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Geological and Climatic Features, Processes and Interplay Determining the Human Occupation and Habitation of Easter Island

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The Prehistory of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Part of the book series: Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research ((DPER,volume 22))

Abstract

Research on Easter Island’s (or Rapa Nui’s) prehistory has mainly been approached from archeological and paleoecological perspectives. The reconstruction of changes in island society has been based largely on the evidence of anthropic activities found in archeological sites and on paleoenvironmental reconstructions. These reconstructions characterized the evolution of the island’s lakes and the changes in vegetation. Many studies address the date of the first human arrival and the origin of those colonizers, two issues that are still controversial. Another recurring theme has been the scientific effort to reconstruct the deforestation of the landscape focusing on the drastic deforestation during fourteenth fifteenth centuries. There are two groups of authors on this topic: those arguing that changes in Easter Island society and landscape were mainly the result of anthropogenic factors (Flenley and King 1984; Mieth and Bork 2005; Hunt and Lipo 2006; Wilmshurst et al. 2011; Stevenson et al. 2015, among others), and those that propose dynamic models combining both climate change and social drivers (Nunn 2007; Lima et al. 2020; Rull 2021).

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Acknowledgments

AS, OM, SP-R, SG research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, through projects LAVOLTER (CGL2004-00683) and GEOBILA (CGL2007-60932/BTE). LB research has been funded by ANID through the Fondecyt Postdoctoral grant 3180257. LEL research has been funded by ANID (Chile) through Fondecyt projects 1141303 and 1211792 and Fondap 15110017. We want to thank R.K. Dunn and Ch. Stevenson for the constructive revision of a first draft of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institut UB-Geomodels, Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Alberto Sáez & Olga Margalef

  2. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Olga Margalef & Sergi Pla-Rabes

  3. SERNAGEOMIN, Santiago, Chile

    Laura Becerril & Luis E. Lara

  4. Institute of Engineering Sciences, University of O’Higgins, Rancagua, Chile

    Laura Becerril

  5. University Bernardo O’Higgings, Santiago, Chile

    Christian Herrera

  6. Earth and Sustainability Science Research Centre, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    James Goff

  7. School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    James Goff

  8. CIGIDEN, Research Center for Integrated Risk Management, Santiago, Chile

    Luis E. Lara

  9. Geosciences Barcelona, Geo3BCN-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Santiago Giralt

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  1. Alberto Sáez
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  2. Olga Margalef
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  3. Laura Becerril
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  4. Christian Herrera
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  5. James Goff
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  6. Sergi Pla-Rabes
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  7. Luis E. Lara
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  8. Santiago Giralt
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Correspondence to Alberto Sáez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Botanic Institute of Barcelona (IBB), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

    Valentí Rull

  2. Anthropology Faculty, School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Christopher Stevenson

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Sáez, A. et al. (2022). Geological and Climatic Features, Processes and Interplay Determining the Human Occupation and Habitation of Easter Island. In: Rull, V., Stevenson, C. (eds) The Prehistory of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91127-0_13

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