Morphometric analysis of Stemmed Obsidian Tools from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

Summary

Of the few resources available to prehistoric people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), obsidian was plentiful. Yet out of the countless surviving shaped obsidian artifacts that are found on the island, virtually all of them are of the same general class, the mata’a. Mata’a are flaked obsidian stemmed tools formed from a hard-hammer primary flake. As relatively simple stemmed obsidian tools with wide blades, their form is similar to artifacts known as mata’a found on other Polynesian islands such the basalt artifacts found on New Zealand, Pitcairn and the Chatham Islands as well as New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Remarkably, all of the mata’a from Rapa Nui are of a single form with no apparent functional differentiation. Here, we have undertaken a morphometric outline analysis of a large collection multiple mata’a obsidian tools from Rapa Nui and compared similar obsidian tools known elsewhere in the Pacific. Relative to other locations, we show that that statistically distinct shape classes suggest that Rapa Nui obsidian tools are part of an as yet unknown social or technological function.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Exotic, Lustrous, and Colorful: Obsidian in Symbol, Society, and Ceremony

Keywords

Spatial Coverage