Late colonization of Easter Island

Science

Volumn 311, Issue 5767, 2006, Pages 1603-1606

  Hunt, Terry L ^a   Lipo, Carl P ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII   (United States)

^b CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEGRADATION; ECOSYSTEMS; STRATIGRAPHY;

CHRONOLOGY; DEMOGRAPHIC PROCESSES; MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE; RADIOCARBON DATES;

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT;

CARBON 14;

COLONIZATION;

ARTICLE; CHRONOLOGY; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; DEMOGRAPHY; GEOLOGY; ISLAND BIOGEOGRAPHY; MEASUREMENT; PALEOANTHROPOLOGY; PALEOENVIRONMENT; POLYNESIA; PRIORITY JOURNAL; STRATIGRAPHY;

ANIMALS; ANTHROPOLOGY; ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL; CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES; ECOSYSTEM; EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION; ENVIRONMENT; HISTORY, ANCIENT; HUMANS; PLANTS; POLYNESIA; POPULATION DENSITY; POPULATION DYNAMICS; POPULATION GROWTH;

EASTER ISLAND; PACIFIC ISLANDS; PACIFIC OCEAN;

EID: 33645081710     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: 10959203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.1121879     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. P. V. Kirch, J. Ellison, Antiquity 68, 310 (1994).
2. A. Anderson, Antiquity 68, 845 (1994).
3. A. Anderson, J. Polynesian Soc. 104, 110 (1995).
4. M. Spriggs, A. Anderson, Antiquity 67, 200 (1993).
5. A. Anderson, Y. Sinoto, Asian Perspect. 41, 242 (2002).
6. A. Anderson, Antiquity 65, 767 (1991).
7. J. Wilmshurst, T. Higham, Holocene 14, 801 (2004).
8. C. Smith, in The Archaeology of Easter Island, Vol. 1, T. Heyerdahl E. Ferdon, Eds. (Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM, 1961), pp. 393-396.
9. R. Green, J. Polynesian Soc. 75, 6 (1966).
10. W. Ayres, J. Polynesian Soc. 80, 497 (1971).
11. J. Flenley, in Easter Island Studies: Contributions to the History of Rapanui in Memory of William T. Mulloy, S. R. Fischer, Ed. (Oxford Books, Oxford, 1993), pp. 27-45.
12. P. Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact (Univ. California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2000).
13. K. Butler, C. Prior, J. Flenley, Radiocarbon 46, 395 (2004).
14. McGlone and Wilmshurst (30) document a similar problem in radiocarbon dating the inception of continuous deforestation in New Zealand. Lake and swamp cores susceptible to in-washing of old carbons yielded dates hundreds of years older than deforestation events recorded in ombrogenous peat bog strata.
15. H. Martinsson-Wallin, S. Crockford, Asian Perspect 40, 244 (2002).
16. D. Steadman, P. Vargas Casanova, C. Cristino Ferrando, Asian Perspect. 33, 79 (1994).
17. T. F. G. Higham, A. G. Hogg, Radiocarbon 39, 149 (1997).
18. Beck et al. (31) established a shallow-water marine reservoir correction for Rapa Nui. In the same study they report radiocarbon dating of 27 abraded coral artifacts, many identified as statue eye fragments. As listed in table 51, 15 of these dates on coral artifacts are greater than 750 yr B.P. For our analysis, we reject these dates. As Beck et al. correctly point out, the coral may have been collected live, or perhaps more likely given ease of access to beach cobbles, used long after the death of the coral. Beck et al. also warn that living coral is comprised of significantly older interior parts. We take these caveats to mean that there is no warrant to treat the death of coral and its use in artifacts as an event known to be contemporaneous or necessarily closely related in time. Indeed, the coral death ages will be systematically older than the manufacture events, but by unknowable amounts.
19. M. Stuiver, P. J. Reimer, R. W. Reimer, CALIB 5.0 (http://calib.qub.ac. uk/calib/).
20. F. G. McCormac et al., Radiocarbon 46, 1087 (2004).
21. P. Kirch, E. Conte, in Archaeological Investigations in the Mangareva Islands (Gambier Archipelago), French Polynesia, E. Conte, P. Kirch, Eds. (Archaeological Research Facility, University of California, Berkeley, 2004), pp. 149-159.
22. J. S. Athens, H. D. Tuggle, J. V. Ward, D. J. Welch, Archaeol. Oceania 37, 57 (2002).
23. D. Mann et al., in Easter Island: Scientific Exploration into the World's Environmental Problems in Microcosm, J. Loret, J. Tanacredi, Eds. (Kluwer Academic, New York, 2003), pp. 133-153.
24. A. Mieth, H.-R. Bork, Easter Island-Rapa Nui: Scientific Pathways to Secrets of the Past (Man and Environment I, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany, 2004).
25. J. Diamond, W. Keegan, Nature 311, 704 (1984).
26. J. Birdsell, Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 22, 47 (1957).
27. T. Hunt, C. P. Lipo, in Pacific 2000: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Easter Island and the Pacific, C. Stevenson, G. Lee, F. Morin, Eds. (Easter Island Foundation, Los Osos, USA, 2001), pp. 103-115.
28. P. Rainbird, World Archaeol. 33, 436 (2002).
29. B. Peiser, Energy Environ. 16, 513 (2005).
30. M. S. McGlone, J. M. Wilmshurst, Quaternary Int. 59, 5 (1999).
31. J. W. Beck, L. Hewitt, G. S. Burr, J. Loret F. Torres Hochstetter, in Easter Island: Scientific Exploration into the World's Environmental Problems in Microcosm, J. Loret, J. Tanacredi, Eds. (Kluwer Academic, New York, 2003), pp. 93-111.