Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Diet Of The Prehistoric Population Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) Shows Environmental Adaptation And Resilience, Catrine L. Jarmine, Thomas Larsen, Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo, Reidar Solsvik, Natalie Wallsgrove, Cassie Ka'apu-Lyons, Hilary G. Close, Brian N. Popp

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: The Rapa Nui “ecocide” narrative questions whether the prehistoric population caused an avoidable ecological disaster through rapid deforestation and over-exploitation of natural resources. The objective of this study was to characterize prehistoric human diets to shed light on human adaptability and land use in an island environment with limited resources.

Materials and methods: Materials for this study included human, faunal, and botanical remains from the archaeological sites Anakena and Ahu Tepeu on Rapa Nui, dating from c. 1400 AD to the historic period, and modern reference material. We used bulk carbon and nitrogen isotope analy- ses and amino acid …

Using Structure From Motion Mapping To Record And Analyze Details Of The Colossal Hats (Pukao) Of Monumental Statues On Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Sean W. Hixon, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt, Christopher Lee

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Structure from motion (SfM) mapping is a photogrammetric technique that offers a cost-effective means of creating three-dimensional (3-D) visual representations from overlapping digital photographs. The technique is now used more frequently to document the archaeological record. We demonstrate the utility of SfM by studying red scoria bodies known as pukao from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). We created 3-D images of 50 pukao that once adorned the massive statues (moai) of Rapa Nui and compare them to 13 additional pukao located in Puna Pau, the island’s red scoria pukao quarry. Through SfM, we demonstrate that the majority of these bodies …

Scaling Up The Self, Scaling Down The World: Self-Objectification And The Politics Of Carbon Offsets And Personalised Genomics, Joshua Reno

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Two global initiatives, the Genographic Project and the Carbon Lottery, share an ambition to make abstract, global processes—human evolution and climate change—comprehensible and engaging to non-specialists. Despite their differences, they both do so by means of self-objectifications that scale up the selves of participants and scale down complex, spatio-temporal models of human-world relations. Based on the author’s auto-ethnographic experience as a participant in both initiatives, it is argued that carbon calculators and personalised genomics involves a pragmatics of scale that evaluates and compares users on the basis of their relative expression of, or deviation from, a standard. Furthermore, this is …