A British archaeologist has proposed a revised account of the excavation of Hoa Hakananaiʻa, the moai higher referred to as the Easter Island Head, arguing that its elimination was not a unilateral act of imperial extraction however a collaborative effort between British explorers and Indigenous Rapa Nui islanders that finally led to its voyage to England.
Hoa Hakananaiʻa was one in every of roughly 1,000 basalt statues scattered throughout Easter Island, a subtropical landmass concerning the dimension of Manhattan situated off the coast of Chile. The Indigenous Rapa Nui individuals name these towering figures moai—monuments that function vessels for the spirits of their ancestors. The most effective-known of them, Hoa Hakananaiʻa, has been on view on the British Museum since 1869, fueling one of many world’s most high-profile restitution campaigns.
Since 2018, Rapa Nui neighborhood leaders, backed by the Chilean authorities, have formally requested its return, arguing that the statue holds important cultural significance and that the British eliminated it with out permission.
The archaeologist Mike Pitts, nonetheless, has claimed that newly surfaced photographic proof and eyewitness accounts of the excavation paint a extra nuanced image. Pitts informed the Occasions that whereas researching his new ebook, Island on the Fringe of the World: The Forgotten Historical past of Easter Island, he encountered a report within the Military and Navy Gazette, a London-based newspaper printed in 1869, one yr after the excavation.
“This discovering was larger than the ebook. This was a type of moments the place the hair on the again of my neck stands on finish, and I simply get very excited,” mentioned Pitts. An professional on the subject, he’s edited British Archaeology, the Council for British Archaeology’s publication, for 20 years and has led excavations at Stonehenge. He added that the article included a “fairly detailed” eyewitness account of the statue’s elimination, the one one at the moment recognized.
It’s undisputed that the excavation’s chief, Commodore Richard Ashmore Powell, offered the Jap Island head to Queen Victoria, who later donated it to the British Museum for public show. Based on the nameless witness of the episode, the British expedition was welcomed by the Indigenous neighborhood: “On arrival at this place we have been met by about 4 hundred males and boys standing in an ideal line of two all alongside the rocks the place one needed to go, leaving a transparent path between for us to go.”
The account goes on to explain the scene onshore as “very unusual” but “nice,” whereas additionally utilizing a derogatory time period for the Rapa Nui individuals. It claimed that the British have been proven a hid entrance to a cluster of stone homes the place the statue—created someday between 1000 CE and 1200—resided. Based on the account, the Britons traded tobacco with the islanders, who then assisted in excavating the sculpture, earlier than the sailors hauled it again to their ship.
Maybe anticipating skepticism, Pitt factors to Easter Island’s state in 1868 as a potential clarification for the nice and cozy reception. On the time, the island was reeling from violent exploitation by competing overseas powers, each clerical and industrial, which had enslaved many Rapa Nui individuals on plantations and launched a bunch of lethal ailments.
Pitts confirmed the Occasions {a photograph} mentioned to have been taken on the day of the excavation. The picture belonged to a coveted historic album whose provenance was unknown, other than a number of pulled photographs offered by a Scottish public sale home to a Persian collector. The entire enterprise, he added, was “very secretive.”
A replica of the album ultimately surfaced on the Nationwide Library of Peru. Within the {photograph}, reprinted by the Occasions, Commodore Richard Ashmore Powell’s crew pose across the Easter Island head, alongside what Pitts identifies because the instruments and ropes utilized in its excavation. The eyewitness account information that 40 males took half within the dig—the identical quantity seen within the {photograph}.
“It had been mentioned that the {photograph} was taken in Portsmouth, the place the ship docked upon its return to Britain,” Pitts mentioned, including that he finds that account unlikely. Within the picture, the statue remains to be painted crimson and white—a ornament utilized by the islanders that, he famous, had been washed off throughout the voyage, as seen in later pictures.
The British Museum has repeatedly declined calls to return Hoa Hakananai’a, citing the British Museum Act of 1963, which restricts the deaccessioning of objects from its assortment with out authorities approval.
“My view as an archaeologist is that an excavation of the location the place the statue got here from can be actually productive and informative,” Pitt mentioned. “Now that’s the kind of mission that the British Museum and islanders may work collectively on.”
