Undermining the Divide between Modern Astronomy and Archaeology on Maunakea

Exciting developments in archaeology, astronomy, and history have shown that terrestrial material evidence can shed light on how people around the world historically understood the sky and stars. Landscape and the built environment offer not only clues to early astronomical techniques and precedents for contemporary practices, but also create continuity in Indigenous star practices that have been used for millennia. Yet too often large-scale observatories see archaeoastronomy practices, and archaeology generally, as a hindrance to their work. These assumptions rehearse Western, Enlightenment-derived ideas of science as strictly separated disciplines. Just as these ideas contributed to colonial worldviews in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, today they re-entrench the colonial dimension of Big Astronomy. This paper will look at the relationship between astronomy, archaeology, and Kānaka Maoli (native Hawaiian) star practice on the volcano Maunakea in Hawaii, and specifically within the Mauna Kea Science Reserve. Set aside in the 1960s for the Mauna Kea Observatories, the science reserve is ostensibly reserved for any scientific practice, but archaeology and biology are consistently subordinated to telescope construction. This paper will center the historical role of the Hawaiian star practice in the movement to protect Maunakea from further development, and discuss the importance of archaeology to those efforts.