Notes from the field: Ahu Nau Nau and Ahu Ature Huki, ‘Anakena, 1982

‘Anakena, April 30, 1982.¹

Ahu Nau Nau

Routledge talks about this site to a certain extent.² It has been excavated in part and parts have been restored, so that many things have happened here. I have no idea whether or not they will ever be recorded.

The excavation and restoration that was done by a local archaeologist, Sergio Rapu,³ restored the ahu but there was little excavation done at that time. The ahu was in excellent shape.⁴ There are now four statues with topknots standing on the platform, each of a slightly different shape. What portions of their topknots are real as opposed to repaired or rebuilt, and what the topknots looked like in their original shape is another question. I don’t know the answer.

Aside from the four standing statues with topknots, there is a vacant pedestal to the left, and then three more statues (and 3 more pedestals). All of the pedestals are composite types (I suspect all the pedestals here were reconstructed, i.e., new). Three more statues are then on the right. Very clearly, the last two on the right (out of the entire seven) were much smaller; only the base portions remain. One of the statues lacks a topknot but it appears as if the statue was designed for one.

Contrary to popular local tradition, the restored ahu called Nau Nau is not the first one at this site. Off to the right, stacked in a small plaza, are fragments of other statues and topknots. It was here that fragments of worked coral were first discovered and recognized as eye for a statue. The coral pieces were found and then it was noted that they fit together.⁵

A number of broken statues (possibly three) are over to the right, but whether or not they belong with this particular ahu is unknown. Two lower-body pieces with the hands still visible suggests that whatever originally stood on this ahu, one of them belonged on the empty pedestal on the ahu.

To return to the statues on the side, there are four bases and one head, two topknots, and several other assorted pieces, but I’m certain they didn’t all belong to Ahu Nau Nau. Immediately adjacent is the statue that was pulled along in an experiment by Heyerdahl (Heyerdahl & Ferdon 1961:Pl. 60b). It is over on the right, as one faces the sea, along with another ahu described in this report.

The entire ahu had been covered by sand so that, when the moai fell, they were cushioned by it (Heyerdal & Ferdon 1961:Plate 24c). We have no record, however, as to when these statues were overturned. Some 80 burials were placed underneath them. These were excavated; it is possible they were from the smallpox epidemics as this was a mass burial. The burials seem to have been tucked underneath without context or sequence.

One trench still remains out in front on the landward side at right angles to the axis of the central platform; it is about 20 meters long and goes right up to the lower part of the ramp.

There are some special things about this ahu. First, the central platform is horizontal but the front landward paenga have a complete red scoria fascia. The landward paenga go up on each end, rather like the gunwales of a boat, and go out in the middle, so it looks like one half of a very long canoe. This is similar in concept to the boat-shaped houses.

There is an extensively spaced poro ramp with some large blocks of bedrock or other kinds of rock in several places within the interior. Another series of paenga are at the bottom of the spaced poro ramp that forms a boundary with the spaced poro ramp; this is a non-scoria fascia. The whole was covered with small beach pebbles and red scoria pebbles.

The courtyard in front (landward) is not very long. It was covered by about 30 to 50cm of sand that blew in over a red dirt-red clay base, evidence of a sediment trap for the valley and into which the front paenga of the lower part of the ramp were placed. The central platform rises about three meters from what would have been the plaza floor. The spaced poro ramp went up almost exactly two meters from its lower bounding paenga to its upper bounding paenga.⁶ The upper row of paenga are scoria blocks, which is similar to the ahu at Akahanga. There is a basaltic paenga and on top of that is the red scoria fascia.

Above that is something I’ve never seen on an ahu and I suspect that it may be an accident of reconstruction: there had been, at one time, a placement of poro covered with calcium carbonate over the destroyed Ahu Nau Nau in an attempt to perhaps make it into a semi-pyramidal ahu. In restoring it, I think there is a chance to know where these poro were or what their relationship was with the pedestals. At any rate, the ahu has been restored so that the poro cover the top surface of the platform. I have never before seen a central platform surface that was paved with calcium carbonate-covered poro. Most platform tops are paved with flat slabs, or have large top plates that may be pecked to fit into the seaward wall. If it was paved with white poro, it is unique.

Regarding the statue faces and the statue bodies, these were reworked. That is, pulverized stone was mixed with concrete and placed over them, and then they were re-shaped. This reshaping was done by Rafael and Juan Haoa in order that one might see what an idealized restoration of an ahu might have looked like, with perfect statues and perfect topknots and all the trimmings. Some believe that this is unethical. I think it is good to see what the ahu might have looked like when first constructed. If one is going to restore something, why restore it as dilapidated? Why not make it a good likeness? That apparently is what was done here. I happen to agree with the restoration process, provided that it is recognized as such.

I am facing inland, towards the little mountain on top of which is another small ahu. I know that piles of excavated sand from the plaza were not sifted, but just dumped there to be sifted later. That was two years ago (1979–80). The excavated sand was supposed to have been sifted, but that was never done. There are also other gouges out of the pre-existing sand surfaces upon which the piles rested. Bones and artifacts lie on the surface and, around where the piles were located, they are mixed with sand. [I suspect that all the artifacts and everything else that was excavated from Ahu Nau Nau has gone into concrete somewhere in the house foundations of Hangaroa. And thus a great deal of information is completely lost]. In the collection of sand, some of which was taken only a few days ago, it was removed all the way down to the red soil surface that is obviously a deposition unit within this small valley. The sand was taken off and there is a series of gouges between Ahu Nau Nau and about 100 meters out into the plaza where sand has been removed for years and taken into the village to make cement. This is a continuing problem on the island as the people need concrete, and rather than haul sand from the continent, this is one of the few places where it is available. And, with the sand, an enormous amount of archeological data went with it, everything from fishhooks to whatever.

Looking back at the ahu, I observe paenga that bound the front part of the central platform of the restoration. The restorers tried to use the original red scoria blocks when possible, but they manufactured new ones when they ran out, and the paenga on the left side are made of poured concrete. There are some odd paenga that probably came from other places, although most of them may be original.⁷

The landward side of the red scoria blocks that form the fascia are plain and lack petroglyphs. I wonder if there ever were any? Both Akahanga and One Makihi have red scoria fascia with petroglyphs. I do not know of any other ahu on the island, as yet, that has such well-preserved stonework; this is important at Ahu Nau Nau because sand would have preserved them on the landward side. I expected to find them, but none are there.

One thing of importance is the number of paenga that appear to be original. Two things are apparent: first, they were made of basalt porphyry, a kind of basalt porphyry that occurs on the still-standing paenga at Ahu Poukura. These seem to have come from a single quarry near Rano Aroi. Second, there were some problems in the restoration at Nau Nau and patching was done with concrete when necessary. Concrete may hold up longer than some of the original stone, although it is hard to say; the original stones were there for some 400 to 500 years and are in good shape.

As for the placement of stones during restoration, I differ as to the size of the fascia blocks. I would have placed them to hang down over the basalt paenga farther than they are, although they may have been reconstructed based on the size of those that were here originally. I assume this was done as accurately as the data would allow, in terms of the reconstruction. What is tragic is that there were no field notes taken on this excavation, at least by the archeologist in charge. The few notes that were taken on provenience and such have never been written up, nor were they amalgamated into a report, and several debris piles in and around the still-open excavations of this ahu have been lying there now for a couple of years.

On the left as one faces the ahu (and the sea), and also exposed in the trench, are a number of structures that were crosscut by a trench in front (landward). It appears that there was an older structure beneath the main restored structure, and this was partly rocked up⁸ within the trench. But there was a still-older wall that stuck out in front, and at the lower edge of the ramp, the bounding paenga are sitting on top of what looks like foundation slabs. They may actually have been a bit of a pavement upon which the smaller paenga were placed. These smaller paenga are very thin and surprisingly small. Several of them may be resting on a single large pavement slab, but the point is that this prehistoric reconstruction overlaps an older construction that is underneath and on the left side, which in this case would be towards the southwest. As one walks out into the courtyard area there are other beveled paenga that come up, right at the left-hand wing of Ahu Nau Nau.

Farther out are a number of paenga that have been there for a long time as well as some very large poro. The excavations that were made in this particular area show, first of all, what I would consider to be some lumps of old ahu fill, just raw rock rubble, and a number of poro, both small and large, plus chunks of beautiful basalt porphyry that would normally go into the making of classic paenga.

The line of rubble continues out to the left; I assume this was the core of an older ahu, a good portion of which was probably recycled into the present Ahu Nau Nau. In particular, the paenga and perhaps portions of the bases or pedestals were recycled. There are some rather large rocks that are thick enough to have been wall blocks for the central platform, but could possibly have been pedestals if they had been used correctly. They are thicker than the composite pedestals on which the statues of Ahu Nau Nau, as reconstructed, stand.

Several paenga have petroglyphs. Two contain elegant carvings of boats (Lee 1988:Figure 12; 1992:Figure 4.109). The farther to the left, the longer the adjacent ahu – the older one – becomes. It may extend in a long line and there are still paenga, almost in a line but not quite aligned with the present structure. However, they nearly match the paenga alignment that is landward of the left wing of Ahu Nau Nau. But this line of stones continues leftward for some distance so that the entire older structure would have been longer than any presently-known ahu.

There are bits and pieces of poro and other rocks that have been lined up and they appear to form a kind of pavement; this continues outward and it might be the base of a pirca that crossed here at one time, as it continues to where there is a road that runs down to the beach; it crosses that and continues. But it is not a pirca. It continues into another pile of rocks, some of which are worked, but they are all still in line. There are several ways to explain this feature. It may have been an older ahu or it may have been a very broad pavement with no ahu in front of it. However, there does seem to be a kind of limit or boundary that is about 40 meters or so from the left edge of the left wing of Ahu Nau Nau. At this edge are one or two paenga standing upright and then some that are oriented at right angles to the shore, suggesting that perhaps this may have been the limit of some older central platform or possibly a wing of a central platform that came out to the southwest.

Looking again at the trench which is now at least three years old (it was here when we first arrived in September 1979), the walls have crumbled to a certain extent and the more that I look at the stratigraphy, it appears that the initial construction of an ahu in this particular area, not necessarily Nau Nau but certainly helped out by Nau Nau, acted as a kind of dam for slope-wash that came down from the local red scoria cones and collected here. I can see that there is obsidian a meter down from the present surface, and about 80 or 70cm from the original surface on which the sand now rests, there is a rather clean sand-capping about 30cm thick. There is a very specific flat, impressively planar surface, on which the sand rests, and I assume this was a deposition surface in the plaza for Ahu Nau Nau. I can see obsidian all the way through this entire deposition sequence. Some of it is a meter or more deep.

On the right side of Ahu Nau Nau, restored as it is, there is another series of excavation units, again with several enormous paenga systems. Immediately adjacent to the central platform of Ahu Nau Nau, on the right, are about four paenga that appear to be part of another central platform, also raised at the ends like a canoe. But in front of it (landward) there is an enormous slab pavement. Some of the slabs have tool marks on them or some markings that indicate abrasion. Although the whole thing is covered with rubble at present, the paenga are within two meters and set back in an entirely different alignment than the central platform of Nau Nau. The pavement that is in front of that would take the place of the paved poro ramp. I cannot tell if there was a bounding limit at the lower end or not; it simply goes down into the sand (on the left end) and it does so beyond the bounding poro ramp limit of Ahu Nau Nau but extending farther landward than Nau Nau. It is also completely covered with sand. Several years ago there were human bones sticking out all over but these are now mostly covered, although I can see human bone and a piece of a skull just lying on the surface. Rain has certainly taken its toll. There was a trench dug straight in to the standing paenga, and a statue with the number “110” resting almost on top of that paenga, plus a small statue as well.

But what is important is in the trench immediately to the right. They tried to rock up the sand walls of the trench wall in order to keep the sand from falling down into the trench and thus destroying the stratigraphy. But the trench goes all the way to the base of the paenga and on top of the enormous slab pavement that is the ramp of the Ahu Nau Nau structure.

I don’t know if there were any excavations through the structure to see if it rests on red clay or on a veneer of clean white sand. If the latter, then it would be considerably younger than the prehistoric construction of the main Ahu Nau Nau, in which the clean white sand abuts the landward bounding paenga of the poro ramp. If resting on clay, a case could be made for either the contemporaneity of two structures side by side, such as that of Ahu Hanga Poukura, or that the main structure had a right wing that was constructed very differently than the normally-expected construction of a simple right wing off the main central platform.

A second pavement was built on top of the sand, suggesting that it is much younger than any of the ahu construction because the alignment of the new ramp goes up and would just about go over the top of the paenga and the fallen statue. They would not have built over the statue, but they would go right up to the absolute limit of the paenga that still remain in place. This is only about five meters to the right of the right wing of Ahu Nau Nau, suggesting that the poro pavement had a real purpose and was a rather young construction. The part that is still intact is about five or six meters across and about eight or nine meters long, and it stretches inland from the paenga. There are bits and pieces of statues all over.

Some large excavations were made into the sand; these went all the way down to the clay layer that marks the surface of what would have been the plaza, at least for Ahu Nau Nau. It was rocked up in several places around the sand to keep it from eroding, but with little success. Bits and pieces of bone and human teeth can be seen in the sand, probably from very late burials.

Several different layers of sand can be seen. For example, the surface layers of sand upon which the grass is now growing was the original surface; it has a beautiful red scoria layer underneath it, and human bone is exposed both above and below. There are many miscellaneous poro remaining, as well as obsidian. However, for this particular excavation, there was no recorded stratigraphic control.

A portion of the enormous ramp structure comes up in front of the last remaining paenga of the central platform of Ahu Nau Nau. There are four paenga in a row, and then the 4th one on the far right has what appears to be a fairly recent sheep burial. But it is lying right in front of the two top big slabs of pavement where, curiously enough, the small poro pavement, the higher one, must have been placed on the sand. If one looks at the landward end of that pavement, and drops the landward end of the upper pavement down to where the big slab pavement would be, one would drop meters right through clean sand. So the stratigraphic separation of the lower end is considerable. At the upper end, the pavement comes right up to and almost touches the enormous slab pavement that comes up at a steep angle from below. So there is wedge-shaped stratigraphy here, in which, if you considered it as two layers, the lower slab pavement is tilted at a higher angle than the poro pavement, which is on top of that.

Small chunks of statue are on top of the poro pavement, as well as in the sand beneath it, suggesting that the destruction of one or more of the ahu had already taken place before they placed the overlying poro pavement. There is a buried statue head, and I remember Jose Tuki telling me that, behind this statue head, there was a cave that went down underneath the bedrock that is exposed underneath the sand. There is also a buried statue body in there. Whether or not that is true I don’t know, but he told me right after they had found it, and he was very excited.⁹

Did the destruction of the right-hand ahu take place after some of the sand was already in place? The sand abuts the big paenga at the top of the central platform, with the fallen statue perched on it. The fallen statue rested on sand, but the sand might have blown underneath it later. At the very least, the destruction continued while the sand was being deposited, otherwise there wouldn’t be moai powder and moai chunks within the sand deposition.

On the lower end of this are bones of a human foot weathering out of the sand between the poro pavements. More paenga are at the lower end of the poro pavement; these are fairly thick, like bounding paenga. Whether or not the poro pavement continued over the top is unknown, but it suggests that the nicely cut paenga were placed here rather late so that there was a chance to fill up the entire interior with sand. Or, it might have been done deliberately with sand, and then the poro pavement was put on the top of that. This is one of those rare archeological sites on the island that has been aggregating until historic times but, unfortunately, it was not well-recorded and it is now under a rapid rate of destruction.

I am about 30 meters or so from the right wing of Ahu Nau Nau and, at the lower bounding ramp for the upper poro ramp, I see the whole area is under about a meter of sand; the ramp itself would have been buried at this point. There are huge chunks of red scoria in all this. I do not know how many have been disturbed so I cannot tell what the original stratigraphy might have been. However, inland, about two meters, are a couple of slabs that could either be a slab-lined tomb or paenga for some other kind of alignment. I do know that some odd statues came from here.

Looking seaward, I see a beautiful paenga that is in place, and I note that it would originally have been part of the central platform, although not the same central platform as the one that I have just mentioned. These paenga are different. I think this was part of a separate small central platform, perhaps with a separate structure. You can see (to the left) that there are only three paenga in this line.

Also to the left are fragments of red scoria that still retain an angle. There is another buried statue in there, or at least a statue body as well as some very large mounds of rock and some broken pieces of basalt scoria that seem to have been beveled or chamfered paenga. These are now to the northeastward of the moai head that is buried within and beneath the poro pavement.

The big paenga on the right were not designed to carry a red scoria fascia. They are enormous, about 40cm thick and not beveled at the top. If they had had a red scoria fascia, it would have been huge. Toward the base of these paenga, however, probably either at the ground level or otherwise, there is a sudden step, suggesting that whomever was carving these paenga felt it was not necessary to continue the fine work any farther below what was either ground surface or below an overhanging paenga (if there were going to be one). These slabs are 40cm thick and about 1.30 high and at least 2.50 long. It is slightly scoriaceous, solid basalt.

Seaward is a small enclosure that was probably a roughly-made burial tomb, and a fragment or two of a statue. This looks like the kind of thing that bounds the back wall of an ahu, rather than the front, so how much it has been realigned is unknown. I doubt they would go to that much work just for a burial tomb. These paenga, four in a row, fit very well and are large.

The back paenga are smaller and of the bounding type. There are one or two on the very back corner at the northeast that appear original, but have been reworked, not into a back wall but reworked here, using this front paenga as a very late construction. Then they just put in whatever else they had in the back to make it look like a back wall, and probably made a burial or crematory on the inside.

From the back side, on the very far left, about five meters from the double bird petroglyph¹⁰ showing one flying after the other (Lee 1984:Figure 5; 1992:Figure 6.5), the sand baulks have fallen apart, and human skulls are visible. In fact, a lot of bones are sticking out: bones of a child and a clavicle, covered over with a little sand, perhaps awaiting some future excavation.

Looking at the back wall of Ahu Nau Nau as it has been cleaned off and partly restored, I note they added some chinking rocks, probably to stabilize it. There are several large walkways. A number of slabs were exposed at one time, but the one that has the large double birds on it is actually behind what would be the central platform of the ahu that is immediately adjacent to Ahu Nau Nau on the right as one faces the sea. It is behind (seaward of), and poorly placed. It is just a poor job, whereas right behind the central platform of Ahu Nau Nau on the backside, complete with all of its statues with the little belts on there and the little tattoos, there is a separate platform. That platform has some very well-made rocks in it, but one thing is important: these rocks look as if they were very carefully-made rectangular or square slabs, but they don’t fit together: they came from some other place.

And that is a good portion of the story of Nau Nau. It has probably had several antecedent ahu that were rifled in order to build it. With that in mind, as one can see when examining the back wall of Ahu Nau Nau, portions of many other blocks have been carved to fit some other blocks and have been put into the back wall. Because they do not fit, they must have came from elsewhere.

There are two or three blocks with petroglyphs on them. For example, one just underneath the fourth statue from the left has a bas relief petroglyph of a man with an outsized penis¹¹ (Lee 1984:Figure 3; 1992:Figure 6-3). Beneath the third statue from the left with a topknot there is another moai head that has been shaped into a block, looking out, and lying down on one ear. Both of these blocks are probably recycled, not necessarily from the ahu that was here, but one that was either adjacent or not too far away.

There are numbers of other piles of poro behind Ahu Nau Nau, all covered with sand. There also are fragments of broken up moai behind this ahu. These include some heads that are very short, flat on top, otherwise classic, with eyes, and they must have had very short ears on them in terms of the proportional length of the ears. They are about the same size, at least the two big ones that are apparent, and they would have been about the same size as the present statues standing on Ahu Nau Nau.

A number of blocks behind the back wall could have fit into Ahu Nau Nau. The problem is that while they could have been used, they weren’t. This suggests that they were extra. They are well-carved, but were not put into place. The back wall of Ahu Nau Nau has two walkways. One, coming off the wing, may or may not have been reconstructed to fit there, but it comes up and then ends in several stair steps behind the standing moai themselves; it is very narrow. This parallels, in a reverse direction, Ahu Heki‘i with an overbuilt wall that would allow access, if one wanted access, or it could stabilize the central platform wall on which the statues were standing.

There are actually two walkways, and both of them end very simply. But the lower one, right behind standing statues #1 and #2, is built of roughly-hewn rock: it was selected to fit and there are lots of chinking rocks within it. Three or four of them, especially at the left end as one faces inland, are set vertically and then all the rest are crudely rocked up.

When looking at the entire back wall of Ahu Nau Nau, the place that would normally have the crematory, that is on my left but would normally be, as you face the sea from the courtyard, on the back right of the ahu, are some beautiful rectangular blocks. They were selected to fit, not carved to fit. That area was either a pavement or a crematory. There is a very small headless statue below and off the backside. How far down those foundations go I don’t know because it is about two courses high or about 1 meter high, and it is bricked up rather than having been put together by the placement of blocks.

Behind statues five and six, as one counts from the left looking towards the sea, is a large block of raw stone that forms the core of that particular ahu, overlain by a horizontal slab of very beautifully-worked basalt. That brings the top of the ahu to the upper level.

There seem to be two visible major constructions and possibly a third. Looking inland at the back of it, the fine recycled rocks are all either in the upper courses or in the upper left hand courses, there being no lower left hand course visible. The lowest course visible, dead center, is of rough rock, vertically set. The stones are chinked. One vertical rock, for example, is four courses high when compared to the courses immediately bordering it on the right. The rock work is of poor quality; it was selected and put in there to fit, but not very well.

Farther to the right, the entire wing of Ahu Nau Nau (facing inland) has been bricked up with horizontal slabs, including some that have three notches in them; these may or may not have been from hare paenga, suggesting that the original wing for this structure was built at a slightly different time. I cannot tell whether the right-hand end that would underlie the empty pedestal and statue # 1 (counting from the left if one faces the sea), that whole right end (facing inland) had been rebuilt, because those slabs do not look prehistoric.

Immediately underneath standing statue # 2 (which has a funny little rump and its own pedestal that it is resting on, and rump cleavage too, as though he were either kneeling or sitting down), begins the original portion of Ahu Nau Nau. It would be the second statue from the right, and everything underneath the first statue from the right (to the right on the central platform) has been reconstructed. How much has been reconstructed below that is unknown. There appears to be a lot of fresh chinking, especially in the lower courses. There is the first walkway, which drops about a meter, then a second walkway about 1 meter below, and then the present excavated level, another 1 meter, some 1.80 below that walkway. The walkway doesn’t go anywhere, just over and then melding with the wing on the right; then it goes beyond the four vertically standing blocks that compose that course and disappears or is broken down on the left side, between statues three and four, standing, counting from the right.

This lower course is poorly done but interesting. The course above it that would support the higher walkway is better made, with a lot of chinking, and it looks like most of it is old rock. The upper part appears to be a reconstruction. So how far did that original central platform extended outward? I’m not sure what evidence they used for that during reconstruction. But it was on top of very well-bricked up construction. However, the bricking changes dramatically from left to right. That is, the right hand side is made of very thin rocks; the left side has all rectangular or squared blocks.

The right side, bricked up with horizontally laid thin slabs, appears younger. It could be contemporaneous, but it was obviously designed to be something else because the horizontal bricking continues all the way out to the end of what is presently the wing and, as one faces the sea, the left wing of Ahu Nau Nau. In the bottom of that wing are two statues together, and a third one underneath the corner. The statues are slightly smaller than those presently on Ahu Nau Nau. One statue body is upside down, facing out; the head can’t be seen. However, the hands are there. More importantly, the entire statue extends farther, since it is upside down, so there seems to have been a greater space between the lower fingers of the hand and the original base of the statue than on any other statue I’ve seen. In this case, the whole block is a meter high, and the hands come midway across it; they are small hands and the body has its original width. That means that there would have been at least 30cm of statue between the hands and the statue base.

Facing inland are the remaining statues in the lower right hand corner. These are underneath the left wing as one faces the sea. The big statue has too much space between its hands and what would have been the base that is built into the bottom of this wing, that is, about 30cm or more. This statue would have been rather high; it lacks the typical pot-belly but instead it has a bell curve shape on both sides. This may be due to the fact that it has been wedged into the wall and was ground down to fit.

The statue fragment on the left is about a meter wide or 60 to 70cm wide; height unknown, as it is buried under the clay surface. There is another piece below to the right, about a meter from the end from the wing of Ahu Nau Nau. Then there is a small structure or part of a platform – perhaps a crematory surface – that sticks out from the back wall. It may have been constructed later; it rests on a clay surface that drops almost two meters from left to right over a space of about 15 meters so, even though the top of the wing is more or less horizontal, the bottom drops down rapidly so the whole wing is about five meters high.

There is enormous difference in the rock work. Immediately above whatever portion of this third statue is below are very rough, angular rocks that are laid on top of it. Above that we see recycled slabs and two or three of them show some good pecking, but they were laid in a random manner. They were chosen for their approximate shape and then placed to fit. Above that, about two meters up, are two or three very large horizontally-laid slabs that have been pecked in several places. Probably these were wall slabs from some other ahu that had been made to precisely fit other boulders nearby, but not the ones they are presently adjacent to. Perhaps these were recycled from some structure nearby.

Some three meters up, the aforementioned brickwork begins. The brickwork rests on a surface that is contiguous to what was originally back wall construction, going all the way from four vertical slabs on the left 30 meters, and coming out to the end of the wing, and forming a back wall of an original structure. It has one small bulge in it. It may have been sort of an arcane back wall of an original [older] structure. There are two ways to argue this because the top of the first step from the bottom, which is about two meters high, is contiguous with the stonework that is above the large recycled wall slabs underneath what is now Ahu Nau Nau’s wing. It is almost horizontal. Above that, brickwork was placed to fit, not shaped to fit.

I am unable to determine if it is an “original” structure or simply older. The concept of an original structure is difficult to define at ‘Anakena, because of the number of structures that exist next to the beach and, at Ahu Nau Nau, not all of the area has been uncovered. I can only assume that it was mapped correctly.

I think the curvature of the wall mentioned above is really quite like the seaward walls of both central platforms of Ahu Poukura and Ahu Hanga Hahave, and that is why there is a temptation to interpret that odd lower wall-step as some seaward wall of an older central platform. Its construction is different, as is its alignment.

The changeover is comparatively subtle because there is brickwork below as well, but it is nowhere near as extensive, nor were thin pieces used. The first step disappears into this wall rather rapidly, and the wall that goes from this horizontal level up to the very top of the wing itself, only the top rocks of the wing appears to be the reconstructed work of Sergio Rapu. From immediately below that is the original work, and there are poro in there, odd shaped slabs, very finely cut slabs, slabs that would normally be found lining a tomb or crematory; there are slabs that look like they were very poorly-done paenga that would have originally been a scoria fascia. There is one slab with three notches in it that looks like it was hauled somewhere. Then, as you move leftward, this brickwork is stacked up against large stones that form a large portion of the back wall of Ahu Nau Nau.

The three parallel notches can be seen in other slabs, notably at Ahu Tongariki, and they suggest that the notches were used for hauling ropes of some sort.

What can we conclude? From the back wall and the fact that some of these pieces of back wall have different kinds of alignments, there appears to be an inclusion of several structures whose lower work is generally poorer than the upper work. But the upper work, using stones that are more finely cut, is still not very good stonework. They used fine-cut stones, but they did a poor job with them. So we have lousy work at the bottom and lousy work at the top; the difference is that the poor work at the top has the advantage of having finely cut stones.

Walking back to the left, there are two other things of interest. One is that the second step in the whole wall (that continues from Ahu Nau Nau’s wing back behind the central platform), has a different alignment than the central platform of the present Ahu Nau Nau with statues.

I am not necessarily convinced that, at the height of this particular ahu’s use, it had eight standing statues, including the several small lumps. It has seven now and several small lumps, but the question is whether or not they all stood there at the same time. Judging from some other ahu, I’m not convinced that they did. There may have had three or four standing at any one time.

Looking inland at the right hand side of the reconstructed central platform, on top of which is the empty pedestal and statue #1, it appears that it was reconstructed from rocks that were probably close by, or possibly even used right there prehistorically. They were pecked to fit, so the kind of rockwork that forms the very top course of Ahu Nau Nau’s back wall of the central platform has been continued. The lower courses are different. On the left-hand side there are only two courses on the back wall, which has a number of cut slabs with petroglyphs on it. It is only two courses high but about two meters more than that in height. As one moves from that point, which is directly under Statue #6 (counting from the right as you face inland) and moving left, there are two courses for a short section and then it changes to three, and then between the top of the central platform and the first step there are about four courses with a lot of chinking. Continuing left is the moai head, and that is at least four meters high from the bottom of the lowest course. That would be directly over where the four major boulders are located that form this original [older] structure.

On the landward side, the surface of the stacked up clay that is in front of the ahu is about the same height as the first step on the back wall. At a minimum, that probably would account not only for the height of the original ahu ramp, but also the height of the original central platform, upon which old statues may have rested.

Continuing on to the right from beneath standing statues 1 and 2, there is a change in rockwork, a sort of bricked-up effect from that point on, to the right. The lower course has large rocks; above the first step are very large rocks, several of them set in on a vertical axis, but one or two are very finely carved. They are almost rectangular. They do not fit their presently adjacent rocks; they’ve been chinked to fit, so they came from somewhere else. Then the reconstructed central platform is above that.

Moving farther to the right, there is an interface with large rectangular or square blocks that are not dovetailed above the first step, but they compose the riser for the second step. The brickwork was laid against these rocks. Then the brickwork continues to the right, but does not continue below the first step. In other words, the riser of the first step does not have the brickwork in it. In fact, it looks like a jumbled mess including a piece of scoria within it. [The use of scoria suggests that the original or lowest central platform was not the first, either on the island or in this area.]

It is only after one goes beyond the end of the central platform that the brickwork changes character and angles, as though the right wing of Ahu Nau Nau, as I face inland, was bricked up as an afterthought, and may have been bricked up from below. It is as if the first riser and step were of some original structure that ended just about a meter and a half beyond [to the right of] where the present central platform of Ahu Nau Nau ends, and the central platform rested on perhaps an even older central platform or wing of some other structure that terminated at about the same spot. The brickwork of the first step disappears into the wing wall of Ahu Nau Nau.

The wall of the riser of the second step suddenly changes, making an angle, and bulges seaward about 50cm. It was bricked up all the way. So, on the wing itself, there would have been at least two separate constructions rather than one.

Of course there is the chance that the second step and riser were raised walkways, similar to that of Ahu Vai Uri or Ahu Ko Te Riku, but then why would they come to an end? At least at Vai Uri and Ko Te Riku the walkways go somewhere and appear functional.

There may be two scenarios: one would have the first step and riser as a central platform that terminated about two meters beyond [westward, or to the right as one faces the sea] the present reconstructed central platform. It just simply ended; there was no wing. Then they wanted to build it higher, so they put a new central platform on top, making the old central platform the first riser. And they did so with some fairly good-sized stones. In doing that, they made the center farther over to the left (as I face that wall), and they may or may not have had statues on top of that. The left-hand side might have coincided with the bottom of the top course of the present central platform.

Perhaps they had a statue head built in, but I rather doubt that; I think the statue head was added later. And there may have been a wing on that structure, built out to the right. There was the third central platform, the presently reconstructed one. Hence, right here under Ahu Nau Nau, there may have been a total of three structures.

As for an alternate scenario, first there was a very large terrace, not a central platform. That terrace would be the riser and first step that went all the way out and nearly to the end. It doesn’t have to go to the end but nearly to the end of the present Ahu Nau Nau wing. It was just a terrace without wings or a central platform. Then above that they developed a second ahu with a central platform, and they may have used the remaining part of this terrace as a lower wing, and had a central platform resting on top of it. Third, we end up with the present day Ahu Nau Nau, in which they bricked up the terrace and the rest of the central platform was turned into a wing, and this resulted in the two walkways. Then they put a new central platform above that. The terrace would be like Ahu Heki‘i or Ahu Mahatua, without the raised central platform.

So in either case, we wind up with at least three uses but, of the two types of scenarios, I cannot tell which is the more valid. I think the second one might be the best.

There are two or three other small chunks of moai tuff built into the wall of the other wing as well, not just the three that are at the very bottom; the bottom of that wall is not as yet exposed by excavation. It is hard to tell where the foundation is, but the excavation was getting pretty close. Anyway, there are two or three other smaller chunks, 20 to 30cm across, built into the wall above the other chunks at the base.

About two meters from the extreme right-hand corner as I face inland, there is another, different, alignment. These are of rock, several set vertically, and two of them in particular are very well pecked, but they don’t exactly fit each other. They are in a different alignment, and they have clay stacked up right behind [landward]. They were excavated down to this level to a certain extent and what they represent, and whether or not they are another structure or wall alignment is unknown.

However, there are some foundations that are underneath these that extend over to and about a meter out from the corner of Ahu Nau Nau. So there was some other structure down here, and it rested on some rocks that are presently exposed. If they represent a wall foundation, it is not clear. Maybe they took the rocks for the present ahu wing [immediately above it to the left] from this particular structure, essentially recycling most of it, or at least its upper part. If this were a wall alignment, the question is whether or not it belongs to the landward bounding paenga that are aligned parallel to this but about 20 meters inland. If that is the case, then we have the thickest ahu known. We do not know where this alignment of potential back wall rocks goes. It disappears into the sand bank that is now walled up to the right, the rest not having been excavated.

The unfortunate thing is, at present, there are no dates for any part of this entire excavation and reconstruction. I do not know if there were any carbon samples taken from any of the excavations or whether there were any controlled obsidian samples. This, I am afraid, is a prime example of what happens when you excavate too much and know too little about the subject of archaeology.

One of the great wall blocks that has fallen down behind statue #4, counting from the right, has some very long fish-like petroglyphs all touching some sort of ridge at the end. I’ve no idea what that is supposed to signify,¹² but these blocks had been completely covered with sand (Lee 1988:Figure 10; Lee 1992:Figure 6.6). Immediately to the left there are a number of pieces of red scoria and various kinds of chunks of moai tuff lying around. Then there is a little square structure with sort of a two tiered or two-stepped face on it, very loosely put together. Again, this would have been completely buried or nearly completely buried with sand prior to excavation.

There is obsidian everywhere, and its context is difficult to determine now. However, what is important is that this thing seems to be connected to the back wall of a lower step that I mentioned earlier that is about a meter and a half high, and resting on some foundations as you face the sea, off the back right end of the central platform of Ahu Nau Nau. That portion, incidentally, for four or five blocks [westward] has been reconstructed of the central platform. What it originally looked like I do not know. There is a little pavement that sticks out about two meters or a little bit more, in sort of an oblong fashion and a number of very finely hewn slabs that make up the back wall of this little structure.

Immediately below it is a very small statue body. It is a classic statue, somewhat thin, minus a head; I mentioned this one before. It is only about 60cm across and less than a meter high and has a fairly pronounced groove where the spine is, the way some of the Ahu Nau Nau statues are. But I see no belt because that part is not exposed. It would have probably been a maximum of a 2 meter high statue.

The pile of rubble that is directly behind the back wall and behind this little extra platform continues out for about five or six meters, and has a lot of white calcium carbonate all over most of the rocks. This suggests to me that it is going to be a fairly late structure or a later structure in the whole sequence. But the little platform that sticks out has been rocked up with great big hewn slabs of basalt porphyry and comes in at a funny angle. There is a nice poro pavement on the surface of this, and I’m sure it is a reconstruction. Whether or not it was original is unknown, but it comes in and then juts right back out toward the sea again with two huge slabs, again hewn, that form the back wall, or began to form the back wall of the next younger ahu, which is to the right of Ahu Nau Nau as you face the sea. Big foundation stones and poro stones are beneath it.

Luckily, not all the sand was excavated from behind this particular wall, so how far that goes and how far it extends we do not yet know, but at least it hasn’t been excavated and it is preserved for the moment. I’m guessing that much of this sand is historic in nature and the real question is how fast does it arrive here? What is the mechanism for the sand to be moving inland from the beach besides wind? Is wind sufficient? I would like to think that a tsunami might have something to do with the large volume of sand, but the clear-cut and sudden super-positioning of the sand above the subsoil clay implies that there was only one prehistoric tsunami. Because the subsoil would have to form on or very near the surface, it would mean that there was no sand formation or accumulation, nor any blowing sand inland from whatever beach there was, until very recently. In other words, I think that a tsunami would occur more often than just once and would show up as sand layers within the subsoil clay. I would hope that there would have been pre-Polynesian tsunami evidence within the soils beneath Ahu Nau Nau.

At least one other option for interpretation of this stratigraphic event is that the sand formation and accumulation is a fairly recent geologic event related to warmer seas, hence increased coral growth and erosion, and some climatic event that would allow for the sand to accumulate and be swept inland. Is it therefore a climatic circumstance or a shift in oceanic currents that is the ultimate cause of the sudden arrival of sand a hundred meters from the sea?

What is particularly impressive are the numbers of statue chunks that lie behind Ahu Nau Nau. There must have been at least two or three others whose broken pieces lie here and all the rocks have not been moved, so we don’t know how many there originally were. What it suggests is that there was at least one statue head that has a rounded look, turned upside down. It has a rounded back on it, but otherwise it is rather classic in appearance. All that is visible of the head is the chin and the broken off portion of the neck.

Another head that I mentioned earlier is out about 15 meters from the back wall. It has a good classic shape and has eye sockets. There are other pieces and chunks of red scoria, but again, all the poro tend to have a calcium carbonate surface on them; it hasn’t eroded off. It would be interesting to see how far back these calcium carbonate poro are associated with the dead. Is it very old or a recent phenomenon? I’m under the impression that it is fairly recent. If that is the case, then we’ve got a problem with being able to get two or three meters of sand deposited in say, 200 or 300 years here, when obviously it was not in the plaza area of Ahu Nau Nau prior to the ahu construction. So the sand had yet to reach there. This suggests there might be some climatic reasons as well for the ‘Anakena Bay area, and the climatic implications suggest that somehow there was transport of enormous amounts of sand that was reworked by wind, inland, and done so in recent times so that it could stack up to a depth of five meters behind [seaward of] the back wall of Ahu Nau Nau. That obviously has taken place since the initial construction. So even if it takes place gradually over the space of, say, 1000 years or since roughly AD 1000, five meters of sand have come in from the beach.

I suggest that it hasn’t been that long because certainly they would have built the back wall at one time in the past, and it is on a clay floor. So the sand had to come in since the lowest structure and my guess is that it does not go back to AD 1000. It probably was about 1100 or 1200 at the very earliest. So five meters of sand has come in since that time and the reason they didn’t build Ahu Nau Nau up was because they were trying to escape the sand as it began to come in at the valley bottom first. At any rate, I do not know if there has been any attempt to trench this to find out how fast that sand came in or whether there are any structures farther seaward, or what the surface slope of the clay floor might be.

Finally, when looking at the prehistoric construction system, the ahu sequence is not only up but it tends to go from left to right as one faces the sea. And as it goes left to right it keeps climbing the little hillside of Maunga Hau Epa, trying to get out of the sand. And it seems to build: the last construction of the poro ramp is on sand itself, suggesting that perhaps they were trying to avoid the problem of building an ahu on sand. And that is why they may have not only built it higher but also continued to the right, trying to escape it.

Also, the highest poro ramp on the uppermost and youngest ahu construction, the one built on the sand, may be a pavement associated with a mass burial that took place in the sand, under the statues of the main central platform, and with the burials that were with that highest ahu construction. The point is that the highest poro pavement was built after more than a meter of sand had accumulated, suggesting it was an afterthought. The pavement rises to the top level of the highest and youngest central platform, whose paenga had to have been emplaced much earlier than the pavement and which had its own poro paved ramp structure below it. But all of the sudden movement of sand at this particular point in the Pleistocene and not before suggests that there was something in the South Pacific climate that would allow a change here, at least at this particular spot, and create the sand movement within the last 1000 years.

Standing on what would have been the central platform for the next younger structure than Ahu Nau Nau, it is oriented at a slightly different angle. The big slab pavement that formed the ramp comes up and wraps around a little to the left, right between the two central platforms of the ahu.

The angle of the central platform is oriented so that the communal plaza area would have been enclosed by all of the existing central platforms [Similar to Ura Uranga Te Mahina]. At Ahu Nau Nau, it is surprising how short the plaza area actually is. It is also oriented in an odd fashion; if it had been typical of the other ahu on the island, it would have been built about another 60 meters to the left as one faces the sea, so that it would be directly in front of a little valley, and it would have been bounded on all sides by lava flows or volcanoes, a typical position.

That is where I think the initial structure was and that is why they kept moving it. That is, they became involved with the inland sand movement when they built the initial structure and, as they had trouble with the sand, they built farther to the right, out of it, and built it higher. Perhaps they might have even dammed off a little area so that when it rained hard, the slope-washed clay would collect and form a nice hard-packed floor for the plaza. If they had wanted, they could have covered the plaza with sand, but it doesn’t appear that they did. The sand seems to have drifted in, complete with wind lamina. The hard-packed clay floor is really impressive, clay and scoria bits, and not mixed with beach sand. You can see in the trench the absolutely sharp transition where the beach sand overlies the clay, so the beach sand obviously came in during fairly recent times.¹³

There is only one statue left on top of this one, it has a No. 110 on it as I mentioned before, and it appears to be on its back. It may have been moved over during the excavation, and it is just resting on top of the rubble that is on the top of this central platform (which does not have all of its back wall exposed). The sand has blown down over it and is hard to tell how much of the back wall exists there. One thing that is important: there are some fragments of bedrock out here and they are covered over by the upper poro ramp, mentioned earlier.

Ahu Ature Huki

Ahu Ature Huki is located immediately to the right of Ahu Nau Nau as one faces the sea, and about 70 meters closer to the sea. I have included these notes with those about Ahu Nau Nau because the sites are close together and they may be ultimately shown to be part of an ahu complex.

Thor Heyerdahl resurrected Ahu Ature Huki; it still has most of its paenga, apparently in place. One of the things that is impressive is that it has a single paenga in front of it which looks as though it was designed to fit there; it is at least four meters long, very much eroded, and chipped on its upper surface. The paenga on the central platform are raised on both ends of the platform, similar to Ahu Nau Nau (Heyerdahl & Ferdon 1961:Plate 60 c-f; Plate 61 a-f; Bahn & Flenley 1992:158–9).

On top of it is an enormously broad statue. It is not particularly tall, but it has to be one of the few statues with the broadest shoulders in proportion to its height of any on the island. I can certainly understand how it might possibly have weighed nearly 20 tons. It looks enormous. The arms are in very good shape. Whether or not there was a topknot is difficult to tell. It is significantly eroded but not as bad as the statues that have fallen along the ancient roads.

The statue has short ears and a short head, not the usual long-eared statue. It is simply a vastly different style with a very flat back and is exceedingly wide. The arms are surprisingly muscular and large in comparison to the more graceful forms that seem to dominate most of the other statues on the island. This has to be one of the thickest statues that I’ve seen on the island. It has number 111 painted on it.

The pavement in front of the ahu on the ramp appears normal. There are some poro on it, but not like the typical spaced poro ramp. It is difficult to know what was here originally and what was reconstructed by Heyerdahl’s team. Part of that difficulty concerns what is probably a manavai where the plaza is now, plus there are some extra paenga lying around. This is, of course, the area where they put the big mound of stones in order to raise the statue in the first place. The whole structure and plaza is up on a steep little hill, Maunga Hau Epa, and it would have taken some work to get the statue up on top of the central platform in the first place, and so I’m sure part of this ramp has been disturbed.

If the in situ paenga ever had a red scoria fascia running along them, this would have been a very neat little central platform with a single statue. This structure is probably just about the size of a single boat, a single canoe. It certainly is raised at both ends and has been designed like that if the front paenga are in their original places. It looks like they have been carved to fit each other.

One thing that is important is that the central platform is short, which suggests the short central platform immediately to the right of the restored Ahu Nau Nau. The central platform of Ature Huki would have been to the right of that as well, so there may actually be a total of three constructions as one faces the sea from the plaza: Ahu Nau Nau is the first and the second one to the right, and then a third one to the right. The second and third ahu seem to have short little central platforms, exactly the same size as this one, reconstructed by Thor Heyerdahl.

There seems to be a bit of a back wall that was intended to extend outward as a wing, and that wing foundation at least, rises upward. Whether or not it was covered with anything is another problem. I am referring to the way the wings of Ahu Akivi rise toward their extremities, the same for Te Pito Kura, and the west wing of the smaller central platform of Ura Uranga Te Mahina.

The back wall of this ahu is in two different steps or levels. Some might possibly rationalize three. The back wall is in poor condition; they had to cement part of it under the statue to support the weight. They may have just jumbled some stones together to make the present back wall. It is hard to say what the reconstruction activity was then or whether there are any photographs of it.

However, there is a lower back wall that has great fitted stones. Those stones have a second course of large stones on top and appear to resemble some of the Marquesan marae. The fitted stones are selected to fit, with a few corners knocked off, not tailored to fit. But they are slabs, rubble-filled. There has been no dating on any of this kind of thing. It appears that it was originally a central platform or perhaps one built into the hill without a left wing (as one faces the sea), perhaps a kind of terrace. What might have been a right-hand wing looks as if it were bricked up. Several enormous slabs were hauled into place, so I rather doubt that this is the first one built, but from the size of the slabs, it may be. They may originally have had chock stones¹⁴ but that aspect may be destroyed now.

The other boulders that have fallen down behind Ahu Ature Huki appear to have been wall blocks and they are well-tailored to fit. There is an enormous pile of stones out behind and some huge blocks that have fallen. Many have been squared. Whatever this huge terrace was for originally, it was made into a wing for another structure next to it, and then the current one was built up on top of that. It has an edge of a central platform that obviously was rocked up and doesn’t have much lichen on it. It appears to be a makeshift kind of thing.

It is easy at this stage to rationalize a total of three constructions for this ahu because of the dramatic difference in the construction of the enormous slab ahu and it almost seems to have a bounding limit on it on the northeast side. There seems to also be a second structure that was bricked up against it with a possible angle change. So there would be two structures here and I assume that the one upon which the statue stands is a third, at least.

The right hand wing of Ahu Ature Huki bends backward as if it were like Ahu Akivi or the wings of Ahu Heki‘i, for they extend slightly seaward at an angle or slight curve from the corner of the central platform. This wing would have been about 12 or 14 meters long. The other wing lacks a back wall or any standing foundation that can be seen, but it would have been superimposed over the top of this lower terrace structure, of which there are still some enormous blocks remaining. Part of it appears to have fallen down the hillside. If the wing were complete, out about 12 or 14 meters, it would come right to the break in the slope, and there seems to be some pavement boulders left on the ramp part. However, one drops down 5 to 7 meters to the sand below and there are boulders there that have dribbled down the hillside. The real question is that, if excavated, one might find a real wall that had been here, one that had incorporated an older central platform that was perched up against the hillside.

I should re-emphasize that all hillside structures at ‘Anakena may be very early in origin and may reflect the location practices of the arriving population.

Immediately below it is another structure that is seaward by about 30 meters and appears entirely different. Across the bay about 200 meters away is another structure built up on the hillside, and the reason that I emphasize this is that I believe that they were trying to get out of the sand and that to me suggests that they knew better than to build their ahu down in dead center; that didn’t work so they recycled it to the right as you face the sea. That didn’t work either so they recycled it again to the right, and again to the right, trying to escape the migration inland of the beach sand.

I think that Ahu Ature Huki is a late site. I am judging from the size of the statue and whether or not it might possibly have had a topknot. It certainly would have been able to support one. But it doesn’t look as if it did support one; that is, there doesn’t seem to be enough red scoria fragments around to rationalize the existence of one. It also has a square head, rather than oval, and that in itself is impressive.

Nothing remains of the left hand wing but a little poro pavement and perhaps, if excavation were to take place, we could see what other structures remain. The unit suggests that it would have a foreshortened plaza or at least one limited on the right hand side as one faces inland. Limited, because you begin to run into other ahu and there’s a lot of sand, and a bit of slope that comes down from Maunga Hau Epa, so its plaza must have been small.

There is a collection of poro out about 30 meters from the front of this ahu on its plaza and this may be all that is left of whatever paina circles or ceremonies there might have been. There are also several large pits, probably for umu pae from having celebrated Heyerdahl’s raising of the statue. A statue head that was originally lying on its face and is now rolled over has a rounded head, 60cm long and about the same wide. It looks more like a smaller classic kind of statue, probably 2 meters high originally.

An enormous red scoria topknot lies out from Ahu Ature Huki by about 150 meters. This pukao is gargantuan and every bit as large as the largest ones that are rolled outside the mouth of Puna Pau; it must have required an enormous amount of labor to get it here. One of the things that I am interested in is that this one certainly would fit the statue that is atop Ahu Ature Huki. There are a number of vertical lines that seem to have been scratched in what I’m guessing to be the underside of it. There are about half a dozen of them, about 30cm apart. This pukao is about 2 meters wide as near as I can guess, and certainly the same dimension to the top.

A large groove is right around the middle of the pukao, suggesting that it was parbuckled, that is, a rope sling was used for rolling it up or down an incline. The pukao has the number 112 written on it. The opposite end has chunks taken out of it, and it has a lot of lichen on it as well as big pockmarks. Whether it was actually set into the ground or whether it has a flat side is a good question, but the parbuckling groove, which is about 10cm deep and about 30cm across appears to run clear over the top of it and both sides. It looks a bit like a spool now, with a very narrow groove around the whole thing.

A Summary of a Portion of the Archaeology of ‘Anakena Bay

All of the area at ‘Anakena Bay has been much disturbed, both prehistorically and historically. There are two or three roads that drive right into the “plaza of Hotu Matua” (the Heyerdahl statue), and another road that goes right down into the plaza of Ahu Nau Nau. Then you have quarrying all the way around what would be the plaza of Ahu Nau Nau, for both red scoria [from Maunga Hau Epa] as well as for sand. The sand quarrying goes all the way around to where the coconut grove is, and there are some big pits right down near the beach that have been used for sand quarrying. I think that if the islanders were given the choice, they would simply quarry all the sand away, build concrete houses as they see fit, and destroy the entire beach.

Both guava and Miro tahiti are presently established here and around the area. The guava is now starting to grow right out into the plaza of Ahu Nau Nau.

Ahu Nau Nau statues are fairly short, in the 2 to 3 meter range. However, they appear impressive because they are sitting up on a central platform whose top is at least three meters above the plaza area, and with the 2 to 3 meter statues on top of that, topped by 1 meter high topknots, the whole appears to rise up. But it is illusory. I think they are nowhere near as large as the statues that are on a great many other ahu, including Ahu Ature Huki, and that probably weigh as much as three of Ahu Nau Nau’s statues together.

A slab with a petroglyph of a stylized bird was set up, seemingly at random, and it has its own little pedestal stone (Lee 1988:Figure 14; Lee 1992:Figure 6.5). It is probably 40 meters away to the left of the left wing of Ahu Nau Nau and almost in line with it. The petroglyph faces the sea, and may have been “helped out” a little bit by some of the locals.¹⁵

To summarize the Ahu Nau Nau area and the sequence of construction, I think the oldest was probably on the left, although I can’t prove it. There may have been one underneath the present Ahu Nau Nau. Recycled remains imply that possibly two of the central platforms were in use at one time, the reconstructed one, and the upper part of the one to the right. While both could have been used in tandem with standing statues, I have no evidence that they were. Certainly the evidence confirms that both were used simultaneously after the fall, but the older one to the left of Ahu Nau Nau was not. This would parallel, to a certain extent, Heki‘i, Tepeu, Vaihu, and possibly Ura Uranga Te Mahina. These conclusions are formulated on the overlapping of architectural features that I perceive in the structures around the island. The most logical interpretation follows.

Underneath Ahu Nau Nau, as it stands at present, there originally was an older structure, probably a very much older one. This ahu was ultimately modified, and perhaps abandoned. It would have been located just off the lower left corner of the left wing [seaward]. I think they then built one a little to the right, and that one is now the base step, the first step that is two meters high on the back wall underneath the present Ahu Nau Nau central platform.

They subsequently wanted one a little higher and so they moved back out into the center of the valley and built the one that has all the rubble and the fine paenga that are exposed in the excavations (to the left of the present Ahu Nau Nau’s left wing). This construction was a very broad one and it may have been on the order of 60 or 70 meters long, or more. It continued up and into the plaza area of what is now in front of Nau Nau. It would have been (at least) the third structure.

A fourth structure was constructed to the right of this, but again underneath Ahu Nau Nau and may have resulted in the second step with the top of its central platform nearly at the same level as the presently-reconstructed central platform. So, the presently reconstructed central platform of Ahu Nau Nau is the fifth construction in this sequence, having used blocks from the others that were exposed.

The sixth construction is the first one to the right of Ahu Nau Nau, and they apparently had plans for a seventh, which would have been the one built on the sand and superimposed on number 6, but about 1 meter above it. This last construction was probably not a classic central platform with standing statues, but instead was a pavement on the sand that, in part, functioned as a cover for numerous burials. The statues of construction number 6 are beneath the pavement in the sand, and below whatever activity surface the pavement represented.

This is a maximum number of structures, an absolute maximum number of structures, i.e. central platforms. If I estimate a minimum number of structures, there are problems. Certainly there is the major structure to the left of Ahu Nau Nau; it appears to be comparatively ancient, that is, it has very well-fitted and classic paenga, and it would be the earliest. Then there is Ahu Nau Nau proper as the second construction. Following that is the central platform to the right for the third construction; and, finally, the overbuilding of the platform with the poro pavement on sand, which may or may not have been connected to a small central platform at its top. This fourth construction may have been the best they could do for a semi-pyramidal ahu on sand.

So the minimum number would be at least three structures with clear-cut central platforms. But I believe that the number is greater. When one looks at the paenga that are in the plaza area of the reconstructed Ahu Nau Nau, and if you extend those paenga out to the left and then measure the thickness of what that structure would be to a back wall that is now below the lower left wing of Ahu Nau Nau, then we have a problem – because that whole structure would be enormously thick, too thick to be a classic ahu, unless it were a simple platform, a great dance platform, or marae of some sort. But there is the problem with the paenga being on dance platforms when there isn’t a single other example on Easter Island, and little in the way of ethnographic information.

There are differences in construction within the back wall of Ahu Nau Nau, also. I think that three central platform constructions are a minimum, given the evidence that is now exposed. I also think that three is minimal. If I add two more, indicating that there was a minimum of five, I think that I would be on safer ground, and I may even suggest we had a minimum of six because there may have been two very early structures, not associated: one under Ahu Nau Nau, and one out to the left of Ahu Nau Nau but at about the same level; if those two were the first, then we have four more superimposed over that.

It is clear that Ahu Nau Nau is a most complex structure sequence, and getting at that sequence is a predisposition that I have because of my mapping of various ahu such as Akahanga, Ura Uranga Te Mahina, Vaihu, and Tepeu. It is my belief that they had been constructed in a sequence because it does not appear that the Rapanui built their ahu in a helter-skelter fashion, and without order. If this view has value, then Ahu Nau Nau is a very complex ahu.