Soil Fertility and Chronology at the RapaNui Rano Raraku Megalithic Statue Quarry

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rano Raraku on Easter Island (RapaNui) is famous as the source of the megalithic moai statues. Past research by the Easter Island Statue Project (EISP) documented and mapped the statues. Other studies, based on coring the freshwater lake in Rano Raraku, identified microbotanical evidence of a cultivated landscape inside the quarry. This paper concentrates on recent excavations of statue 156 confirming that the statue was permanently placed in this location and was not "in-progress" or awaiting transport. We present a Bayesian model based on 20 radiocarbon dates that addresses the timing of the raising or "use" of Statue 156, visitation to create secondary petroglyphs, and the tempo of sedimentation that buried most of this statue. Micromorphological analyses reveal the presence of incipient surfaces as the slope deposits accumulated around the statue. Results from the soil chemistry indicate that the quarry was exceptionally fertile and likely produced uniquely high yields of traditional cultivars on an island struggling with poor soil conditions. This complex land use history for Rano Raraku has significant implications for understanding how specialized craft production may have impacted or otherwise influenced the evolution of social relationships on the island in the 16th through early 18th centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25257