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"Hunt, Terry"
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The statues that walked : unraveling the mystery of Easter Island
The monumental statues of Easter Island, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island's barren landscape, have been a great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific, have built such monumental works, and moved them from the quarry where they were carved to the coast? And if the island once boasted a culture sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? The prevailing accounts of the island's history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. But when Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archaeological studies on the island in 2001, they uncovered a very different truth: they show that the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time.--From publisher description.
Book
Rapa Nui (Easter Island) monument (ahu) locations explained by freshwater sources
Explaining the processes underlying the emergence of monument construction is a major theme in contemporary anthropological archaeology, and recent studies have employed spatially-explicit modeling to explain these patterns. Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) is famous for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly numerous monumental platforms (ahu) and statuary (moai). To date, however, we lack explicit modeling to explain spatial and temporal aspects of monument construction. Here, we use spatially-explicit point-process modeling to explore the potential relations between ahu construction locations and subsistence resources, namely, rock mulch agricultural gardens, marine resources, and freshwater sources-the three most critical resources on Rapa Nui. Through these analyses, we demonstrate the central importance of coastal freshwater seeps for precontact populations. Our results suggest that ahu locations are most parsimoniously explained by distance from freshwater sources, in particular coastal seeps, with important implications for community formation and inter-community competition in precontact times.
Journal Article
The Oxford handbook of prehistoric Oceania
\"The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania presents the archaeology, linguistics, environment and human biology of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. First colonized 50,000 years ago, Oceania witnessed the independent invention of agriculture, the construction of Easter Island's statues, and the development of the word's last archaic states.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Megalithic statue (moai) production on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)
Ethnohistoric and recent archaeological evidence suggest that Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) was a politically decentralized society organized into small, relatively autonomous kin-based communities across the island. The more than 1,000 monumental statues ( moai ) of Rapa Nui thus raise a critical question: was production at Rano Raraku—the primary moai quarry—centrally controlled or did it mirror the decentralized pattern found elsewhere on the island? Using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry with over 11,000 UAV images, we created the first comprehensive three-dimensional model of the quarry to test these competing hypotheses. Our analysis reveals 30 distinct quarrying foci distributed across the crater, each containing redundant production features and employing varied carving techniques. This spatial organization, combined with evidence for multiple simultaneous workshops constrained by natural boundaries, indicates that moai production followed the same decentralized, clan-based pattern documented for other aspects of Rapa Nui society. These findings challenge assumptions that monumentality requires hierarchical control, instead supporting emerging frameworks that recognize how complex cooperative behaviors can emerge through horizontal social networks. The high-resolution 3D model also establishes a crucial baseline for the cultural heritage management of this UNESCO World Heritage site, while advancing methodological approaches for testing sociopolitical hypotheses through the spatial analysis of archaeological landscapes.
Journal Article
High-precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia
The 15 archipelagos of East Polynesia, including New Zealand, Hawaii, and Rapa Nui, were the last habitable places on earth colonized by prehistoric humans. The timing and pattern of this colonization event has been poorly resolved, with chronologies varying by >1000 y, precluding understanding of cultural change and ecological impacts on these pristine ecosystems. In a meta-analysis of 1,434 radiocarbon dates from the region, reliable short-lived samples reveal that the colonization of East Polynesia occurred in two distinct phases: earliest in the Society Islands A.D. ~1025-1120, four centuries later than previously assumed; then after 70-265 y, dispersal continued in one major pulse to all remaining islands A.D. ~1190-1290. We show that previously supported longer chronologies have relied upon radiocarbon-dated materials with large sources of error, making them unsuitable for precise dating of recent events. Our empirically based and dramatically shortened chronology for the colonization of East Polynesia resolves longstanding paradoxes and offers a robust explanation for the remarkable uniformity of East Polynesian culture, human biology, and language. Models of human colonization, ecological change and historical linguistics for the region now require substantial revision.
Journal Article
Approximate Bayesian Computation of radiocarbon and paleoenvironmental record shows population resilience on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Examining how past human populations responded to environmental and climatic changes is a central focus of the historical sciences. The use of summed probability distributions (SPD) of radiocarbon dates as a proxy for estimating relative population sizes provides a widely applicable method in this research area. Paleodemographic reconstructions and modeling with SPDs, however, are stymied by a lack of accepted methods for model fitting, tools for assessing the demographic impact of environmental or climatic variables, and a means for formal multi-model comparison. These deficiencies severely limit our ability to reliably resolve crucial questions of past human-environment interactions. We propose a solution using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to fit complex demographic models to observed SPDs. Using a case study from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a location that has long been the focus of debate regarding the impact of environmental and climatic changes on its human population, we find that past populations were resilient to environmental and climatic challenges. Our findings support a growing body of evidence showing stable and sustainable communities on the island. The ABC framework offers a novel approach for exploring regions and time periods where questions of climate-induced demographic and cultural change remain unresolved.
Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates can be used to estimate past demography, but methods to test for associations with environmental change are lacking. Here, DiNapoli et al. propose an approach using Approximate Bayesian Computation and illustrate it in a case study of Rapa Nui.
Journal Article
Population structure drives cultural diversity in finite populations: A hypothesis for localized community patterns on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)
Understanding how and why cultural diversity changes in human populations remains a central topic of debate in cultural evolutionary studies. Due to the effects of drift, small and isolated populations face evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences, particularly when environmental conditions change unpredictably, such that knowledge about past environments may be key to long-term persistence. Factors that can shape the outcomes of drift within a population include the semantics of the traits as well as spatially structured social networks. Here, we use cultural transmission simulations to explore how social network structure and interaction affect the rate of trait retention and extinction. Using Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) as an example, we develop a model-based hypothesis for how the structural constraints of communities living in small, isolated populations had dramatic effects and likely led to preventing the loss of cultural information in both community patterning and technology.
Journal Article
Megalithic statue
Ethnohistoric and recent archaeological evidence suggest that Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) was a politically decentralized society organized into small, relatively autonomous kin-based communities across the island. The more than 1,000 monumental statues (moai) of Rapa Nui thus raise a critical question: was production at Rano Raraku-the primary moai quarry-centrally controlled or did it mirror the decentralized pattern found elsewhere on the island? Using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry with over 11,000 UAV images, we created the first comprehensive three-dimensional model of the quarry to test these competing hypotheses. Our analysis reveals 30 distinct quarrying foci distributed across the crater, each containing redundant production features and employing varied carving techniques. This spatial organization, combined with evidence for multiple simultaneous workshops constrained by natural boundaries, indicates that moai production followed the same decentralized, clan-based pattern documented for other aspects of Rapa Nui society. These findings challenge assumptions that monumentality requires hierarchical control, instead supporting emerging frameworks that recognize how complex cooperative behaviors can emerge through horizontal social networks. The high-resolution 3D model also establishes a crucial baseline for the cultural heritage management of this UNESCO World Heritage site, while advancing methodological approaches for testing sociopolitical hypotheses through the spatial analysis of archaeological landscapes.
Journal Article
Late Colonization of Easter Island
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) provides a model of human-induced environmental degradation. A reliable chronology is central to understanding the cultural, ecological, and demographic processes involved. Radiocarbon dates for the earliest stratigraphic layers at Anakena, Easter Island, and analysis of previous radiocarbon dates imply that the island was colonized late, about 1200 A.D. Substantial ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement.
Journal Article