TY - JOUR
T1 - Rapa Nui (Easter Island) monument (ahu) locations explained by freshwater sources
AU - DiNapoli, Robert J.
AU - Lipo, Carl P.
AU - Brosnan, Tanya
AU - Hunt, Terry L.
AU - Hixon, Sean
AU - Morrison, Alex E.
AU - Becker, Matthew
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was provided by National Science Foundation award #1005258 “Geospatial Research and Mapping on Easter Island”. RJD was supported by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Global Education Oregon, and Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon, The American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research, and the Explorers Club Exploration Fund Grant. MB and TB were supported by the Conrey Endowed Chair in Hydrogeology at California State University, Long Beach. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Comunidad Indígena Polinésica Ma‘u Henua, the Easter Island Development Commission (CODEIPA), the Chilean Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), and the people of Rapa Nui for allowing us to work on their island. We also thank Hetereki Huke, Gina Pakarati, and Tiare Aguilera for their guidance and support without which this research would not be possible. Thanks to Thegn Ladefoged for sharing data on rock mulch gardens, Monica Tromp for useful feedback on diatoms in Rapanui dental calculus, and Enrico Crema for discussions that greatly improved our analytical approach. We also thank John P. Hart, Ethan Cochrane, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 DiNapoli et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019/1
Y1 - 2019/1
N2 - Explaining the processes underlying the emergence of monument construction is a major theme in contemporary anthropological archaeology, and recent studies have employed spatially-explicit modeling to explain these patterns. Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) is famous for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly numerous monumental platforms (ahu) and statuary (moai). To date, however, we lack explicit modeling to explain spatial and temporal aspects of monument construction. Here, we use spatially-explicit point-process modeling to explore the potential relations between ahu construction locations and subsistence resources, namely, rock mulch agricultural gardens, marine resources, and freshwater sources—the three most critical resources on Rapa Nui. Through these analyses, we demonstrate the central importance of coastal freshwater seeps for precontact populations. Our results suggest that ahu locations are most parsimoniously explained by distance from freshwater sources, in particular coastal seeps, with important implications for community formation and inter-community competition in precontact times.
AB - Explaining the processes underlying the emergence of monument construction is a major theme in contemporary anthropological archaeology, and recent studies have employed spatially-explicit modeling to explain these patterns. Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) is famous for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly numerous monumental platforms (ahu) and statuary (moai). To date, however, we lack explicit modeling to explain spatial and temporal aspects of monument construction. Here, we use spatially-explicit point-process modeling to explore the potential relations between ahu construction locations and subsistence resources, namely, rock mulch agricultural gardens, marine resources, and freshwater sources—the three most critical resources on Rapa Nui. Through these analyses, we demonstrate the central importance of coastal freshwater seeps for precontact populations. Our results suggest that ahu locations are most parsimoniously explained by distance from freshwater sources, in particular coastal seeps, with important implications for community formation and inter-community competition in precontact times.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0210409
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0210409
M3 - Article
C2 - 30629645
AN - SCOPUS:85059827992
VL - 14
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 1
M1 - e0210409
ER -