March 22, 2012: Free lecture by Easter Island expert Dr. Terry Hunt

by Kathleen McCoy  |   

Thursday, March 22, 7 p.m. Anchorage Museum, 625 C Street

Click on poster to see larger version UAA's Resilience and Adaptive Management Group and the Department of Anthropology invite you to attend a free lecture by Easter Island expert Dr. Terry Hunt on Thursday, March 22, at 7 p.m. at the Anchorage Museum. Hunt's free lecture, "The statues that walked: Unraveling the mystery of Easter Island," is based on a highly acclaimed book-co-authored by Dr. Lipo-by the same name, and it will outline the evidence for the island's astonishing prehistoric success and explore how and why this most isolated and remarkable culture avoided collapse.

A professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hunt has directed archaeological field research on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) with his students for the past 12 years. His continuing research on the island addresses questions concerning environmental resilience and the adaptive strategies that humans adopt to achieve sustainability.

Easter Island has become widely known as a case study of human-induced environmental catastrophe resulting in cultural collapse. The island's alleged tragic prehistory is offered as a cautionary tale of our own environmental recklessness and flirtation with failure on a global scale.

However, a closer look at the actual archaeological and historical record for the island reveals that while an environmental disaster unfolded, the ancient Polynesians persisted. Indeed the ancient people succeeded despite the odds. The only "collapse" came with epidemics of Old World diseases introduced by European visitors. Sadly, "ecocide" has been confused with genocide, intended or not, where today the victims have been blamed for their own demise and collapse of their way of life.

Terry L. Hunt is professor in the Department of Anthropology, adjunct professor in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology, as well as the director of the Honors Program at University of Hawaii-Manoa. Hunt has taught at University of Hawaii since 1988. His work has been published in Science, Nature, American Scientist, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Journal of Archaeological Science, Pacific Science, Journal of the Polynesian Society, Rapa Nui Journal, and Current Anthropology, among others. He has co-edited four books, including a collection on historical ecology and ancient landscape change.

In 2008, Hunt was awarded the prestigious University of Hawaii Board of Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research in recognition of his innovative work on Easter Island. In 2005, Hunt won the University of Hawaii Regents' Medal for Excellence in Teaching. Hunt and Lipo's book was recently awarded the Society for American Archaeology's 2011 Book of the Year award.

For additional information, contact Holly McQuinn at hemcquinn@uaa.alaska.edu.

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