Rapa Nui: A Hyperbolic Iconography

Abstract

Place are readily represented, understood, and marketed through the use of capsule images (Porteous 1977) or icons. The Eiffel Tower means Paris; the shell-like image of the Opera House means Sydney. Such large vertical objects, hyperbolic in their exaggerated obviousness, make useful icons. In this paper I explore the iconography of Rapa Nui, which is rather more complicated than the image which immediately springs to mind, the icon of the stern and severe moai which decorates so many book-covers, film titles, tee-shirts and placemats.