The Statues That Walked by Terry Hunt & Carl Lipo

Author:Terry Hunt & Carl Lipo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

Figure 7.7. Stone foundation of a typical “boat-shaped house,” or hare paenga.

Our excavations of the deposits within hare paenga foundations located near Ahu Akahanga and along the northwest coast of the island revealed few, if any, artifacts associated with domestic activity. Early historic visitors to the island made observations consistent with our findings, remarking that all they saw inside these houses were some gourds. Thus it is likely that hare paenga were not primary habitations but may have had a special, perhaps ritual, role on Rapa Nui. Given their size and narrow shape, they would not be well suited for much other than sleeping. Their general clustering around ahu suggests that they are somehow related to ahu activities, though exactly how is unknown.

This distribution of domestic features reflects dispersed settlement patterns. The farther inland one goes, the lower the density of domestic archaeological features, such as rock mulch areas and manavai. As we travel inland from the coast, we also find an increasing array of artifacts that indicate specialized economic activities as opposed to domestic life: basalt quarrying, carved bedrock water basins, small rock alignments with terraces, and so on.

Variations in the style of artifacts and architectural remains suggest that groups shared ideas locally, and that communities were relatively small subsets of people compared to the island population as a whole. For example, open-air earth ovens ( umu ) are common features throughout the island. Umu were the primary means of cooking food. While umu are functionally identical and formed by a pit dug into the ground enclosed by rocks, their construction varies in shape. The surface stones can be arranged in rectangular, pentagonal, circular, and irregular shapes. None of these shapes affects the performance of the oven; each is simply the result of shared (or inherited) cultural preferences, that is, a local style for doing things.

As it turns out, on Rapa Nui, “local” can be very local. When we plot the distribution of different umu shapes, or styles, we find that their numbers vary from place to place. Some areas, for example, have an abundance of rectangular ovens, while other areas have more circular ones. We find similar variations in styles in the details of ahu construction, pukao, moai, and even in mata’a tool forms. 20 For example, while ahu share many features, the details of seawall construction, presence of red scoria lintels, and other specific items vary from platform to platform. Our analyses of these ahu features have shown that they vary little by little as one moves along the coastline. Ahu in close proximity will be more similar than those farther apart. Moai and pukao also appear to vary over distance, although some variation also reflects changes in styles through time. It is remarkable that styles of artifacts and architecture could vary from place to place on such a small island.

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