Making Monuments on Rapa Nui: The Statues from Easter Island Exhibition at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester

1 April-6 September 2015. Curator of Archaeology Bryan Sitch. Free entry

The monumental stone statues of Rapa Nui (named Easter Island by European explorers) in the Pacific are some of the most widely recognised and fascinating archaeological objects in the world. Following recent fieldwork on the island, Professor Colin Richards, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, has worked on this new exhibition, which takes a fresh look at these impressive statues, or moai. Making Monuments looks at how the statues and their top-knots (known as pukao) were made, the role they played in the lives of the islanders, how they were quarried and transported across the island, and what they mean. It also deconstructs some of the myths about the island, and discuss current theories about the decline of this astonishing culture.

Photo: Joe Gardner

The exhibition includes one of the statues, Moai Hava, which was collected on Rapa Nui in 1868, and is on loan from the British Museum. Moai Hava, meaning 'dirty statue' or 'to be lost' weighs 3.3 tonnes and stands 1.56 metres tall and was brought into the Museum in an operation lasting five and a half hours.

Visit the Making Monuments at Manchester Museum website for more information:

http://www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/rapanui/

Read a blog post from the Deputy Head of Collections and Curator of Archaeology Bryan Sitch:

https://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/making-monuments-at-manchester-museum/

Visit the Easter Island section:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/easter/index.php