The Outreach page will consist of upcoming events and news relating to ORCA Achaeological and Geophysics projects.  Updates will be provided on a regular basis.

Orkney College Archaeologists called to Easter Island

Staff from Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA) and Orkney College Geophysics Unit (OCGU) left Orkney on Tuesday 13th January for a four week archaeological fieldwork project on Easter Island (Rapa Nui). The contribution of Orkney College falls under the aegis of the Rapa Nui Landscapes of Construction Project that is jointly run by University College London and the University of Manchester.

The project seeks to re-examine the quarrying and construction processes associated with the moai – the famous colossal statues dating to the 12th-16th centuries AD. The research project will investigate how the sculpting, quarrying, transportation and erection of the moai played a major role social life and look at the journey the moai took from the quarry to their erection upon the ahu (ceremonial platforms). The construction stages, transport and final locations of the moai have never before been considered as a unitary concept, and are currently fragmented into individual study units. The interpretative approach adopted a major and different perspective to academic work on the moai.

Jane Downes, ORCA, will be working on the investigation of the different quarries where the moai statues and their pukao ‘topknots’ were made – looking at the various techniques of quarrying and also whether the quarries themselves were locations of ceremonies.

Susan Ovenden and Mary Saunders from Orkney College Geophysics Unit, using its state of the art equipment, will be conducting ground penetrating radar and electrical imaging surveys to map the quarries and roads used to transport the statues, and also to locate buried statues.

The researchers from Orkney College UHI are very excited about this exotic research. The expertise they have developed on the standing stones and monuments of the Orkney World Heritage Sites will be put to the test in the heat and extreme remoteness of this tiny island – which is about the size of Hoy and has a population size similar to Stromness.

This is a high profile project with researchers from a wide variety of  academic institutions and is authorised and supported by the Chilean National Parks authority (CONAF: Corporacion Nacional Forestal), the Muse Antropologico P. Sebastian Englert Museum, Rapa Nui (MAPSE), and a Permit has been granted by the Chilean Ministry of Culture.

For regulary diary updates from Easter Island, select the link below to the pages on the Orkney College website.

Easter Island Diary