Name Yosihiko Sinoto | ||
Books Huahine: Island of the Lost Canoe | ||
Yosihiko H. Sinoto (born 3 September 1924) is a Japanese-born American anthropologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is known for his anthropological expeditions throughout the Pacific, particularly Hawaii and French Polynesia.
Contents
Biography
He graduated as BA at the University of Hawaii in 1958 and he acquired his DSc at the University of Hokkaido in Japan in 1962.
In 1954 he moved to Hawaii where he began his archaeological dig work at South Point on Hawaii. In 1960 he accompanied anthropologist Kenneth Emory to Tahiti, in French Polynesia.
In 1964-5 he excavated Hane in the Marquesas Islands, during which he discovered more than 12,000 bird bones of which nearly 10,000 are reported to belong to about seven species of shearwaters and petrels. On the island of Huahine, where he worked for 40 years, he helped to restore and preserve the prehistoric village of Maeva with its temple ruins, or marae. In 1977 he discovered the remnants of a deep-sea voyaging canoe. Sinoto's further expeditions led him to the Society Islands, Marquesas, Tuamotus and others, where he studied the settlements, artifacts, migration patterns and Polynesian cultural ties.
Yosihiko Sinoto's wife, Kazuko Sinoto, who died in 2013, was a historian of Japanese immigration. His son Aki is archaeologist at the Bishop Museum.
Honors
Sinoto is honored as a Tahitian chevalier (knight) of the Order of Tahiti Nui in 2000 and the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun.
Sinoto's lorikeet (Vini sinotoi), an extinct lorikeet species in the Marquesas Islands, and Sir Yosihiko Sinoto, a hybrid variety of hibiscus, are both named for him.