Papers by Robert DiNapoli
Monumental architecture was an important and widespread component in the emergence and dynamics o... more Monumental architecture was an important and widespread component in the emergence and dynamics of many past human societies. These features figure prominently in global dialogues about the evolution of social complexity, as monuments are often seen as manifestations of social inequality, religiosity, labor control, intra-community cooperation, and inter-group competition. Consequently, understanding the various socio-ecological factors underlying the emergence of monument construction is critical for a more complete understanding of the human past and its various trajectories. In this dissertation, I investigate these processes on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), famous for its monumental religious architecture. The role of monument construction in Rapa Nui society had been persistently debated, with some arguing for a cessation of monument construction, internecine warfare, and cultural collapse in a late pre-contact ‘Huri Moai’ phase. Given recent critiques of this narrative, a new emerging model, drawn from costly signaling theory (CST), proposes that monument construction was instead an adaptive response to the island’s marginal and risky environment that had long-term benefits to Rapa Nui communities. In addition to their well-known religious roles, it is hypothesized that monument construction served as conspicuous displays (i.e., costly signals) of communities’ competitive ability to control and defend their limited resources, which resulted in greater intra-group cooperation and limited violent conflict between groups. This dissertation is focused on testing the archaeological predictions of the CST model and critically evaluating some central, yet unresolved aspects of the Huri Moai narrative. This dissertation addresses these issues through a series of quantitative spatial and chronological analyses of monument construction on Rapa Nui as well as the archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence for warfare and monument destruction that define the Huri Moai phase. The results provide support for the CST hypothesis, question the validity of the Huri Moai phase, and offer a revised account of Rapa Nui culture history. This dissertation includes previously published, co-authored material.2022-08-1
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Archaeology in Oceania, 2021
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<p>SKS tests for the relationship between image-<i>ahu</i> (black squares) and ... more <p>SKS tests for the relationship between image-<i>ahu</i> (black squares) and distance (m) from subsistence resource locations (choropleth maps). Observed distribution (black lines) is compared to the expected distribution under CSR (dashed red lines) with the alternative hypothesis being that <i>ahu</i> are nearer to these resources than random. Results suggest <i>ahu</i> are significantly clustered near freshwater sources (D<sup>+</sup> = 0.59, p<0.0001), marine resource locations (D<sup>+</sup> = 0.65, p<0.0001), and the maximal rock mulch garden classification (D<sup>+</sup> = 0.24, p<0.0001). Results for minimal and medial mulch classifications can be found in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0210409#pone.0210409.s008" target="_blank">S8 File</a>.</p
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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017
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Journal of Pacific archaeology, 2020
Warfare is widely accepted as a transformative factor in human history. However, as warfare is no... more Warfare is widely accepted as a transformative factor in human history. However, as warfare is not inevitable in human groups, archaeologists must critically assess the empirical evidence for war and its importance in the past. Here, we reevaluate the culture history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), often interpreted as a case of warfare resulting in social upheaval. Common accounts hold that, prior to European contact, clan groups eventually ceased making moai statues and statue platforms (ahu), battled with obsidian spears, sought refuge in fortified caves, and toppled rivals&#39; moai in a prolonged period of internecine warfare termed the &#39;Huri Moai&#39; phase. Examining this culture historical framework and evidence for warfare and monument destruction, we find a lack of support in archaeological or historical records for a pre-contact Huri Moai phase. Overall, these findings highlight how archaeologists must carefully evaluate assumptions about the prevalence of violence and war in the past given the evidence for each case. In the case of Rapa Nui, our prior understanding of the island&#39;s culture history is in need of fundamental revision.
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PLOS ONE, 2021
Understanding how and why cultural diversity changes in human populations remains a central topic... more Understanding how and why cultural diversity changes in human populations remains a central topic of debate in cultural evolutionary studies. Due to the effects of drift, small and isolated populations face evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences, particularly when environmental conditions change unpredictably, such that knowledge about past environments may be key to long-term persistence. Factors that can shape the outcomes of drift within a population include the semantics of the traits as well as spatially structured social networks. Here, we use cultural transmission simulations to explore how social network structure and interaction affect the rate of trait retention and extinction. Using Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) as an example, we develop a model-based hypothesis for how the structural constraints of communities living in small, isolated populations had...
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Sustainability, 2021
The history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has long been framed as a parable for how societies can f... more The history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has long been framed as a parable for how societies can fail catastrophically due to the selfish actions of individuals and a failure to wisely manage common-pool resources. While originating in the interpretations made by 18th-century visitors to the island, 20th-century scholars recast this narrative as a “tragedy of the commons,” assuming that past populations were unsustainable and selfishly overexploited the limited resources on the island. This narrative, however, is now at odds with a range of archaeological, ethnohistoric, and environmental evidence. Here, we argue that while Rapa Nui did experience large-scale deforestation and ecological changes, these must be contextualized given past land-use practices on the island. We provide a synthesis of this evidence, showing that Rapa Nui populations were sustainable and avoided a tragedy of the commons through a variety of community practices. We discuss this evidence in the context of Elin...
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Remote Sensing, 2021
Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is an important component of many coastal environments and ... more Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is an important component of many coastal environments and hydrologic processes, providing sources of nutrients to marine ecosystems, and potentially, an important source of fresh water for human populations. Here, we use a combination of unpiloted aerial systems (UAS) thermal infrared (TIR) imaging and salinity measurements to characterize SGD on the remote East Polynesian island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). Previous research has shown that coastal freshwater seeps are abundant on Rapa Nui and strongly associated with the locations of ancient settlement sites. We currently lack, however, information on the differential magnitude or quality of these sources of fresh water. Our UAS-based TIR results from four locations on Rapa Nui suggest that locations of variably-sized SGD plumes are associated with many ancient settlement sites on the island and that these water sources are resilient to drought events. These findings support previous wo...
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Nature Communications, 2021
Examining how past human populations responded to environmental and climatic changes is a central... more Examining how past human populations responded to environmental and climatic changes is a central focus of the historical sciences. The use of summed probability distributions (SPD) of radiocarbon dates as a proxy for estimating relative population sizes provides a widely applicable method in this research area. Paleodemographic reconstructions and modeling with SPDs, however, are stymied by a lack of accepted methods for model fitting, tools for assessing the demographic impact of environmental or climatic variables, and a means for formal multi-model comparison. These deficiencies severely limit our ability to reliably resolve crucial questions of past human-environment interactions. We propose a solution using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to fit complex demographic models to observed SPDs. Using a case study from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a location that has long been the focus of debate regarding the impact of environmental and climatic changes on its human population,...
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Nature Communications, 2021
Examining how past human populations responded to environmental and climatic changes is a central... more Examining how past human populations responded to environmental and climatic changes is a central focus of the historical sciences. The use of summed probability distributions (SPD) of radiocarbon dates as a proxy for estimating relative population sizes provides a widely applicable method in this research area. Paleodemographic reconstructions and modeling with SPDs, however, are stymied by a lack of accepted methods for model fitting, tools for assessing the demographic impact of environmental or climatic variables, and a means for formal multi-model comparison. These deficiencies severely limit our ability to reliably resolve crucial questions of past human-environment interactions. We propose a solution using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to fit complex demographic models to observed SPDs. Using a case study from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a location that has long been the focus of debate regarding the impact of environmental and climatic changes on its human population,...
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The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2021
In a recent paper published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, John Terrell (2020)... more In a recent paper published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, John Terrell (2020) objected to the proposition that islands can offer model systems to study human behavior and ecodyn...
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Geosciences, 2020
Landscape archaeology has a long history of using predictive models to improve our knowledge of e... more Landscape archaeology has a long history of using predictive models to improve our knowledge of extant archaeological features around the world. Important advancements in spatial statistics, however, have been slow to enter archaeological predictive modeling. Point process models (PPMs), in particular, offer a powerful solution to explicitly model both first- and second-order properties of a point pattern. Here, we use PPMs to refine a recently developed remote sensing-based predictive algorithm applied to the archaeological record of Madagascar’s southwestern coast. This initial remote sensing model resulted in an 80% true positive rate, rapidly expanding our understanding of the archaeological record of this region. Despite the model’s success rate, it yielded a substantial number (~20%) of false positive results. In this paper, we develop a series of PPMs to improve the accuracy of this model in predicting the location of archaeological deposits in southwest Madagascar. We illust...
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Advances in Archaeological Practice, 2020
ABSTRACTArchaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting inform... more ABSTRACTArchaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting information for landscape-level analyses. In the American Southeast, for example, analyses of lidar data using automated feature extraction algorithms have led to the identification of over 40 potential new pre-European-contact Native American shell ring deposits in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Such datasets are vital for understanding settlement distributions, yet a comprehensive assessment requires remotely sensed and previously surveyed archaeological data. Here, we use legacy data and airborne lidar-derived information to conduct a series of point pattern analyses using spatial models that we designed to assess the factors that best explain the location of shell rings. The results reveal that ring deposit locations are highly clustered and best explained through a combination of environmental conditions such as distance to water and elevation as well as social factors.
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Quaternary Geochronology, 2021
Abstract The abundance of marine mollusks found in Pre-Columbian archaeological sites in the Cari... more Abstract The abundance of marine mollusks found in Pre-Columbian archaeological sites in the Caribbean has made them enticing sample types for radiocarbon dating. Unfortunately, a paucity of local marine reservoir corrections (ΔR) for most of the region limits building chronologies using marine-based carbonates. Here we present a suite of 33 new ΔR values for 22 islands in both the Greater and Lesser Antilles derived from known-age shells pre-dating A.D. 1950 (i.e., pre-atomic testing) and is the first intensive radiocarbon dating effort in the region to examine ΔR effects. The spatial coverage and corrections presented here demonstrate wide variation within and between islands across the Antilles, Bahamian archipelago, and islands that skirt the coast of northern South America. Correction values range from 282 ± 24 yr in Grenada to −547 ± 36 yr in Anegada. Calibration of published radiocarbon dates on archaeological marine shell using these new ΔR values demonstrates the need for caution when dating marine shell in the Caribbean, but illustrates the potential for these corrections to provide more accurate radiocarbon chronologies. Research is now focused on identifying the causal mechanisms behind the high variability in Caribbean ΔR and the implications these data have for refining radiocarbon sequences in the region, particularly for islands where there are currently no ΔR values.
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Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2018
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Papers by Robert DiNapoli