Rapa Nui Journal Volume 8 Issue 4

What's New in Polynesia

What's New in Hangaroa

International News

Film Review

Hollywood at the Center of the World: A Review of Rapa Nui

James Hynes

A Tig Productions /Majestic Films Production Directed by Kevin Reynolds

Jo Anne Van Tilburg. 1992. HMS Topaze on Easter Island, Hoa Hakananai 'a and Five Other Museum Sculptures in Archaeological Context (with drawings of Easter Island statues by Cristian Arevalo Pakarati). Occasional Paper 73, Department of Ethnography, British Museum. 207 pp., 12 pI., 87 figs., 1 fold-out table. £12.

Review by Michel Orliac, CNRS,

Walsh, Grahame L. 1994. Bradshaws: Ancient Rock Paintings of North-West Australia. Edition Lirnitee, PO Box 1204, 1277 Carouge, Geneva, Switzerland. US $80; Australia $120; UK £50.

Hardcover, 285 pages, exceptional quality throughout. Maps, diagrams, bibliography and 99 color plates. Each color plate has an opposing black and white rendition of the key figure(s) which are isolated to show important features that are lost in layers of superimpositions. Review by Georgia Lee

Grant McCall, Rapanui: Tradition and Survival on Easter Island, 2nd edition. University of Hawaii Press, 2840 Kolowalu Street, Honolulu, HI 96822. 1994. Paperback, 207 pages, 2 maps, several B&W photographs. ISBN 0-8248- 1641-2.

Review by William Liller Easter Island Foundation Viiia del Mar, Chile

In RNJ 8:79-80 I related Gerard Boon's story about the cannon found on the island Takapoto in the Tuamotus which could conceivably be cannon from the Africaensche Galey. The Africaensche Galey was the smallest of the three ships with which Jacob Roggeveen set out on his voyage in search of the unknown Southland. After the discovery of Easter Island I on Easter Sunday April 5, 1722 he sailed on westwards and on May 19 the Galey struck a reef to the east of Takapoto atoll where it sank.

The following passage was inadvertently truncated from RNJ 8(3):65, immediately following the paragraph ending: "...We got on board at Sunset, hoisted the boats, weighed the Anchor, and made Sail." The footnotes to the truncated text are in RNJ 8(3):66.

A high-power use-wear analysis has been conducted on a sample of chipped obsidian artifacts from Site 10-241, an upland site located approximately 5 km from the southern coast of Easter Island near Vaihu (Figure 1). The site was occupied between AD 1400 and AD 1680 (Stevenson, Pollack, and Ramirez 1991). Site 10-241 was selected for excavation in 1989 in order to document the variety of prehistoric economic activities conducted at high inland sites.

It was only at the Rapa Nui Rendezvous held at Laramie, Wyoming in August 1993 that I found out that--up to now-the journal of Captain Bouman's stay around Easter Island had never been completely translated into English. After having written "Some Details of the Journal of Jacob Roggeveen on the Discovery of Easter Island" for RNJ VoI.4(3), the editors wanted more, so I wrote "Some Details from the Journal of Captain Bouman on the Discovery of Easter Island" (RNJ Vol.4 (4). I thought that, for the serious students of Bouman, a complete translation would be available in some library but, as far as I know, this is not the case. Because Roggeveen' s journal disappeared for over a century and Bouman's for nearly two centuries and during that time only apocryphal sources were available, a tremendous confusion arose about their journey. I tried to evaluate all the different narratives in my article "Roggeveen and Bouman, an Inventory of all the Narratives" in RNJ, Vol. 7(4).

We know from different sources that small human figures in bark-cloth as well as large wicker figures were used in ancient times on Easter Island. There are now only three bark-cloth images in two museums of the world--Boston and Belfast. Their ancient name is forgotten by the Rapanui. Of the large wicker figures, none survive and we know them only from descriptions made by voyagers and scientists. These two types of anthropomorphic figures are very interesting, not only as art objects, but also as attributes of the ritual practices of the Easter Islanders. Some features of the small bark-cloth figures are described in early publications and reports, including one by the author of this article.