Rapa Nui Journal Volume 26 Issue 1
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Item Easter Island Foundation News(2012-05-01)Item What's New Elsewhere(2012-05-01) Mulrooney, MaraItem What's New in Oceania(2012-05-01) Mulrooney, MaraItem What's New on Rapa Nui(2012-05-01) Mulrooney, MaraItem Moai Sightings(2012-05-01)Item Getting to know you: Alex Morrison(2012-05-01)Item Obituary Paul Harmer Rosendahl Archaeologist (1944–2012)(2012-05-01) Severance, CraigItem Thor Heyerdahl as world heritage(2012-05-01) Solsvik, ReidarItem Reports and Commentaries Rapa Nui in Tenerife(2012-05-01) Bahn, PaulItem Images, which are not seen, and stolen friends, who steal: A reply to Van Tilburg and Arévalo Pakarati(2012-05-01) Davletshin, AlbertItem Hoa Hakananai‘a in detail: Comment on A. Davletshin’s unconvincing assertion of an ‘overlooked image’ on the ventral side of the ‘Orongo statue now in the British Museum(2012-05-01) Van Tilburg, Jo Anne; Pakarati, Cristián ArévaloAlbert Davletshin contends that he has detected several rock art elements on the ventral side of the basalt statue Hoa Hakananai‘a (EISP inventory BM-LON-001).1 The statue was collected from ‘Orongo by HMS Topaze in 1868 (Van Tilburg 1992, 2006) and is now in the British Museum (1869.10-5.1). We take his claim very seriously and agree that a single curved line on the torso is tantalizing. However, the designs he depicts do not exist on Hoa Hakananai‘a. Since we are constrained for space we cannot deal with all of our disagreements with this article, most of which we raised during the peer review process. Our main points here are that Hoa Hakananai‘a is unique within our inventory of 1,042 monolithic sculptural objects but must be considered within an island-wide archaeological context of which the author has no apparent grasp. Secondly, our documentation employs a variety of objective, replicable methods including state of-the-art digital scanning procedures (www.eisp.org). Davletshin’s methods, in contrast, are subjective and not replicable, not encouraged in the field of modern rock art studies, produce unreliable results (especially in artificial light and with a raised target), and are inferior to ours. His resultant data are erroneous and his interpretations are incorrect.Item An overlooked image on the Hoa-haka-nana‘ia stone statue from Easter Island in the British Museum(2012-05-01) Davletshin, AlbertThe Hoa-haka-nanaʻia stone statue in the British Museum in London is one of the most well-known specimens of pre-contact Rapa Nui art. An important object of the tangata manu (birdman) cult, it was originally situated at the ceremonial village of ‘Orongo. It is famous for the designs of two birdmen, a manutara (sooty tern), ‘ao (ceremonial paddles), and komari (vulva) symbols carved on its back and painted with bright colors. This paper is dedicated to the documentation and analysis of a hitherto unrecognized image carved on statue’s front torso. The image is described, tentatively drawn, and analyzed for the first time, and is defined as an “atypical” birdman, which grasps an egg in its extended hand without fingers, is crowned with feathers, and has a long hooked beak holding one more egg. Several komari symbols and other unclear designs may surround this figure. The image is badly obliterated. Its “pecking and abrading” method of carving differs from the method of carving used for the dorsal designs. Tentatively defined stylistic traits of the birdman carved on the statue’s front are different from the two birdmen of the late phase on its back and permit us to potentially date the frontal image to earlier times. The finding opens the question of multiple re-use of this unique statue and its exceptional role in the birdman cult.Item Strikes, insubordination, theft and disobedience. Between the rebellion of Angata and Rapanui struggles for civil rights. Forms of indigenous resistance on Rapa Nui (1917-1936)(2012-05-01) Fuentes, MiguelAfter the demise of the indigenous rebellion in 1914, the Rapanui community began a campaign of active resistance against attempts to mold their ways of life to new socio-political patterns and norms. Their constant and varied practices to undermine and disregard the authority of the State and the functionaries of the “Compañía Explotadora de Isla de Pascua” (CEDIP) became significant obstacles for colonial powers, as well as marking the beginningsof the struggles for Rapanui civil rights in the 1960s.Item A fast yam to Polynesia: New thinking on the problem of the American sweet potato in Oceania(2012-05-01) Barber,Ian G.This essay revisits Leach’s thesis that American sweet potato (Polynesian kūmara) was first introduced into the Pacific as a variation on Dioscorea yam by Polynesian voyagers returning from South America. A review of early agricultural systems on both sides of the first transoceanic kūmara transfer clarifies South American disinterest in Polynesian cultigens, but not necessarily why sweet potato was transferred to Oceania as a lone, yam-like root crop. Archaeologists working on Rapa Nui and northern South Island (New Zealand) have identified early kūmara cultivation in dry soil planting pits that conform to a widespread Oceanic yam agronomy. Historical ethnobotany sources from Hawai‘i reinforce a Polynesian pattern of kūmara production in three to six months from planting pits and mounds, compared to nine months or more for yam. Northern South Island evidence also confirms that the planting pit method could provide for kūmara cultivation in free-draining soils of low to medium fertility in a climate where yam would not grow. I propose a model in which Polynesians selected South American kūmara for transoceanic transfer as a fast growing, hardy survival yam. These versatile kūmara qualities may even have encouraged the lasgreat voyages of Oceanic exploration to remote southern Polynesia.Item Behrens’ narrative of the discovery of Easter Island:Two editions, two personalities, two realities(2012-05-01) Jakubowska, ZuzannaThis article is dedicated to the figure of Carl Friedich Behrens, a member of the Dutch expedition led by Jacob Roggeveen, who re-discovered Easter Island in 1722. Behrens, a German soldier serving on one of the ships, left a narrative describing the whole journey. The first edition was published in 1737 followed, among others, by a re-published edition made by German anthropologist Hans Plischke that was published in 1923. The important thing is that this version differs from the original to a great extent and the editor did not account for the changes he had introduced into the text: besides grammar and orthography modernization, he omitted certain portions, misinterpreted other ones and added some comments without marking them as his own. As a result, the narrative gives an impression of having been written by another author; Behrens appears as a person with a different character and attitude, weaker, less convincing and even less trustworthy than he really was. This article presents numerous examples of the distortions as a warning against making a scientific or an anthropological use of unreliable editions of source texts, as this may wield a negative influence upon our view and interpretation of the culture we are analyzing.Item Easter Island’s birdman stones in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, Massachusetts(2012-05-01) Horley, Paul; Lee, Georgia