| Abstract: |
Introduction: The study of fishing gear, fishhooks in particular, has proven fruitful in investigating technological change and past cultural relations in Polynesia. Previous examinations of Easter Island fishhooks established their basic Polynesian affinities (Métraux 1940
Golson 1965
Emory 1972
but see Heyerdahl 1961, 1968), emphasized similarities with those from the Marquesas and Mangareva (Sinoto 1967, 1970), and identified the Easter Island two-piece fishhook as a local development comparable to innovations in Hawaii and in New Zealand (Emory, Bonk, and Sinoto 1968). In contrast to many other Polynesian islands, Easter Island offers little historic and ethnographic information about local marine subsistence (Ayres n.d.<i>a</i>)
the little that is known suggests technological and methodological elaboration consistent with the locally limited material resources and the impoverished marine biota. The shortage of canoe timber was noted even in the earliest historic times, suggesting that deep water angling for large fish was quite restricted, particularly during the last three to four hundred years. Evidence for an emphasis on netting techniques is offset by the rocky coastline, which lacks productive shallow coral reef flats. Weirs or traps were never elaborated
pre-European spear fishing is not well documented. Despite Métraux's assertion (1940: 172) that the nature of the earlier Easter Island marine subsistence is virtually unknowable, examination of comparative data on fishing methods and technology, of ecological factors, and of archaeological remains provides a base for formulating testable hypotheses characterizing the nature and development of the island's marine subsistence economy. Morphological variation in Easter Island fishing gear must be considered from three perspectives: (a) culture-historical, so that differences in form can be related to innovations within styles or to differing sources of fishhook tradition
(b) technological, so that variation can be related to raw materials and manufacturing techniques
and (c) functional and ecological, so that variation can be connected to exploitative strategies and varying biotopes and habitats. This paper aims to (1) employ ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic data to reconstruct traditional Easter Island fishing strategies and technology, and (2) devise and archaeo10gically test hypotheses about Easter Island fishing gear derivation and variability.
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