Read The Art Of Easter Island

The Art Of Easter Island

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Description:No other island has had so much appeal to the imagination of writers and world travelers as tiny East Island, one of the loneliest inhabited island anywhere, halfway between Polynesia and South America. Its more than six hundred giant monoliths have puzzled laymen and scientists ever since the island was discovered by Europeans in 1722.Yet, because of its remoteness and the unpromising barrenness of its open landscape, no professional archeologist had ever attempted stratigraphic excavations on the island until 1955, when Heyerdahl brought a team of American and Norwegian archeologists there. They, and up to a hundred manual assistants, worked for six months in all major areas of archeological interest.This book is the fully documented review of their discoveries. It is also, for the first time, a richly illustrated presentation of all known art objects created on the island - those obtained during Heyerdahl's own visit and those that had previously reached public and private museum collections throughout the world. Heyerdahl was the first to penetrate the subsurface soil and the hidden entrances to secret family caves on Easter Island, and he also was the first to visit every museum in the world that housed Easter Island art. Thus he had a unique opportunity to unravel one of the most remarkable lost civilizations ever known.The art of Easter Island contains a wealth of hitherto of unknown facts, and it demonstrates how completely erroneous previous assumptions have been in maintaining that Easter Island art lacked variety and was a monotonous repetition of conventionalized prototypes. The book summarizes the turbulent past of the statue makers as it was revealed to Heyerdahl by oral traditions, new archaeological evidence and pollen borings. It reveals the purpose of the various giant statues and the manner in which they were carved, transported, and erected. It shows how the islanders regularly made use of secret family caves with concealed entrances to hide themselves and their women during the frequent tribal wars, and to store personal property and occult heirlooms, or would otherwise be stolen by enemies or destroyed by arriving missionaries.Heyerdahl tells the whole extraordinary story of how the Easter Islanders gradually came to entrust their secrets to him and finally brought him and his companions into the hitherto unknown storage caves filled with bizarre lava sculptures. His survey of the newly discovered cave art—and of corresponding museum pieces, many of which have been deposited in storerooms and never made public—illuminates the two categories into which Easter Island art falls. One consists of talismanic images secretly owned by individuals and endlessly varied in motif and style. The other category is represented by standard monuments, ceremonial objects, and public paraphernalia—all of remarkably homogeneous types that are demonstrated by Heyerdahl to be clearly of South American inspiration, unknown elsewhere in Oceania.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with The Art Of Easter Island. To get started finding The Art Of Easter Island, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: 349

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Release: 1975

ISBN

Description: No other island has had so much appeal to the imagination of writers and world travelers as tiny East Island, one of the loneliest inhabited island anywhere, halfway between Polynesia and South America. Its more than six hundred giant monoliths have puzzled laymen and scientists ever since the island was discovered by Europeans in 1722.Yet, because of its remoteness and the unpromising barrenness of its open landscape, no professional archeologist had ever attempted stratigraphic excavations on the island until 1955, when Heyerdahl brought a team of American and Norwegian archeologists there. They, and up to a hundred manual assistants, worked for six months in all major areas of archeological interest.This book is the fully documented review of their discoveries. It is also, for the first time, a richly illustrated presentation of all known art objects created on the island - those obtained during Heyerdahl's own visit and those that had previously reached public and private museum collections throughout the world. Heyerdahl was the first to penetrate the subsurface soil and the hidden entrances to secret family caves on Easter Island, and he also was the first to visit every museum in the world that housed Easter Island art. Thus he had a unique opportunity to unravel one of the most remarkable lost civilizations ever known.The art of Easter Island contains a wealth of hitherto of unknown facts, and it demonstrates how completely erroneous previous assumptions have been in maintaining that Easter Island art lacked variety and was a monotonous repetition of conventionalized prototypes. The book summarizes the turbulent past of the statue makers as it was revealed to Heyerdahl by oral traditions, new archaeological evidence and pollen borings. It reveals the purpose of the various giant statues and the manner in which they were carved, transported, and erected. It shows how the islanders regularly made use of secret family caves with concealed entrances to hide themselves and their women during the frequent tribal wars, and to store personal property and occult heirlooms, or would otherwise be stolen by enemies or destroyed by arriving missionaries.Heyerdahl tells the whole extraordinary story of how the Easter Islanders gradually came to entrust their secrets to him and finally brought him and his companions into the hitherto unknown storage caves filled with bizarre lava sculptures. His survey of the newly discovered cave art—and of corresponding museum pieces, many of which have been deposited in storerooms and never made public—illuminates the two categories into which Easter Island art falls. One consists of talismanic images secretly owned by individuals and endlessly varied in motif and style. The other category is represented by standard monuments, ceremonial objects, and public paraphernalia—all of remarkably homogeneous types that are demonstrated by Heyerdahl to be clearly of South American inspiration, unknown elsewhere in Oceania.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with The Art Of Easter Island. To get started finding The Art Of Easter Island, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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The Art Of Easter Island

The Art Of Easter Island

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