Mike Pitts writes: I spent last night (February 16, 2012) all but alone with the British Museum’s Easter Island statue, Hoa Hakananai’a. Graeme Earl, James Miles, Hembo Pagi and I began a project to record and analyse the carving in unprecedented detail. It is one of the British Museum’s most popular objects, but well known as it is, it has been little studied at first hand.
It was taken from the remote Pacific island by the Royal Navy in 1868, and has been on public display in the centre of London for over 130 years, with just two significant breaks. It must be one of the most viewed statues from the island.
The May/June 2013 British Archaeology contains the first printed report on our study of the great Easter Island statue in the British Museum. The feature makes a great spread, and the results are really interesting.
The key points are:
* Contrary to popular belief, the statue was not made for a coastal platform, but always stood in the ground where it was found on top of a 300m cliff
* When it was half-buried by soil and food debris, small designs known as komari, representing female genitalia, were carved on the back
* At a later date the whole of the back was covered with a scene showing a male chick leave the nest, watched by its half-bird, half-human parents – the story at the heart of the island’s unique birdman ceremony, recorded in the 19th and early 20th centuries
* In its present plinth, the statue leans slightly to one side
More, with lots of photos at Mike Pitts' blog
http://mikepitts.wordpress.com/tag/hoa-hakananaia/
There are some examples of the photogrammetry and a video at the University of Southhampton here
http://acrg.soton.ac.uk/blog/3169/
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