Rapa Nui Journal Volume 11 Issue 1

The second technical mission to Orongo, which WMF had tentatively scheduled for the past month of October, had to be delayed in order to resolve technical and logistic problems. The objective of this second mission is to determine the exact location of the sound rock front into which the retaining wall has to be anchored. The construction of the retaining wall along the sea-side and the reconstruction of the original platform around the Mata Ngarau sacred precinct were the solution proposed for the stabilization of this site by the first WMF mission to Orongo in 1995 (1, 2).

The Toromiro (Sophora toromiro) is a species of the leguminosae, Faboidcae, endemic to Easter Island. The history of this treelet by now has become quite well known: For decades (since the beginning of this century), there probably remained only one living plant on Easter Island. This last specimen disappeared in the 60s and the species seemed to have become extinct.

International News

What's New in Polynesia

What's New in Hanga Roa

Between 1990 and 1993, the Ligabue Study and Research Centre of Venice, in collaboration with the Centro de Estudios Isla de Pascua of the University of Chile, the Museo Isla de Pascua Sebastiano Englert and the Italian Precolumbian Archaeological Study and Research Centre, three successive missions to Rapa Nui were made with the aim of increasing knowledge of the inhabited and ceremonial settlements on the island. The purpose of this was to make a more comprehensive analysis including the Marquesas Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, the most probable route of the Polynesian migration.

In my research, I have been focusing on my Nusantao hypothesis since about 1975 when my first publication appeared (Solheim 1975a,b; 1976). My concept of the Nusantao has evolved over time (ibid.: 1979,1981,1985,1990, n.d.a.b), and my present definition of the Nusantao was presented in 1985 (ibid.: 1984-85; 1985-86). The definition of Nusantao applies to a people with a maritime orientation, who originated in Island Southeast Asia. I have expanded this a bit further to the Nusantao Maritime Trading Network. My most recent research on this trading network has been in its development from Southeast Asia to the north. The papers in which I present the results of this research have not yet appeared in print so I must repeat some of the material in order to present sorne context.

For well over two centuries, scholars have debated the origin of the people of Easter Island-and with good reason. The Island is far removed from all other inhabited places on earth and its people, at the time of European contact. were remarkably diverse. Carl Friedrich Behrens, a companion of Roggeveen, the Island's European discoverer in 1722, noted that the islanders in general were 'brown like the Spaniards,' but that some were 'pretty black.' some 'quite white.' and others of a reddish complexion as if burnt by the sun. The English archaeologist Katherine Routledge, who spent several months on Easter Island in 1914, found Behrens' description 'still accurate' and the islanders 'very conscious of the variations.' 'When we were collecting genealogies," she wrote, 'they were quite ready to give the colour of even remote relations' (Langdon 1975: 260,265).

On behalf of the member of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island in 1955-56. I would like to express our gratitude to the University of Wyoming for the invitation to participate in this Rapa Nui Rendezvous. As we all know, this University was the scientific home of our late friend and collaborator. William Mulloy, and is a most appropriate meeting place for his many friends and followers. No other scholar has devoted so much of his life to field work on Easter Island as did William Mulloy. It was my fortune that I was able to introduce him to this most remarkable of all Pacific islands, at a time when no stratigraphic archaeology had as yet been attempted in any part of Eastern Polynesia.