Iconoclasm Island: New Research on the Destruction of Rapa Nui’s Statues

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Monuments are a critical window into people’s values, beliefs, and social memories. The destruction of monuments is especially important since it can shed light on how these aspects of societies change over time. We describe new research aimed at understanding the destruction of moai (statues) on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Our first goal is to build a chronology of statue toppling based on the exposure of the broken surfaces of statues to weathering. Exposure to rain and sea spray will over time damage statues in a way that can be measured non-destructively with a specialized handheld ultrasound instrument. To determine how long damage observed on statues took to accumulate, we are artificially weathering stone blocks as well as conducting other experiments. Our second objective is to assess how statues were toppled by looking for distinctive patterns in the timing and location of statue toppling that can be linked to purposeful destruction, neglect, or earthquakes. We utilize advances in archaeoseismology, specifically engineering computer simulations that predict how statues might behave in major earthquakes, coupled with recorded and synthetic earthquake waveforms. These data will help the local community to help make decisions about future conservation of statues.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Social Archaeologies and Islands   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38215.0