Easter Island/Rapa Nui at Manchester Museum

Kiera holds the fort at the recent Big Saturday at Manchester Museum

The subject of last Saturday’s Big Saturday was travel, and with Kiera from the British Museum, who is with us on a placement at the moment, I showed some objects from Easter Island to the public. It was particularly appropriate to show material from Easter Island or Rapa Nui which must be the most isolated place on earth as part of the travel Big Saturday. As a useful map in John Flenley and Paul Bahn’s book The Enigmas of Easter Island Island on the Edge (Oxford University Press, 2002) shows, it is  almost 3,600 km from the coast of Chile on the South American mainland and 2,092 km from Pitcairn, the nearest ‘neighbouring’ island: imagine popping round to the neighbours to borrow a cup of sugar! One of the Collections Team curatorial assistants went out to Easter Island as part of her holiday and kindly sent me some copies of photographs she took. Kate told me it took just over 5 hrs to get from Chile to Easter Island by plane. The unique, monumental stone statues or moai from the island are the subject of an exciting new temporary exhibition called Making Monuments on Rapa Nui; the Stone Statues of Easter Island which opens on April 2nd 2015 and runs until 6th September 2015.

Easter Island postcards (courtesy of Kate Sherburn)

 

Up to their necks in it: Easter Island statues (courtesy of Kate Sherburn)

Many of the visitors to the Big Saturday whom we talked to were familiar with the statues and they were thrilled to see some objects from Easter Island from the Museum’s Living Cultures collection. These were kindly made available by Stephen Welsh, Curator of Living Cultures. There are four obsidian mata’a or spearheads from the Charles Heape collection. Charles Heape (1848-1926) was a businessman by background but because of his interests he became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Anthropological Institute. He collected implements and weapons and in May 1923 he donated his collection – said to be the most complete of its kind in existence – to Manchester Museum. It was said to be of supreme value not only to the University but to Ethnology students throughout the world. He collaborated with James Edge Partington, who had collected in the Pacific, to publish An Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands. Given their respective collecting interests and backgrounds it is hardly surprising that some Easter Island material came to Manchester Museum.

Obsidian mata’a from Easter Island (accession number 2425)

The mata’a look like very large barbed and tanged arrowheads (see image above). However, they are so big they cannot have been used as arrowheads or projectiles. They are much more likely to have been mounted as spearheads by means of the stem or tang. I initially thought the tips of these implements had been damaged and that was why they didn’t come to a point. It looks as though there is a great deal of variability in the shapes of the mata’a. Many writers have quoted George Forster who accompanied Captain Cook on his visit to Easter Island in 1774: ‘some…had lances or spears made of thin ill-shaped sticks and pointed with a sharp triangular piece of black glassy lava’. To some, the historical context for these weapons is the period of internecine warfare that followed the destruction of the island’s palm forest and ever-increasing competition between the different clans on the island for food and other resources. To others the collapse of traditional Easter Island or Rapa Nui culture did not come because of whole-scale degradation of the environment by chopping down the trees (what Jared Diamond refers to as ‘ecocide’) but because of the effects of contact with Europeans in the 18th century.

Obsidian mata’a from Easter Island

Some archaeologists, however, have questioned whether the mata’a are indeed weapons. Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo in The Statues that Walked Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island (Free Press, 2011) questioned the evidence for a descent into violence and wrote that only a small proportion of prehistoric human skeletal remains  from the island show evidence of trauma. Of the mata’a they write:

Obsidian mata’a from Easer Island

‘On Rapa Nui, it is often assumed that obsidian tools known as mata’a are evidence of lethal weapons. These are roughly triangular implements that have a stem chipped on one end for hafting to some kind of shaft. How lethal mata’a would have been, however, is open to debate. While the edges are sharp, their shape is not appropriate for piercing, and we should be cautious before concluding that they were used in warfare…they would have been remarkably poor tools for stabbing.’ They cite studies of microwear on the edges of the mata’a arguing they were used for the cutting and scraping of fibrous plant materials and quote an observation made by Cornelis Bouman, captain of one of the Dutch ships with Jacob Roggeveen in 1722, to the effect that the islanders cut ‘bananas with a sharp black stone’.

Obsidian mata’a from Easter Island

In their rebuttal of Hunt and Lipo’s assertion that the mata’a were agricultural implements Flenley, Butler and Bahn wrote that the obsidian objects were unlikely just to be tools because of their intricate hafting.  They write that insufficient work has been done on micro-wear analysis and they ask why the mata’a turn up suddenly and in large numbers (sometimes in hoards) and quite late in the history of the occupation of the island. Although one skull had been pierced through by a single thrust of a spear, the relative paucity of evidence for injuries on human skeletons could be explained by the fact that fatal wounds inflicted on soft tissues would simply not survive archaeologically. The wounds mentioned in the Spanish accounts of the visit to Easter Island in 1770 are also relevant: ‘…in some we observed sundry wounds on the body, which we thought to have been inflicted by cutting instruments of iron or steel, we found that they proceeded from stones… and as most of these are sharp edged they produce the injury referred to’. This blog paragraph briefly summarises one of the sections in Flenley, Butler and Bahn’s ‘Respect versus contempt for evidence: Reply to Hunt and Lipo’ in Rapa Nui Journal (vol.21(2) October 2007, pp.98-104. Lethal weapon or banana chopper, it is up to you gentle readers…

Since writing this a few days ago I have read Grant McAll’s ‘European Impact on Easter Island: Response Recruitment and the Polynesian Experience in Peru’ in Journal of Pacific History 11.2 (1976), 90-105. In this article there is an account of the pursuit of a Peruvian slaver by an islander called Tori. Years later the Peruvian returned to Easter Island and offered gifts to his pursuer who had shouted to him to stand and fight. In the account it states ‘Tori could easily have thrown his mataa (spear) and have killed that young man, but he did not want to throw at the young man’s back.’ And Tori himself makes the following explanation: “I could easily have thrown my mataa at your back and have killed you but I didn’t want to’ and an intermediary repeats “He didin’t want to cut you with his mataa from behind. You would now be dead with his mataa. He didn’t wish to cut you from behind.”

In addition to the mata’a Kiera and I also showed a wooden figurine but as it is not clear whether or not this was made for the tourist market I do not discuss it here. We also showed some archive photographs of a journey in the Pacific  undertaken by members of the Hudson family during the 1930s, of which this is one taken during their time on Easter Island:-

Photograph from a 1930s visit to Easter Island (Manchester Museum)

I understand that visitors especially enjoyed seeing the ‘unusual objects from many years ago’ and were impressed by the ‘amount of activities on offer today’, to which the Easter Island table made its contribution. My thanks to Kiera for manning the fort whilst I went to see a Roman one at Castleshaw and to Vicki for planning and organising such a wonderful day.

This must be the only job in the world where you could attend a Druid ceremony at dawn to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the discovery of a bog body, show the public objects from Easter Island in the morning, and visit the excavation of a Roman fort in the afternoon…

 

Ancient Worlds and A Game of Thrones (Trone de Fer)

Dragonglass dagger from Game of Thrones

Readers of this Blog will have seen the recent entry about an obsidian vessel that I saw whilst on holiday in Crete recently. Fans of George R.R.Martin’s popular Game of Thrones novels will instantly recognise this material as dragonglass, which is referred to by some of the characters as ‘fire given form’. Jon Snow finds a cache or hoard of ‘dragonglass’ weapons at the Fist of the First Men in the second book….

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and distributes them among his brothers in the Night’s Watch. They prove to be unexpectedly useful when self-confessed craven Sam Tarley uses a dagger against one of the White Walkers.

This material that archaeologists know as obsidian as discussed earlier turns up in the Middle east, the eastern Mediterranean, the Americas and other places beside. The working of the material is often stunning, leaving cores with flake scars so evenly spaced as to make you think they were worked by a machine.

Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones

Martin’s Game of Thrones series of novels (still unfinished) frequently draw upon archaeology and ancient history. Though set in the fictional kingdom of Westeros, this is recognisably ‘high medieval’ world comparable to England during the Wars of the Roses, complete with a hierarchical society of king, lords, knights who show off their prowess in  jousts, seneschals, castellans, men-at-arms, archers with longbows, crossbowmen and commoners. There are even trebuchets for siege warfare, each with its own name, reflecting the grim humour of the besiegers.

But it is Medieval world conscious of its historical backdrop, which goes back thousands of years.The timescales are incredibly long – the Wall (a kind of Hadrian’s Wall but built of ice not stone) has been held by the Night’s Watch for eight thousand years, so long in fact that it is not clear whether Jon Snow is the 998th Lord Commander or merely the 675th as Sam points out (A Song of Ice and Fire 5: A Dance with Dragons, p.100). The rather slippery understanding of time in Westeros has been picked up by Adam Whitehead in a short article ‘An Unreliable World – History and Timekeeping in Westeros’ in James Lowder (ed.) Beyond the Wall Exploring George R.R.Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Benbella Books, 2012). If you compare the same time span in a north west European context, the Wall would have stood from the flooding of the English Channel in the middle of our Mesolithic period up to the present day.  What stuctures could possibly have survived the passing of so much time? Maybe the pyramids are our best comparison. The great pyramid at Giza was built about 2500 BC but the Wall is made of ice and it’s in a cold northern environment.

Sam is the budding archaeologist and historian. As a steward he serves a maester and has access to the library, where he is fascinated by all the old records – much to the incomprehension of Jon Snow who can’t understand where his friend has been all night. Sam tells him he can work out what the garrison of the Wall was thousands of years ago from looking at records of amounts of food shipped to the wall to feed the garrison. Sam’s records are written on parchment and badly decayed in some cases, copied half-a hundred times over the years. It is reminiscent of the Vindolanda tablets with their troop manifests and duty rosters… or the auxiliary diploma displayed in the Discovering Archaeology gallery at Manchester Museum,  which refers to a Syrian recruit in the Roman army of northern Britain. Maybe Sam is going to make nerdy chic fashionable, in which case there’s hope for the curatorial profession!

The historical backdrop is Valyria, a superpower rather like Rome that was destroyed by a cataclysm (like the erruption of Santorini and the supposed decline of Minoans?). Valyrian roads run dead straight across the landscape; skilfully crafted Valyrian swords are greatly prized by the ruling families; and powerful artefacts inscribed with glyphs of the writing system still circulate in the aftermath. Perhaps Valyria was inspired instead by the Aztecs of Meso-America?

For all its gritty historical realism it is, none-the-less, a world in which magic is present, though used sparingly by Martin. The last dragons supposedly died out a hundred years or more earlier but the power of the magic deployed by pyromancers and red priests appears to have been mysteriously amplified just as rumours are circulating of a three headed dragon in the east and the return of a claimant from the previous ruling dynasty of Westeros – the Targaryens.

Ancient Worlds on Holiday II: Obisidian vessel

Obsidian drinking vessel from Zakros in Crete

Another welcome surprise during my recent holiday in Crete was to see an obsidian drinking vessel or goblet in the Antiquities Museum in Iraklion. It’s almost 30cm tall! It’s from Zakros at the eastern end of the island and the label in the Iraklion Museum said it dates from the New Palace period (1500-1450 BC).

Site of Minoan Palace at Zakros in eastern Crete

I sent a copy of the photo to Dr Elizabeth Healy who is in the Archaeology department at the University of Manchester and she commented that “It must have been a huge piece of obsidian!” A lot of work has been work done on sourcing some of the Greek obsidian vessels by Prof.Tristan Carter at McMaster University in Canada.

I haven’t seen many vessels made of obsidian but there is one in the Ancient Worlds third gallery in a case of alabaster and other stone containers from ancient Egypt. In this gallery we wanted to show off more of collections that were previously in storage and so we got out lots of examples of glass vessels, jewellery, shabtis and other items. Had we not done this it is unlikely that colleagues in the wider university would have realised that we have an obsidian vessel from ancient Egypt in the collection.

obsidian pot (Accession number 5782)

The Manchester Museum’s black kohl-pot has a flat rim, and a fragment of the lid, which has a rebate to fit into the mouth of the kohl-pot. It was identified as obsidian in the Museum original register. It measures 4.2 x 3.3 cm and was given by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt (1912-1913). It dates from the Middle Kingdom (Dynasty 12) and was found at el-Riqqa in Middle Egypt.

There are also flakes of obsidian displayed in one of the sections in the Discovering Archaeology gallery. They come from the site of Yanik Tepe in northern Iraq. Work is currently being undertaken by Tristan Carter at McMaster Universitry to try and identify the source of the obsidian, which is a kind of natural glass produced at high temperature in volcanoes. This is the material known as dragonglass in the popular Game of Thrones books by George R.R.Martin.

Sources of obsidian found at Yanik Tepe in northern Iran and Aby Hureyra in Syria (map courtesy of Prof Stuart Campbell, Dept. of Archaeology, University of Manchester)

Prof Tristan Carter commented that although the Zachros  vessel has not been analysed chemically it is  ‘almost certainly’ made of obsidian from the Aegean (Dodecanesian) source of Giali (near Nisyros). The material was originally referred to as ‘Liparite’ by Sir Arthur Evans (some of this material was found at Knossos) who thought it was the ‘spherultic’ material from Lipari, a claim that ‘made sense’ at the time with regard to claimed links between Minoan Crete and Spanish tin sources (of which no evidence has ever been found).

Renfrew et al (1965) proved in fact that the very distinctive white spotted obsidian in the Aegean came from Giali. It has terrible flaking properties so it was only used on local islands for chipped stone tools during the Neolithic.

From the Middle Bronze Age it was exploited by Cretan (or Minoan) lapidaries to make vases (following a lead from the Assyrian Trade colony in central Anatolia – e,g, Kultepe/Acemhoyu – and northern Levant and Egypt).

This vase is Late Minoan IB (post Theran eruption and for some the apogee of Minoan civilisation).

The use of this obsidian for raw materials is rare for vases and restricted to palaces (also Malia and Knossos) and high status sites. This form of vessel was also made using other raw materials. Zakro would have had good connections by sea to the Dodecanese.

I must check whether we  have any Nisyros obsidian in our lithics collection.

Thanks to Prof.Carter for sharing this information.