CONSOLIDATION OF THE RAPANUI ASTRONOMY CONCEPT INVENTORY AND RE-APPRAISAL OF APPLIED ASTRONOMIC OBSERVATION AT PAPA UI HETU’U, RAPA NUI

Abstract

Rapa Nui, the easternmost settlement and most isolated trade outpost in ancient Polynesia, represents one of

the most ambitious feats in Polynesian wayfinding, and by default reflects the high level of competence in

navigation and interpretation of astronomical and natural phenomena, currently a popular field of inquiry

in Polynesian ethnoastronomy. However, as skywatching was not limited to navigation, the full scope of

Rapanui applied astronomical observation and complexity of astronomical devices was much broader.

Observatories, calendric calibration systems, “star-maps,” and structures with astronomical alignments,

have all been identified for Rapa Nui, yet the two main challenges confronting researchers is the scarcity of

extant information, as well as degradation and site location due to errors in the official mapping of the

island. The present investigation re-examines and extends the Astronomy concept inventory of the ancient

Rapanui, with regards to the toponymy of local stars and asterisms, and an inquiry into the stars and

methods used by traditional navigators to locate Rapa Nui in past times. The results have been analyzed

within both a local and regional context. In addition, our team did a re-appraisal of the astronomical

functions of the Matariki (Pleiades) stone and related petroglyphs in the area of Papa Ui Hetu’u (star-gazing

rock) on Poike Peninsula, which E. Edwards and Antonio Belmonte had investigated in 2004. For the first

time, this collected data was evaluated within the context of a digital planetarium, permitting the review and

identification of alignments between astronomical phenomena and sites of observation as if viewed in situ

and in the pertinent chronology; together with photogrammetry/3D-modelling of astronomical devices at

Papa Ui Hetu’u, these techniques offer a new and more precise line of research, rendering intriguing results.