Presented in person and online. Zoom details below.

Archaeology in Rapa Nui - Anakena excavations re-analysed

This seminar will present Rapa Nui pre-history spanning over 3 decades of my archaeological research. Rapa Nui is a tiny island situated in the southeast Pacific. Geographically, it is the most remote place in the world, but it was populated from the West around 1000 years ago. It is an important place for understanding the history of Polynesian migration and the internal development of the ceremonial ahu (monument) and moai (statues) complexes. Anakena cove on the northern part of the Island is, according to vernacular history, the place where the first people who colonised the island went ashore under the leadership of paramount chief Hoto Matua. Since then, Anakena have been important for Rapa Nui history. The cove houses several famous ceremonial monuments erected by the ancient Rapanui and around 300 complexes circumnavigated the island's coasts.  Archaeological investigations of ruined ceremonial sites around the Island were initiated in the mid-1950s by the late Thor Heyerdahl and archaeologists. One monument was restored then, but in the late 1970s, the large ahu Nau Nau in the centre of the cove was restored and statues re-erected. In the mid-1980s, I participated in carried out extensive excavations at ahu Nau Nau and the surrounding area, which revealed the settlement in Rapa Nui, which is still the earliest dated. The early cultural remains were buried under three meters of erosion soil. In addition, my analysis of fish bones from the site has shown a changing subsistence pattern over time. We furthermore encountered another early settlement area. Due to an extensive dating and re-dating program and re-analysis of the material culture together with my zoo-archaeological analysis from the excavations we recently carried out a re-evaluation of the site that in the light of new aDNA analysis confirm my hypotheses on when and how the Island was colonised and by whom and how the monuments developed and changed over time. 

Speaker bio:
Professor Helene Martinsson-Wallin from Uppsala University in Sweden focusses her research on Pacific Archaeology (Rapa Nui and Samoa) since the mid-1980s. In addition, her research also specialise on Baltic Island Stone and Bronze Age as well as contemporary issues in Cultural Heritage management and Cultural tourism. She has interdisciplinary approach to her research and she is currently involved in a broad range of topics spanning from Historical Settlement Dynamics in Samoa – in a West Polynesian context, Rapa Nui Sustainable Cultural heritage management and Cultural Tourism, pXRF on Stone Age Baltic pottery, Stone Age Baltic environmental changes though sed-DNA and zoo-osteology. She has in addition a background as an Adjunct Professor at the National University of Samoa where she assisted to develop a program for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management. She has developed the forum for Island and Seascape Interdisciplinary Research Cluster and participated to develop the interdisciplinary research school GRASS (graduate studies in sustainable studies) at Campus Gotland. Martinsson-Wallin have been a visiting fellow to ANU on several occasions since 2001 as well been awarded visiting fellowships to The University of Auckland and University of Otago. In 2025 she has been awarded the SSSHARC fellowship to University of Sydney.

Join in-person or via zoom: https://anu.zoom.us/j/84955848358?pwd=BlAgPRsbVdbBo9vrMB8mLEfcgz3FAo.1
Meeting ID: 849 5584 8358
Password: 602080

Presented as part of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology's 2025 Centre for Archaeological Research (CAR) Seminar series