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When first carved, the surface of the moai was polished smooth by rubbing with pumice. However, the easily worked tuff from which most moai were carved is easily eroded, such that the best place to see the surface detail is on the few moai carved from basalt or in photographs and other archaeological records of moai surfaces protected by burials.
Hoa Hakananai'a is a moai, a statue from Easter Island. It was taken from Orongo , Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 1868 by the crew of a British ship and is now in the British Museum in London. It has been described as a "masterpiece" [ 1 ] and among the finest examples of Easter Island sculpture. [ 2 ]
Carved stone human figures, known as Moai, on Easter Island. A stone sculpture is an object made of stone which has been shaped, usually by carving, or assembled to form a visually interesting three-dimensional shape.
Moai kavakava are male carvings and the Moai Paepae are female carvings. [147] These grotesque and highly detailed human figures, carved from Toromiro pine, represent ancestors. Sometimes these statues were used for fertility rites. Usually, they are used for harvest celebrations; "the first picking of fruits was heaped around them as offerings".
They are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter.
It was a quarry for about 500 years until the early eighteenth century, and supplied the stone from which about 95% of the island's known monolithic sculptures were carved. Rano Raraku is a visual record of moai design vocabulary and technological innovation, where 887 moai remain.
The best-known aspect of the Rapa Nui culture is the moai, the 887 human figures carved from rock between 1250 and 1500 CE and transported throughout Easter Island. The moai were believed to be the living faces of ancestors and had all been toppled by 1868.
Re-erected tuff moai at Ahu Tahai with restored scoria pukao and replica coral eyes. Pukao are the hat-like structures or topknots formerly placed on top of some moai statues on Easter Island. [1] They were all carved from a very light-red volcanic scoria, which was quarried from a single source at Puna Pau.