Identifying and explaining the end of long-lived practices is a major challenge for anthropological archaeology. We present a high-precision uranium series dating (230Th/U) chronology of an undocumented aspect of Hawaiian religion: the use of corals as offerings in gardens. Our results from the upland gardens of Kealakekua (Kona District, Hawai`i Island) document the onset of religious offerings at the same time as farming in the area at around AD 1400, with no samples dating to after around AD 1635. There are similar conspicuous endings to coral offerings in temple sites on the small, isolated island of Nihoa and in the uplands of Maui. On Nihoa, the lack of coral offerings after AD 1606 can be reasonably linked to the abandonment of permanent settlement on the island. In upland Maui temple sites, as is the case in the upland gardens of Kealakekua, the end of coral offerings around AD 1600–1700 suggests a disruption to a long-lived ritual tradition at a time when other metrics point to the rise of state authority over religion.

Pleistocene faunas from south China are difficult to subdivide based on the long temporal ranges of many taxa and a reduced number of genera in comparison to faunas from temperate north China. In south China, the Ailuropoda–Stegodon fauna is a very general one and includes a relatively stable suite of genera that apparently persisted for long periods of time. These attributes have made constraining its time range difficult. Application of electron spin resonance (ESR) dating of tooth enamel constrains the ages well where uranium uptake was minor. Where uranium uptake into teeth was significant, an approach combining ESR and230Th/234U isotopic analysis also yields excellent ages. Previous estimates of early, middle and late Pleistocene time ranges previously determined by biostratigraphic seriation for the Ailuropoda–Stegodon fauna are confirmed in all cases but are made more precise with our approach, including specific time ranges for certain archaic taxa. Absolute dating also yields an extended time range for Gigantopithecus blacki of 1200 to 310 ka.