exotic looks and unusual accent have made her
something of a celebrity among local island intellectuals, more
than one of whom, she said, wondered how on earth a woman from
Russia could end up interested in ancient Hawaiian history. 

     On her first trip this acceptance enabled her to participate
in a dig at an ancient temple site in the Hana area of Maui. The
temple was originally thought to be dedicated to the harvest god,
Lono. Captain Cook is believed to have arrived in Hawaii during a
festival honoring Lono, and some have suggested the Hawaiians'
initial enthusiastic welcome was brought about, in part, because
the priests of Lono found considerable advantage in proclaiming
Cook a direct emissary from the god.

     Work on the dig, however, suggested that the temple site may
in fact have been dedicated to the shark god, Ku, primarily
because the rituals associated with each god were different, and
the evidence discovered more closely matched Ku than Lono. "You
cannot consider the results of an excavation as 100 percent
accurate," said Ermolaeva with a scientist's innate skepticism.
"The data has to be contrasted and confirmed by other disciplines
before we can reach a definite conclusion."

     Ermolaeva's real specialty lies not in Maui, but on the
nearby "big island" of Hawaii, where, along the east coast, a
series of five deep mountain valleys lead to the sea. Pololu--the
fifth, and northernmost of these valleys--occupied a sort of no
man's land between two hostile chiefdoms. This "buffer state"
area was, over a period of several hundred years, settled,
depopulated and settled again in response to the changing
political relations between the two states.

     Ermolaeva has become expert on the history and development
of this remote valley, collecting what is probably the world's
most extensive library of surveys, historical literature, maps,
photographs and even song lyrics about Pololu. "Not much research
has been done on border areas, and the great advantage to Pololu
is that it is still undeveloped today," she said. The valley is
accessible only by all-terrain vehicle or on foot and is largely
uninhabited. Archaeological evidence suggests periods of
intensive agricultural development alternating with little or no
activity, which would seem to correspond with known political
developments in Hawaiian pre-literate history.

     "There is the history of Umi, the partly legendary king who
came from nearby Waipio Valley, and there are several known
periods when power was consolidated on the island," Ermolaeva
said. "My effort is to establish similarities and differences in
the way the valley was exploited during different historical
periods, based on the theory that the way two cultures--in this
case, two different chiefdoms--contact each other can be

     One day, she hopes, such isolated world models might provide
an insight into similar conditions in places such as Eastern
Europe. "No one is saying the conclusions we come to in Hawaii
will become immediately applicable elsewhere, but I believe they
can help to point to both theoretical and empirical probabilities
in existing situations," she said. "I believe that, more or less,
things go in cycles. It makes sense if we are to understand, and
sometimes to interfere, in current world affairs, that we have an
understanding of how these things work."

     In the near future, however, Ermolaeva must contend with the
realities of an academic life. Her American doctorate, which she
hopes to complete soon, will nicely augment her Soviet degree,
and she retains her position in the Institute of Sociology in
Moscow. It remains doubtful, though, that once back in Russia she
will be able to raise funds to continue her research in Hawaii. 

     "I am a committed academic," she said hopefully of her
future plans. "I will continue my research." One serendipitous
discovery has been that she especially enjoys teaching what she
knows. Recently, she returned to Russia for the first time in six
years. "I went to the Lenin Library [in Moscow] to investigate
what primary source materials might be available from the Russian
explorers and traders who visited Hawaii in the early 19th
century," she said.

     Unfortunately, the only information was a series of Soviet
books and articles with titles like Aggressive Intervention in
Hawaiian History, all published at the height of the Cold War in
the 1950s and '60s. If there is ever to be an original Russian
contribution to understanding Hawaiian history, it looks like
Elena Ermolaeva will have to do it herself. Nor does that seem an
unlikely possibility. After all, a woman from nowhere is really a
woman from everywhere. She might as well be from Hawaii too.

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