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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Role Of Culture In Sustainable Communities: The Case Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), Pamela A. Mischen, Carl P. Lipo
The Role Of Culture In Sustainable Communities: The Case Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), Pamela A. Mischen, Carl P. Lipo
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
We explore how the combination of cultural heritage and present-day cultural affili- ations influences the construction of the concept of sustainability at the scale of the community using the case study of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). We argue that overlapping affiliations—expressed through administrative culture, organizational culture, and professional culture—influence the views held by governance leaders. Furthermore, the role of cultural heritage must be considered in efforts to change and perpetuate sustainability-related behaviors within a community. Using archeo- logical and historical evidence from the pre-contact and historical record of Rapa Nui, we discuss how cultural heritage evolved endogenously in response …
A Model-Based Approach To The Tempo Of “Collapse”: The Case Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Robert J. Dinapoli, Timothy M. Reith, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt
A Model-Based Approach To The Tempo Of “Collapse”: The Case Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Robert J. Dinapoli, Timothy M. Reith, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) presents a quintessential case where the tempo of investment in monumentality is central to debates regarding societal collapse, with the common narrative positing that statue platform (ahu) construction ceased sometime around AD 1600 following an ecological, cultural, and demographic catastrophe. This narrative remains especially popular in fields outside archaeology that treat collapse as historical fact and use Rapa Nui as a model for collapse more generally. Resolving the tempo of “collapse” events, however, is often fraught with ambiguity given a lack of formal modeling, uncritical use of radiocarbon estimates, and inattention to information embedded in …
The Ethnohistory Of Freshwater Use On Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), Sean W. Hixon, Robert J. Dinapoli, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt
The Ethnohistory Of Freshwater Use On Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), Sean W. Hixon, Robert J. Dinapoli, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Sources of drinking water on islands often present critical constraints to human habitation. On Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), there is remarkably little surface fresh water due to the nature of the island’s volcanic geology. While several lakes exist in volcanic craters, most rainwater quickly passes into the subsurface and emerges at coastal springs. Nevertheless, the island sustained a relatively large human population for hundreds of years, one that built an impressive array of monumental platforms (ahu) and statues (moai). To understand how Rapanui acquired their scarce fresh water, we review ethnohistoric data from first European arrival (1722) through the …