Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation Volume 10 Article 2 Issue 4 December 1996 1996 Bone Tool Technology on Easter Island Felicia Rounds Beardsley Follow this and additional works at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/rnj Part of the History of the Pacific slI ands Commons, and the Pacific slI ands Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Beardsley, Felicia Rounds (1996) "Bone Tool Technology on Easter Island," Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation: Vol. 10 : Iss. 4 , Article 2. Available at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/rnj/vol10/iss4/2 This Research Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Hawai`i Press at Kahualike. It has been accepted for inclusion in Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation by an authorized editor of Kahualike. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Beardsley: Bone Tool Technology on Easter Island Bone Tool Technology on Easter Island Felicia Rounds Beardsley One of the attractions of Easter Island is the grand ture of a variety of bone implements can be easily traced and display of a complex technology embodied in the archaeo­ clarified, and the methods and devices used in tbat process at logIcal record-the aIJu and associated statuary. Yet it is the least inferred. As Semenov (1964) points out, It IS only smaller, less spectacular elements 111 other technological through the repated observations of similar patterns of modi­ industries which provide the greatest insights into that prehis­ fication on several items of like nature tbat the fundamental toric culture-into the industrial repertoire of one of the most features of a reduction process, implement ,function, or use isolated and environmentally impoverished islands in the are ultimately derived. Unfortunately, one factor which has south Pacific: into the ability of the prehistoric islander to affected the final outcome of the present study is the lack of adapt and ma e use of this envIronment; and into everyday formal or at least complete implements in the analysis collec­ rout me (perhaps even mundane) activities of life on this tion; this discrepancy has injected a degree of ambiguity into small island. In particular, it is those elements of the material the discussion as the full range of end-products remains culture inventory which were either in production or use on a unknown. nearly daily basis and which display the indelible mark of the The analysis collection consists of 169 artifacts of craftsman III form and across the surfaces--namely hand chicken (possibly other bird), mammal (which could also tools: those Implements made eIther form stone or bone. Of include human skeletal material), fish, ray, shark, and the two, stone tools have at least been the subject of a few unidentified bone; there might also be some rat bone in the papers and articles discussing such topics as quarrying activ­ collection as it appears in the midden. The artifact types ity in the obsidian deposits; morphology, classification and include needle fragments (needles are the most prevalent of analYSIS of expedient tools made from waste flakes: mala'a all formed bone artifacts), a fishhook shank drilled verte­ and even the chIsels littering the statue quarry (see for brae, possible awls, a potential tattooing comb fragment. example Beardsley et al. 1991; Ferdon 1961; Stevenson et al shark tooth scrapers. debltage (by far the largest group of 1984: Ayres and Spear n.d.; Cheatham and Ayres n.d.). Bone artifacts), and expedient ad hoc tools made from the odd tools and implements, on the other hand, have received fragments of bone debris. It should be noted bere that type Virtually no attention; they have often been relegated to a designations are based on inferred function and are always brief note in a list of artifacts present at a given site (Ayres open to change as more information becomes available. All 1975: Ferdon 1961: Stevenson 1988). artifacts were recover d from surface and subsurface con­ The next few pages present an outline of the results of texts in 14 coastal and inland caves from all around the one of the few IIIvestigations IUto the bone tool industry of Island, and one bare paeng,7 in Anakena (Ayres 1975). prehistoric Easter Island. The collection that has become the Within the chronological sequence for the island, the sites basis for the following observatIons on the prehistol;c era and hence artifact assemblages date from the Expansion bone industry IS housed at the Unl ersity of Oregon and (Ahu Moal; Middle Period) Phase into at least the Protohis­ consists almOSI exclusively of bone debitage, that artifactual tonc (Late Penod) Phase reSidue of reduction. manufacture. modification, and use. 11 Examination of the artifacts involved measuring and is actually a portion of a larger collection recovered by d scribing each, with particular attention paid to any stray William Ayres (1975) during his work on the island some 20 marks or traces of manufacture, modification and use. 11 years ago: the rest of the collection has remained on the proceeded on the premise of what Jacob Bronowski. the island. In addition. the experimental replication work con­ British mathematician, calls the double power of the artifact­ ducted in an effort to reproduce the manufacturing marks and -that is, an invention which carries its own blueprint with it. technological processes invol ed in lhe production activities allowing us to see forward into its use and backward into its observed In lhe collection will be summarized manufacture (Bronowski 1978:65). Magnification was used In developlllg a picture of any technological industry to examine many of the manufacturing and/or wear marks, \ Ilhm a prehlstonc era culLUre, the use of debHage IS of the and it served two purposes: the first is to determine the utmost Importance because the hIstory of the manufacturing general pattern of micro-relief or micro-structure common to process is retained in the residual marks across the artifact particular bone types so that anomalous striations or irregu­ surfaces. As production of bon implements or other articles larities across the bone surface could more asily be de­ IS a subtractive process, the by-products or waste (i.e., deb­ tected: the second is to determine the pattern of preservation Hage) will tend to be deposited at or near the place of origin across the sUlfaces of a given artifact. and hence the degree or manufacture; whereas a formal implement will more often of clarity that might be expected in the traces of wear and/or be deposiled at the last of what is likely a long line of use modification. On a severely weathered item, for example, the locations (this naturally has implications for interpreting the modificatons may be all but erased; whereas a highly pre­ activities conducted at a specific sile as well as the post­ served item may retain virtually the entire history of its depOSItIOnal factors affecting a site and its cultural deposit, modification. Needless to say, these are the extremes-the but thai is another topic best re erved for a later alticle). A artifacts in the UO collection lay somewhere in between the cOITelate to the deposition of production by-products is that two. the sequence of reduction, modification, and hence manufac- PublishedRapa by Kahualike,ui Journal 1996 77 Vol 10 (4) December 1996 1 Rapa Nui Journal: Journal of the Easter Island Foundation, Vol. 10 [1996], Iss. 4, Art. 2 The artifacts its shape is slightly modified by the addition of what can only The various artifact types included in the analysis collec­ be thread wear-a groove or channel or linear depression that tion are described below, beginning with the largest group of formed along the direction the thread was most often pulled, formed artifacts-needles; actually needle fragments, as there usually parallel to the long aXIs of the needle. are no complete needles within the collection. One artifact, tentatively identified as the fragment of a The needle fragments are divided into four groups: shaft tattooing comb, also displays wear from a fibrous cord or fragments, shafts with tips, shafts with butts, and shafts with thread, but in this instance the pattern of linear depressions is eyes. All needles are chicken bone, with at least one from a consistent with haft wear rather than thread wear. This femur, several from tibia, and still many more from unidenti­ fragment is made from what appears to be a chicken fiable long bones. The fragments represent the full range of metatarsal and has a head or knob set apart from the working production stages from needle blanks in the initial stages of end by V-shaped notches cut into the lateral edges. The haft formation to completed needles, discarded after a long use­ wear consists of linear depressions transverse to the main life. In tbe initial production stages, the needle blank has a axis of the implement and appears on the knob, in the rough surface witb many bone notches, and just below the fiber snags. The surface is cov­ mm mm notches. The whole item has ered with fine and coarse been shaped by grindmg. grained striations that were Other artifacts in the collec­ generated by the grinding tion include a fishhook shank, work in the initial surface which is made from a more sub­ preparation just prior to split­ 1 2 stantial bone than a chicken ting the long bone (raw mate­ Serrated debris Fishhook shank bone: it has been identified as mammal. and was most likely rial) as well as grinding from 7-1-942 7-1-931 the shaping work applied in human.