Easter Island

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Mission Accomplished?

2009-04-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

After G W Bush's "mission accomplished" event on the deck of the
aircraft carrier involved in the Iraq invasion, I'll never utter these
words without a question mark after them. With the question mark
added, they are apt for our last day here. We think we've got a great
set of samples to bring home. The map I'm including shows they're well
distributed across the island. But until we do the work in the lab, we
won't really know if we've accomplished the mission.

I'll try to keep you updated, and there will be at least one more post
about the people we've worked with here.

Tuesday 28 April: Dave's shoes

2009-04-29T12:30:00.001-07:00

Dave's idea of packing for a big overseas field trip is to find old
shoes that are about die, and to leave wear them until they die. This
seems risky to me, but at least means he doesn't have to clean them to
get back into NZ.

Today was our last full day on the island, so Dave went for a long
hike. When he returned, he pronounced his shoes to be dead.

Monday 27 April: The last sample

2009-04-29T12:26:00.001-07:00

Today we collected our last sample. Keeping with our efforts to find
buried soils, here's another example. This is from 90-120 cm, and the
darkening (that looks just like a good garden topsoil) is at the
bottom, from about 108-120 cm!

Sunday 26 April: Mana vai

2009-04-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

Today was our "day off" again, which meant we started packing and
writing our report.

I thought I'd tell you about the mana vai which the people of Rapa Nui
used, and still use, to grow crops. Within stone walls, the plants are
well protected from the wind; this conserves water (vai). This is very
helpful for the more tropical plants brought from Polynesia. Here our
guide Soro has ginger in one hand and a sugar cane in the other. Mark
and John were impressed, and there's more sugar cane behind John.

The other photo shows a much tidier mana vai, which we saw in the same
area while we were looking for places to sample soil.

Saturday 25 April: Lithic Mulch

2009-04-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

Today we sampled a site quite some distance around the north coast.
Here's a view of our site (with a calf for scale), which contained
about 2 meters of nearly rockless soiI. It took researchers a long
time to recognize that all these rocks were put in place by people to
reduce water losses from cultivated plants. Amazing, eh?

Friday 24 April: Refining our target

2009-04-29T12:08:00.001-07:00

As our soil sampling has proceeded, we've been able to refine our
visual target for sites. We're trying to find sites that naturally
collect sediment from a significant uphill area with both human
occupation and agriculture. As we've proceeded, our skill has improved
at finding sites that collect sediment efficiently without being
scoured out during major floods. This site was nearly ideal. It
samples a large area upstream of gorge in the background. The exact
location we sampled showed evidence of almost continuous soil burial,
but had to be chosen carefully because areas directly downstream of
the gorge appeared to be scoured out during floods.

In the sample shown, the core is composed entirely of material dark
enough to be a topsoil, but the sample is from 1.2 - 1.5 m below the
soil surface. Throughout most of the island, soils at this depth would
be light reddish brown.

Thursday 24 April: Improvisation

2009-04-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

Today we're continuing with more soil coring. I'll post some photos of
this tomorrow.

I thought I'd post today about improvisation. Working in a remote
place often involves some improvisation. There have been many ways
we've improvised on this trip, and here's one. Normally, we like to
dry samples in nice ovens, or better yet in freeze dryers. For samples
that had to be dried here, I "built" this cute little oven. It
consists of a box with a hole cut in the bottom to go over a light.
With the help of a tripod and an extra bed, the box was stable for an
overnight drying session. And as you can see from the lower reading,
it hit my target range of 35-40°C nearly perfectly.

Warning: be careful with heat. I checked the temperature around the
light bulb quite a few times to be sure I wasn't a fire hazard. John
reports that an older tactic was to use a candle as a heat source, and
he caught his plant samples on fire once!

Wednesday, 22 April: Fossil roots on the former lakeshore of Rano Raraku

2009-04-23T16:52:00.001-07:00

Studies of lake sediments and climate at Rano Raraku -- the crater
where nearly all the moai (statues) have been carved -- have suggested
that lake level was once higher (at the end of the last glacial
period). In the process of identifying soils to sample, we've stumbled
onto what seems to be previously overlooked evidence for a high stand
of lake level. In addition to large areas of "ironpan" development
consistent with a vegetated peaty lakeshore, we found large numbers of
fossil roots which we can use to partially identify the plants that
once occupied the lakeshore.

Tuesday 21 April: Rano Raraku Day 2

2009-04-22T18:16:00.003-07:00

With the benefits of good access and additional help, we were pleased
to finish off our coring here in only two days. Here you can see our
coring raft on the lake.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the crater (after the moai of
course) is the rapidly eroding red soils. The red soils are diagnostic
of volcanic terrains in the tropic and subtropics. The erosion here is
interesting, because it is relatively rare to see such pronounced
erosion on the island -- despite the reputation Easter Island has for
erosion, I remain unconvinced the problem is as serious as in many
other parts of the world. In Rano Raraku however, I'm amazed by he
energetic herds of wild horses with dust flying behind them. They must
be both drawn and energized by the water source. As Mark puts it, they
are "just horsing around."

Monday 20 April: Beginning Rano Raraku

2009-04-22T18:16:00.001-07:00

Today, we began coring Rano Raraku, the crater lake around which
almost all the moai were carved. Rano Raraku has been cored more than
any other lake on the island, partly due to interest in the statues
and partly because it yields beautiful sediment cores. Most of all,
access is easy.

For us, Rano Raraku meant a contrast from working in the open on a
floating vegetation mat. We were cooped up on a very small raft for
the entire day. Today's photo shows a silhouette of David efficiently
operating the corer. In the background, you can see the open 9-10m
core and 9m of core neatly stacked in boxes.

Sunday 19 April: A day off?

2009-04-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

Today was "a day off" in the sense that we didn't go out into the
field. But on a day off there is a still a lot to do to make sure
samples from last week are in order, and all the gear is ready to go
for next week.

In honor of the "day off", there is no photo for today.

Saturday 18 April: Last day of Rano Kau

2009-04-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day descending into the crater of Rano Kau. We
started early to make sure we were successful collecting all our
required cores. They all went very well, with one minor glitch, and we
were able to make an early start heaving our gear (and samples) out of
the crater.

Friday 18 April: Back out there

2009-04-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

It was great to be back out in the field today, but it was a dog of a
day. Very, very little went well. This core was the one bright spot.
You can see nice banded sediment layers in as we slip it into a
storage box.

Tomorrow we'll make an early start, because we need to finish Rano Kau
and carry all our gear out of the crater.

Thursday 17 April: Standing Back

2009-04-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

I had to stay at the hotel today to get caught up on processing
samples. It was a good day to do this since one of the local
researchers, Tahira, has joined our field crew for two days. She's
been helping us and learning about coring lake sediments.

On the other hand, there's no good time to miss fieldwork on a
pleasant sunny day, just to spend time in a cramped hotel room.

Staying back from the field creates an chance to stand back and think.
We continue to ponder the concept of "collapse". Jared Diamonds book
knits the concept of collapse neatly together for many societies.
People here are concerned the book passes judgement on Rapa Nui, with
its question, "What was the person who cut down the last tree
thinking?". My colleague, John Flenley feels he originated this
question many years ago in a slightly different form. Regardless, the
question is clearly posed in Diamond's book about "Collapse", and I've
felt this question is meant in a rhetorical manner, as a tool to make
students think. A good student, in responding to that question might
ask many other questions posed in different ways. Our project is based
on the premise that deforestation can become an inevitable course long
before the last tree falls (or dies).

However, any science project has to be set up to falsify a hypothesis,
and as such we have to generate data which test key premises. I am
learning that perhaps most of all, we have to ask, "was there really a
collapse?" Or at least, was there a collapse of anything but the
statue building culture?

In today's photo (taken last week), John Flenley examines one of the
most remarkable pieces of stonework on the island, the facing of the
ahu (alter) at Vinapu. Each massive piece of stone fits the adjacent
pieces perfectly. Since we've been here, I've learned that ahu and
moai are only one line of remarkable stonework on the island. Others
are harder to see, and perhaps less photogenic, but perhaps more
remarkable in a landscape context. Yet, when one focuses on moai and
ahu, one sees collapse. Looking more broadly, it seems there is more
than meets the eye at first.

Wednesday 15 April: More coring...

2009-04-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

We'll be continuing to collect sediment cores from Rano Kau for the
rest of the week. So far, it looks like we're achieving promising
results. Today's picture shows a nice 50 cm sample from one of our
two devices. It shows some good layered sediments, as well as some
fibrous vegetation that was dragged along on the outside of the corer.

As you can see from David's shirt, this is a grimy job. When done
well, it produces excellent results.

Tuesday 14 April: Coring Rano Kau

2009-04-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Today we began our efforts to core Rano Kau, the massive crater lake
at the southwest end of Easter Island. Getting there is a challenge in
itself. The walk down to where we are coring is a descent of 300m
across boulder slopes and then out onto the floating mat that covers
the lake.

Our first hole reached 20 meters below water level. Like most previous
work in Rano Kau, we found entirely organic sediments (today's second
photo shows an ideal sample from deep in the core). These organic
layers are derived entirely from vegetation. We were pleased to find
the organic layers interrupted by at least two layers of clay, silt
and fine sand that may indicate ancient landslides from the crater rim.

Monday 13 April: more buried soils

2009-04-14T20:14:00.001-07:00

This morning we went back up the biggest mountain on the island to do
a better job with a couple samples we'd collected on Wednesday last
week, but discovered had some problems when we looked at them
carefully over the weekend. In both cases we had to make some
impromptu modifications to our gear to get past problems we
encountered in the local soils and sediments. In the late afternoon we
had just enough time to sample a buried soil profile that was
uncovered during quarrying activity recently, and pointed out to us by
Charlie Love, a long-time researcher here.

Because it is in a quarry, this set of profiles is very unique -- it
goes on for perhaps 50 meters and gets better and better as you walk.
The most immediately striking part is that a basalt flow covered a
soil, and baked the underlying soil to a bright red color. A new soil,
of perhaps 30-40cm thickness has formed on top of the basalt flow. At
the very bottom is another soil forming on top of a whitish rock layer
(tuff).

Underneath the basalt flow, we can still see many of the features of
the underlying soil. The most remarkable is the preserved structure of
the root cavities of the extinct palm which once dominated the
landscape here. In the photo that shows extra detail, you can see the
root traces as black lines. We think the black color is a manganese
mineral that forms around roots as they consume oxygen from the soil.

We sampled an area that has even more buried soils than you can see
here. We hope to be able to identify the plants that grew in each soil
and to find out if the plants changed over time.

Finally, remember you can look at larger versions of the photos by
clicking on them.

Sunday 12 April: Easter on Easter Island

2009-04-13T18:15:00.001-07:00

Many people have asked about Easter on Easter Island. It's one of the
big holidays scheduled around traditional Polynesian culture, but it
is an important holiday to the people. It seems to be an important
weekend for families to spend together. It seems the main things going
on were the usual activities in town, plus an organized soccer game,
and earth-oven feasts (which I believe are similar to hangi in New
Zealand).

Some of us checked out the main service at 9 am in the Catholic
church. The church itself is a very interesting feature of Hanga Roa,
the main town. It stands at the top of the hill on one of the two main
streets, and displays a combination of traditional Christian and Rapa
Nui motifs. The sharp green glyphs on the front of the church are the
Rongorongo script, a unique and mysterious form of writing that seems
to have been invented by the islanders around the time the moai-
building era ended and Europeans first arrived.

The church is always overcrowded on Sundays, with tourists flowing out
the doors. As you can see in today's photos, Easter was no different.
I've also included a snapshot that shows the inside of the church,
including wood carving which are done in the same style as much of the
native woodcarving which is on display (and for sale) all over the
island.

Radio New Zealand's Easter Monday show called to ask me about Easter
on Easter Island - you can listen at this link.
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/emm/emm-20090413-0810-Happy_Easter_from_Easter_Island-048.mp3

The Rapa Nui Experiment?

2009-04-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Today my colleague, John Flenley, gave an informal evening lecture to
half a dozen Earthwatch volunteers who are visiting the island to
assist with archaeological investigations. I joined the the audience,
which also included the Chris Stevenson, a Virginia archaeologist, and
Thegn Ladefoged, an archaeologist from Auckland University.

In his talk, John reflected on his 30+ years of research on Rapa Nui.
One of his themes was the relevance of the scientific investigations
of past environments and past human activity on the island to modern
civilization. As John puts it, given the potential catastrophes facing
the Earth's now globalized civilization, wouldn't it be nice if we
could do an experiment to isolate a population of perhaps a few
thousand people for a millennium so that we could better understand
what can undermine efforts to achieve a sustainable society?

Of course, the civilization that developed on Rapa Nui is as close as
we can get to this notional experiment. Before you think further about
the experiment, look at today's picture and imagine yourself as part
of the isolated society isolated on this small but diverse landscape.

John's point is that we have a lot to learn from this experiment.
There is much more to be learned from detailed investigations --
including both our study and the one Stevenson and Ladefoged are
carrying out to understand the functioning of the gardens that fed
people for perhaps a millennium here. There is also much to be learned
from integrating the knowledge that has been gathered so far. As we do
this, and incorporate more and more detailed information, the story
does change. For example, we all agreed that despite most published
information pointing to a "collapse" at the the end of the moai-
building era, there is a lack of sound evidence that population
crashed exactly and dramatically at this time. Perhaps our project
will shed some light on this.

In closing, John emphasized that many of the most remarkable things we
learn from deciphering the Rapa Nui experiment center around the ways
the island's leaders cultivated the moai-building and Birdman rituals
to maintain peace between the many tribes/clans on the island. He also
notes that the focus of the rituals seemed to shift appropriately from
the extremely resource-intensive moai building to a reemergence of the
creator god Make Make, as resource issues related to deforestation
(and presumably maintaining food production) became a dominant source
of concern for the society.

Since he has retired from his role as Professor and head of Geography
at Massey University, John has been putting most of his time into
efforts within his Anglican church and several trusts to conserve and
restore the natural world, both around New Zealand and around the
world. He's also just completed work on the third edition of a book on
Easter Island, which he writes with archaeologist Paul Bahn.

(Good) Friday, Wild Horses

2009-04-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Since the National Park requires that we take a guide with us each day, and our guide's preference was to spend the Easter weekend with his family, both Friday and Saturday are all about checking the samples we've collected, cataloguing them and getting ready for next week.

I'll take a moment today to write briefly about a couple of the things that surprised me when I arrived here. First, there are a lot of horses. Horses (along with cats, dogs and chickens) are everywhere. They often turn up right in the center of town grazing any scrap of grass, whether it be tiny or the playing fields. Many people, especially younger males, ride horses for transportation. I'm told many of the wild horses were originally placed here to provide a horse breeding ground for the Chilean military. Since the horses are wild, some are not so energetic. The horses in today's picture decided that the middle of main street might be a great place for a nap in the afternoon sun.

This brings me to a second surprising fact. There are a lot of cars, motor scooters and traffic. A native anthropologist, Sergio Rapu, told me today that there is a car for every 1.8 people now. Many are rental cars for tourists. Motorbikes of various sorts are also very popular with locals and tourists alike. As a result of a recent fatal accident, helmets have been required as of April 1. We've been seeing the police all around town enforcing the new law.

Wednesday 7 April: Sampling at last

2009-04-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

At long last, our research team is hard at work gathering samples. We
had an extremely effective first day, knocking out what I expected
would take several days. I was focussed on sampling rather than taking
photos, so I realized I ought to snap a photo for the blog just as I
was leaving our last site in the afternoon. This is the highest
elevation crater on the island, Rano Aroi. The vegetation is typical
of the extensive peat deposits in wet craters here. These peat
deposits accumulate dead vegetation layers, and provide an environment
that very effectively protects pollen and other organic matter from
decomposition. The pollen has proven to be an excellent indicator of
past plant populations living upwind of the crater.

Tuesday 7 April: Permission Granted

2009-04-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

Continuing from the last post, I was pointing out that collapse can be
relative term. To what degree did Easter Island society collapse after
the statue-building era came to an end?

I've already posted some material about the Birdman cult. Today, while
we were waiting for the meeting on our permission to start collecting
samples, we visited an archaeological dig that I found fascinating.
Sorry, I have no pictures since I was busy taking a video. It was
ceremonial site that must have been set up roughly between 1800 and
1870. It closely resembled a European sailing ship, and happened to
have exactly the same dimensions as one of the first ships to visit
Easter Island. It was used, and modified many times based on the
accumulated layers. This site seems to show how the society adjusted
and changed its customs, indicating that collapse was far from total.

Today ended with a successful result for our permission hearing. Given
our efforts to include local researchers in our project and provide
results that are of use to the National Park and to the people on the
island, we were told our case was very good.

Monday, 6 April: Is Easter Island a model of global civilisation?

2009-04-09T17:36:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, we went to the local museum. One panel reminded of a very
striking feature of Easter Island's history. The local people had
developed an integrated economy between roughly a dozen territorial
clans/tribes that persisted for many centuries. Each clan's territory
contained valuable resources -- one had the best beach for launching
ocean-going canoes, another had obsidian for tools, another had the
tuff used for carving moai (statues), while another had the scoria
used for the topknots (hats) placed on moai. I've included a copy of
Routledge's circa 1914 map of the political divisions on the island,
even though it differs from later versions I've seen.

Looking from today's world, and integrated economy hardly seems
unusual. In fact, that's the goal of globalisation. But remember that
in Europe at the time (c 1200-1600 AD), the economy was far from
integrated, and there were dozens of small and often warring kingdoms
still amalgamating into nations. Effectively little trade occurred
across borders in Europe, while Easter Island had clear evidence of
strong trading. One reason for this may have been the role of the
statue building culture in society. One question we have to ask is
whether clear collapse of the statue building culture represented a
true collapse of society. While evidence exists for warfare and
violence, difficulty remains in determining if the collapse of the
statue building culture coincided exactly with a complete societal
collapse. It appears, for example, that the Birdman (Manu Tangaata)
cult may have served as a new cultural basis for society. Clearly,
there was some difficulty making the transition from an integrated
economy based on statue building to a later one based on the Birdman
cult.

This could be very similar to the rise of conflict and Fascism around
the time of the Great Depression, a result that today's world leaders
hope to avoid despite the seriousness of the current financial crisis.
A crisis becomes increasingly serious as it moves from the loss of
luxuries to the loss of basic needs, such as food. Ultimately, our
project is trying to learn about whether fertility, food and
population were at the root of a crisis causing the collapse of the
integrated economy that existed here on Easter Island about four
centuries ago.

Buried Soils!

2009-04-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Note: click on image for larger version!

Yesterday and today, we collected some dryer sediments that appear to
have accumulated over hundreds or thousands of years. In these areas,
soils were forming as the sediments were accumulating. Recognizing
soil formation processes plays a critical role in allowing us to
identify samples that are suitable for our study.

Today's picture shows a sequence of samples that I've pulled up in
coring device that takes very small samples -- 1.7 cm in diameter.
They are from a soil that was about 1 meter deep, and ended in contact
with rock. It was in the center of a small depression in the
landscape, near the top of the largest mountain on the island. Each of
the 7 samples below is representative of a horizon or layer. Taken
together, they show that a soil formed here to a depth of about 50 cm,
and then was buried under another 50 cm of soil. Each horizon is
represented by one intact 2 cm section in the photo, and is given a
standard letter designation (I won't bore you with the explanation of
what each letter means).

A This is the "topsoil". It is dark in color and has a crumb
structure. Roots are abundant.

AB This layer still has mainly a crumb structure, but is a bit lighter
and has a few less roots.

BA This layer shows some dark areas of the above layers, but has fewer
roots and is mainly composed of an accumulation of yellow clay.

Bt This layer is dominated by reddish-yellow clay, which has
accumulated in "films". These films are thick and dominate the sample.
This clay has moved down from the surface soil, and has been deposited
here. This type of clay provides strong evidence of soil formation
processes.

2Ab Here we have a second topsoil, which has been buried. It has
similar structure to the topsoil above. While it is not as dark, it is
still brown rather than red or yellow in color.

2Bt This second layer of clay accumulation shows similar films and
color to the layer above -- the color is even more pronounced. This
layer suggests that the buried soil was stable for a long period.

2C At the very bottom of the profile, the corer brought up rock
fragments (reddish) in a matrix of clay. This represents soil forming
from the rapid weathering of the underlying rock.

I found soil profiles very similar to the above in 2 more locations,
and all 3 were close to a wetland area the rest of our team was
sampling. These profiles suggest a period of stable soil development
(perhaps under pre-Polynesian forest) and then a period of rapid
deposition that must have been fueled by erosion of the surrounding
landscape. It may be reasonable to guess that the upper 50 cm of soil
accumulated as a result of agriculture. Confirming this timing will
require further analyses back in the lab. But if the buried soil
represents pre-Polynesian forest and the upper soil contains evidence
of agriculture, then both will contain microfossil and chemical
information which will help us understand nearby wetland samples.

People of the project, part 2

2009-04-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

The final member of our team is the technician in the Geography Department at Massey University, David Feek (today's picture). David grew up in and around the Manawatu and landed himself in a "tech" job at Massey that has gone on for over two decades. David and John have worked together all over New Zealand and the Pacific, sampling various wetlands to obtain cores for pollen analysis and radiocarbon dating.

John reckoned that including David in the project was essential, and I see why. David has been a godsend for efficiently pulling together the gear to sample here despite airline baggage regulations. His best trick so far has been leaving a good stash of gear of on the island.

The other day we found it, minus a couple long rods that may have been separated from the rest due to their length.

People of the project, part 1

2009-04-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

We've been working on logistical and practical details that aren't
very interesting to relate in a blog, so I'll take this time to tell
you a bit about the 3 Kiwis that are here with me. In today's picture,
John Flenley (left) and Mark Horrocks (right) are discussing the
statue building quarry at Rano Raraku. Just over John's head, you can
see the head of statue that was in the process of being carved,
including the protruding nose and chin.

John is a Professor Emeritus from Massey University, and has been the
leader in developing the vegetation history of Easter Island through
pollen studies of crater sediments from the main three craters. He
began this research with a visit to the island in 1977, and has
visited repeatedly. It is John's work that confirmed forests once
thrived on the island, and that the deforestation process was
associated with human settlement. With Paul Bahn, he's also written
one of the most useful books on Easter Island.

When I originally discussed this project with John, he put me
immediately in touch with Mark, who takes over John's role of pollen
analysis in this project. In addition to pollen, Mark specializes in
starch grain microfossils, which provide a promising tool for
understanding the extent of past agriculture. Mark lives in Auckland,
and is associated with Auckland University, but organizes his research
as small consultancy business specializing in microfossil analysis.

John and Mark are great team, and love discussing all aspects of
botany. But I have to say, these long discussions about plants and
pollen often exceed my attention span, and David's too.

The mysterious crater of Rano Kau

2009-04-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

Today, we descended from the rim to the bottom of Rano Kau crater. At the base of the path, we discussed past coring work in the lake. John Flenley has always been struck by the microclimate in the crater and its potential for agriculture. The wind protection offered by the tall walls (300m) and abundant water would have made it very useful for some forms of agriculture, despite the difficulty involved in descending and climbing back out. With our guide, Zoro, Mark and I began traversing the boulder-strewn lake shore.

Along the way, we found growing examples of many of the crops Polynesians brought to Easter Island: taro, sweet potatoes, bananas, ti (Tahitian cabbage tree), and paper mulberry. There were also a number of tree crops introduced by Europeans, including avocados and mangos. I wondered why I brought a lunch.

Part of the purpose of today's trip was to think about how we can collect cores that might tell us about past landslides and failures of the crater rim near Orongo, while still achieving the original goals of our research. We are hopeful that by collecting cores where we first descended, and directly underneath Orongo, we will be able to achieve both goals. The former is probably the best place to undertake agriculture, and therefore may have the most enduring record of agricultural activity. The area underneath the village of Orongo may be highly relevant to us because Orongo became the focus of activity after the "collapse".

Rano Raraku and Ahu Tongariki: The height of Rapa Nui culture.

2009-04-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Luggage! In my excitement, I thought we should show off the rush tags placed on our lost luggage. These rush tags really work! It turned out that our luggage continued on from Tahiti to Los Angeles, and then was returned to us via Santiago, Chile within 26 hours of our arrival! I wonder if I can earn airpoints for that!?

I'll begin today with a bit more about collapse and history.

Continuing backwards in time from Orongo, we move through the 'collapse' to the classic height of Rapa Nui culture. The eeriest element is the seemingly sudden abandonment of the culture, with evidence lying strewn around the landscape. Visiting the statue quarry at Rano Raraku, a volcanic crater composed of tuffs believed to be the best carving rock in Polynesia, one finds many nearly completed statues presumably waiting to be moved to ahu (alters), as well many statues still being carved. One behemoth would have weighed about 200 tonnes if it was completed, more than twice what any successfully erected statue weighed. It's fascinating to go directly from the statue quarry to Ahu Tongariki, the largest ahu on the island.

From a travel perspective, the best and most surprising news of the day was the return of our luggage. Mark Horrocks and I made our way to the airport shortly after we heard the 11 am flight from Santiago arrive. We held relatively little hope, but since this is what we were told to do we tried to be optimistic. We couldn’t really see inside baggage claim, which is a controlled area even for flights from Chile. So we walked around the airport outside the security fence until we could see the backside of baggage claim. Within a few seconds, our spirits suddenly buoyed when I saw one of my duffels come around on the conveyor. Sure enough, they were all there. We still had to go the desk to claim them, and it turned out that they’d stayed on our Air Tahiti plane and gone on to Los Angeles, and somehow made the loop down through Santiago in outstanding time.

News wasn't all good though. First, we're still having trouble finding out more about the status of permission to do research. We came in the expectation that there could possibly be one hurdle left. I'll write more about that tomorrow. Plus David Feek and John Flenley left some coring gear on the island previously, but have been unable to locate the owner of the hotel (a native anthropologist) where it was left. Serious renovations appear to underway at the hotel, so it is possible the gear is buried or lost. If we can find it, this gear – two rafts and some coring rods – might save us a lot of time and expense. It seems hopeful and by the end of the day we heard the owner is on the island, so we'll try again tomorrow.

Ahu Tongariki is the largest set of restored moai statues. The ahu is of considerable interest from a natural hazards perspective. The entire set of moai were swept away by the tsunami resulting from the enormous 1960 magnitude 9.5 earthquake centred on the coast of Chile. They were restored to the ahu through the efforts of an enormous crane sent from Japan.

As I understand it, the moai at Rano Raraku represent the final stages of statue carving. Many are artistically distictive and convey considerable personality.

Around the statue quarry, dozens of nearly completed moai can be found. These moai presumably awaited movement to a distant ahu, possible across a distance of dozens of kilometers. We admired one moai still attached to its parent rock which was estimated to weigh 200 tonnes.

John Flenley contemplates collapse. Many statues were toppled purposefully to cause their necks or torsoes to break.

A statue lies face down at the Ranu Raraku quarry.

Rano Aroi and Rano Raraku

2009-04-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

CONAF has asked us to take a native guide with us each day. This serves two purposes. First, the guide will keep an eye on us and make sure we don't do anything we shouldn't -- there are so many archaeological artifacts and sites here, this is more useful than it may sound. Second, the guide knows the island extremely well. It was suggested that we take a guide named Zoro who has worked with scientists and archaeologists his whole life, going all the way back to William Malloy (still regarded as the greatest archaeologist to work here). I was briefly resistant to the idea of having a guide that doesn't speak hardly any English (because we speak hardly any Spanish), but amazingly we seem to understand each other very well because of his experience working with scientists. Nevertheless, I am making it a priority to try to learn some more Spanish as fast as possible.

Today we looked at Rano Aroi and other depressions on the largest mountain on the island. These depressions collect the sediments we want to bring back to the lab to analyse. The depressions here will help us understandithe highest elevation areas, which we think were the last to be deforested. Previously, work here has focused on the crater at Rano Aroi which has a large swamp. Unfortunately, there was an effort to clear away the upper meter of peat some years ago and previous results suggest that it may or may not still contain sediments that will give us the results we want. Luckily in several hours of walking, we found areas that appear likely to give us excellent records from the last 1000 years.

We then proceeded into the crater at Rano Raraku, where the moai (statues) were made. This site has proven most popular to core, for reasons that may be obvious from today's photo - be sure to note the moai in the background. With a lake sediment core, we look backward in time as we go down. In each layer of sediment from the lake, pollen, soil and all sorts of other biological and chemical markers tell us what the surrounding environment was like when that layer formed. So, it has proven possible to work back through time, identifying when the forest around the lake was cleared, and when massive statue building activity was underway, as well as when European introductions of trees and grasses occurred.

Permission pending...

2009-04-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

Today, we finally found the office where the local researchers are based. Once we found it, it seemed hard to believe it took us a day and half. But, it is a single room at the back of a hotel complex, and has no sign. Upon arriving, we found our contact on the island, Lili, and she brought us up to date on the details of our permissions.

There are many steps involved in getting permission to collect samples here, and we've essentially passed all of them except a native commission. Lili whisked us off immediately to talk with the local head of CONAF, the government agency that administrates national parks and forests. The local head of CONAF spoke little English, so Lili translated. She told us CONAF was very supportive of our work for a number of reasons -- including our interest in understanding the function and dynamics of ecosystems that existed on the island in the past. They hope to begin some restoration projects that will benefit from this understanding.

CONAF was also interested in whether we can help answer an emerging question about the risk that many of the petroglyphs at Orongo, including the one in my first photograph, might soon fall into the ocean. There appears to even be some risk for the entire Orongo site, if I understand correctly. We may be able to look into this by checking the lake sediments we collect for evidence of past landslides that reached the inside of the crater. If we can help answer this question, they believed it would also cement our case with the native commission. We agreed in principle to try to examine this in our work in the Rano Kau crater, and to provide advice on how they might construct further work to evaluate the stability of the Orongo site.

The upshot of all this is that our meeting with the native commission will be next Tuesday, and we can (in the meantime) begin detailed exploratory work to determine where on the landscape we will take samples. But we can't take any samples yet. Ultimately, we hope we've done the right thing by coming to see our permission through, and assuming we can start work. In many western countries, it would be best to have postpone our trip until we had permission. But we surmised that coming to press our case was the best approach for Rapa Nui where both the Chilean authorities and native people are involved in granting permission, and the process is a bit opaque (at least to us). Please wish us luck!

For today's photo, I'm including a photo of moai on the ahu at Anakena. This is the best beach on the island, and the only one with significant dunes. It is where the first canoes landed, and is assumed to be the first settlement. The white coral sand makes a beautiful contrast against the dark volcanic rocks and red soils. Incidentally, the coconut palms in the back were planted relatively recently once a species was found that could flourish this far south -- the typical Polynesian varieties require more tropical temperatures. Soil-derived sediments accumulating in washes behind the dunes may be useful for our research, helping us to understand the first area settled.

What's this all about?

2009-03-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

Why are we doing this? What's this all about? The Marsden fund has supported our project to investigate the causes of a societal collapse on Easter Island. You can read the summary below, as well as our press release (http://www.gns.cri.nz/news/release/20080925_easter_island.html) to learn more about the project and its possible relevance to contemporary concerns such as the global financial crisis. Since we wrote the proposal, it has become increasingly apparent that we also have to ask what is a "collapse", and is a "collapse" as bad as it sounds?

Project summary

In his book "Collapse", Jared Diamond highlights the spectacular and mysterious collapse of civilisation on Easter Island. Diamond outlines a number of factors leading to success or failure of civilisations. We have identified that one of these factors - fragile soils - allows us to hypothesise that Easter Islanders would have overshot the carrying capacity of their landscape, reaching maximum population as soil nutrient depletion caused declining crop yields. We propose isotope, biomarker and DNA approaches to reconstruct the biogeochemistry of collapse and thereby test whether the timing of nutrient depletion can answer the question: "Why did they cut down the last tree?"

Within dormant volcanic craters where settlement occurred, we will obtain carefully located cores to precisely resolve the timing of changes in plant, animal and human populations, as well as soil fertility. We will examine plant microfossils (e.g. pollen, starch grains), nitrogen isotopes, the DNA of native and introduced species, and steroid biomarkers derived from humans, animals (faeces) and plants. Plant microfossils from surrounding soils will define the extent of cropping. Collectively, the analyses will enable bio-geochemical modeling to help predict the future of societies around the world where we are stressing carrying capacity of landscapes.

Getting there

2009-03-26T16:05:00.001-07:00

On arrival on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), we were greeted by some Polynesian-style music and a rapid trip through customs. Unfortunately, two of us were still missing our luggage and there was no clear suggestion when it might arrive. The situation looked a bit bleak because the next flight from Tahiti arrives on Friday, although we were told to check back at the airport tomorrow when a flight from Chile arrives.

Hotel/hostel keepers on Easter Island tend to meet their guests at the airport. Although we had rented a car, this turned out to be very helpful. The car rental agent took a look at the lake-coring gear that had arrived with David Feek and John Flenley from Massey University, and then told us we didn't want the shiny new little Suzuki 4wd he had for us. Luckily we were able to quickly negotiate roughly the same price on a similar vehicle from our hostel keeper, Martin.

The hostel (or residencial in Spanish) is between a traditional hotel and hostel. It consists of adequate rooms with toilets and showers, collected through a lovely courtyard setting. In terms of quality, it is referred to as 'mid-range' in the Lonely Planet, and seems quite appropriate for Kiwis on a budget that includes the effect of a sinking dollar.

While we did little more than get settled on our first day, we had to find time to look around the island a little in the afternoon. We drove up to look down into the Rano Kau crater, which is likely to pose our greatest coring challenge. I'm sure you'll see and hear about Rano Kau again in this blog, so I'll focus now on the Orongo ceremonial village.

In a way, beginning with Orongo means beginning with the ending. The Orongo village and its Birdman cult represent what came after the 'collapse' of Rapa Nui's culture of statue building and ancestor worship. The ceremonial village would be owned for a year by the clan who successfully recovered the first seabird egg of the year from an offshore island, after dangerous swims across waters reported to be infested with sharks. You can see the island (Motu Nui) and a petroglyph of the Birdman in the photo I've posted, and you may want to read more elsewhere. For me, the take home message of the Birdman cult is that there was recovery after collapse, and that the focus on the dramatic feat of recovering the egg provided a very positive alternative to the clan warfare that appears to have emerged immediately following 'collapse'.