The artefact that I have chosen is a wooden tablet with a system of glyph engravings called Rongorongo, specifically the Small Santiago Tablet. Rongorongo is one of the worlds rare undeciphered scripts which are comprised of lines of symbols, many of which are birds or other animal forms, engraved with every second line being upside down. The text is said to be read from left to right, bottom to top, which is also known as the reverse boustrophedon (Bahn, 1996). This famous enigma of Easter Island was first dated in 2003 with the use of the accelerator mass spectrometry technique and was concluded to have a 95% probability of being created in 1680 and 1740 AD (Orliac, 2005). They were discovered in the 19th century on the small island with
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Originally I was going to create a flake from two rocks I collected from my backyard, however, the rocks did not budge when I hit them and no flake was produced and it also resulted in minor injury. Instead, I used a white pebble also from my backyard, the reason I chose this was because it was the closest material I found that resembled an obsidian flake/core. I cut the pebble down by hitting it with a larger rock, which caused it to flake, creating a perfect piece for carving.
Following the creation of the flake, I began my process of copying down the glyphs from the original image of the small Santiago. This took around an hour to do but it was stopped due to the flake I was using going blunt. This made it really difficult to make any visible inscriptions into the wood. I was to use another pebble and create another flake, however, I did not have any more to use.
The glyphs were harder to replicate than expected. I believe this was due to the writing implements and the wood being completely different to what was originally used on Easter Island. The artefact was obviously created by a highly skilled writer, also another difference would be that the inscribers would practice on banana leaves before they wrote on the wood (Horley, 2009), which was not done in this experimental reproduction of the
Originally I was going to create a flake from two rocks I collected from my backyard, however, the rocks did not budge when I hit them and no flake was produced and it also resulted in minor injury. Instead, I used a white pebble also from my backyard, the reason I chose this was because it was the closest material I found that resembled an obsidian flake/core. I cut the pebble down by hitting it with a larger rock, which caused it to flake, creating a perfect piece for carving.
Following the creation of the flake, I began my process of copying down the glyphs from the original image of the small Santiago. This took around an hour to do but it was stopped due to the flake I was using going blunt. This made it really difficult to make any visible inscriptions into the wood. I was to use another pebble and create another flake, however, I did not have any more to use.
The glyphs were harder to replicate than expected. I believe this was due to the writing implements and the wood being completely different to what was originally used on Easter Island. The artefact was obviously created by a highly skilled writer, also another difference would be that the inscribers would practice on banana leaves before they wrote on the wood (Horley, 2009), which was not done in this experimental reproduction of the