The Rangitoki Bark-Cloth Piece: A Newly Recognized Rongorongo Fragment ... THE RAŊITOKI (RANGITOKI) BARK-CLOTH PIECE: A NEWLY RECOGNIZED RONGORONGO FRAGMENT FROM EASTER ISLAND Robert M. SCHOCH (Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
[email protected] Tomi S. MELKA (Las Palmas de G.C., Spain)
[email protected] The Raŋitoki fragment, here described in the literature for the first time, consists of a piece of bark-cloth collected on Easter Island in March 1869 that has painted on its surface a short rongorongo (RR) sequence of glyphs. Analysis of the historiography and inscription of the Raŋitoki fragment suggests that it is, most likely, a genuine relic of the rongorongo tradition on Easter Island and thus represents an authentic addition to the known corpus of RR inscriptions. Keywords: bark-cloth, corpus, genuine artifact, Rapa Nui, Rangitoki, Raŋitoki fragment, relic, rongorongo script Introduction In a publication of 1971, the German ethnologist and epigrapher Thomas S. Barthel commented, among many other things, on the technical features related to the production of rongorongo (RR) artifacts.1 Besides their possible thematic content; the dimensional size of objects; directionality (left-to-right) and writing method (essentially, reverse boustrophedon), and assumed stages during the writing / carving process, Barthel expresses his concern about the material media used to record inscriptions. While wood is by and large the basic medium, “It appears from the account of a calabash, which has unfortunately 1 BARTHEL, T. S. Pre-contact Writing in Oceania, pp. 1167–1169. 113 Asian and African Studies, Volume 28, Number 2, 2019 disappeared, that other materials were also inscribed. On the other hand we have no proof that rongo-rongo texts were possibly painted in color on bark- cloth”.2 The said “calabash” is first reported in William J.